For anyone familiar with the history of Motordom, as documented in Fighting Traffic by Peter Norton and summarized in Happy City by Charles Montgomery, the significance of labelling pedestrians as ‘jaywalkers’ was integral to changing ‘the social meaning of the street.’ That is, from a place where all users had informal right-of-way to a place primarily dedicated to moving cars at high speed.
But that’s changing. Or at least pedestrians are fighting back, as reported in, of all places, Los Angeles: In a Car-Culture Clash, It’s the Los Angeles Police vs. Pedestrians.
The police say they are simply trying to maintain order at a time when downtown Los Angeles, once a place of urban tumbleweeds and the homeless, is teeming with people competing for pavement with automobiles. “There’s a huge influx of folks that come into the downtown area,” said Sgt. Larry Delgado of the Central Traffic Division. “If you go out there, you are going to see enforcement.”
Still, the enforcement has struck many of the pedestrians — the new kids on the block — as more than a little one-sided and strikingly strict. When Adam Bialik, a bartender, stepped off the curb on his way to work at the Ritz-Carlton a few blinks after the crossing signal began its red “Don’t Walk” countdown, he was met by a waiting police officer on the other side of the street and issued a ticket for $197.
“I didn’t even know that was against the law,” he said. “I was like, ‘You are the L.A.P.D., and this is what you are doing right now?’ ”
These pedestrians are confronting not only the police, but a historically entrenched car culture that has long defined the experience of living and working in Los Angeles. With its wide streets, and aggressive motorists zipping around corners, cutting in and out of lanes and sneaking past red lights, Los Angeles is hardly built for people who prefer to walk.
I got a jaywalking ticket in L.A. — on hill st in the middle of downtown. The way the police officer explained it to me: pedestrians are not allowed to set foot on pavement unless it’s at a crosswalk and the little white man beckons us across.
“The Modern Moloch” on 99% Invisible covered this VERY well perhaps a year ago. Also: their coverage of the “Red Car Conspiracy”.
OSCAR LEROY: Listen, I pay your taxes!
JESUS: He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone
The owner or occupier of real property adjacent to a street, must not allow or permit any earth, rock, stones, trees, logs, stumps or similar substances or things from the property:
(a) to cave, fall, crumble, slide, accumulate or be otherwise deposited on to a street
“Street” includes public road, highway, bridge, viaduct, lane and sidewalk, and any other way normally open to the use of the public, but does not include a private right-of-way on private property.
“City Engineer” means the City Engineer of the City for the time being
“Right-of-Way” means the privilege of the immediate use of the roadway.
“Roadway” means that portion of a street improved, designed or intended for vehicular use.
“Vehicle” includes any device by which any person or property may be transported on a roadway, irrespective of the motive power, but does not include railway cars running upon rails.
No person, other than a duly authorized officer or employee of the City or the Park Board acting in pursuance of his or her duties, shall dig up or in any manner injure or destroy any tree, flower, foliage, flowering plant, foliage plant, or shrubbery in any street.
Don’t tread on me
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taraxacum
“Boulevard” means:
(a) on a street with curbs, the portion of street between the outside curb and the adjoining property line, and
(b) on a street without curbs, the portion of street between the edge of the roadway and the adjoining property line,
and on a street where traffic is separated by means of a median, includes the median.