http://www.yehudamoon.com/index.php?date=2008-04-29

It’s not much, but the street running through Pike Place Market here in Seattle might meet your description. It is thronged with pedestrians year round, but cars are not banned. They inch slowly along the brick roadway and often wait for minutes at a time for a gap in pedestrian traffic to turn right. I wish there were more streets like this in Seattle.

Robert (Rob?), a traffic light controlled crossing would still be available for use by other pedestrians. It’s just that with such young children, it’s useful to have someone to make sure that they use it safely, and that the cars stop safely.

I’m not a big fan of pedestrian bridges. They’re essential when both road and on-foot street crossing path between them have more than full utilisation of the space they’re sharing, and advantageous even quite a ways from that limit (common in universities). Also, vehicle fuel efficiency is increased because vehicles don’t have to stop and start for a pedestrian crossing.

That said, for a pedestrian you have to go up a long ramp and down again, which uses up a decent chunk out of your ‘walkability radius’ for the area without actually getting you anywhere. Also, they can be unsightly (not an issue in this case, it seems).

Conceptually, separating drivers from pedestrians this way prompts an auto-centric mode of thought among the drivers (in turn encouraging inappropriate driving), and a fear of crossing the street at ground level among pedestrians. It’s appropriate on the motorway (freeway) when the space really is segregated, but in this kind of environment its important that streets shouldn’t be a barrier to communities.

Jon

I used to avoid my local elementary school when bicycling during rush hour. But now I don’t. I have found that riding by the school during those times can be very entertaining. I enjoy annoying the parents as I take my lane.
I have been honked at, saluted [one finger] and told to do things that are physically impossible. My responce is always the same, Slow down smile and wave.
I am not sure but me thinks they are very upset that they have to travel at 15 mph [25 mile zone] for two blocks. Thats a 19 second delay.

My two cents; what else is the internet for? : )

http://tinyurl.com/278btvt

$1,000,000 seems pretty expensive for such a bridge (williams elementary, kearney street, springfield, USA, on google to find the streetview). If you paid two crossing guards for three hours a day, 200 days a year for 30 years, you’d have to pay them more than $25/hour for the bridge to be cheaper. In the UK, a traffic-light controlled pedestrian crossing would cost £50-80k, so even factoring this in (with such young children and a busy street, you’d want the guard as-well-as) the bridge is more expensive. Presumably, the cost of a couple of buses is comparable to this.

Yours,

Jon

http://www.hdsb.ca/Newsroom/Pages/PLRobertsonPublicSchool.aspx

“The Halton District School Board will open one of its newest schools, P.L. Robertson Public School in Milton, on January 4, 2010 as a “walking-only” school. As the newly-built school gets ready to receive students, the school board and community partners have been busy ensuring the infrastructure and supports are in place for students to use active transportation to get to and from school.”

It is not very hard to retrofit existing schools as car-free. All that is needed is barriers to keep cars off the school property. Then the local government signs the surrounding two blocks as a “no stopping zone.” Then the local police make it part of their daily routine to send an officer around for 1/2 hour before school starts and 1/2 hour after school lets out to enforce the no stopping rule by ticketing any car driver that stops to let out a child.

All very easy, cheap and simple to implement. Any school can go car-free cheaply, easily and simply.

Perfect example of how too much traffic causes a vicious circle of even more traffic. Why is it OK to allow cars to so totally dominate a thoroughfare that people (in this case kids) dare not use it? I ask my fellow “How We Drive” readers: are there any thoroughfares in America that are so dominated by people that cars dare not use them?

Designated pedestrian malls come the closest, but in those places, cars are banned. I am thinking of places where cars are not banned, places where they are simply as rare as pedestrians along high-traffic roadways.

John
Number one Google search, “best driver in the world”