Pedestrians, Road Works, and Project Management

Reading Time: 3 minutes
When you plan road works that are meant to improve journeys for people cycling, and on foot, it is essential to remember that people who are on foot, or on bikes, need proper infrastructure to get from A to B, because if they don’t, then they go from being on foot or on bikes, to being in a car. If we take this to the extreme, if you don’t plan for pedestrians, or cyclists, or cars, then people just stop visiting.

No Thinking About Pedestrians and Cyclists

For several weeks road works have made it noisy, muddy, and confusing to walk from A to B along a certain route. On some days you’re on one side of the road, and on others you’re on the other. They make you cross, but sign posts and directions are not obvious.

Last weekend they placed ramps, which make sense, when machinery is moving from the parking to where works are taking place, but on the weekend those ramps should have been removed. This weekend, a cycling route was blocked, in part by dirty, and muddy tarmac, but also by metal planks blocking the cycle route.

Two Noisy Weeks

This entire week, and the entirety of next week the road is closed because they are resurfacing the road that they resurfaced within the last few weeks. I’m not sure the road is open for pedestrians and bikes.

It’s not that these road works are in one place, and that we can re-route, and avoid them. They are in three places, so it has become impossible to walk from the village, to town, without being affected by road works.

Pandemic Habits

For years I had not gone into this town, because of the COVID pandemic. Recently I got back into the habit but the road works, that are meant to improve cycling, and walking, have ruined it instead.

The situation is so bad that yesterday I got into the car, to drive a few kilometres, to run where there are no road works.

They’re spending millions of Francs to encourage people to walk and cycle, but they’re discouraging walking and cycling, rather than encouraging it.

If I spent two months on road works, I would make sure that cyclists are safe from cars, and I’d ensure that pedestrians are safe from cars and cyclists. The road works that have taken placce throw bikes into a bike lane for 200 meters, before bikes are thrown back into car traffic. It’s absurd.

Connecting Villages

If I was to spend two months, I wouldn’t have done works here. I would have improved the cycling and walking network between every village, to make it safe to walk from every village to every village, parallel to roads. Villages have no pavements, or walking routes to connect each other, so we are forced to walk along the road, and in wet and sometimes muddy grass.

The paradox about the new "cycling" lane is that dogs and people will walk on the cycle path, and cars will mount the pavement to pass other cars, due to car spreading, and narrowed roads.

Rivers of Cars

One of the biggest issues with the increase in traffic is that roads are becoming like rivers. If you’re on foot, on a bike, or even in a car, if you want to cross the river of cars, it will take patience, and luck. They’re adding cycling paths, and widening pavements, but they forget that the issue is high volumes of cars. The infrastructure that was fine before, becomes a congested mess when there are too many cars.

In a place where we had a pedestrian crossing, it was removed, so when traffic is heavy, but not so heavy that cars get blocked, it becomes impossible to cross without running. This is especially true now that they removed the centre island in one place, and the pedestrian crossing in another. What was inconvenient before has now become dangerous.

Strava, Google, Garmin, Apple

Strava, Google, Garmin and Apple have tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of walking path heatmaps from decades of people walking with mobile phones, GPS devices and more. These heat maps highlight where people walk. These maps should be used, especially ahead of road works, to map a route that is convenient for people walking and cycling.

If you want to defeat the automatic habit people have, of getting into cars, you need to make walking and cycling safe and convenient. It was safer and more convenient before they destroyed the old infrastructure. In theory it will now take two years for them to make certain walks walkable once again.

And Finally

When project managers prepare for road works, they need to consider pedestrians and cyclists. This is especially true of road works that are meant to encourage people to walk and cycle. If you block people from walking, and cycling, for two months, as some road works have done, this year, and will do, for two years along another route, then you discourage pedestrians and cyclists. You encourage more car traffic. You also encourage people not to visit your town at all.

I love walking and cycling, and yet the changes that I see encourage me to avoid walking along the new infrastructure, because, in my eyes, it has made it more dangerous rather than safer.I am disappointed.