There are two ways to cross the street

I have a friend who is really interested in traffic patterns, when people choose to walk or drive, city planning, crosswalk signal timing, etc. Reading the things he writes about has gotten me interested in it too; I’ve started to pay attention.

Today I was crossing Market Street in San Francisco and noticed something odd about one of the crosswalks—it wasn’t perpendicular to the street. The crosswalk hit both sidewalks at about a 30° angle. No idea why.

Anyway, I sat there for a while today watching lots and lots of people cross the street in this crosswalk. There were those who crossed based on the crosswalk (i.e. they walked along a path parallel to the crosswalk lines). There was another population who ignored the crosswalk lines and crossed perpendicular to the sidewalk.

These two different populations clashed. They bumped into each other. There was no clear protocol for how you were supposed to pass. Nothing seemed to have prepared them all for the reality of a herd of people trying to pass them at a 30° angle.

I don’t know that I’ve uncovered any of the deep dark secrets of the human psyche based on this observation. However, I have learned that there are two different ways to cross that street.

(I cross perpendicularly)