Pedestrians at bay

Well this one amused me. Council build big new urban road, take no account of pedestrians in designing it. But pedestrians want to continue walking to where they want to go, so do. Arms race of anti-pedestrian defences ensues.

It must be from somewhere around 1988-90ish.

One thought on “Pedestrians at bay

  1. We had this when M8 smashed through Charing Cross in Glasgow, and pedestrian traffic routes were sent way off the long established routes and made substantially longer. almost immediately a footway route had to be shoehorned in at street level as the bridge lay (as it still does) hardly used. Yet it took 35 years of dodging cars nominally doing 30mph as they came of the M8 slip road, before we actually got a priority crossing.

    It took 40 years to complete a footbridge (the bridge to nowhere) that makes a poor but passable substitute for the historic main route out from Glasgow severed in the 1970’s, and that was initiated by winning funding from the National Lottery, rather than delivery of transport infrastructure by the authorities responsible for core delivery.

    There remains the route to the severed Great Western Road/City Road straight line corridor whcih was lined with shops and housing right in to the city – around 50% of the pedestrians walk along the central median of the dual carriageway as a shorter and despite the motor traffic – often near stationary – on either side, more pleasant and secure than the convoluted funded and filthy passages under the roadway.

    There is also a nice detail – in building the motorway the general purpose road – Newton Street (the A804) was truncated, and so you can cycle on the start and finish sections of slip roads feeding on and off the motorway. You can also walk that way, and in theory it has a 30mph speed limit. At peak times you can ride along substantially faster than the traffic moving alongside on the M8, and on one occasion a Police traffic car pulled over and teh officer attempted to nick me for walking on the Motorway. I pointed to the road signage (black letters on a white background) and the destination (Charing Cross) which was signposted – unfortunately the 30mph roundels don’t seem to survive that long, casualties of regular motor vehicle impacts.

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