Battle Flag of the Pedestrians (washingtonpost.com)
Battle Flag of the Pedestrians (washingtonpost.com): "Burke strides briskly across the avenue, puts the flag in its holder and explains her technique: 'I look like I mean business.' She looks like one stern crossing guard, without the vest. Later this year, in its continual effort to mediate the war between walker and driver, Washington will finish outfitting every single signaled intersection -- more than 1,000 of them -- with the super-sophisticated, light-emitting-diode pedestrian countdown displays, the very latest in gee-whiz traffic engineering. At the same time, the city will decide whether to take the distinctly low-tech orange flags program being piloted at two Chevy Chase crosswalks -- at Northampton, and two blocks away at Connecticut and Morrison -- and offer it to other neighborhoods. The orange-flag idea was born in 1996 in Kirkland, Wash., a Seattle suburb, after a boy who was a crossing guard at his elementary school was hit by a car. From Kirkland, the program has spread to municipalities in at least 13 states. Flags wave in Portland, Maine, St. Paul, Minn., Madison, Wis., Cambridge, Mass., and Salt Lake City. The flags arrived in Chevy Chase after intensive lobbying by Samantha Nolan, a whirling dervish of a community activist. 'We were having people shopping at the Safeway,' she says, 'and they would walk across Connecticut and cars would knock the groceries right out of their hands.' Eggs were not the only things broken. Some residents urged a traffic light be put in at Morrison Street, at the Safeway, but Nolan argued successfully that the flags were cheaper, successful and would not change the residential character of Morrison Street. "
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48350-2005Apr12.html?referrer=email
- posted by Jim @ 12:26 AM