List serves

I think i subscribe to around a dozen Durham email lists. Most of these are neighborhood based, and generally eschew politics and controversy (at least the one i moderate does, which is one reason i really need to have a blog). The PAC2 list is theoretically devoted to crime and crime prevention issues.

But there's a fair bit of good info that moves across these lists, enough so that i wish some of the people who post a disproportionate amount of that good stuff would start to blog (hint to JS).

Here's a piece that came across the Bike and Ped list this week, that i would otherwise have missed:

“Step on a sidewalk or try crossing any street here, and chances are you’ll instantly feel like the prey of a safari hunt,” said Vassilis Theodorou of the Hellenic Association of Road Traffic Victim Support. “This is the only place in Europe where the golden traffic rule — that pedestrians have the unconditional right of way — is so brazenly disrespected.”

In Athens alone, swarms of scooters race down crowded sidewalks. Pedestrians struggle to circumnavigate construction debris, torn-up pavement and mounds of refuse. The greatest impediment, however, is the fleet of vehicles that each day mount the city’s approximately 1,200 miles of tree-lined sidewalks or other walkways to park.

To deter violators, the authorities blocked off the sidewalks with some 50,000 steel columns in preparation for the 2004 Olympics. But since then, drivers complaining of not enough parking places have rammed, removed or ruined most of them.

“The drivers aren’t to blame,” said Christos Akritidis, the deputy mayor of Athens. “We, the authorities, are responsible for applying Band-Aid solutions, than setting up a coordinating commission to effectively deal with the city’s traffic problem.”

With an estimated two million vehicles in the city, Athens has the European Union’s highest per capita car ownership, Mr. Akritidis said, with 450 cars registered for every 1,000 residents.

A string of new traffic measures, including high fines, designated parking areas and campaigns to discourage driving in favor of mass transit, biking and walking, have eased the plight of pedestrians somewhat.

Still, activists argue, no solution can succeed without effective enforcement of traffic regulations, and a change in the Greeks’ lackadaisical mind-set.

The article goes on to note that in France, letting the air out of tires of vehicles that violate pedestrians' rights is not illegal, as long as the car isn't damaged in the process. An ad hoc group called "The Deflated" has been doing just that.

One thing i've been trying to figure out is just where Durham would compare with the figures of vehicle ownership cited for Athens. Athens has 45 vehicles per 100 residents, and i'm assuming that's an overall number including residents under 16. Best i can find is US DOT figures for North Carolina as a whole, which are about 6.5 million vehicles for about 10 million residents, and Census Bureau figures for Durham which show that about 75,000 of our 100,000 strong work force commutes in a single occupancy vehcile. I'm going to guess when all is said and done that our vehicle registrations are going to end up being about 100,000 for a city of about 225,000, or a registration density similar to that described for Athens. Obviously, parking is not the problem here as it is there. But that doesn't mean that pedestrians are any safer here.

Let's hope that our city officials start allocating the funds to implement our pedestrian plan before things get to the point where people start taking matters into their own hands.