Nightmare on 10th Street

Vehicle traffic was so heinous on 10th Street the other day that the driver of my number six bus took out his Sudoku and started penciling in answers.

I couldn’t make something like that up if I tried.

We all know the time of day when it’s faster to walk up 10th Street than ride.

I avoid it any time I can. I can’t blame my bus driver, who doesn’t have any choice but to sit there, for trying to find some activity that’s more entertaining than contemplating the vanity license plate in front of him.

During this time I end up spending sitting in 10th Street traffic, I’ve had a lot of time to consider why this specific traffic jam happens every day. And I think I figured it out.
It’s all because of that crosswalk in front of the Kelley School of Business.

You can tell because traffic is backed up from that crosswalk to the west as far as the eye can see. But from the crosswalk east traffic is virtually nonexistent.Once people start crossing the street there, all of 10th Street becomes complete anarchy.

Cars and buses have to shoot the gap between students just to make it to the library.
Once they finally make it through the floodgate, drivers are clearly not happy. They rip up the remainder of 10th Street like pent up animals that have finally been freed from captivity.

There’s a motorcycle that usually pops a wheelie in celebration as he crests the hill at 10th Street and Jordan Avenue, leaving all those pesky pedestrians in the dust.

Here’s the deal. This crosswalk is supposed to make crossing 10th Street to get from Kelley to Herman B Wells Library safer. That’s clearly a laudable goal.

But does it really help?

When the flow of students is light enough that cars can yield to them, let them cross, and then proceed on their way, it probably does.

But how is it so much safer to have cars dodge through an impenetrable stream of students and then roar up the remainder of 10th Street at breakneck speed? At this rate, it’s only a matter of time until something tragic happens.

But there is a solution.

The crosswalk at the stadium uses a system of lights to stop traffic and let pedestrians cross.

It’s like a traffic light, but the cross-traffic is pedestrian instead of being vehicular.
Implementing something like that light would be a perfect solution for the misguided, slow crosswalk that was placed on 10th Street. It caters to the needs of both students and bikers, bus drivers, and cars.

It would divide the current pedestrian-dominated anarchy into clearly defined times for pedestrian and vehicular traffic, and it could be timed with the light at 10th Street and Fee Lane for maximum efficiency.

Students using all forms of transportation could get to class on time, and everyone, epsecially the pedestrians that dominate this campus,  would be that much safer for it. It’s a simple, elegant, and easily implemented solution to an unnecessary
annoyance.

Then maybe my bus driver could leave the Sudoku puzzles at home.

­— drlreed@indiana.edu