Crossocalypse Now
Is this what your mother meant when she said reality would smack you upside the head one day?
From The Globe:
A Medford teenager (Jae Woo Paeng, 19), engrossed in a cellphone call tripped and fell right into a moving Green Line trolley early this morning, according to an MBTA spokesman.
He ended up cutting his head, but didn't lose it, lucky for him. Makes you think, though, that maybe this next generation isn't as good at multitasking as we all thought they'd be. Walking and talking at the same time didn't used to seem like a death-defying feat.
Kind of makes me leery of Shared Space schemes, in which, according to a recent piece in the Globe Sunday Magazine, "The Future of Crossing the Street,"
The curb is a big enemy, because the curb is a separator, dictating what belongs to the pedestrian and what belongs to the vehicle. There are other enemies as well: signs, lines on the road, even traffic lights. ... Shared Space gets the street naked, removes all physical and psychological barriers, and forces cars and pedestrians to share. The concept makes the street safe by making it dangerous to proceed without paying attention.
Throw an MBTA trolley in there, and the whole plan sorta goes to hell, unfortunately. The T doesn't like to share with others, although it's more than happy to "share" our fares amongst its own (as recent executive pay raises show).
If you want to see a Shared Space free-for-all, look no further than Central Square in Cambridge. It's not that they've taken away the signs and street markings — it is, if anything, overmarked — it's that no one pays any attention whatsoever to them anyway. There are no psychological barriers to walking right out into traffic.
And that's the thing. Boston seems to be a special case. It's not that pedestrians are particularly repressed. Whether there are barriers or not, they will happily march right into traffic, plugged into their ipod, reading a book, texting or chatting on their iphone, keeping whoever is always on the other end apprised of their every thought, at the very moment it's hatched.
At least he's using the crosswalk.
The generation that's all about the fierce urgency of now should try being in The Here occasionally. Because who knows when the trolley driver will be too busy texting or chatting up his cellphone buddy to make way for you?
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