In the English city of Liverpool, that famous place you probably only heard about because of The Beatles, they're instituting "fast lanes" on sidewalks to accommodate pedestrians who've been fed up with high sidewalk traffic in their high volume city center.

The concept is coming to life after lots of cities have floated the idea of somehow easing the congestion surrounding shopping centers and downtown areas, and it's not entirely irrational.

If it works on streets with cars, there's no reason it shouldn't work on sidewalks with people, right?

With 47% of Brits polled noting slow walkers being the most annoying aspect of street shopping, we're wondering why New York City hasn't instituted similar fast lanes.

At the very least, in tourist-centric areas like Times Square, where walking in a straight line for more than ten feet is a frustrating ordeal, it seems rather appropriate.

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What do you think? Is it a good idea to direct slower walkers to one side in order to keep traffic moving on the busiest sidewalks in the City?

Similar concepts have been instituted in other ways, like the automated sidewalks in our mass transit hubs like airports and major train stations, so why not the streets? There was even once a plan to turn Broadway into an enormous moving sidewalk in 1872.

via Independent

There's no guarantee that people will use the fast lanes if we give them a try, but seeing as all it will really cost is the price of painting some stripes down the sidewalk, we don't have much to lose when the prospective gain is a more orderly street where needed.

In fact, it's plausible that out of the countless artists living in NYC, at least a few would be into the idea of designing a clearly marked but also aesthetically pleasing system of delineating fast lane from slow. 

So why not try it?

Check out Which NYC Stereotypes Are Actually True? 

[via Independent]

[Feature Image Courtesy The Sun]