Stu's hearing voices

I'M CROSSING 10th and Chestnut and I hear a voice.

Not the usual voice in my head, and not a happy (or enraged) reader.

It's muffled, saying something about "crossing Chestnut Street."

I look left and right. Nothing. Then I look up, and above the traffic signal I see a box small enough to hold in my palm. It's telling me something, but with the street noise, I can't make it out. Nor can a couple of people I ask.

What is it, and why is it there?

"It's an audible pedestrian signal," explains city chief street lighting and traffic engineer Richard Montanez, as we sit in his office in the Municipal Services Building later on.

It is there "to aid the visually impaired cross the street."

Sounds like a good idea. How many are there?

About 20, "usually near transit stops," he says.

Why aren't they everywhere?

That's where this becomes a Philadelphia story, but first some background.

The technology is not new. I first saw - or heard - a traffic signal warning pedestrians in Loch Ness, Scotland, in 1976.

Very cool. I wondered why we didn't have it in the States.

Although Montanez was not the chief then, he thinks that Philadelphia's first audible pedestrian signal was installed on Broad at Cecil B. Moore, in 1997, to coincide with a national summit on volunteerism that was attended by President Bill Clinton.

That device, Montanez tells me, used Colin Powell's voice to announce: "It is now safe to cross Broad Street." (The city later yanked the message, thinking that the word "safe" was "giving the wrong message," Montanez says.)

It may have been the first device with a voice, but it wasn't the first APS. There's been an audible pedestrian signal outside the Overbrook School for the Blind, at 63rd and Malvern, for "at least 25 years," a school spokeswoman tells me.

In 2006, Montanez says, more APS devices were added along Broad Street, four of which remain - at Spring Garden, Polett Walk, Montgomery and Diamond.

The signals' cost ranges from a few hundred dollars per intersection to a bells-and-whistles version, such as at City and Cardinal avenues. That voice says, "You can now cross City Avenue." The location is on the campus of St. Joe's, which paid $25,000 for the high-tech squawker. (Shouldn't it also say, "The Hawk will never die"?)

Wiring a city intersection takes eight devices, at $80 each, two on each of four corners.

The three along 10th Street were requested by the Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, at 919 Walnut St. The city paid for them.

There are about a half-dozen versions of the devices, Montanez says. They make different noises - chirps and cuckoo sounds are popular - and also can employ human voices.

There are two reasons why the devices are not more widespread.

First, they are installed only after the request of some organization, "or where we find a large visually impaired community," says Montanez, who coordinates his efforts with the Mayor's Commission on People with Disabilities.

If you think, as I did, that adding them would be a slam dunk, you'd be wrong. That's where it becomes a Philadelphia story.

Not all visually impaired people want the devices.

Relying on hearing, "crossing the street is a skill," explains commission deputy director Charles Horton, and some in the visually impaired community are concerned about losing that skill and being in danger because there will never be APS boxes everywhere.

Even some people with normal hearing don't like them. Montanez has received complaints from people who say that the sounds are too loud at night, even though they are supposed to adjust "to ambient sound," Montanez says.

This is Philadelphia, where having something to bitch about is a birthright.