4 ms·
Two cases: Dense urban areas and sparse lightly-trafficked areas. In lightly-trafficked areas, you're absolutely right about the cost limitation. In the dense
by jaibot 13y ago
Two cases: Dense urban areas and sparse lightly-trafficked areas. In lightly-trafficked areas, you're absolutely right about the cost limitation.
In the dense urban case, where "elevated pedestrian walkway" means "getting people away from cars", it means decimating foot traffic to stores and restaurants, ceding the area to automobiles. Generally regarded as horrible for dense urban environments.You see this more in urban planning a few decades back, and it tended to not help the surrounding area. If you look at the places where people want to live and travel to, you don't see elevated walkways. So it's fallen out of favor, with more emphasis on getting speeding cars away from dense areas.
The exceptions are things like the NYC Skyline, which is basically a pedestrian freeway between and through areas already dominated by pedestrian foot traffic and relatively light and slow vehicular traffic.
- bernardom 13y agoOther exception: really cold cities. See the Calgary +15: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2B15 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2B15 They get around the foot-traffic problem by basically bringing the commerce up as well- it's like a giant indoor mall on the second floor of interconnected buildings.
- sp332 13y agoYou don't need the whole sidewalk elevated, just the crossings. Las Vegas is known for this. http://ywwg.com/images/photos/060426-0/P4261565%20crosswalk.800x600.jpg http://ywwg.com/images/photos/060426-0/P4261565%20crosswalk....
- Cthulhu_ 13y agoI was going to comment on elevated crossings and walking up stairs, but then I saw the picture and remembered there are no regular stairs in the US, :+). Reminds me of a picture of a (rather short, ten foot) escalator going up to a gym.
- sp332 13y agoIt makes more sense in Vegas. You really don't want such a mass of drunk people walking up and down stairs all the time :)
- mseebach 13y agoIf by Skyline you mean Highline, then IMO it's quite different. It's not a purpose-build walkway, it's a disused railway converted into what I'd rather describe as an extreme elongated park than anything particularly optimised for pedestrian traffic.
- jaibot 13y agoYeah, meant to say "Highline". I believe traversing the NYC Skyline is reserved for Spider-Man.
- lysol 13y agoA few cities do have Skyways or Skywalks besides the NYC example you cited. Two good examples are Minneapolis and Des Moines. And you're right -- it does negatively impact the street level businesses. It's really more about climate control in those cities, however.
- mitchty 13y agoSkyways make winter bearable here. Also makes exercise safer because you don't have to worry about slipping on icy streets.
- snogglethorpe 13y agoTokyo has tons of elevated and undgerground pedestrian walkways, including in some of the most fashionable/popular/heavily-trafficked (by pedestrians) areas, e.g., around Shibuya station. An interesting extreme case is the south-east side of Yokohama station, where they (stupidly) put in one the most insane messes of concentrated roadways I've ever seen [not just 8+ lane roads, but 4-5 vertical levels of roadways!]. The area also has extremely heavy pedestrian traffic, which essentially all happens underground or on elevated walkways; basically nobody walks at ground level any longer. This may sound horrible, but in fact it's pretty nice ... you really don't realize what a mess it is unless you look back from a distance. In both cases, the retail has followed the pedestrians under or over the ground...