Just over 100 years ago, in January 1925, a traffic ordinance was passed in Los Angeles. There’s seemingly nothing so unusual about that: other US cities already had ordinances regulating the way that pedestrians walked when they were on or near roadways. “Minneapolis and Boston had them by 1910, though they were minimally enforced, if enforced at all,” explains transport historian Peter Norton. “Kansas City, Missouri, had a ‘no jaywalking’ law in 1912, and they did enforce theirs. Even LA experimented with pedestrian regulation before 1925. In 1923 the Auto Club of Southern California got the LAPD to issue a ‘no jaywalking’ order. The club supplied the signs, posting 60 of them along Broadway in downtown LA.”
However, LA’s ordinance stuck: even though cars were the relative newcomers to the city’s streets in 1925, vehicles were to take precedence over pedestrians. It became the model for the US, with state and local jaywalking laws descended from it.
But why? The LA ordinance became the national blueprint because the National Conference on Street and Highway Safety made it the basis of its Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance in 1927-28, explains Norton, associate professor at the University of Virginia, and author of books including Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City.
Rather than draft from scratch, the Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance adapted LA’s ideas – although leaving out the city’s original rule which said pedestrians could raise their hand to stop cars before crossing the road.
“The model ordinance was the official recommendation of the US Commerce Department. It was promoted nationwide by automobile clubs, by the National Automobile Chamber of Commerce, and by others in ‘motordom’,” continues Norton. “By 1930 it was already in place throughout much of the US. Some states just adopted it statewide. By late 1930, 23 cities beyond California had adopted the model ordinance, in whole or in part. New Jersey, New York and Wisconsin adopted versions of it as state law. It is the ancestor of the typical traffic ordinances in US state codes and municipal ordinances today. It superseded common law principles by which pedestrians had rights at least equal to those of other street users.”
Revised versions of the model
But it would still have been possible for Chicago and New York, say, to go their own way if they wanted. “Yes, and in fact to some extent cities did,” he adds. “By that I mean the LA ordinance became the national model – but only the model. States and cities were free to use ordinances they already had on the books, or to adopt revised versions of the model, and they did. Plus cities went their own way on matters of enforcement. Some enforced the jaywalking rules, some didn’t. Many had sporadic ‘safety drives’ where they’d ticket people for a week or two, then go back to benign neglect. There was plenty of variability. But the LA ordinance was the national example, and was by far the most influential pedestrian control ordinance.”
Yet although the new law established the dominance of cars over pedestrians – and contrary to how it might appear today – the new technology of motor cars hadn’t been accepted as the dominant mode straightaway. “Circa 1920, the conventional wisdom – among experts, authorities, and the mainstream press (indicative to some degree of their readers’ views) – was that motorists were welcome only on condition that they conform to streets as they were, neither obstructing nor endangering others,” says Norton.
Fast-forward to today, and that attitude seems a distant memory. And that’s why history is essential, suggests Norton. “We need to recover the fact that 100 years ago every US city – even LA – was walkable and had a vibrant walking culture,” he insists. “Conversely, we need to question the false histories that were constructed to perpetuate the status quo. These histories misattribute the status quo to popular preferences, mass demand, consumer choice, democracy or culture. In fact, while Americans welcomed cars, they never chose car dependency. We need to build on the fact that ‘freedom of choice’ is a pervasive value that cuts across political, social, class and ethnic lines. We have a choice-free transport system. Every state department of transportation presumes that car ownership is the precondition of convenient mobility. That deprives Americans of choices. Improving walkability restores choice.”
However, people will still need cars – and in fact many people in the US have no realistic choice about that. “Yes indeed,” Norton agrees. “This is a fact, and in many places it’s worsening. Millions are driving 50 miles each way to work. In some places, such as San Francisco, it can be the only way to reach affordable housing. But I often hear a wrong and very dangerous explanation for this: ‘That’s just American culture. Everyone prefers to drive. That’s how it got this way.’ This story is historically wrong. It also serves as an excuse to do nothing about the status quo.”
'Liberating but complicated'
The true history is “liberating but complicated”, he says: “The LA ordinance story is a beautiful way to reduce this complex story to a manageable scale. It’s a simplification, but a fair simplification. We need accurate but manageable true stories like this one.”
Part of the reason that marking anniversaries such as the 1925 traffic ordinance is important, Norton argues, is that it offers a way forward that sees the dominance of cars being reduced. “Yes, definitely,” he insists. “History proves that streets can be radically redefined.”
In 1922, a proponent of priority for motorists, Edward Mehren, recognised this fact, and saw that roads could be defined as primarily for motor vehicles. “In an editorial in Engineering News-Record, he wrote: ‘The obvious solution … lies only in a radical revision of our conception of what a city street is for’,” Norton says. “He was arguing that the purpose of streets can be reversed, and he and his allies set out to reverse it. Their success proves it can be reversed again.”
“Every state DoT presumes that car ownership is the precondition of convenient mobility: that deprives Americans of choices” Peter Norton, University of Virginia
This counter-reversal has actually occurred in some places - though not so much in the US. For example, in 1970, driver priority was the norm on the large majority of urban streets in the Netherlands. “Engineering standards, laws and to some degree social norms supported this priority. But between 1970 and 1990, this priority was either negated or reversed on a very large fraction of Dutch streets. People tell me: ‘But the Netherlands is a small country. It’s not like the US.’ To which I reply: ‘You’re right, the Netherlands is not like the US - but it is a lot like two New Jerseys.’ The Netherlands closely resembles two New Jerseys in area, population density, topography, climate, weather, income, etc. They’re even a lot alike culturally. Both have a reputation for being home to assertive, direct, sometimes blunt people who like to get ahead.”
And reassertion requires assertiveness, he says. “To get your rights respected you have to assert your rights,” Norton says. “We have so normalised car domination that often pedestrians defer to drivers even where the pedestrian has the right of way. We need to reach people with this message: ‘When you walk and you have the right of way, be prepared to safely assert it’.”
Take Paris, for example
In much of Europe, this rebalancing is happening to an extent. “Paris has set the example,” he suggests. “Oslo and Utrecht and many other cities have also done amazing things. In the US, no. There are isolated success stories: Hoboken, NJ; Market Street and Octavia Boulevard in San Francisco, etc. Relaxation of zoning restrictions in some cities has helped too. But these are fragmentary and incomplete examples.”
He is not hugely optimistic that this will go further. “But constructive change that I felt hopeless about 20 years ago has happened,” he points out. “I’ve seen DoTs adopt concepts, such as ‘complete streets’, that began as renegade ideas but have since been more accepted. I’ve seen more official acknowledgment that the US egregiously fails pedestrians. I’ve seen officials agree that crashes are not mere ‘accidents’. I’ve seen bike lanes spread in some cities, such as New York, to a degree I did not dare to hope for. In growing cities, there will be growing pressure to give up on accommodating every driver and on finding other ways instead. The San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Denver, Austin, Atlanta and greater Washington will all have to give people choices they lack now, simply because the traffic jams are so bad.”
Interestingly, he sees opportunities for coalitions across political divides. “For example, ‘freedom of choice’ may help us frame bike lanes, for example, as means of giving people choices they lack now,” Norton says. “Highways that don’t charge users require vast public money administered by huge state bureaucracies. There are opportunities to enlist conservatives in support of a model in which drivers pay for what they get. Relaxation of zoning rules would permit destinations to get closer together, and can accurately be framed as relief from intrusive government.”
In short, while cars will – of necessity – remain vital to many people in the US, there is room for alternative experiences of mobility to be developed. After all, if you are left with no option but to make a 100-mile round trip each day to your place of work, it’s not as though you’re exercising freedom of choice anyway.
