Road wars
Hub pedestrians rule the streets these days
One of the defining characteristics of urban life is the endless war between drivers and pedestrians for control of the streets. It is a battle of nerves that ebbs and flows over time. The two agonists in Boston are well matched. The only thing worse than a Boston driver is a Boston walker.
Drivers used to career around Boston with impunity while walkers sashayed anywhere they damned well please. Many on both sides still do. Yet anything approaching a balance between these Hatfields and McCoys is in shreds. The walking movement, with a sympathetic City Hall, has built a hegemony over traffic flow -- pedestrian and automotive -- that is breathtaking.
''We're not going to jeopardize safety for speed," vows Jim Gillooly, the estimable deputy commissioner for engineering and planning of the Boston Transportation Department.
Of course not. But that's a canard. No one's pushing speed. At issue is the decent flow of traffic around our city. Cars and trucks need to move smoothly through Boston. Forget about yuppies cruising Newbury in Beemers, I'm also talking about the goods and services that fuel our economy whose delivery on a timely basis saves money. Boston does not thrive as one giant parking lot.
''It's already difficult to drive in Boston," notes David Luberoff, executive director of Harvard's Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. No fan of urban autos, he still wonders, ''Where is the tipping point that would make people stop driving but not take public transit -- they just wouldn't come into the city?"
Let's be clear here. Boston, like, Florence, is a spectacular walking town. The size is right and the rewards fabulous for perambulators. Natives and tourists alike should be able to enjoy these pleasures without fear for their lives every time they cross a street. Walking should be encouraged: it's good for your health and, to the best of my knowledge, does not require infusions of petroleum at $3.59 a gallon.
That said, there's an attitude in Boston today that dismisses the very idea of drivers's rights as an obscene notion. To many hardcore walking activists, drivers are pond scum only a mother could love. To drive a car in the city -- to the movies or the emergency room with a sick child, auto haters can't tell the difference -- is to wallow in evil. The inherent righteousness of Walking Nation is self-evident.
''They force their views on people who drive," says Ivan Sever, a lobbyist for the National Motorists Association, who has been the target of ''nasty e-mails" from members of WalkBoston, the nonprofit that has spearheaded walker power here.
The more moderate WalkBoston president Liz Levin claims there's room for all. ''I believe very strongly that both sides should be treated well. It's a matter of attitude. The roads should be shared. A lot of jaywalking happens because roads have been timed to move cars, not people."
Um, isn't that what roads were built for? I always thought that streets are for cars and sidewalks for people. Cars are supposed to stay off sidewalks and people off streets except at stoplights.
Yet crosswalks continue to multiply. About 2,300 of the roughly 7,000 intersections in the city now have crosswalks. (About 800 intersections have traffic lights.) Some are apart from lights, creating traffic jams. The crosswalk from Newbury Street and Arlington, for example, is a tiny block away from the crosswalk and stoplight at Arlington and Commonwealth Avenue. The light at Commonwealth goes green and a driver proceeds a matter of feet only to stop again for pedestrians at Newbury. In this age of rampant obesity, I'm baffled why pedestrians can't walk a few feet to cross at the light, or one block the other way to Boylston, until I realize it's inconvenient. What about the inconvenience to the drivers?
Speaking of lights, there are somewhere over 50 new ''concurrent" ones installed in Boston that allow pedestrians to walk when the light is green. Welcome to the future of traffic control. Both Gillooly and Levin maintain these devices are superior for all concerned to the traditional ones where cars actually stop for pedestrians.
Let's see. A driver gets a green light and wants to make a right turn. But, throughout some or all of the typical 100-second duration of the green light, pedestrians block his way as they cross that street, triggering a big old backup. I grasp how this is swell for the walker, but what's in it for drivers? Does anyone care?
Gillooly laments the chaos mentality of walkers in one breath and tells me in another that the city is putting in two more crosswalks on Merrimack Street to accommodate pedestrians who aren't crossing where they're supposed to.
What's wrong with this picture? What about enforcement?
What about issuing tickets to walking scofflaws rather than reflexively adding more crosswalks? The BTD doesn't issue tickets. The police don't either. Why not? Shouldn't such an effort be part of any coherent traffic flow plan?
Cars aren't going away. They define city life as much as a skyscraper. Neither are walkers. So we need a summit to align competing interests. We're all in this together.
Sam Allis's email address is: allis@globe.com 