On 11/26/2012 8:45 AM, STRAWSER, Charles wrote:
I read the whole thread, and I didn't see anybody explain why it makes
more sense, much less a lot more sense, for peds to walk on the right. I
saw one guy explain why he thinks walking on the left is more sensible.
But it's made clear by your forward that the convention on trails is for
peds on the right, and clearly it's safer when people follow stated
traffic convention than if everybody makes up their own.
Less clear is why there is one convention for peds on roads and another
for peds on trails. Let's guess that there are a lot of people who don't
know what the conventions are.
Scott M. Rose
West Point Grey, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Thanks for your reply, Chuck. One more point:
In the face of persistent questions about this, our Transportation
Projects Engineer, Ahna Bizjak, hassled the DOT for an answer. What she
got back has not yet been mentioned: On roads, pedestrians are
*un*intended users, and are expected to step out of the travel lane for
on-coming vehicles. By contrast, pedestrians are *intended* users of
the multi-use trails and paths we have around here, and so follow the
rules of the road, "keep right, except to pass", resulting in precisely
the yielding expectations that Chuck summarizes below.
You’re right, it wasn’t made all that clear in the previous thread.
Mark Shahan wrote: “The problem is most people don't know that when they
walk against traffic on the left, they are suppose to move off the path
when on-coming traffic approaches.”
But this is not actually the (official) expectation of path users as I
understand it. This is what is required of peds walking on a ROAD (not a
sidewalk, and not a path).
There is one convention for peds on roads because peds in roads (not
sidewalks) are expected to yield to vehicles in the road. Therefore,
peds in the road must be able to see the approaching vehicles that they
are required to yield to, and hence must walk facing vehicle traffic. I
believe this is state law, though I’m not going to take the time to look
it up.
There is another convention for peds on multi-use paths because peds are
NOT expected to yield to vehicles (bicycles) on the path. It’s exactly
the opposite: bicycles are expected to yield to peds on the path (well,
actually, faster users are expected to yield to slower users, but with a
few exceptions this generally means that bikes yield to peds). However,
it is much easier for everyone (if not necessarily more comfortable for
everyone) if all the traffic (bikes and peds) travels in the same
direction. Here’s why:
If you approach a ped traveling in t he same direction as you, but there
is oncoming traffic that makes it unsafe (or even just discourteous) to
pass, you can ride at walking speed behind the pedestrian until the
oncoming traffic clears and it is safe to pass. If the pedestrian you
approach is walking towards you (on his/her left of the path), and you
must wait for oncoming traffic to pass, at some point you and the ped
meet and both must stop until it is safe for one to pass the other. This
makes no sense at all (unless you believe that peds walking on the left
are expected to get off the path, which I don’t think is codified
anywhere in local or state law), it’s irritating for both the walker and
the cyclist, and on a crowded path it quickly cascades into bottlenecks.
The problem, as you put it w ell, comes when everyone does not follow
the same convention. And too many folks don’t know what the official
convention is, or seem to care. For example, I meet pedestrians walking
in the road against traffic (even where there are sidewalks) all the
time who do not yield to me as a vehicle, and of course I do yield to
them because I’m not about to hit a pedestrian in the road simply
because they are not following the law. This generally happens on
relatively low speed, low volume local streets, so perhaps we have
gravitated to a system where peds expect to be yielded to whether they
are in a thoroughfare in which they feel relatively safe (such as local
streets or paths). That’s understandable, and perhaps it’s even a more
appropriate convention. But it doesn’t happen to be the law here in
Wisconsin.
Chuck Strawser
Pedestrian & Bicycle Transportation Planner
--
Steve Arnold, Fitchburg Alder, District 4, Seat 7
2530 Targhee Street, Fitchburg, Wisconsin 53711-5491
Telephone +1 608 278 7700 · Facsimile +1 608 278 7701
[email protected] · http://Arnold.US
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