Slow walking in shared public spaces is sometimes unavoidable and sometimes a choice. Hellbeing on the second category and the simple spatial awareness that would fix it.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
People Who Walk Slow in Public When They Could Walk Faster
To be clear upfront: this is not about people who move slowly because of age, injury, disability, or any other circumstance that affects their pace. Those people are walking as fast as they can and this is not about them. This is about the other category — the person who is physically capable of a normal walking pace and has simply chosen not to use it in a shared space where other people are trying to move through.
The Specific Situation
A crowded sidewalk. An airport terminal. A mall corridor. A train station exit. These are spaces with a directional flow of people, all of whom need to get from one place to another. The flow works when everyone moves at approximately the pace that the environment implies. One person moving at half that pace creates a disruption that propagates backward through everyone behind them, because unlike a highway, foot traffic cannot simply change lanes without physical negotiation with the people on either side.
The slow walker is at the front of this chain. They are producing a backup that they cannot see because it is behind them. They are doing this without any awareness that anything is happening because from where they are standing, they are simply taking a walk. The twenty people navigating around them in varying degrees of frustration are a fact they are not registered as existing.
The Coupled Version
Two people walking side by side, occupying the full width of a path, at matching slow speed. No gap to pass through. No awareness that a gap would be useful. The sidewalk problem and the slow walking problem share this quality — a genuine non-registration that one’s presence in a shared space is affecting other people’s ability to use it. It is not rudeness exactly. It is the absence of the thought that the space is shared and that sharing it requires some basic spatial awareness of what is happening around you.
The couple walking side by side at slow pace in the middle of a busy corridor is not thinking about the corridor as a shared resource. They are thinking about their conversation. Both of these things are true simultaneously and the conversation is winning.
The Simple Ask
Be aware that you are in a shared space and that other people are trying to move through it. If you are moving slowly, move to the side. If you are walking side by side and taking up the full width of a path, one of you moves behind the other for the ten seconds it takes to let someone pass. Neither of these requires stopping. Neither requires significant effort. Both require the brief acknowledgment that other people exist in the same space and are also trying to get somewhere. That is the entire ask.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Usually because they are focused on something else — a conversation, a phone, a thought — and their walking pace has dropped to match their level of distraction. They are not aware they are walking slowly because their attention is elsewhere. The people behind them are very aware.
When it creates a bottleneck in a space with directional flow — an airport corridor, a busy sidewalk, a train station exit — moving significantly slower than the ambient pace without moving to the side is inconsiderate. The consideration required is simply moving to the edge of the path rather than the center.
A clear “excuse me” while moving to the side they are not occupying works in most situations. Eye contact before speaking is optional but sometimes helps. The goal is to signal your intention clearly without forcing a confrontation.