Fast Facts-New York needs to catch up

New Yorkers may be the fastest walkers in the US, but not in the world. I was kind of disappointed to learn that we are number 8. However, the I think (not 100% sure) the study excluded people wearing ipods, and that is a lot of New Yorkers. Lord knows I walk much faster with my ipod on.

May 4, 2007, 12:40 pm
The 8th Fastest Walkers in the World
By Anthony Ramirez
For most out-of-towners fond of a porch swing, a beach blanket or a wandering Sunday stroll, the phrase “New York Minute” has come to mean a peculiarly local delirium of impatience that results in the shrinking of time itself.Moreover, the natives take unembarrassed pride in it.
What then to make of a vertiginous study out of England earlier this week that seems to say that New Yorkers are not all that?

Positing that walking is a physical measure of urban frenzy, a University of Hertfordshire researcher released a study that found that New Yorkers ranked far down on a list of quick-steppers around the world.

In a sample of 32 cities, New York ranked 8th.

Its residents, on average, took 12 seconds to cover 60 feet, or some 3.4 miles per hour. (Michael Johnson’s world record for the 200-meter dash is equivalent to 23 miles per hour.)
But, in what some are taking as a blow to hometown pride, the Hertfordshire study of “the pace of life” found that the residents of Berlin; Curitiba (a city of 3 million in Brazil); Dublin; Guangzhou (formerly Canton, a city of 6 million in China); Madrid; and Copenhagen all out-hustled New York.

And the fastest walking city? Singapore, with a population of 4.5 million, was clocked at 3.9 miles per hour, some 15 percent faster than New Yorkers.

In the walking study, researchers in cities around the world observed walkers on Aug. 22, 2006 between the hours of 11:30 am and 2:00 pm local time.
With a stopwatch, they recorded the time it took 35 men and women to walk along a 60 foot stretch of pavement. They left out people carrying packages or luggage, walking with other people or talking on cellphones.

By comparing the results to those in a similar 1994 experiment by Robert Levine, a psychology professor at California State University, Fresno, Mr. Wiseman concluded that the pace of urban life, as measured by walking, had increased 10 percent.

Professor Wiseman noted in an e-mail interview that the New York walking speed had stayed flat over the years — 12 seconds in 2006 compared with 12.03 seconds on 1994 — but other cities had quickened their tempo.

“It is the huge increase in the other countries as they have caught up and, in some cases, overtaken” New York that accounts for the rankings, Mr. Wiseman wrote.

For the record, the slowest walking city is Blantyre in Malawi, in southern Africa, at the escargot pace of one-fifth of a mile per hour.

Here’s the full list (courtesy of ITV):
1) Singapore (Singapore); 10.55 seconds
2) Copenhagen (Denmark); 10.82
3) Madrid (Spain); 10.89
4) Guangzhou (China): 10.94
5) Dublin (Ireland); 11.03
6) Curitiba (Brazil); 11.13
7) Berlin (Germany); 11.16
8) New York (US); 12.00
9) Utrecht (Netherlands); 12.04
10) Vienna (Austria); 12.06
11) Warsaw (Poland); 12.07
12) London (United Kingdom); 12.17
13) Zagreb (Croatia); 12.20
14) Prague (Czech Republic); 12.35
15) Wellington (New Zealand); 12.62
16) Paris (France); 12.65
17) Stockholm (Sweden); 12.75
18) Ljubljana (Slovenia); 12.76
19) Tokyo (Japan); 12.83
20) Ottawa (Canada); 13.72
21) Harare (Zimbabwe); 13.92
22) Sofia (Bulgaria); 13.96
23) Taipei (Taiwan): 14.00
24) Cairo (Egypt); 14.18
25) Sana (Yemen); 14.29
26) Bucharest (Romania); 14.36
27) Dubai (United Arab Emirates); 14.64
28) Damascus (Syria); 14.94
29) Amman (Jordan); 15.95
30) Bern (Switzerland); 17.37
31) Manama (Bahrain); 17.69
32) Blantyre (Malawi); 31.60

From NY Times

While I was in Europe I really got a kick out of the exit it signs. They definitely imply more hustle than US exit signs.