Here in Coatesville every day maybe, hundreds of times a day, people walk in front of moving traffic without ever looking. Sometimes they’re staring at a smart phone. Most of the time they looking straight ahead like they’re walking on farmland.
It’s one thing to time traffic so you can cross. Not bothering to ever look at traffic when crossing the street is another thing.
They have no “street smarts”.
If they lived in Germantown or Mt. Airy in Philadelphia they wouldn’t last long. In Germantown and Mt. Airy speed limits are partly followed. In a 25 mph area the speeds could be anything from 25 to 70 mph. You really have to look at traffic and time your street crossing to survive.
It’s safer to cross the street in downtown Philadelphia. There’s a kind of code between moving traffic and walkers. You give a little, they give a little.
Here in Coatesville many people don’t bother looking. The only thing that saves them is that people mostly follow the speed limit and can stop quickly, or drive the obstacle course.
On Lincoln Highway in Coatesville the obstacle course isn’t marked by traffic cones. The obstacle course here is moving pedestrians. It’s really disturbing when the obstacle course is children crossing with their mothers into moving traffic.
We put bump outs at crosswalks to shorten the crossing distance and crossing time for pedestrians.
The traffic signals are state of the art camera controlled signals. The signals actually count the number of cars waiting at a red light and change long enough for those cars to move. Most of the signals are camera controlled. A few are timer controlled.
The timer controlled intersections are at 1st Avenue, 3rd Avenue and 8th Avenue. I’m not sure if Strode Avenue is timer or camera controlled.
Stopping traffic makes breaks in traffic along Lincoln Highway so that pedestrians can cross. Otherwise on very heavy traffic times there would be an unbroken line of vehicular traffic from one end of Coatesville to the other.
The entire traffic signal system can be controlled remotely if necessary.
When the firetrucks and ambulances activate the traffic signals they don’t turn all signals to red. It depends on which direction the emergency vehicles are headed, how fast and where they are. State of the art. It helps keep the under 10 minutes response time.
When traffic is very light you can drive through Coatesville from bridge to bridge and maybe stop at 1 or 3 traffic signals. That’s 17 intersections.
It’s not like New York, NY. The “Walk” buttons really do work and you don’t have to wait long for traffic to stop.
But many people don’t bother crossing at cross walks.
Many people walk between traffic moving both ways anywhere along Lincoln Highway in Coatesville and don’t bother looking. This is on a roadway designed to favor pedestrians and not automobile traffic. But the pedestrians need to show some good sense for it all to work.
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SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2015
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