Pedestrian bridges are often displayed by officials as an accomplishment, but they should be scrutinized more carefully. Every time a pedestrian bridge is built, it improves the mobility of people in cars and diminishes the mobility of those on foot. Instead of pedestrian bridges, more funding should go into improving ground-level pedestrian infrastructure: speed bumps, midcross refuge islands, sidewalks, better signage, painted zebra crossings and automatic walk signals. The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), one of the global thought leaders in the field of sustainable mobility, has analyzed the impact of pedestrian bridges in an Oct. 1, 2019 article titled “Pedestrian Bridges Make Cities Less Walkable. The “hostile design” of pedestrian bridges encourages many to just cross at-grade, without the protection that a normal pedestrian crossing would provide.

Source: Manila Times October 23, 2020 16:43 UTC