They think protecting drivers cars from scratches is more important than protecting pedestrians from getting hit, so they make the sidewalk part of the “clear zone”
Physical design is not neutral.
Physical design is an expression of our values.
Saw an example of correct guardrail usage today, with the overgrown path that some other commenters were worried about.
(Lincoln Highway Hackensack River Bridge in Newark)
Let me tell you one thing, I would 100% rather ride on this overgrown sidewalk than on the shoulder of the 55mph highway without a shoulder. This is the official bicycle/pedestrian bridge crossing. I wasn’t sure whether the bridge path is even open or exists, but it does and there were even other people using it. (There is a second mesh fence on the embankment side, more so to protect the bushes than to stop you falling over.)
And then take a look at this other beauty today:
(Weequahic Park Drive, New Jersey)
Correct guardrail usage AND perfectly maintained path! Alas, pedestrian only, but not a problem to ride on 25mph street. Proof that putting the guardrail before the sidewalk is perfectly possible, both legally and practically. (There is a lake down the embankment. Don’t walk into the lake.)
I mean, I get where this post is coming from, but they didn’t build guardrails along every single street and deliberately put them behind the sidewalks. They put it there because behind it is a steep dropoff.
It was never about “pedestrian bad”, the guardrail wouldn’t be there at all if it wasn’t for the hill. Same thing with the parking meters others are mentioning. It’s not because the meters are more valuable or whatever, it’s because replacing them is expensive. Could they have put it in front of the sidewalk? Sure. But I’d bet the sidewalk was there for a while before the rail (plus the fact that there’s a sidewalk at all is surprising, in the US)
I get the point this is going for, but don’t forget, narrative manipulation can, and is, done by anyone.
The bigger issue I see here is that pedestrian access received exactly 0 minutes thought when this road was built, even though there’s clearly enough foot traffic to form a desire path on the patch of grass on the left side of the picture. That doesn’t happen without foot traffic, but not only is there no pedestrian crossing of any kind, but there isn’t a foot path on the island on the left, even though there’s a footpath leading up to it that just ends without anything to connect to.
What do they think people would walk there for? To just stop at the intersection and turn back?
In this case, and I’m guessing in many cases like it, it looks like the rail’s there to prevent the vehicle from driving into a ditch or other obstacle.
This is the correct answer. Guard rails are to prevent vehicles from going down steep embankments or other hazards. They can be used for separating traffic from walkways, but I don’t think there’s been any studies into the efficacy of doing so.
The guardrail can serve the don’t-drive-off-embankment function equally well positioned before the sidewalk. The problem is when an out-of-control car strikes the guardrail at a glancing angle, it takes a long time (by design) to grind down to a stop. This creates a bowling alley effect. The guardrail keeps the speedy car centered right on the sidewalk. Any human bowling pins are toast. Some of the most horrific traffic death videos I’ve seen involve that. Whole families wiped out.
And what story does this tell?
Is that a bicycle path and a dirt running track, or is the desire path in the dirt the official bicycle route and the side road behind the guardrail is for horses or golf carts or something?
The path closest to the road is the footpath. The other path is the cycle path. They put the guardrail in between for some reason.
Consequently the footpath isn’t used and pedestrians and cyclists need to share the cycle path.
It’s Stevenage, a town in the UK that was designed and built in the 50s and 60s with cycle paths along most major roads, pretty unique for that time. It was championed by one person during construction. The decades after haven’t been kind to the cycle network. The footpath is closest to the road because the designer thought that would be the most convenient for bus stops (it isn’t).
Pedestrians are much more terrified of bicycles than cars, makes sense to put the guardrail there to protect them from vicious cyclists.
In NYC they put parking meters on the sidewalk behind metal bollards. Note that they do not put bollards on street corners at pedestrian crossings. Even in the modern intersection redesigns with the wider sidewalk cutouts, the DOT still only ever uses collapsible plastic bollards at best, if at all. Every time I wait for a crossing light as a pedestrian in one of those brown-paint-only sidewalk cutouts at street level, I look over my shoulder to one of these parking meters up on the curb behind their bollards and awe at how much more protection a dumb piece of metal street furniture gets than the squishy me.
I mean, you’re not wrong, except it’s not to keep the cars from getting scratched. It’s there to keep the car from going off into the ditch. It also prevents pedestrians from walking off the edge. If there was no slope there, then there would be no guardrail at all. We don’t typically put rails between roads and pedestrian walkways because it would prevent pedestrians from crossing the street. If the rail were closer to the road, the foliage would probably overtake the walkway.
I agree that we should make our communities more walkable, and I agree that safety measures should prioritize the safety of people over inconvenience or the damage of property. But we should understand and accurately describe the reason for the current system, lest we be dismissed entirely.
The problem is once you put people on this path of playing the victim, they see everything through the lens of being personally wronged. They incorrectly attribute all attributes of everything, eventually, to someone attempting to harm them in some way. Thankfully this community still has their wits about them, but I see this happen everywhere on the internet.
The internet also just has a general problem of burying nuance in preference to big simple opinions.
If also has a habit of treating anyone who cares about nuance as being a pedant and derailing because of it.
Usually the accusation “you know that’s not what they meant!” Anytime is pointed out that the words people use in an argument don’t actually define the opinion or argument they are missing
Valid.
The foliage thing is nonsense. The guardrail does nothing to stop plants from growing. And the guardrail ends at the crossing area anyway. So I think OP has a point here.
Right, but a mower isn’t going to go on the other side of a guardrail to clear it, and people aren’t going to walk there if it’s all overgrown.
I don’t see any reason it couldn’t? Sidewalks require maintenance. If we choose not to maintain them then they won’t be usable. The guardrail is barely relevant to that.
Have you seen how a roadside mower works? Because a guardrail between the walkway and the road would definitely impede that. And then for ada compliance, you’d need to make sure the rails are finished on both sides, and there are sufficient gaps at the crosswalks and curb cuts. And, you’d still need some sort of protection on the ledge side to prevent people from falling down into the bushes.
I mean, yeah, unlimited budget and effort, you could make that walkway much better. You could pave the whole thing and level the ground so there is no ditch and no trees. Plant some gardens for pollinators, and put in a water feature to keep things cool. Build a playground and one of those moving walkway conveyors they have at airports. Ice cream and blowjobs for everyone, while we’re at it.
The way it is now protects cars and people from the ditch, and is easy and cheap to maintain. Hardly any sidewalks anywhere have guardrails along the curb to protect pedestrians, because most pedestrians are hit where they cross the street. Even if a car jumped the curb and hit the rail, it’s unlikely people would be standing in that exact spot, and how often does that happen anyway?
If you want to improve the walkability shown in the picture, you’d do better putting in more crosswalks, signals, signs, and stops to permit pedestrians to cross the street more safely.
They could definitely design a mower that is able to reach over the guard rail. We could also just send a different mower to do the gaurd rail sections.
When your response is “we could design a different mower” I think you’ve answered why it’s on the side it’s on. Yes, I agree, in a perfect world we could. But the people deciding what side the guard rails go on are not the people deciding what mowers look like, nor do they have the sort of power to do that.
They could just send a crew out with a regular mower. Im also nearly certain ive seen a mower on a tractor reaching over guardrails on a highway before.
That guard rail is there because the book told the designers to put it there and thinkkng outside the book hasn’t been allowed for decades in road planning, its all cut and paste.
Of course they have those. They could have a guy go out with scissors, or replace all the grass with marshmallows and replace them daily when the animals eat them. Good for jobs, good for the animals, and good for me, the municipal marshmallow supplier!
Mowing is like one small part of it, and this configuration allows it to be done with any equipment.
Has anyone been struck by a car here? Have any car accidents happened here at all? What’s the speed limit on the road? Is it near a school or a park or a playground for blind children? Putting a safety rail between the sidewalk and the road is inconvenient for many reasons. Of course it can be done, and safety is always going to be inconvenient.
It was inconvenient to put a rail on the far side of the sidewalk. They did it because the need for safety outweighed the inconvenience of it. Cars and pedestrians could fall down the hill, and it would make accidents worse.
I mean, what are we even talking about? Having a second guardrail would make the sidewalk harder to navigate, and would obstruct the view of drivers turning the corner looking for people crossing the street. The most obvious need is for a crosswalk and additional signage.
Maybe pedestrians shouldn’t be crossing busy roads unless at designated crossings. Additionally, if they are going to jaywalk, having the barrier would at least ensure they have some kinda bare minimum physicality in order to hop over the barrier.
And seriously, how often has a vehicle guard rail been the deciding factor in a pedestrian falling down the ditch?
Zoom in.
What are you trying to show me?
This is a designated crossing. It’s just really poorly marked, which is far more dangerous than the lack of a physical barrier between the sidewalk and the road. Crossing the road here would not be jaywalking.
Oh yes, I was speaking about the idea of guard rails and sidewalks in general, not this specific intersection. This particular intersection looks stupid for several reasons, including that sidewalk that cuts across without any markers to show a crossing. In fact I’d go as far as saying this isn’t even a crosswalk, it’s a sidewalk with an expectation of teleportation since there’s nothing painted on the road.
seriously i should be allowed to take my 2 ton machine and smash it into those stupid trees
The curb protects pedestrians from vehicles. The guardrail protects everyone from the drop-off. Neither is 100% effective.
The curb doesn’t protect shit. It’s only purpose is for drainage.
Y-yeah…?
it also protects cyclists from the same cliff/hill
I feel like getting hit by a car is a bigger hazard than choosing to walk/bike down a hill.
Much more tragic on average per occurrence, of course. But, I’d be willing to bet that the chance of falling down that slope is way higher than being hit, and thus the “average damage over time” is far greater for falls than collisions. People are really bad at comprehending risk. (See: dying from a shark attack or lightning strike being more common fears than dying from falling down the stairs.)
It feels wrong to reduce human lives to a numbers game, but that’s what traffic engineering is. If there’s a budget, it has to be a numbers game at some level.
In general yes, but if you have to put a barrier between the road and the footpath to keep people safe the problem isn’t that there are no barriers
Right. It’s the cars. But as long as the cars are there, a barrier is a good quick fix
Banning driving under influence and enforcing speed limits would be a better and quicker fix if you ask me. If a car driver can’t behave they should take away their car.
Barriers really shouldn’t be necessary on local roads.
