So this is mostly about crossing against a don’t walk in a green left turning phase? (Otherwise, when do pedestrians commonly, illegaly hold up drivers?) A good bad example is the south side of the Houston/Broadway intersection. Basically no one is obeying any laws, nor is anyone happy. I’ve found it’s safest to jaunt across the street after the last southbound car passes, so yes against the don’t walk sign and theoretically during the left turning phase, but I’m across long before the turning cars have time to get there. I do this because inevitably cars will continue to turn left after the turning phase and block eastbound traffic to play chicken with pedestrians who DO have a brief walk sign, a stressful and easily deadly situation. Moments prior, walkers unfamiliar with the intersection will have dawdled across following those who dart, blocking the legitimately left turning cars.

With intersections as broken as Houston/Broadway is (and has been since before Houston’s gutting), the greatest fault lies neither with the law breaking pedestrians nor the law breaking drivers but the DOT that has allowed the deadly situation to fester for years (decades?). Giving the multitudes of pedestrians a safe 30 seconds to cross first, as a group and with no turning cars from any direction, would be better for all parties than the current everyone-vs-everyone gridlock.

As for regular crosswalks, unprotected by a stop sign or traffic light, I personally think NYC has a problem with those, with drivers never stopping. Most other states will put out signs that say something along the lines of “STATE LAW STOP FOR PEDS IN XING”, which I’ve seen in a few other states but never in NYC.

It was a big awakening for me, back in 1987, to see those signs in Great Barrington, MA, and to discover that the drivers actually stopped, and waited. For years I wished New York would adopt a law like that – anyone remember the signs that said “YIELD TO PEDESTRIANS IN YOUR PART OF ROAD“?

It was another big awakening when New York actually adopted a law like that in 2003 – and there was no publicity, no education campaign, no additional signage, just business as usual.

I’ve seen signs like Lee mentions in some towns upstate – I think Tarrytown has a couple. But not in NYC.

and waiting 45-60 seconds at an intersection for your turn to cross is not at all comparable to the ipod legislation which everyone realizes was ridiculous on its face.

Asking pedestrians to obey traffic signals designed to facilitate the flow of motor vehicles is not fair or sensible. On low traffic side streets no pedestrian in their right mind is going to wait for the walk signal when no vehicles are present. It’s because the rules do not make sense for pedestrians, not because everyone on foot is
an impatient jerk. The RPA Spotlight had a good piece about how little sense it made for pedestrians to have to take off their iPod at every street crossing (20x a mile or once every 45 seconds.) The same is true of stopping for every DONT WALK sign when no cars are there.

since DOT saw fit to remove the stop sign I would not expect so many instances of cars bearing down on pedestrians or it taking minutes to find clear crossing of the street because there are so few cars. nevertheless some of those Yield to Pedestrians signs in Section 2B.11 would be nice.

removal of the signs at River Terrace and Warren and Murray worry me a little more as it would seem to create an opportunity for speeding on the street. but the street is already pretty narrow, and it is one way which, although conducive to faster speeds, means peds only have to worry about one direction of traffic when crossing. Again volume should be so low that it won;t be a problem. Whenever I’ve spend time in the area it seemed like there gaps in traffic of at least a minute.

As far as ped/vehicle confusion or conflict at a stop sign goes, I think the confusion argument is bunk. One problem is that at many stop signs, and especially when turning, a car must stop twice. Once at the stop line to let pedestrians cross, and then again after creeping into the intersection to see around the cars parked on the corner to see if traffic is coming.

saying selfish drivers are the problem doesnt really help. it seems to me that everyone using the roads is selfish. from the motorists who speed up to turn between crossing peds, to the pedestrians who insist on crossing against the light in the face of a turning phase to the cyclist riding in the middle lane of Atlantic ave with his crack showing.

there should be no such thing as an unmarked croswalk. Either mark them all or only permit crossing where the crosswalk is marked.

as much as the european conception of driving is different than the american so is european pedestrian behavior.
we should all follow the rules.

As for regular crosswalks, unprotected by a stop sign or traffic light, I personally think NYC has a problem with those, with drivers never stopping. Most other states will put out signs that say something along the lines of “STATE LAW STOP FOR PEDS IN XING”, which I’ve seen in a few other states but never in NYC. In California, there are even crosswalks pedestrian-activated flashing yellow lights embedded in the road.

Call me crazy but reducing the speed limit to 20mph throughout the city could also be considered. I test the idea whenever I am behind the wheel and like the feeling unlike those drivers anxious to pass me (and get behind stopped cars ahead). At slower speeds my response time is better as there is an inherent connection to vehicles, pedestrians and bicyclists.

Here in Western Queens there are tons of intersections with no crosswalks and only stop signs on the side streets. I’m not 100% sure on the legalities, but I think in the past that was legally interpreted to mean that pedestrians had NO right to cross the street.

Under the letter of the current traffic laws (as far as I can tell), it means that drivers are required to yield to pedestrians, but the drivers clearly aren’t aware of that fact. There are no signs and no enforcement, and the result (as before) is that pedestrians cross in perpetual fear of drivers. In rush hours it can be several minutes before it is clear to cross. I once requested a “Yield to pedestrians” sign on my old corner, and DOT engineers came and did a study and told me it wasn’t “warranted.”

Four-way stop signs are a marginal improvement (because of the chronic “California stop”), but still an improvement. If the DOT is removing the stop signs from those intersections, they need to put in traffic calming devices like neckdowns and raised intersections, or the drivers will assume they can blow through the intersections and the pedestrians will be at their mercy.

Given the laws of the city and the physical universe, it is only the driver that can be at fault in this scenario. Running down a walking person after a stop sign means either the driver didn’t stop, or didn’t see a pedestrian who had already begun to cross. I can’t walk fast enough to put my body in front of a car that’s already in the intersection, yet daily I’m cut off by (confused?) cars blowing through stop signs between Washington Sq. and Broadway.

Of course the signs don’t work as well when drivers ignore them, but capitulating to scofflaws is no answer. (And how useless are those crosswalks with no stop sign or signal up against wilfully accelerating SUVs?) It would make more sense to entirely close these low-traffic streets to cars until they can be made to slow down and allow the streets’ living and breathing majority users to cross. Faced with that happy alternative, I’m sure the automobile interests would find a way to comply.

But, a 2 point deduction for using the traffic engineer-ese “warrant.” How does “criteria” work for ya?

In this case, we have a large park and lots of apartments, with a road in-between. So is the goal of this street to move cars through, or to facilitate community activity? If a neighborhood wants people to go slowly and respect pedestrians than there are lots of ways to change the street to get that kind of behavior—through lane widths, medians, sidewalk activity, pavement treatments, etc. Changing or eliminating controls at intersections is only a small part of that equation.

In Battery Park City, with it’s limited through-traffic and local destinations, you have a good place to try out more innovative treatments. Considering that we are talking about a street that is in between a large park and a bunch of houses, this would seem to be a great opportunity to traffic-calm through a variety of measures. Design speed on a street like this should be incredibly slow, but here the city and BPCA are only considering changing the intersections to control driver behavior. If people are speeding in between intersections, than the street should be redesigned to move cars very slowly all along. Then the “confusion” at the stop-controlled intersections would not be a problem. In fact, engineers in Europe are telling us that this confusion is exactly what heightens safety, because drivers and pedestrians have to negotiate with each other. Signals increase predictability through and makes drivers and pedestrians LESS conscious that they need to be looking out for each other at all.