This will have to be a quick post as I’m hogging a computer in the SoHo Apple Store at the moment.
We’ve spent the day mainly wandering around parts of New York, including the lovely Greenwich Village and the very trendy SoHo. After yesterday, which was a very long day of major activities like visiting the Museum of Modern Art, walking halfway across Brooklyn Bridge and then going up the Empire State Building, it has actually been really nice today to just wander around checking out the buildings and the city in general. I think that’s the part of being a tourist that I like the most – just wandering around and checking out the place I’m in.
One thing that I have found interesting in New York is the interaction between pedestrians and motorists. Due to the NYC grid, there are thousands upon thousands of intersections with traffic-lights on Manhattan Island. That means a lot of roads to cross, a like of lights to wait for. However, usually you don’t have to end up waiting – you just walk as there aren’t particularly many cars except on the main north-south avenues.
Even when there are cars coming through on a green light, they seem to always slow down and give way to pedestrians who are halfway across the road jay-walking. Perhaps it’s the massive number of pedestrians that makes this work, perhaps NYC drivers are just more concerned about pedestrian safety than in Auckland, or perhaps it’s something else altogether. I like the “greying” of the boundaries between pedestrians and vehicles that we see in NYC – a friendliness to pedestrians that I actually didn’t expect to see at all.
Tomorrow is the end of the long weekend here. It will be interesting to see how the city changes on a weekday. It’ll be good to have the subway running as per usual after all the service changes!
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Interesting … one of the first things I noticed when I moved to Auckland (from Europe) was the abundance of “PEDESTRIANS GIVE WAY TO TRAFFIC” signs everywhere!
It may very well be a numbers thing … apparently there are more people driving than walking (or is it that a car is harder than a person?)
In New Zealand, pedestrians only have right of way on controlled crossings and footpaths.
Also i think our no-fault ACC rules makes a difference as a pedestrian hit by a car cannot sue the driver.
In New York:
At crosswalks where there isn’t a traffic control signal or officer, pedestrians have the right-of-way.
If there aren’t any crosswalks, signs or signals, the pedestrian must yield the right-of-way to all vehicles.
Regardless of the right-of-way, the driver is required by law to take great care to avoid “hitting” pedestrians.
“At crosswalks where there isn’t a traffic control signal or officer, pedestrians have the right-of-way.
If there aren’t any crosswalks, signs or signals, the pedestrian must yield the right-of-way to all vehicles.
Regardless of the right-of-way, the driver is required by law to take great care to avoid “hitting” pedestrians.”
Exactly the same in New Zealand, pedestrians have right of way at uncontrolled ‘zebra’ crosswalks.
In the US the reason that cars behave so nicely towards pedestrians is because the drivers are so scared of liability.
It’s simply not worth risking million dollar lawsuits by going close to erratically behaving pedestrians.
I have noticed that in a few places in town cars are giving more respect to pedestrians, in particular the Queen St entrances to Darby St and Durham Lane where the road is raised to be almost level with the footpath, it is also noticeable on the Queen St exit of Fort St. In all of these locations cars will often voluntary give way to pedestrians which is nice to see however there is always the occasional driver that just plows through and gets agro if pedestrians are in the way. The common thing about all of these places is they have been made easier for pedestrians to cross.
Matt, cars are inanimate objects. They can’t ‘give respect’ or do anything ‘voluntarily’! 🙂
It’s such a common part of our speech to talk about cars doing stuff, you even see it daily in the Herald. I guess that simply reflects the dissociation that we have between cars and the drivers inside.
“cars” is quicker to type than “drivers” 😉 and anyway everyone understands that it is the driver of these cars making the decisions (for now)
The personification of vehicle’s goes back a long way in history. In a marine context the operation of a vessel is often handled by multiple people. It is only modern convention that denotes a single person operates a car (a very smart convention given our average car occupancy of 1.2). In competitive 4wd’s the co-driver operates independent breaking for each wheel, a task the driver simply does not have enough arms or legs for. With multiple people controlling a vehicle is a much more simple convention to personify actions of the entire vehicle rater than describe the actions of the occupants.
I agree that NZ society disassociated the driver from the vehicle. This is made worse by the preference of certain driver “types” for certain car types.
My main problem with the dissacosiation is that it frames traffic as some sort of inanimate mechanism, like gas in a pipe (or sewerage in a drain 🙂 ) when in reality traffic is controlle by human beings making decisions related to their very human motivations and goals.
> have noticed that in a few places in town [drivers] are giving more respect to pedestrians
The best ever example for that is the raised table across the Domain Drive entrance of Park Road. You can (if you go back in memory, or look at old Google aerials) see the progression beautifully.
1) First, there were huge turning radii, where you could zoom in and out of the Domain at 50km/h if the road was free.
2) Then they realised that maybe (just maybe) it would be nice if the entrance of our main park would be accessible for pedestrians in a style that didn’t remind you of sprinting between trenches under fire at the Western Front in 1917. So they added glue-on islands to reduce the crossing widths, and create smaller radii.
3) Then, when they built the Central Connector, they added raised tables, and reduced the exit from the park to a single lane. The result – easily half of all drivers give way to pedestrians with great, heart-warming courtesy (and I say that without any cycnicism – it really works). The other half drive through at much slower speed. Result: good traffic flow and a great layout for pedestrians. I have much more issues crossing the signalised hospital driveway 100m down the road, or the hospital car park driveway 50m down the road than this one.
Build it and they will come (and walk free of hassle) works for peds, just as it does for PT.
That is another good example that I have seen.
The situation as of 2) above:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=-36.862057,174.77066&z=19&t=h&hl=en
I’m from the States. It was quite shocking to realize that drivers in Auckland expect you to stop midway across an intersection to let them have right-of-way. I have been to no other modern place in the world where people walking are given such low regard.
Have you been to China ?
Hong Kong, but not the mainland. I tried to equivocate my statement with *modern*.
Well the states is generally credited with inventing the idea of a freeway and suburb “autopia”, but Auckland is definitely one of the most car dominated places in the world! The car is definitely king and walking just isn’t taken seriously.