Monday, October 10, 2011

Mimes Directing Traffic: A Nightmare I Had or An Experiment In Venezuela?

One of my favorite and one of my least favorite things are coming together in Caracas, Venezuela, and I think my head is going to blow up as a result: transportation and mimes. Yes, mimes. A sure sign of the apocolypse, in my book.

Thanks to my sister-in-law Julie, who saw this article in the newspaper yesterday and called to alert me to it. Apparently The Mayor of Sucre, in the eastern part of Caracas, turned to mimes to encourage civility among reckless drivers and careless pedestrians.

About 120 mimes (where do you find THAT many mimes??) hit the streets last week, wagging their fingers at traffic violators and pedestrians who streaked across busy avenues rather than waiting at crosswalks.

Despite the creepiness factor, they're having some success. Good thing too, because the norm there is for motorcycle riders to drive on sidewalks, buses drop passengers in the middle of busy streets and drivers treat red lights and speed limits as suggestions.

I can't even write about this anymore. Here's the article if you want to know more.

2 comments:

Julie said...

Spokane traffic isn't quite as bad, but do you think Mayor Verner could be persuaded to try this? I would be willing to step up to the plate and be Spokane's first Traffic Mime. Just doin' my civic duty.

SRTC Staff said...

I'm sure she could be talked into it. I'll put in a call. I'm also sure she wouldn't have a problem miming signing your paycheck, so probably a volunteer position. I'd put in $10 to see you do it though.


About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.