I am glad to see the first pedestrian right of way sign that I have ever seen here. These had become a common sight in Cambridge over the last decade and drivers for the most part had become accustomed to the indignity of having to stop.

Hudson, with its usually sparse traffic, offers plenty of opportunities for both pedestrians and cars to pretty much use the streets as they see fit. In fact, though I would never do this in NYC or less so in Boston, here I regularly cross the street in mid block with just a casual glance to the left for an oncoming car then, as I approach the mid point of the street, a right glance for cars coming from the opposite direction. But, now in the 300 block of Warren I will have to be back to minding my pedestrian manners.

As I was admiring the crosswalk I realized that neither side of the walk had ramps for handicapped access. Then, thinking about the sidewalks in Hudson in general, I realized that ramps at intersections and crosswalks are not to be found. How could it be that decades after legislation demanded access for handicapped people elsewhere, Hudson has not found opportunities to put them in just as part of normal maintenance?

Escalators in Kowloon Tong Station Hong Kong

This is one of series of postings flowing from our trip to Hong Kong and Vietnam between December 15, 2008 and January 7, 2009.

During my visit over the last three weeks in Hong Kong I was on more escalators than in my entire existence. This reflects the well known verticality of both the natural and built environment there. It also shows the city’s interest in maintaining foot traffic as a viable mode of mobility. Even in the more remote parts of the city, pedestrian travel is aided by sidewalks, elevated walkways, and everywhere a web of pedestrian friendly access connected everywhere by escalators.

Compared with the chronic outages of service on the MBTA escalators, I never came across a single escalator that was out of service.

A final little reminder of the more typical lack of reliability of public escalators I experience in the US came on our return at Newark. After clearing customs we rounded a corner to see an escalator to carry us upstairs to catch our connecting flight to Boston. Sure enough, this escalator, a “Schindler” was emitting a loud clanking sound. We had seen plenty of Schindlers as well as Otis escalators in Hong Kong. None greeted us with such dramatic evidence of imminent failure.