The Observer, November 18, 2005
Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11
SideTrax: Transportation
I was a small town girl when I arrived on Case's campus this past August, full of naive ideas about big city living. I knew you shouldn't walk around downtown at three in the morning, I knew there would be a lot of people packed into not a lot of space, but there was one thing that I never saw coming: Cleveland traffic. And, at our urban school, traffic is something that you have to deal with every day.
The interesting thing about Case's campus is that it requires a majority of the student body to cross a high speed-road about three to four times a day. When you have this many students crossing streets, most of whom are tired/hungover/irrationally angry after leaving another SAGES class, and you combine it with a group of drivers who have decided that it is their goal in life to zoom through as many almost-red lights as they are physically able, you create a situation that just begs someone to write a satirical piece on it. So here it is, three transportation-related ways you know you're in Cleveland.
No. 1: Greenies. They're white. This fact seems to be a running joke among Case's public relations team, as it has been mentioned numerous times to me by Case employees, always with a look that suggests that I ought to be overwhelmed by the sheer irony and humor of the situation. The real joke is in trying to catch one.
No. 2: Idiots running red lights. Six out of ten times, when the little white walking man is lit up, there are still four or five cars speeding over the crosswalk on Euclid. I always feel bad for that walking man, thinking the light has turned red, assuming the street is safe to walk on, only to lead pedestrians into a slew of oncoming traffic. His only job is to get people safely across a street, and, thanks to Cleveland drivers, he can't even do that. Now this might be justifiable if that sign lit up immediately after the light turned red. But there's a good one to two second lag between the light turning red and the "walk" sign lighting up – no ambiguity, no questions, it's a red light. Yet drivers persist in their willful colorblindness, and, now, many a student has at least one near-death experience on while attempting to cross Euclid.
No. 3: Pedestrians. It wouldn't be fair to place all the blame on the drivers of vehicles, as we pedestrians aren't the sharpest crayons in the box when it comes to street safety. It seems as though, upon arriving at college, students completely forget the street-crossing skills we learned in first grade. Look both ways before crossing the street? Not here! Cars can't hurt you! Just step off the curb, You're invisible! Need to get diagonally across a major intersection? Actually taking the crosswalks takes too much time. Just save time, cut across! You wouldn't think that these people with so many years of street crossing experience would make such novice mistakes, but Case students have managed all the same.
As the joke goes, why did the chicken cross the street? Clevelanders can't even get past the fact that the chicken made it alive to the other side...
