This new Traffic Management Authority is now officially way, way out of hand. Fran Spielman and Lisa Donovan of the Sun-Times report that the authority has stolen 26% of the crossing time from pedestrians at State & Washington, one of the city’s flagship pedestrian intersections — and given that time to right-turning cars.

We’re moving completely in the wrong direction here. Other cities like New York and San Francisco are embracing signal timing solutions that benefit pedestrians: scramble signals (all traffic stops, all pedestrians go), Leading Pedestrian Intervals, and, in New York, “thru streets” where all turns are banned to improve pedestrian flow. In fact, Washington Street is designated in the zoning ordinance as a “mobility street,” where new development should “promote safe and efficient pedestrian flows” (sec. 17-4-0604). And here city officials are stepping in to demote safe and efficient pedestrian flows — all in the name of adding a little bit of convenience to THREE drivers per light cycle. Three!

I would be willing to bet that people in private cars are no more than 20% of the PEOPLE who move down State Street every day. Cars on State Street are vastly outnumbered by people walking, riding buses or trains, or on bicycles.

IIRC, the city received a substantial CMAQ grant a few years back to coordinate the pedestrian signals downtown — someone walking at a brisk pace across the Loop can make all green lights. Reducing pedestrian timing would mess up this existing system, frustrating pedestrians — although that seems to be the point here.

The gauntlet has been set. Gridlockers, let’s meet at the Campaign for a Free & Clear Lakefront’s “God Save the Queen’s Landing” rally tomorrow (4pm, Buckingham Fountain) and strategize for how to defeat the “slay those pesky pedestrians, all hail almighty car” attitude of this new Traffic Authority. The “traffic problem” downtown is entirely the fault of there being too many cars — not because of pedestrians or buses or trains or bicycles. Downtown would thrive with fewer cars; it would die with fewer pedestrians, but the blind bureaucrats don’t understand that. They’d rather demolish everything and just pave it over: then we’d have no traffic because there’d be nowhere to go to! How amazing!