Walking, Biking, or Driving

There's a great divide in the city of Seattle. Two of them actually. I imagine it's the same thing in other cities that have a large percentage of people living and working downtown, like New York City. There are basically three types of people downtown on an average work day: drivers, walkers, and bikers.

If you're annoyed that I'm going to talk about walking around town, I've got no problem with you postponing your reading of this post for a while. By all means, do your thing. I'll wait until you're ready again.

Group 1: the Drivers

Drivers, I think, are held in the least respect by the other two groups. I say respect, because there is a serious drive, no pun intended, around here to protect the environment. They are not, however, the most hated. Back to that in a minute.

Drivers clog up the roads. You see them out there blocking lanes of crossing traffic because they think they should get to go anyway. They have to have the police direct traffic because left to their own designs they'll cause nasty gridlock. The worst thing about them is that they have no problem laying on their horns to express their displeasure with the guy in front of them. They do it with their windows up nicely isolated from the majority of the sound without thinking about the walkers right next to them. Then they get pissed when they're told to stop honking. By the way, it's technically illegal around here to blow your horn unless it's an emergency. And by emergency, I don't mean the jackass in front of you isn't moving fast enough.

If they were really serious about reducing traffic downtown, they'd take a look at what they do in London. If you drive in the city centre of London, you pay a toll. Now that I'm not driving, I'm all for that.

I'm going to include the buses in this group. They're just as bad. The passengers aren't, but the bus drivers are. Do not make the mistake of being in the bus lane or stopped to drop someone off very quickly anywhere near the bus stop. The bus drivers have no problem honking at you, and they're not particularly considerate of the poor people naked to their noise either.

Group 2: the Walkers

The walkers are awesome. They are the best people in town. I'm not saying that because I'm one of them. I think there are all sorts of other reasons. Walkers don't clog up the roads. We only add the carbon dioxide produced by our breath to the atmosphere. We're getting some exercise going wherever it is that we're going. In generally, we just totally rock.

Group 3: the Bikers

You might think that Walkers and Bikers are naturally allied against the Drivers, but you would be wrong. Bikers are the least liked people on the road, or the sidewalk, or wherever the hell else they decide to go. I swear when I was a kid one of the things they taught us was that a bike is just like a car and subject to the same rules of the road as any other vehicle. I don't think the bikers around here got the same lesson. If they don't like something on the road, they just hop up onto the sidewalk. They do what they want and and damn everyone else. Then, if they're doing something stupid on the road and almost get squashed, do they own up and take responsibility for their idiocy? Not normally. They will get up in the face of the car that almost turned them into road-kill chew them up one side and down the other. I don't know of anyone in the Walk or Drive groups that likes the Bikers. The worst part is that they can get away with it, since biking is heavily promoted as alternative transportation.

Bikers, you are vehicles, not pedestrians. Follow the rules of the road, and stay on the road. Stay off my sidewalk, I'm walking here.