Hey pedestrians, screw you!

This winds me up. I know I complain about cycling in Edinburgh, but I reckon in a lot of ways pedestrians get the roughest end of the stick. Don't get me started on corralling those on foot into little crossing islands, hemmed in by railing, when a crossing all the way across would be faster and safer for anyone not in a metal box - the reason they're not used that way? To maintain traffic flow. Pedestrians are a wrinkle.

So this week, with me walking mostly to and from work (I'm taking a week off the bike for various reasons), I stumbled across these roadworks en route, and while the road traffic was given light controls, the pedestrians are left fend for themselves. Crossing closed. No alternative provided. The nearest controlled crossings enough distance away to be inconvenient, which would be why school kids and adult commuters alike were diving for gaps in the motorised traffic.

So sod it, I emailed the councillors for the area, two of whom I know are actually sympathetic to this kind of thing, and within an hour had a response that the concerns were legitimate and would be looked into. It's probably the contractor being lazy, but it's symptomatic of the pedestrian's ranking in the traffic hierarchy. Fight the power people.

Citizen Anth.