Citations:pedlock

Noun: "the condition of an area being so crowded that it impedes the flow of pedestrian traffic"

 * 1982 — Walter Kerr, "What's in a name? Traffic jams, that's what!", The New York Times, 1 April 1982:
 * The form letter went on to say that ever since "gridlock" had become a popular way of describing a standstill traffic jam, another new form, "pedlock," had come along to describe a pileup, and immobilization, of pedestrians.
 * 1983 — "Retailers Revel As Yule Buying Gilds Big Apple", Miami Herald, 19 December 1983:
 * In fact, weekend shopping up and down the city's major avenues has been so heavy this season that it has created a new phenomenon: "pedlock."
 * 1986 — Larry Bivens, "Cars, Pedestrians 'Fair' [sic] Well in City", Newsday, 19 May 1986:
 * With up to 1 million people expected to flock to street fairs, shows at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan and a Fifth Avenue parade, officials last week warned of gridlock for cars and even pedlock for pedestrians.
 * 1986 — Thomas Ferraro, "Reports from Nation's Front Lines in the Long-Running 'Car Wars'", Chicago Tribune, 11 July 1986:
 * The city transportation department uses the term "pedlock" to describe these hordes of people who jam sidewalks, cross against the lights and jaywalk as a daring and dangerous way of life.
 * 2003 — Ian Frazer, "Invented City", The New Yorker, 28 July 2003;
 * Within a few blocks, the crowds heading down to the Neva waterfront, site of the night's celebration, reached near-pedlock density.
 * 2005 — Joe Moran, Reading the Everyday, Routledge (2005), ISBN 0203280407, page 84:
 * In recent years there has been some media discussion of 'pedlock', a term that originated in the US in the 1980s to describe conditions so crowded that they impede pedestrian movement.
 * 2007 — Ben Gibberd, "Dodging Traffic: Taming the Belly of the Beast", The New York Times, 8 July 2007:
 * Mr. Tompkins cited the dual threats of gridlock, referring to frequent weekend backups of up to 45 minutes at the Holland Tunnel, and "pedlock."
 * 2008 — Patty Winsa, "Our city square that never sleeps", Toronto Star, 4 February 2008:
 * As Times Square endures gridlock and pedlock – where people literally cannot move at the busiest times of the day – it also suffers severely from a lack of space, unlike Yonge-Dundas.
 * 2008 — Jeff Byles, "Taking Back the Streets", The New York Times, 6 April 2008:
 * "We're going to spend a pile of money widening the sidewalks a little bit and narrowing the streets a little bit," Mr. Haikalis said of city plans to ease pedlock — pedestrian congestion — in Times Square.
 * 2009 — Morgan Brennan, "Untangling Times Square", Forbes, 9 April 2009:
 * And so there's incredible gridlock and incredible pedlock, pedestrian gridlock, because the cars and the pedestrians are really just fighting for space.
 * 2010 — Philip Smith, Timothy L. Phillips, & Ryan D. King, Incivility: The Rude Stranger in Everyday Life, Cambridge University Press (2010), ISBN 9780521895514, page 199:
 * The reworking of public space to reduce body congestion and 'pedlock' is always going to be lower on the priority list than other more urgent issues like education or crime
 * 2011 — Nicholas Blomley, Rights of Passage: Sidewalks and the Regulation of Public Flow, Routledge (2011), ISBN 9780415575614, page 45:
 * The successful sidewalk, from this perspective, is wide and largely empty, or devoid of 'pedlock'.