Back in the old days, before you could do any kind of building or digging work that required a temporary closure of the pavement, it was necessary to erect a proper cordon with signs and diversions including a clearly marked safe route for pedestrians. But now we seem to get all sorts of obstacles places in the way making travel by foot an increasingly hazardous venture. It’s not like this is some American city where everybody is expected to get around by car and walkers are treated like weirdos. No this is in central London where crowds of people get about using shanks’s pony on a regular basis.
And it’s not just builders, scaffolders, road maintenance and utilities crews. Where I live, a bit further out, parked cars are often left straddling the pavement blocking the right of way for pedestrians. Other obstacles are provided by roadside businesses who decide to expand outwards from their shop front onto the pavement. Hand car wash services for example seem to use the pavement, kerb and bus lane as part of their workshop area. Then there are the tressel tables of vegetables in bowls, all at £1 each which are spreading like potato blight in front of all kinds of non-food related shops, to the extent that proper greengrocers are going out of business unless they join in the bowls system as well. So now you can’t buy two lemons you have to have five, and a bowl of tomatoes is expensive at £1 whereas three aubergines might seem like a bargain until you notice that the two underneath are going brown.
Tags: pavementclosed, no pavement, walkway obstacles, vegetable bowls, hand car wash, rant
Andy Roberts is a writer who initiated DARnet. Contact me on aroberts@gmail.com or @aroberts on twitter
