Crosswalks to Bear in Northampton, Massachusetts

Path of Pride

A red, white, and blue crosswalk will not grace Northampton, Massachusetts’ main street on July 4^th.  Northampton, in fact, is a town in search of an approval process for such an initiative. Veteran’s Day seems like a more reasonable goal, observed board of public works chairman Terry Culhane during a June 25^th hearing on the matter.

The tricolor proposal by Northampton resident Katherine Osborne followed two months after the town’s rollout of the rainbow crosswalk pictured above, just in time for the city’s annual Pride Parade on May 3^rd. The crosswalk and the rainbow flag that it emulates, of course, are iconic symbols of the gay community, which helps give Northampton its Je ne sais quoi.  I prefer to view the symbol expansively to include once prideful heterosexuals like myself as well.

In any event, Northampton’s Bureau of Public Works gave the rainbow crosswalk fast-lane approval, the mayor and the city council president got on board, and the crosswalk’s chief advocate, Northamptonite Melinda Shaw, raised $1,700 to get it painted. Now apparently a permanent fixture, it debuted tutti frutti for the parade.

Still, some Northamptonites had misgivings. Had pride advocates received special treatment? Did the approval process lack sufficient procedural due diligence?  Stung by such consternation, members of the public works board confessed to having opened a Pandora’s Box. In that uncertain climate, Katherine Osborne’s patriotic crosswalk proposal was not the recipient of fast-track treatment. Instead, it awaits unresolved ground rules that may include aesthetic and other input from the City Council or the Arts Council.  

Pedestrian safety in disappearing ink

Vanilla Fudge. Meanwhile, a traditional vanilla crosswalk (see above) 200 feet up the street at a heavily traveled intersection continues to receive city government shunning a la Rodney Dangerfield. Northampton’s “disappearing ink” crosswalk may be the town’s longest crossing. It is undoubtedly among its most spectral. Pedestrians hit the street late because the cross light has no audio. And many seniors and others less than fleet of foot get stressed out in midstream when the light begins to switch over. The enterprise is an accident in waiting.

You’d think that Northampton’s burghers would be self-conscious given the cautionary reminder pictured below. It, in fact,  is easier to discern from the disappearing ink crosswalk than the d.i.c itself. It's a second crosswalk bordered by phosphorescent barrels topped with amber beacons resembling oversized pinball bumpers.  The town rolled them out in November of 2012, after Pallav Parakh, a physician, was run down by a 25-year-old in a pickup truck.

Northampton gets its priorities straight. . . via the rearview mirror.

Coda: Residents of Northampton and nearby Amherst take pleasure in ridiculing one another's  loopiness.  In the interest of balance, here’s a July 4^th sendoff from a card-carrying Amherstite that will gratify Northamptonites. Her letter is apparently an annual 4th of July message to readers of The Daily Hampshire Gazette:

Old Man Walking—Just like a Train

Get Out of My Way, You Jerk, a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, examined the causes and consequences of pedestrian sidewalk rage. The feature cited average rates of locomotion in Manhattan for men (4.42 feet per second), women (4.10 fps), cellphone users (4.20 fps), tourists (3.79 fps), and others.

And it sparked my memories of an elderly Brit with two oversized canes and the air of a professor emeritus whose forward progress gave new meaning to the word glacial. Until last June’s heat wave, he would walk each day onto my campus (the University of Massachusetts at Amherst), eventually stopping for lunch at a campus cafeteria.

Although he moved at a tempo apart, no one who ever saw him failed to admire his grit and his walk ethic. Still, when he extended a cane onto the crosswalk at Massachusetts Avenue—a large thoroughfare that bisects the campus—he became the scourge of most drivers at directional cross-purposes. At those crossings, prominent Ped-X-ing signs and tight campus police enforcement ensure that foot traffic rules.

So how long might a driver on the wrong side of the cane wait for our friend? One day I timed his passage across the two east-bound lanes (15 feet across total). Getting across both took him 42 seconds—an eternity if you’re behind the wheel, perhaps an eternity and a day if you’re a student behind the wheel.

A 42 second stroll--15 feet across

Just like a train. “For me it’s not unlike coming up short at a train crossing,” observes a friend who studies the behavior and psychology of decision making by accountants. “At first there’s shock and disappointment that you just might have an indeterminate wait on your hands. How you adjust—how you shift gears mentally and emotionally—is critical, of course, to your short-term disposition. Why not count train cars from Peoria or root for the aging professor as he goes for the gold?”

Sometimes, though, a more pragmatic response can present itself. If you’re in the far lane, and the cane has just touched down on the crosswalk, you have 21 seconds before it reaches your lane. Many drivers, in fact, grab daylight while they can. But a strict interpretation of Massachusetts law, i.e., “law driving,”--the stuff you learn to get your license—requires that you stop your vehicle whenever anyone sets foot (or cane) on a crosswalk. Fortunately, there are broader interpretations of the law: “In a situation like that,” observed a campus police officer, "my recommendation is—use good driving judgment!"