Saturday, May 17, 2014

Make Singapore more pedestrian friendly

Our town planners design roads and crossings to be friendly to cars and unfriendly to pedestrians. 

The put barriers in the middle of the road to force pedestrians to walk a longer distance to a traffic crossing. These barriers are not helpful. 

If there are no barriers, the pedestrians can use their judgment on crossing the road, when there are no cars. If there are cars, they will walk to the crossing.

In housing estates, the do not provide short cuts for pedestrians to reach the road or bus stops. The pedestrians have to walk the long way, along the roads used by cars.

Even large commercial or industrial buildings are fenced in, forcing pedestrians to walk the long way to the main gate. This may be for "security", but is it really necessary?

I have a gut feel that the town planners in other cities are more friendly towards pedestrians.

1 comment:

michael13 said...

One needs only to spend a few days walking around Hong Kong, and to conclude Singapore's town planners are easily outclassed.

In Hong Kong, often the pedestrians have the alternatives to choose to climb the overhead bridge, take the escalator or the lift to reach their points of destination. Even the construction or road works are in progress, there are always enough pedestrian /walking paths to ensure all the conveniences are not disrupted. Very friendly and considerate town planners indeed.

In Singapore, many of us especially the senior citizens who are very fearful of the sky-high overhead bridge when crossing the road because no other alternatives are available.

Unfriendly towards pedestrains are 1000% correct in the context of Singapore. Here again, the attitude problem.

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