Traffic Life : Passionate Tales and Exit Strategies
Edited by Stephan Wehner
An Anthology
 
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166 Manifesto fact that not everybody gets around in a car. Much can be done just by changing a few settings on the traffic light controls. For example: four-way reds, so pedestrians won't be chased out of the crosswalk by turning cars. More pedestrian signal buttons, and a quicker action for them. 'Walk' signals that last long enough so you don't have to be an Olympic sprinter to make it across the street. Education. Drivers believe they own the road-and who can blame them, since nobody has told them oth- erwise? Time to start telling them. Paint 'YIELD TO PEDESTRIANS' in every crosswalk. Put public-service spots on TV, and make it clear in no uncertain terms that pedestrians, cyclists, and skaters are also on the street by equal right under the law, and morally by an even greater right, since their road use is less costly in every way. The Bigger Picture American car-madness has taken its toll throughout the country, not just in New York; indeed, in some ways New York is relatively fortunate (we still have a functioning pub- lic transportation system, for example, at least for the time being). These larger social costs include the waste of open space, the decline of community, the pollution, and of course the Vietnam's worth of deaths every few months. Who hasn't lost a friend, or more than one, in the killing grounds of the American highway system? We can't change all this overnight. But we can make a start. And there's no better place to start than New York City, where alternatives to the car are already used, every day, by the majority of our citizens. It can be done. And, as so often in the past, New York can show the way.
  
Boneshaker Scott Munn I ran into the Ghost of Christmas Past on the Connex Southeast into London and we got to chatting. 'I miss the old trains,' he sighed, an ectoplasmic Disgusted of Tun- bridge Wells. 'What, steam?' I inquired politely. 'No. Slam-door. They had proper storage.' He waxed nostalgic. 'You could sit in the cage and keep your veloci- pede company if you liked. Get away from some of the mo- bile phones. If I have to listen to the opening bars of 'Mis- sion Impossible' one more time I'm really going to scream.' 'Don't hear that one quite so often anymore,' I remarked, then considered who I was talking to. We were shoehorned into the cramped new seats ('as if people were getting SMAL- LER these days'), keeping an idle eye on our bikes. His was indeed of ancient manufacture, with a gaslight up front, wooden saddle ('honest English Oak, not one of your sissy softwoods'), and a braking system which probably didn't even work in theory. The only nod to modernity was a rear LED: 'It's just sensible.' My ride was a sexy little number with toeclips. 'And they say I live in the past,' he commented. I ignored this. 'You must be in great demand. The olde days are big business. Especially in this country.' 'I do all right,' he admitted. 'Our meeting like this wasn't ­ 167 ­

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