Woman, 82, Gets Ticket for Slow Crossing

Maybe she just wanted to show off to the line of cars. Show a little ankle, shake a little booty.

Police here recently ran a Scooter safety campaign for seniors. The electric scooer type. it was well atended by those seniors with electric scooters.

Two days later a senior was involved in a collision with a vehical whilst riding her scooter in the shopping area of my town.

The vehical was a police car!!!

I'd like to give that cop a ticket for being an idiot.

If he was witnessing this, why not just help her out? Just watch, now all the oldsters will be protesting and it serves city hall right for being so daft for installing such a quick light at a busy intersection.

Just put up a sign, "Must walk 15MPH or faster to cross this street".

I am outraged by this too.

The west side of Albuquerque is relatively newly developed.

I am an old walker, in that I used to walk a lot, and I'm edging on older, but not that old. I don't presently have any walking disability except for going up 2:1 slopes fast.

So, I go to Jiffy Lube and decide to await the car by crossing Coors to go to the Walgreen's over on Sequoia. That's two longish blocks, no big deal. I gave up that day, no sidewalks at all, big traffic jam.

Next bit, I took my car to discount tire since my tires were flagging burst city, and had a bit of a wait. Well, I'll just cross the street to Riverside Plaza. I crossed at Montano in a slight subset of actual fear, in that people go fast on Coors.
The signal gave me thirty seconds, and I'm a little slow off the pad as I'm sort of awry in space, always have been. My eyes are way diff from each other, let's say 6 seconds worth of launching. Six lanes, hurry up woman.

So, after a haircut and lunch, I head back, using another signal where the street narrowed to get across Coors. No problem... except when I got there, there was no sidewalk.
I'm glad to wander along the shoulder of a country road, but not there. Back across to the Mall side, and back up to the signal with the six lane crossing. I made it. I jogged in my mild way.

Gadzooks. Thousands of people live across that street. What are they thinking? 30 seconds to cross the riverlike road?

Traffic management in that spot is not as critical in my point of view as was the excuse for Los Angeles doing this on streets to the airport. Coors is not that busy a road and people don't have to go that fast. (45 - 60)

Makes me want to rewrite my pedestrian culture articles (submitted but never opened by LA Times).

I'm not against speed as such - I went 90 several times on the way from California to New Mexico. But where pedestrians are apt to cross, I don't think it works. I think pedestrians matter for the life of cities, so I get riled up on this as a general matter and for particular pedestrians.

I'm all for that woman sueing, and I am not a lawsuit person. That is b.s.

Is this tantamount to slower pedestrians can't walk about in their cities? I'm not that slow, remember I jogged, and barely made it.

There are known internecene wars in cities between various departments. Transportation usually wins, re traffic flow. Enlightened cities usually get past that as the only criterion.

Do you have a link for that, Reyn? I want to jostle some friends...

Okay, here's two links:

Link 1

Link 2

Okay, I can see the argument that extremely slow people need find another way re major state highways, and by major I mean major. This gets tricky - one of the areas we designed as landscape architecture firm was a piece of state highway that went through a small town.

but, what I recently experienced shut all but marathoners off from a gigantic housing region to the so called neighborhood mall.

Why couldn't they just build a pedestrian overpass? I've seen it done here on busy highways.

I suppose it'll all come down to money.

I have a neat idea, reyn. Let's buy us a few things, go out there and open Reyn n Edgar's Rickshaw Service. We'll run 'em across that road.

It is a lot of money. Besides - a fractionally longer signal, and an appropriately lesser speed would work too.

Signals are timed in various ways. I remember various signals in WLA were set at 35 and if you went at 35 you could sail through them.

The trouble in the area near me is that it is new and that both sides of the highway aren't developing in similar ways.

Well, this gets me going... I see all of west Albuquerque ballooning with no nodes, or almost no nodes, of places to stop and shop. Sort of retrograde planning, decades ago planning, if indeed there is any planning.

I moved here on purpose - real estate providing more for less money, and I have less money, and my friends are nearby. But my urban planning feathers are up.

When we did the highway design within a small city, the whole trick was to slow traffic on a state highway (we worked with the state highway folks). A lot goes into that, and it takes balancing. You can't just do one median strip, or one set of bulbouts... as there is no warning for the driver. Takes a community will, really, to have a slowdown and then appropriate rev up.

Sounds like a solid business plan. :wink:

Might be more useful to look into your local signal timing.

Oh for heavens sake...
If this is such a big problem they need to extend the red light time, build an overpass or have a crossing guard to help people get across in time.

Ticketing someone for walking to slow...cuz she was DOING IT ON PURPOSE!

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mayvis14apr14,0,51710.story?page=2&coll=la-home-headlines

update...

Did you notice the name Darwin at the end of the article?

Yes, I did, edgarb...