Quote:
Originally Posted by fotze
Can someone point me to the post where people are advocating for the feeling sorry for these people. Its been mentioned a billion times, yet I don't see it.
Also from my old traffic engineering courses, it is driven into your head that if reams of normal people are doing illegal actions, your design sucks. That's why there are limits you are allowed to design a signal to have a red. IF it goes past that point people will tend to think something is broken and do dangerous crap.
People are lemmings, instead of giving a ticket to the lemming as its falling off the cliff, you build stuff to keep them walking around safely.
But it is like argiuing the drinking and driving thing. One side is coming up with solutions where the other screams like a mongoloid "THE ONLY SOLUTION TO DRINKING AND DRIVING IS TO NOT DRINK AND DRIVE".
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I cannot agree more with the suggestion about the design sucking.
I used the street that was closed down a few times a week. In the past few months, the changes there have been somewhat confusing. For at time, the sidewalk on only half the street was closed down. You could walk north just past the bus stops and then the barriers were there. Pain in the ass to turn around, walk back to the corner, wait for the light, cross the street to the east, walk north a block, cross the avenue, then cross the street again to the west. I get that in the grand scheme of things it's not that far and not that long of a delay, but when the other option is to quickly sneak up half a block and save yourself a bunch of hassle...
I believe there was a barrier up for a while that allowed pedestrians to walk along the closed portion of the street. I imagine the lane closures delayed traffic and drivers complained. I don't know for sure, but it seems like a reasonable assumption.
Part of what bugs me about the ticket blitz is that a lot of the pedestrians who frequent that area have probably become accustomed to being able to walk that corridor without consequence. This is right by the court house. If there's ever a place in town outside of a donut shop you would fear running into the police it's gotta be there. If, despite the police presence, there's been little to no enforcement to date, it seems a bit of dirty pool to start handing out tickets en masse without warning.
I think it would be preferable to provide a compromise for all involved. There are covered walkways elsewhere down town. I've not heard a compelling reason why one could not be used here. Having those same officers on the corner handing out warnings instead of tickets may have served the same purpose (albeit without the injection of revenue to the city) and got the message out about the sidewalk closure.