Zebra crossings, that is, because the City of Granada, in order for the buses to run on time, has hacked zebra crossing green-light time by nearly fifty percent!
The new municipal bus services, known by the acronym LAC (Linea de Alta Capacidad), aren’t going according to plan, despite making the first week of its coming into being completely free for all passengers.
The trouble is that in places within the city they have taken a lane from the already congested 2-lane, normal traffic and dedicated it exclusively to these extra-long buses – known as ‘bendy buses.’ You can imagine what hell the centre of Granada is for car and van drivers now.
The City Hall sold the idea to the general public along the lines of lots of buses getting you quickly to your destination, but it hasn’t worked out like that because many of them are running late. So what does the City Hall do? Slash the allotted time for pedestrians to get across a zebra crossing.
On the Gran Via – as its name suggests, it’s a broad street – in some places the 24 seconds during which the green man was lit have been reduced to just 15 seconds or from 18 seconds to just eleven.
Pedestrians are not much impressed.
From the time that it turns green and you react to it, you have to adopt a good pace to make it across before it starts flashing, and that might not be difficult for a young, healthy person without running, but for the elderly, or somebody with a mobility problem who requires crutches or a wheel chair… or even a mother dragging a young child, you will already have the lights against you before you reach the other side.
On the Avenida de la Constitución, which has a centre island, you have between 12 and 20 seconds to cross the six metres, meaning that many pedestrians end up waiting in the middle for the next change of lights.
The complete, light-changing sequence now lasts 90 seconds, giving the majority of the time to vehicles, obviously, but the cycle previously lasted 120 seconds.
So what are the regulations across the land concerning pedestrian-crossing light cycles? The law used to stipulate that you should get one second per 1.2 metres but a modification to it in March 2010 put the ratio at 0.5 metres per second for people with ‘reduced mobility.’
The Gran Via is nine metres wide therefore the fast, light cycle (they vary depending on the importance of the crossing) at Calle Tinajillas is 0.8 metres per second – much too fast for the elderly.
Bus drivers and taxi drivers, for example, consider that the traffic flow is more fluid, with less time being held up at the lights and, on the positive side for pedestrians, the wait needed for the next light change has been reduced by 27 seconds.
The Councillor for Mobility won’t be moved – that’s not true, but it sounds good! No, she has admitted that it is enough crossing time for people with no mobility problems but they will have to look into adjusting it for the elderly and people with reduced mobility.
But the big question is… are the bloody buses running on time after all this?
(News: Metropolitan Area, Granada, Andalucia)