Bad design: Paving over the (wrong part of the) environment

(Technically this is not paving, but pouring concrete.)

Here’s something you sometimes see in cities or any urban area that has decent foot traffic. For the most part people walk along sidewalks and stick to them because the alternatives are unattractive for varying reasons–trespassing in someone’s yard and getting eaten by a dog, walking into the street and being run over by a bus, and so on–but sometimes there are routes off a sidewalk people will take, when that route is more direct and without risk of dogs, buses or other obstacles.

This is the sidewalk in front of the Burnaby Public Library on Central Boulevard.

Walk which way?

There are a pair of roundabouts here that bisect the sidewalk. Here’s an image from Google Maps that shows both of them (the one in the photo I took above is on the right):

A decision was made to have the sidewalk in front of the library not line up directly along the street, as would normally be the case. As you can see especially from the photo, people who come from either intersection, where the sidewalk does align next to the street, continue to walk in a straight line, ignoring the sidewalk directly in front of the library altogether.

The unnatural foot path (so to speak) becomes quite muddy and slick in winter, but it’s perfectly fine for most of the year, provided you’re not especially susceptible to tripping on small, exposed tree roots.

Anyone who understands human behavior should have anticipated the development of this foot path when looking at the plans for this block. Sidewalks that deliberately steer you away from getting from Point A to Point B are bad design. People will always take the shortest route if it’s easier and safe to do so.

The fix here would be to add a stretch of sidewalk where the existing foot path lies. The tree roots complicate things, so that may never happen, but the roots will eventually get ground down by the traffic on them, anyway.

Sometimes this bad design, while not anticipated, is still fixed later. Such is the case in Thornton Park in Vancouver. When the park was rehabilitated as part of the redesign of the nearby Main Street SkyTrain station, several pedestrian-made paths were converted into permanent sidewalks. It’s always nice to see recognition of real-life usage and adapting the environment to it where it makes sense.

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