the Evil Line

In the local paper - and in the online world too, to some extent - there has been a lot of discussion about pedestrians, bikes, and cars sharing roads. Yesterday's Daily Camera editorial says you should be careful. Well, I'm in favor of apple pie too, but is there some policy change we should make in Boulder?

One letter writer to the Camera thinks the current blinking light crosswalk system is too ambiguous, and should be replaced with a standard green-yellow-red pedestrian crosswalk.

This is exactly backwards. The whole problem is the perception that pedestrians are strange and don't belong on the road, that we need to shunt them to specially marked crosswalks with giant red and white signs and blinking yellow lights. If streets are designed so pedestrians are normal and expected instead of a weird anomaly, everyone will be safer.

What you do is slow traffic down (use roundabouts if you have to), make streets part of the environment instead of a barrier, and give drivers less rather than more guidance in the form of lights, signs and signals.

If you hadn't already guessed from the length of this post, this is one of my favorite topics.