Columnist Susan Snyder: Engineering a pedestrian debate

Tuesday, May 30, 2000 | 9:16 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Tuesdays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

Engineers can take something really simple and make it more complicated than building a swing set with the wrong wrench on Christmas Eve.

Take crossing the street, for example. After a recent column about jaywalking, droves of readers wrote and called saying the lights around here are set wrong.

But it's all a big misunderstanding, says Herb Arnold, Clark County chief traffic engineer. Here's how it really works:

If you step off the curb the very second the little white "walk" man appears you have four to seven seconds -- depending on the intersection -- before the man turns into a flashing orange hand. Flashing means there are about four more seconds to finish crossing, as long as you keep moving.

The hand turns solid red when the traffic light for cars turns yellow, which gives pedestrians a couple more seconds to finish crossing even after the hand stops flashing.

All of this is based on the assumption that people will walk 4 feet per second, or 2.7 mph, Arnold said. It's the federal guideline -- but not a law -- that Clark County engineers use to make everything consistent.

"We have to take the average citizen. We have to take a happy median," Arnold said.

Unfortunately, walkers ain't happy.

"As soon as I'm five paces off the sidewalk, the sign starts to blink," said Frank Vivert, 75. "By the time I'm 20 paces from the other side, it's red again. This is to make the pedestrian speed up his pace so the traffic can move faster."

Bingo, says Dan Burden, executive director and founder of Walkable Communities, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping public officials make their towns more safe for pedestrians.

The guideline Clark County uses is one of several federal ones to choose from, Burden said. And it also says planners can set lights for 3 1/2 feet per second. Four is the extreme of the suggested parameters.

"If they're in their 70s, they're not going to walk 4 feet per second," Burden said, "He's setting it for the cars."

Burden, a nationally recognized expert on pedestrian planning, has conducted seminars with Las Vegas and Henderson city officials. He says towns that are bad for walking are often made that way by traffic planners.

Engineers should plan with their heads, not code books, Burden says. For instance, he said, the federal guideline Clark County uses says engineers can alter the 4-feet-per-second basis to fit the average pedestrian of that area.

But forget codes. Try it. I found covering 4-feet-per-second is easy -- for a 39-year-old long-distance bicyclist.

However, it isn't reasonable for an older person with arthritis and a cane. The valley's fastest growing group is the over-60 crowd. Whose average are we talking about?

"Seniors are really afraid to leave their homes," Vivert said. "It's a serious problem confronting the people of Las Vegas."

Burden calls pedestrians "the lifeblood" of any town -- pulled it right out of a federal guideline book.

Arnold says he has no choices. Burden says hogwash. Just choose people over cars.

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