Can you guess this U.S. city? Look at all those cars – stopping, waiting for me to cross!
It's just a crosswalk. Guess that city-
This isn’t even a ‘great’ crosswalk, but those two stripes of paint tell drivers to stop and wait for people crossing. It gives a person trying to get to the other side a sense of confidence, calm or ease that feels so foreign to too many pedestrians here in Miami.
There are lots of kinds of crosswalks. The best ones are clearly marked, often raised, and laid out at each side of every intersection. Here are some examples:
Manhattan, New York City
Raised Crosswalk or 'Speed Table'.
"On a street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, drivers yielding to pedestrians crossing at the raised devices went from approximately 10% before installation of the project to 55% after the installation."
A Tampa Crosswalk
Crosswalks don’t always need to be fancy to be respected – though local cultures that care for life over speed does encourage compliance. Tampa Police have been cracking down on unsafe driving through crosswalks after their city surpassed Miami and Jacksonville for top ranking in pedestrian fatalities. You cannot ticket someone for driving through a crosswalk that doesn’t exist, however.
Crosswalk pavement marking types approved by the USFHWA.
A Pedestrian (or Refuge) Island in Texas
Abbey Road
Abbey Road: Would such a narrow road even get a single stripe from our DOTs? Crosswalks encourage responsible behavior from people on foot and in cars. They remind you that you are not on the expressway, but in a place where people live, work and do business. Crosswalks have been shown to save lives, too. How much to they cost to install? On average, a couple thousand dollars. Pedestrian islands and mid-block crosswalks can cost much more but costs are typically reduced when incorporated into larger projects.
What do your local intersections look like? Are there crosswalks? Why not submit a picture to TransitMiami.com or write your own piece for Community Commentary? The first step to taking back the street is paying attention.
5 Responses to Pic O’ the Day: Crosswalks
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San Fran!
Great question there: How much to they cost to install? It doesn’t seem that money would be the issue here, but then again, anything any DOT does has budget overruns and delays. It would probably take them a month to paint a simply street crossing
Hi Rina,
It actually takes much longer for FDOT to paint a crosswalk. I was out on Brickell Avenue with two FDOT engineers in August and pointed out that the crosswalk on Brickell and SE14th Street was barely discernable. The engineer took notes, but has done nothing about it; the crosswalk remains barely recognizable. I guess we will have to wait for FDOT to repaint it in about a year when they are done with the Brickell Avenue resurfacing. Until then, good luck getting across Brickell Avenue.
Pathetic.
Crosswalk paint is not expensive at all, it’s one of the least expensive aspects of any project, although it is often done poorly, or without thought.
On another note, people in Miami often stop on top of the crosswalk leaving pedestrians to have to walk in front of them or in the through street, I often tell drivers when on my bike that they are in the crosswalk, last time I did this a pedestrian said something along the lines of “yeah, that’s not fair.”
So use some sense when braking to stop behind the crosswalk not on it.
[...] a raised crosswalk? The Traffic Operations professional working on this project did not know what a raised crosswalk was. He told us, “I saw one once. You don’t want them; they’re loud.” This [...]