Car on Greenbelt

[TVille]

In our small town we have a greenbelt that loops around town. It passes in front of our house, and occasionally, I find a car driving down it. There is NO simple way onto it at this point. You have to make a sharp 90 degree turn from a driveway onto it, or drive onto it from a roadway. In both cases, the actual ROAD is like a foot or two away.

 

[bp2008]

I guess they should put painted markers everywhere it crosses a road. Something like a bicycle to indicate no cars allowed.

 

[sebastiantombs]

The sheer stupidity of people never ceases to amaze.

 

[Mike A.]

We have bike/walking trails where people do the same thing all the time. Here they put a 4x4 post in the center at the entrance but some still get on there somehow. You'd think that having to avoid a post in the center of the "road" would be a clue but apparently not if you're clueless and determined.

 

[TonyR]

When I worked for a city in N. CA a new public park was under construction and I was asked to review the plans and specs for the lighting in the parking lot, the park and on the tennis court, which I did.

But I stepped outside of my area a bit because of some past observations about people, having spent at that point close to 25 years working in the roadway and around the motoring public working on street lighting and traffic signals.

They were going to make the curbs at the public roadway soft and gently rolled, not your standard curbs that are not very easy to climb with your vehicle. I mentioned they should use standard curbs as in the rest of the city AND to install two 6 inch diameter x 6 foot tall (4 ft. above ground and 2 foot IN ground) concrete-filled bollards in the middle of the wide concrete pathway that led from the public roadway into the central part of the park. I suggested they be about from 15 feet from the public roadway, be painted yellow, be lit at night and have silver reflective tape circling them top and bottom and be spaced apart so as allow ONLY pedestrians, bikes, wheelchairs and baby carriages to pass.

When asked why i suggested it I told them because when people try to carry a 80 qt. picnic cooler packed with ice and drinks they do NOT want to carry it because it WILL be very heavy and they WILL drive over the curb and down the path to get it close to their picnic table.....furthermore, signs prohibiting motor vehicles WILL be ignored.

The engineer in charge told me in so many words to "stay in my lane" and so I did and observed with amusement less than a month after the pristine, new park was opened as they rushed to put out to bid various measures to protect the pathway from vehicles...one such measure was the bollards, installed pretty much exactly as I suggested.