Explain sloped sidewalks accommodating front car driveway then. As I just mentioned with bit of insanity in a winter climate. Those are either icy in winter, pools of water in the spring, and in no way accommodate walking. These like I say are instances wherein even sidewalks are made to cater to driver instead of pedestrian. Stuff like that should deserve a rethink. Its actually more expensive to have those driveway slopes instead of regular curb sidewalk as well. Yet we pay for this? Why? Any resident in the city with a front faced drive should have the same front sidewalk, i.e. curbed, as everybody else.
TBH, my real beef is with the design of cities in Alberta. I've lived in a town in New Brunswick where the city counsel realized years ago that building a network of paved walking/cycling trails was a good idea and took care of many of the problems mentioned here. They made the developers of neighborhood incorporate these trails as part of their design and made sure it connected with existing trails. The end result over time as the city expanded was an excellent network of paved trails that allows anyone to walk or bike anywhere in town away from motorists. That way cars could move freely & park without sacrificing space for pedestrians and cyclists.
However, here in Alberta it seems until recently that neighborhoods were designed to slap in as many houses on a piece of land as possible without adding the necessary infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians. It doesn't make sense to me that cities allow builders to build a bunch of townhouses with no driveways (or very small driveway) and think there will be enough room for cyclists and pedestrians when everyone parks their vehicles on the side of the road.
One of my pet peeve as a cyclist is when groups of joggers are running 2 or 3 wide on the road and making me come to a complete stop because traffic is coming up behind me and i'm the one who gets squeezed out when there's a perfectly good sidewalk on the other side of these godforsaken parked cars. Another pet peeve is a single runner with earbuds who can't hear nothing running all over the place and can't hear me or cars coming behind them. Some pedestrians are idiots. Just like some cyclists and motorists are idiots too.
There simply isn't enough room on the road for oncoming traffic, cyclists, parked cars and runners. I get it that the sidewalks suck in the winter time and are poorly designed or in poor condition but at some point we need to draw the line somewhere. Having lived in a town with a little foresight, I much prefer a solution that puts cyclists and pedestrians on its own infrastructure rather than figuring out how all these groups of users are supposed to share the same space. Roads are built for cars so keep it that way. Get cities to build better infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians. Obviously, a big city like Edmonton won't be able to adapt in dense areas like city centre and older areas that were built 50 years ago. However, i don't think there's much of an excuse in most residential & newer areas to exclude paved trails for pedestrian and cyclists.
