01-29-2017, 10:26 PM
(01-29-2017, 09:13 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:(01-29-2017, 09:08 PM)KevinL Wrote: I don't believe there's room on the south side of the tracks for a second trail, unfortunately. The rails are too close to the property line along there.
Well the property line could be taken. Of course, paths already exists in some form on both sides. On the north side there is already a continuous trail. On the south side there is a sidewalk, that while admittedly set a fair distance back from the rails is still a safe route.
The problem is, this doesn't actually fix the problem. If I live directly across the tracks from my destination, but the crossing is 300 meters away, I still have to walk over half a KM to get to the destination right across from my house. There are both more and less extreme examples, but trails on both sides doesn't help a badly positioned crossing.
No, but they allow the crossing to be positioned based on what are unofficially the best locations, without worrying about whether the crossings officially connect to anything. For example, you could take a place where there is a path coming out of the back of any parking lot and put the crossing there. With two parallel trails, this is fine because officially the crossing is just connecting the trails. Without the trails, the crossing has to officially connect, requiring formal negotiations with a property owner.
Also, for anybody not directly crossing the tracks, as long as there is a crossing between where they are and where they want to be on the other side of the tracks, the exact position of the crossing doesn’t matter at all. Combined with more crossings (two or three or conceivably even more although at a certain point it’s enough), the inconvenience could be reduced enormously.