The only way to feel safe. The really big ego-support vehicles are no safer than a subcompact to be inside of, but they are far more likely to kill your own family.
Ironically enough, this is how the pavements are in the ski resort I live in. It's a "shared zone", pedestrians have the same rights as vehicles. It slows everyone down because nobody knows when the next braying snowboarder trust-fund baby is going to stagger out in front of you.
Oh and as for the snow, we have adorable little mini snowploughs for the pedestrian bit
If you are walking you're either poor or up to no good, in both cases we don't want you around these parts. Oh, your kids need to walk? Don't be lazy and DRIVE them where they need to go!
For the briefest of moments I felt a spark of blinding hot rage in my heart. Now I am left with the lingering feeling of wanting to smash my head against a rock.
Weirdly enough it is a walkable neighborhood legit this is the entire street in the picture, for some reason they decided to paint these people lanes instead of just leaving it.
Idk. We have similar things around here for when they want to add more walkable spaces and less space for cars but they cannot or do not have the money for a full walkable path. Although usually they put some plastic bollards to avoid people parking or stopping on it.
They ain't bad, usually is in town and the max speed is 20 - 30 Km/h with the exception of main roads inside the town/city which is 50 Km/h.
So although a proper sidewalk would be better they ain't bad and they are quick to install.
Except that they are bad if you consider safety and convenience of pedestrians. It is a testimonial of terrible planning in the first hand and the most 'I don't give a shit' solution second hand.
Yeah, it seems like there should be something to separate the vehicle traffic from the pedestrian traffic though. Like some kind of low concrete barrier that would actually curb an errant car's trajectory and direct it back on to the road.
I keep seeing joggers in my area choosing the bike lane over the sidewalk, presumably because asphalt is softer than concrete sidewalks. If paving a ped lane next to the bike lane is what it takes to isolate these wrong-way bike-lane-jogging scufflaws, then let's just do it and be done with it. We can cannibalize a car lane to make it happen. >:-)
Sidewalks in car-brained areas are super dangerous to jog on. People backing out of their driveway or turning across the road at 10-20km/h without looking. Trip hazards. Ankle destroying driveway cutouts or curved surfsces. Uneven grading.
Imagine seeing this when house hunting and still buying the house. You'd have to have worms in your brain to want one of these ugly McMansions with no sidewalk
Most of Britain doesn't have sidewalks. But there's a slight difference in the law... In Britain, pedestrians have priority on ALL roads at ALL times (except for dual carriageways, obv). Pedestrians can even legally cross the road on red light as all traffic control signs and lights are merely suggestions for pedestrians and not a requirement.
In my opinion, if this was done in a community that was not designed for sidewalks (the house are very close to the curb), then it's better than nothing. I'd like to see some bollards or post reflectors or something, but at least there is some effort.
On the other hand, if this is a new community and this is the sidewalk "solution" then fuck them.
Ideally we would have a car free utopia, but that doesn't happen overnight, so any step forward, even if it's a shuffle, is good, I think.
Each house has a driveway long enough to park in. Remove the pointless front lawn and driveway, switch to on-street parking, narrow the absurdly wide road a bit, and BAM, you got enough space for sidewalks, bike lanes, and trees. There is PLENTY of space on this street for everyone.
Well sure, if you were designing from scratch, but with existing neighborhoods, the city may not have the necessary right-of-way rights to do that, so what they've done here may be the only option, even if it could be executed better.
My point is that working to make cars less necessary is a process and if the only way a city can add a "sidewalk" is by carving it out of the existing road, then so be it. After all, by making some of the road devoted to pedestrians only, we are effectively reclaiming space back from cars, right? Isn't that a good thing?
Fake, but not terribly far from reality in some areas.
Anywhere upper middle class enough to have lawns like that will have proper sidewalks. But in poor neighborhoods, sometimes local government just doesn't bother spending money to make sidewalks at all. But they also don't bother to paint any lines in the road. It's just road - no sidewalks, no bike lanes, no whatever these are. Just roads.
It is exactly reality on some roads in my area. My town is growing and decently high income for the area, but some of the very first neighborhoods have drainage ditches along the roads rather than proper storm drains. So they are smaller, less expensive houses, but they are in the center of town with good access to everything.
So that leads to lots of sidewalks being built, trying to make things more connected and walkable, but certain roads have this exact “we painted a line and a walk symbol” sidewalk. The walk symbol looks correct though, not the weird one in the op.
And Canada. Half the residential streets in my city don't have sidewalks, the rich folks get walking paths behind their houses so they don't have to mingle with the poors walking out in the street