Comment 47254

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted September 05, 2010 at 12:55:19

Pedestrians are painfully unpredictable. This is the main reason I don't ride on sidewalks, it overshadows every legal and safety concern I have. Pedestrians make random, unpredictable, changes in speed and direction all the time and there's no safe way to navigate a crowd of them once you hit any speed beyond a brisk walk.

Streets and sidewalks are more than transportation infrastructure. They're places to meet, chill, play music, sell your wares, exercise free speech and assembly, or simply sit. In downtown Hamilton, you can be stoppedby the police for any of these activities on "public" sidewalks. We need to build public spaces AS public spaces, where transportation is only one of many integrated uses. But that's only possible as long as they're built FOR people, not as highways (whehter pedestrian, car or bicycle). Busy, crowded sidewalks and other public spaces are annoying, but the crowds are a fair better sign of sucessful street design and management than empty, desolate ones (like Stonechurch Rd, where they even exist).

"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford

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