The pedestrian’s power of one

OPINION

BY ANDREW WOODHOUSE

President, Potts Point & Kings Cross Heritage and Residents’ Society

THE NSW Roads and Maritime Services, known as the RMS, should re-think its existence.

Just what, pray tell, is it designed to do?

Move traffic faster apparently, if you believe or understand any of its gobbledy gook.

Try this website extract for starters: “Roads and Maritime Services is a delivery agency within the Transport cluster. Transport for NSW is at the centre of the Transport cluster with responsibility for setting the strategic direction and guiding an extended network of public and private service delivery agencies to provide improved transport outcomes. Roads and Maritime is the delivery agency providing agreed outcomes across the road and maritime networks within the context of an integrated transport strategy.

We deliver projects and programs to reliably and safely improve the movement of people and goods by various transport modes, including through the road and freight network, NSW waterways, the public transport network and active transport such as cycling and pedestrian networks.”

Phew. My English Master would have marked them down with his thick red pen for verbosity and poor felicity of expression.

So the RMS is a delivery agency within the “transport cluster.” At its nucleus is Transport NSW which improves transport outcomes. And the RMS delivers those “agreed” outcomes – but I haven’t agreed to anything anywhere, let alone “to safely improve … pedestrian networks.”

How are they doing this and who is measuring results?

Well, now you know – I am. I’ve measured them and, guess what, my score is 1/10: must try harder and do prescribed research homework.

I couldn’t find any improvements but gave one mark for attending the exam, even if in absentia.

RMS is not keeping up with public opinion. RMS really means Root My Street: it deliberately disrupts my footpath walking schedule by stopping me at various points for no reason.

And since I am a member of the public my opinion is paramount, at least to me.

I walk because I don’t own a motored vehicular carriage, commonly known as a car, and because I relish a good walk.

Sydney Council’s former Euro design guru, Jan Gehl, was partly right: “Sydney’s heart needs a major re-arrangement to … rescue pedestrians from clutter and an over-reliance on cars.”

Many agree we should forget mucking around with a dysfunctional bicycle boulevarde like Bourke Street and build more awnings and balconies over footpaths, providing shelter from the rain and shade from the sun. Encourage hanging gardens in laneways to provide sheltered, scented passages away from the rat-running sewers of motorbikes and cars. Make a fleet of bicycles freely available for inner-city public use and let visitors get something for their parking-metre money – not just fines.

Pedestrian crossings were a key RMS criterion for success in my exam.

Is this because I love those buttons? Yes.

It is the power of one finger.

Pedestrians want that power. We want the power of touch, and we want it for all walkers. For all who’ve stood endlessly at traffic lights in freezing, Hobart-cold conditions in horizontal rain. For all those blown away by Mawson Base-force winds, or hot Sahara-strength siroccos while people in their cocooned cars nonchalantly shuffle through intersections with windows wound up and air-con, heaters, stereos and mobile phones blowing, blasting, bleating and texting.

Now is the time to take back our streets from the RMS.

We want more space and more pace. We want higher-energy pedestrian traffic flows and more maneuvering on our personal compass of daily activities.

We do not like waiting at our intersections or pressing a button which has minimal effect.

So when I arrive at intersections I am Moses. Cars will part like the Red Sea. I have absolute right-of-way just like shared zones in European cities. There, pedestrians are as important as convulsing cars, with their space-consuming inhabitants of one.

And I achieve all this with just one finger. I press that intersection button.

Electronics whirr. Lights wink. Cyclopean cameras nod in obeisance and buttons genuflect as that little, green-lit, stylised walking man beckons me forward. Systems monitor my safe arrival on the other side and then anticipate another pod of pedestrians.

I’m not Goebbels, Hitler’s repeat-the-same-message media führer, but I will repeat this once more: A City Is Its People, people.

Let’s take it back. And let’s start at intersections.