Desire path for straight sidewalk
snugglesthefalse 7 points a year ago
Yeah what's with the hatched lines artificially widening the road? Couldn't that be more pavement? It's not like it's even being used for cars.
piccolo 7 points a year ago
Large roads ussually have a shoulder for when vehicles break down and can be removed safely off the roadway. It would also allow additional cars when the turn lane backs up from rush hour/event congestion.
snugglesthefalse 2 points a year ago
It just doesn't look like a particularly large road. We have shoulders on the motorway but that's usually 3 lanes either way.
M0oP0o 9 points a year ago
This is the us right? Many nations would struggle to fail at sidewalks this hard. Those are poured slabs, they could have connected them to the curb for less work and more space, enough to fit the sidewalk in the right place.
jwmgregory 7 points a year ago
that’s also a giant avenue with a speed limit likely anywhere from 35-50 MPH right next to the curb you want this sidewalk to run up against. sure, there’s a light there to slow people down before the intersection, you might say… and to that, i say, the unfortunate reality of living in a country where everyone has to risk their lives driving a car everyday is that the vast majority of drivers are nincompoop incompétents that you wouldn’t trust to shine your shoes, let alone with your life.
civic engineers have to consider local cultures and environments when designing even shit like sidewalks and paths that might seem dummy simple. they made the right call here for safety in an american locale. people don’t often careen their cars all the way off the road. people very often clip right up against the curb bc of low visibility, drunk driving, etc.
M0oP0o 5 points a year ago
I live in Canada, the sidewalk abutting the street is not an issue, and the only time I hear such antisidewalk nonsense is from americans (in MPH of course). That 30 cm of grass is not a meaningful barrier of any kind and the pole is not built to be a car barrier.
jwmgregory 5 points a year ago
i’m not saying anything anti-sidewalk. not once. you’ve just kind of demonstrated to me that you don’t actually really care about the civil engineering at work here and mostly just want an excuse to shit on americans, which is honestly kind of lame because you really don’t need to invent things to shit on us right now, there’s plenty of real things to go around.
of course the grass isn’t a meaningful barrier. of course the pole isn’t a car barrier (even though in the US they often are because they’re often reinforced with steel and concrete).
i… never claimed any of those things, or even anything close to it. i actually even addressed those assertions pre-emptively by acknowledging the actual reason one might build a sidewalk this way in the US, but you seem to not really be reading anything i’m actually saying.
no idea what you’re on about, man. have a nice one.
M0oP0o 1 point a year ago
You are saying that you should not have a sidewalk directly next to a street, due to the speed of the street. A uniquely anti sidewalk us-centric view, not saying you are against sidewalks but that you have bought the bad civil engineering at work there. I have not demonstrated to you anything about my knowledge of civil engineering, just that I disagree with yours.
This same argument has been tried here to not put in a sidewalk. Its weak and silly. Sure having a barrier is better but a having a sidewalk is leagues better then not having one or having the one pictured above.
Pika 9 points a year ago
I'll never understand why city planners do that. Like, it's clear you could have definitely had a little bit narrower sidewalk going straight through, but instead they just went around it.
If it's worried about spacing, they could just make it on both sides like a smaller path to the left of the pole and then the normal path curving around for like wheelchair access.
panda_abyss 53 points a year ago
Has to be 4-6’ for accessibility, and if there’s plowimg in the winter the sidewalk plow has to fit.
Mouselemming 43 points a year ago
The width is for safe travel by people in wheelchairs. I've been in situations where a mere inch too narrow meant we had to go back to wherever we could cross, or drive/walk in the road, or even give up on that street entirely. Could you possibly fit the pavers if you took it all the way to the edge? Would it be safe for that stretch of roadway? The people who laid the sidewalk presumably measured and decided not. Now, could they have paved the straight AND the curve? Probably yes, but at greater expense. And we'd miss out on this nice desire path.
dreadbeef 16 points a year ago
bet you $10 the pole was there first. The cost of working with the cable company and paying their approved expensive team to remove it and moving it vs just taking your existing city contracted cement team and doing a little squiggly
money is always the motive
Nollij 4 points a year ago
I'll throw in another $10 that the sidewalk was somewhere else initially.
I'm betting the road was narrower, and the sidewalk further to the left (in the photo). The pole was to the right of the sidewalk. These were all planned/built around the same time.
Then the road was widened. The sidewalk had to be pushed (moved/rebuilt) further to the right. They could've put it far enough over to be completely on the other side of the pole, but that would have other implications - including running into the fire hydrant in the background.
Sergio 2 points a year ago
In some places it'll be the phone company and the power company and the cable TV/internet companies as well. You'd have to coordinate with all 3. And there may be regulations about how close it has to be to the street to enable repairs -- regulations put there for the safety of the workers, as well as to keep the lines away from tree branches that might take them down during a storm.
Pika 2 points a year ago
man I'm so glad we don't have to deal with that here. All poles are owned by the town here, if they wanna move a pole they give notice to the utility companies "hey this is being moved on X date, if you wanna keep services on it we recommend you be there" (coordination wise, we still have many regulations to follow)
RheumatoidArthritis 2 points a year ago
Probably some idiotic law the designer had to follow
SanctimoniousApe 1 point a year ago
Made by anti-LGBTQ+ sidewalk jerks.
/jk (for those that need it)
paraphrand 4 points a year ago
I don’t get it
PumaStoleMyBluff 6 points a year ago
I think they're joking that the desire path was made by homophobes, not the sidewalk.
paraphrand 1 point a year ago
Ohh.
BagOfHeavyStones 2 points a year ago
What do you mean? It's clearly Bi.
MonkderVierte 1 point a year ago path: 0 20286481 20289551 20293164, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
desire_paths
@sh.itjust.works
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Desire paths Desire paths can be paths created as a consequence of erosion caused by human or animal foot-fall or traffic. The paths usually represent the shortest or most easily navigated routes between origins and destinations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path
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desire_paths
@sh.itjust.works
2940
96
1
Desire paths Desire paths can be paths created as a consequence of erosion caused by human or animal foot-fall or traffic. The paths usually represent the shortest or most easily navigated routes between origins and destinations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path
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Those sidewalks always amaze me at how claustrophobic they feel. You dedicate like 20 m of space to cars and can only spare like 1 m to actual human beings living there?
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