What about making the C-Train more pedestrian friendly? Can we possibly take the pedestrian and send them IBeacons to their headphones that they are about to be hit. What about auto texts to tell warn them. Perhaps, C-Trains need to learn how to operate friendlier and realize all people on foot are at a disadvantage to the speed and how about a bike track along the ctrain route? There is a real difficulty on a train moving at an operating speed taking into effect all these calculations and stopping on a dime with it's inertia. Same with automobiles. There is a death chain and it has to to with curb weight * speed = inertia. No matter how good the operator is the pedestrian will have the most to lose. As bad as I feel about the loss tonight, I feel bad about the operator of the train and also the first responders and the families that will live with this.
Distracted walking and driving are epidemics. This is number 1 on the worst offenders. Having headphones on and ignoring your surrounding's is just as bad as texting in an automobile. I feel terrible for these people. Add this up with being tired, not alert or how about a screwdriver on the way to work.
Pedestrian behaviour is abysmal. Also, driver behaviour to pedestrians and cyclists is abysmal. It's like this area of the law isn't enforced. I especially agree further out in the perimeter people all but ignore crosswalks, the pedestrian and the rules. Under the traffic act this expensive with massive demerit point loss. I witness failure to stop at crosswalks daily!
While we can engineer better road signage and painting it's only part of the answer. I think in the NY example you will see they had foot officers on hand long enough to ticket all offenders to make the change effective. I believe this intersection is in the meat packing district. Our city maybe to sprawling but in order to make things better we will need to enforce any changes we make with officers on foot to ticket offenders continuously until the patterns finally changed, less about paint and more about enforcement. Real change is effected by people on the ground committed to an outcome. That's where the city should look if it wants to truly make Calgary commutable for all forms of transportation.
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