Doing the J-walk again....

Phew! Having spent a few days in Vienna, let me tell you that it's a real relief to be back in a country that allows jaywalking. I mean, I'm all for respecting local laws and customs and all, and I certainly don't want to be fined 50 Euros for failing to cross the road at the designated pedestrian crossings. Nor do I want to undermine the imperative to cross the road safely. I have to admit, however, that I don't think I can trust a country that penalizes pedestrians for jaywalking. Firstly, making jaywalking illegal is a recognition of the preferential treatment that motorized transport receives over pedestrians. The average intersection might allow cars in any one direction to pass through for one or two minutes at a time, while giving pedestrians only some 20 seconds to cross the road, despite the fact that cars generally travel at 10 times the speed of pedestrians. This, in addition to the extra distance that pedestrians must walk to get to a crossing, means that pedestrians spend proportionately more time crossing intersections than do motorized vehicles. Secondly, such preferential treatment of motorized transport perpetuates gross inequities in urban living. Although many pedestrians choose not to own a car, a great many don't own one because of financial rather than personal reasons. Car ownership is, however, rarely forced upon people (except perhaps in ridiculous cities that are built around the car). Urban public spaces are thus preferentially occupied by private, mobile spaces that pollute the air for everyone else at no additional penalty (exceptions being, perhaps, cities that have congestion charges). The very least cities could do to offset this imposition is to make jaywalking legal (under jaywalking, I exclude skimpily-clad, extremely drunk women who jump in front of a bus on a Friday night for no particularly good reason - that's just dumb).