Why does a pedestrian have to cross the street to cross the street? In most of the country, intersections have crosswalks on all four sides. In Norwalk, almost no intersections do.
A pedestrian at the intersection above, West Ave & Orchard St, might have to pass through three crosswalks just to cross the street. Can you imagine waiting for a walk sign, crossing the road, pushing the walk button, crossing again, pushing the walk button a third time and finally reaching your destination? Neither can I. In reality, this configuration just encourages jaywalking.
In traffic engineering, an intersection that delays cars more than 80 seconds delivers a Level of Service (LOS) F. This intersection is LOS F for pedestrians.
View Intersections with partial crosswalks in a larger map
How big is this problem? It affects almost every intersection in Norwalk, on city roads and state roads. When I asked about this issue for the N Main St & Ann St intersection, I was told that the traffic consultant had advised that a crosswalk on all sides would be too many crosswalks.
I am not sure how we wound up with this unusual idea of what an intersection should look like, or why we adhere to it even in our most pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods. However, this is a policy that is long overdue for an update.
2 comments:
This isnt just a Norwalk problem. Id guess that 90% of crosswalks outside urban centers in California are like this. It shows that the highway engineer doesnt give a shit about the pedestrian. They do the absolute minimum necessary and call it a day. I bet theyve never had to cross the street in the rain and risked crossing illegally or waiting for 3 different light cycles. Crossing illegally is of course safer, because theres nothing safe about "playing" in an intersection by crossing 3 times.
What I can't understand is, it simply cannot have much affect on traffic to have that missing crosswalk.
It's a hardly-noticeable feature to drivers and a huge, glaring inconvenience for pedestrians.
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