When I first heard that the City of Chicago was awarded a grant by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to bring awareness to pedestrian safety education, I thought it was great because Chicago has the most ignorant pedestrians in the world! I have written a number of times how pedestrians pay no attention to the cross walk signs and how frustrating it is when vehicular traffic gets backed up because of this ineptitude. Then I heard how the money was being spent. And now feel Chicago not only has the stupidest pedestrians but the stupidest bureaucrats!
According to the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) :
“The Pedestrian Safety Campaign from the Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) is installing crossing flags at 10 uncontrolled intersections near schools, senior centers and hospitals throughout the city. The temporary, inexpensive flags are designed to make pedestrians more visible to motorists and raise awareness of the safety needs of the most vulnerable users of the public way.”
The way the program works is that plastic cylinders, with red flags in them, are installed on sign posts on both sides of an intersection. Pedestrians are supposed to grab a flag, wave it in the air while they are crossing the street and then place the flag on the opposite side of the intersection for another pedestrian to use.
During the installation “ceremonies” of the cylinders, CDOT officials were on hand to teach pedestrians how to use the flags. That probably took hours to explain-- how to take a flag, cross the street and put the flag on the other side. Another example of tax payer money at hard work!
Ten intersections have received the flags:
71st and Spaulding, near Tarkington Elementary School;
Central and Walton, near Brunson Elementary School;
Belmont and Kilpatrick, near a senior housing building;
93rd and Oglesby, near Trinity Hospital;
l63rd and Talman, near a senior center;
50th and Cottage Grove, near Hales Franciscan High School;
Devon and Francisco, near the Croatian Cultural Center;
64th and Western, near Claremont Academy;
79th and Throop, near a senior housing building;
Elston, Grace and Bernard, near Murphy Elementary School.
I can hazard a guess that within 15 minutes of the red flags being put into the cylinders, students from the nearby schools will steal them. It will become a game based on who can collect the most flags. The city will keep replacing the flags and children will keep taking them.
The grant for this program from the NHTSA better be large enough to include money for the city to be replacing the flags every day as it becomes a cat and mouse game with them being stolen. I cannot think of a more stupid governmental plan; unless you count the urban streets that are being turned into bicycles lanes. Bikes and people don't belong on city streets, cars do.
Let's make a date to meet at the nearest location ... and we can play in the street with the red flags. We can make our own TOURIST video ... so our visitors will understand what to do with the red flags!
ReplyDeleteWho sponsored this? Actually, who has the contract for the red flag, container and installation? (See now those are the important questions!)
What the hell are they thinking? You're wasting your time...you should be Mayor...or Governor...or, hell, President!
ReplyDeleteYou need to write a book called "Dumbest Ideas From People Who Should Know Better"
ReplyDeleteKathy, If people don't belong on city streets, you could never leave your condo!
ReplyDeleteOr you could but you would have to walk around the block way too many times and Fridays and Dicks would miss you!
ReplyDeleteFor me, this grant doesn't raise any red flags.
ReplyDelete(Ha. You missed the most obvious pun!)
The biggest problem of all is the car itself.
ReplyDeleteIf we had way fewer cars, there'd be, let's see ... Fewer deaths. Less pollution. People would live closer to where they work. With less mindless sprawl, we would save billions in public service delivery. We would save oh-so-many tons of money not launching wars to do things like putting Dick Cheney's friends in charge of oil extraction in Iraq and selling us overpriced peanut butter sandwiches to feed the soldiers we put in harm's way.
We could stop dealing so much with the Saudis. And road builders.
We'd have less national debt.
We wouldn't have underground storage tanks leaking toxins into our drinking water
The ineptitude is in the drivers more often than not. They seem to feel there should be no one in the way when they proceed down a street which merely has crosswalks but no traffic signals. Stop signs at such places are ignored often as well.
ReplyDeleteYou've got people focused on a grant and fears of flag theft, when the bigger problem is cars hitting pedestrians. That's a red herring!
ReplyDeleteTons of comments, love reading them!!
ReplyDelete