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Comment by joppy | Hacker News Reader

I applied to my local council (in Australia) for a pedestrian crossing to be painted somewhere near my home where a footpath from a park comes out onto the road, and pedestrians need to cross to the other side of the road. Seemed like a real no-brainer to me.

I got a letter back several months later saying that they had reviewed my request, measured the foot traffic in the area on several days, and decided to not paint a pedestrian crossing because there was low enough pedestrian traffic that cars would get complacent and ignore it (therefore endangering pedestrians who would have expectations that cars would stop at a pedestrian crossing).

It's the first time I realised there is actually a lot of though that goes into where to place a pedestrian crossing, and when to not place one.

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This is a constant chicken-and-egg problem. Why would there be much foot traffic if pedestrians perceive that the local government thinks so little of them that it won't put down paint to remind the giant high-speed metal boxes not to kill them?

To be clear, it was a very low-traffic (both car and foot) location - neither would expect to encounter each other almost ever. I thought the decision to not encourage pedestrians into a false sense of security was a sensible one.

A lot of thought goes into making it possible for drivers to drive as fast as possible at all times and ignore most traffic laws.

If drivers aren't stopping for pedestrians at a place where pedestrians are legally allowed to cross (in most countries, the presence of a marked crosswalk does not affect this), then the solution should be to get the drivers to stop, not to stop people from crossing.

at least a lot of thought about how to avoid creating a pedestrian friendly environment

in that case that would require something like a traffic light with a button for the rare pedestrians.

or, of course, a complete reversal of the car-centrism of the last century, but this quick fix was probably not in the toolbox of that particular bureau.

But that would be expensive, compared to just painting the road. And so we get into opportunity cost. Resources are finite, and even deciding what to do costs resources which you then can't expend on doing something.

In my country you can't just paint the road, at all, the minimum intervention is a lit crossing, orange lamps at each side, called "Belisha Beacons", which together with the paint forms a mandatory (ie if somebody is on the crossing or appears to be intending to cross vehicles must stop) crossing. This means you need electric power (for the lighting) and the resulting crossing is significantly safer but more expensive.

Even deciding whether, and how, to allow the simpler painted crossings is a significant opportunity cost, it would require legislation, and the government has other things it wants to do (e.g. sell off irreplaceable cultural treasures to spite enemies) with that legislative time.

Thankfully Australia is (for the most part) pretty pedestrian friendly.

I wonder if it is this simple. Perhaps most drivers will learn to ignore the crosswalk, but not all. Eventually someone will notice a crossing pedestrian and they will be more likely to stop when there is painted crosswalk, adding convenience for pedestrians.

There is also the reverse perspective your local government failed to consider. If drivers get complacent and ignore potential pedestrians so will pedestrians learn to recognize that drivers might not stop and cross with added awareness (I actually live by one such crosswalk). In addition there might be a risk factor of forcing pedestrians to learn the lesson that it is OK to cross on unmarked locations.

Your initial no-brainer might have been wrong, but your local official’s explanation sounds equally malinformed.

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