Besides drinking Bevo instead of beer and turning the space below the rickety City Auditorium into a dog pound, in 1916 Little Rock residents experimented with crosswalks.
Didn't go over so well.
The increasingly popular automobile was mowing down citizens left and right (to exaggerate a bit) and meanwhile, the mind of the pedestrian had not quite caught up to the escalating pace of transportation. People hiked across streets where they pleased, dodging the Little Rock Railway & Electric Co. streetcars as well as "automobiles, motorcycles, auto trucks, bicycles and horse-drawn vehicles."
And we think modern streets are dicey.
Particularly dangerous were the stations where streetcars stopped to load and unload. Downtown routes were a transportation sandwich with rails in the middle and sidewalks for bread: sidewalk, traffic, streetcar rails, traffic, sidewalk. So passengers boarded in the middle of the street.
An ordinance prohibiting autos from passing stopped streetcars had proved difficult to enforce. But in July 1916, the city Police Committee came up with an alternative: "safety zones."
Here's the Arkansas Gazette on July 21: "Fourteen safety zones -- into which motorists dare not drive -- will be marked between Second and Seventh streets on Main, and 'jay-walking' -- the pedestrian's practice of cutting corners -- will be prohibited after the City Council passes a new traffic ordinance drafted by the Police Committee."
Subsequent reports described these "zones" in possibly too much detail. Example: "The ordinance establishes a safety zone from the north property line of Main and Second streets, south on Main to the south property line of Ninth and Main streets. All street car stations at crossings where safety zones are established will be marked at each end of same with a standard not more than six nor less than four feet high, so constructed as to stand securely upon the street and not to occupy more than 18 square inches. One of these standards will be placed on the property line of the intersecting street and another 50 feet away. Each standard will be placed not more than six feet away from the outside rail of the street car track. The space between the street car track and a line parallel with the track, drawn between the two standards, will
be known as the safety zone, and no automobile, motorcycle, bicycle or horse-drawn vehicle will be permitted to enter the safety zone."
Wait, there's more. After some rules about parking came this: "Pedestrians are prohibited from crossing a street within the safety zone district except at right angles at intersections where zones shall be marked by white lines extending across the street the width of the adjacent sidewalks."
The fine for jay-walking? Not less than $1 nor more than $200.
Here's the Aug. 26 Gazette:
Vanishing Paint Apparently Used on Safety Zones
"'I've heard of vanishing ink and disappearing guns, but blow me [down] if I ever heard of vanishing paint.'
"Thus spake a resident of Little Rock as he stood at Sixth and Main streets yesterday afternoon and viewed the spot where only two days ago had been heavy lines of white paint, designating the safety zones, painted in compliance with a recent city ordinance establishing these zones on Main Street."
Creosote in the street's wooden block pavement had seeped up to obscure the paint. Unnamed officials said the lines would be repainted.
The ordinance took effect as planned at 10 a.m. Aug. 28, and that afternoon the Gazette checked in with Patrolmen J.N. Adkins and J.C. Thornton, traffic officers at Capitol Avenue and Main Street: "The officers said their chief trouble is in breaking motorists of stopping behind street cars discharging passengers and to prevent pedestrians from running into the iron posts that mark the boundaries of the safety zones."
Comprehension was complicated by the fact that the new rules allowed cars to pass standing streetcars at 6 mph in the safety zones but no place else in the city.
From the Sept. 4 Gazette:
Traffic Cop's Lot Is Not a Happy One
"Old-time theatergoers will remember the song in one of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, 'A Policeman's Lot Is Not a Happy One.' But Gilbert and Sullivan knew nothing of the unhappy lot of the Little Rock traffic cop's trials and tribulations in teaching the humble pedestrian to observe the new rules since the safety zones were established at street intersections.
"It is not only the 'jay crossing' of streets. That is the least of his troubles. The real hard time he has is in getting people accustomed to observing the lines in getting to the safety zones.
"It is not permissible for one to stand several feet from the corner and cross directly to the car. He must go to the corner to the front end of the car and walk a chalk line to the rear door, inside the safety zone lines. It is certainly funny to watch the efforts of the policeman and the various ways in which his efforts are taken by the people. One stylish woman being halted and asked to go the right way, calmly replied,
"'I haven't time now,' and kept on her way.
"A smartly dressed [woman] refused all instruction. The policeman told her, or rather started to tell her to stand at the corner and follow the lines. Haughtily she told him she guessed she knew how to get on a car. 'All right,' said the policeman, 'but you'll get on in my way.'
"Presently the car came along and the woman started across the street 50 feet from the corner, where the rear door was. The policeman waited for her to get to the step. Then he advanced, stopped her and took her back to the sidewalk, then up to the corner and so back to the car at the front end and back to the rear. She looked daggers, but the policeman had the law back of him.
"'I guess I've brains enough to go to a car,' said a man when the policeman started to explain.
"'If you haven't, we're to supply them,' amiably remarked the cop, and in fact, he had to show the man how to obey the rules after all.
"Some kick, some abuse the officer as though he were personally to blame for the ordinance, some laugh good naturedly and some cut corners when they get near the front end, just to show that the law has no terrors for them.
"Said the policeman after a strenuous time at the hour when churchgoers were getting their homeward-bound cars:
"'If a policeman had any brains, this job would sure drive him crazy.'"
Next week: Pokes Prevail at Cohn Hat Display
ActiveStyle on 09/12/2016