It's every hustling New Yorker's dream: a pedestrian fast lane that bypasses dawdling tourists and texting zombies.
The U.K. retailer Argos is making that dream a reality for Brits this week, testing out through Sunday a fast-track lane painted on the sidewalk outside its Liverpool store. The company's pilot should appeal to shoppers who find the slow place of foot traffic on commercial drags frustrating.
Over the years, exasperated New Yorkers have proposed their own solutions to pavement hogging and other breaches of sidewalk etiquette. We take a look back at their ideas, ranging from whimsical to pragmatic, below:
► Separate walking lanes for tourists and New Yorkers
In 2010, the prank collective Improv Everywhere drew a line down the middle of a particularly congested Fifth Ave. sidewalk south of 23rd St., dividing it into one lane for New Yorkers, the other for tourists. (Naturally the lane closest to shop windows was marked for tourists.) Then-mayor Mike Bloomberg called the prank "very cute."
"But you can't do that every place for tourists," he told the New York Post, "and we're not about to go to say to tourists, 'Well, we're going to clear off some streets just for you.'"
► Pedestrian penalty cards
In 2012, writer Cory Bortnicker and illustrator Andy Jimison created a set of "pedestrian penalty cards" that assigned severity ratings for rude pedestrian behaviors like a 6.7 for "carefree sauntering" and a 9.2 for walking side-by-side as a party of four.
Bortnicker told Atlantic Cities he envisioned people handing out the cards to offending pedestrians, the way referees slap rule-breaking players with yellow and red cards during soccer games, but confessed he would never dispense them himself.
"If people are crazed enought to do it, I'd love nothing more," he said.
► An NYC Department of Pedestrian Etiquette
The NYC Department of Pedestrian Etiquette — a fake institution that cropped up in a prank sign posted in the East Village earlier this year — would require all new residents and visitors to the city over age 16 to take a mandatory training session on proper etiquette, then pass an oral and practical exam to qualify for an "NYC DPE Pedestrian Permit," and pay a fee for said permit.
According to the flier, violators of "NYC Official Pedestrian Etiquette" would pay no less than $100 in fines. Three offenses would get them ejected from the city and banned for at least five years.
Among those violations were hair flipping, "standing like an idiot in the middle of pedestian traffic," and "waiting for the traffic light to turn green when the road is clear and thus blocking jay walkers." Mobile pedestrian patrol units would monitor the sidewalks for bad behavior, so New Yorkers wouldn't have to.
► A pedestrian code of conduct
Unlike the anonymous comedian behind the NYC DPE, Robert Selsam, former director for planning at the MTA and former director of transportation and regional planning at the New York Department of City Planning, had some actual credentials to support his 10 rules for city sidewalks, published in the Daily News in 2011.
Selsam proposed fines for zigagging on the sidewalk, failing to maintain mimimum speed of 3 m.p.h., and window-shopping outside of "designated window-shopping zones," among other offenses. His suggested fines ranged from $50 to $200 for "walking a dog with its leash running perpendicular to the sidewalk."
Rule enforcement would fall to citizens and the NYPD, with offenders granted the ability to waive their fines provided they take a five-minute lesson in appropriate walking conduct.
