A pedestrian overpass allows pedestrians safe crossing over busy roads without impeding traffic.
There was a time that these grafted bits or road-related infrastructure seemed to make sense. A mark of that time was the implicit assumption that “traffic” meant cars and that it made perfect sense to give them priority over pedestrians, cyclists and anybody else who might wish to cross a busy road. That time has now passed.
Hardly a day that passes that someone somewhere on this gasping planet does not come up with a bright idea for a project for constructing high cost new infrastructure the main achievement of which ultimately will be to increase the number of vehicles in whatever the given space is. This is so well known at the leading edge of transportation thinking and practice that it would be hardly worthy of discussion, other than the fact that these bright ideas appear all too often and in all too many places. They need to be dealt with in a positive sense and with as much diplomacy as we can muster.
Enjoying the bridge in Penang
Here is a perfect example from Penang which is refreshing given the way in which the author takes on the challenge of making a positive proposal instead of just lambasting the tunnel option. One might prefer not to specify the technology that will be used to improve throughput on the existing road/bridge system in this increasingly congested part of the world (in this case LRT or monorail). However the main fundamentals are in place in this excellent newspaper article and worthy of the attention of all of those of us who care about sustainable transport, and above all the people and voters of Penang who are in a position to make this choice themselves — and not have the final decision foisted on them by people with approaches and agendas that do not necessarily match up with sustainable transport policy and practice in the 21st-century. After all, it is their city.
Sustainable Penang: New Mobility Agenda 