r/Glasgow Tools

Title
Author	Scunnered20
Comment	> Have you walked along Sauchiehall Street bother before and after the renovation? Before there was actually more and safer pavement space for pedestrians. After the renovation the tables and chairs and signage (and often crash barrier fencing to contain the drinking areas) takes up so much space on the pavement. This is unrelated to the renovation. It's down to rules on outside hospitality being loosened during Covid, with most places now having outside seating that didn't before. There are rules about having chairs and tables outside only so long as you leave 1.5m of passable space on a pavement. Cleary lots of places aren't adhering to this rule (something that is happening across the city centre, not just Sauchiehall Street where the Avenues works were completed. If this is happening, the venue can and should be reported. There's also the issue of street clutter (access panels, electricity boxes, road signage on the pavement) which is a bit of a general problem with place design across Scotland. This is an issue that long predates the Avenues works on the street. > Also, the decision to integrate the cycle lanes onto the pavement rather than the road was utterly stupid and dangerous to pedestrians. Legal ally cyclists should be on the road, so the cycle lane should have been as well. Slightly agree with some of this, but not entirely. In the sense that there should be clear physical separation at each point between pavement - cycleway - road. The cycleway needn't be at the same level as the road surface. It being at pavement height is okay, but the issue fundamentally is a lack of clear physical separation then between the pavement & cycleway. One reason some cycleways are designed to be elevated compared to the road surface is to discourage car parking on them. Doesn't always work, but it is a rational motivation for the design. > Ultimately, I feel like this work is all a box tick to say GCC is green and they spend eye-watering sums of public money making me less likely to walk to the shops. Sauchiehall Street was just the pilot in what's a quite large programme of works for street renovations and active travel corridors across the city centre. Many more are in the planning stages, and some have even had their plans publicised and are now at design and tender stage. My point is, it's not a tiny stretch of renovation done in isolation, just for the sake of it. It was the first step in what could quite legitimately be described as the biggest transformation the city centre has experienced since much of it was constructed in Victorian times.
Reddit Link	https://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/yppmaw/byres_road_public_realm_work_to_begin_in_january/ivq6udj/
Created	Wed 9th Nov 2022 8:23pm
Status	normal ()

> Have you walked along Sauchiehall Street bother before and after the renovation? Before there was actually more and safer pavement space for pedestrians. After the renovation the tables and chairs and signage (and often crash barrier fencing to contain the drinking areas) takes up so much space on the pavement.

This is unrelated to the renovation. It's down to rules on outside hospitality being loosened during Covid, with most places now having outside seating that didn't before. There are rules about having chairs and tables outside only so long as you leave 1.5m of passable space on a pavement. Cleary lots of places aren't adhering to this rule (something that is happening across the city centre, not just Sauchiehall Street where the Avenues works were completed. If this is happening, the venue can and should be reported. There's also the issue of street clutter (access panels, electricity boxes, road signage on the pavement) which is a bit of a general problem with place design across Scotland. This is an issue that long predates the Avenues works on the street.

> Also, the decision to integrate the cycle lanes onto the pavement rather than the road was utterly stupid and dangerous to pedestrians. Legal ally cyclists should be on the road, so the cycle lane should have been as well.

Slightly agree with some of this, but not entirely. In the sense that there should be clear physical separation at each point between pavement - cycleway - road. The cycleway needn't be at the same level as the road surface. It being at pavement height is okay, but the issue fundamentally is a lack of clear physical separation then between the pavement & cycleway. One reason some cycleways are designed to be elevated compared to the road surface is to discourage car parking on them. Doesn't always work, but it is a rational motivation for the design.

> Ultimately, I feel like this work is all a box tick to say GCC is green and they spend eye-watering sums of public money making me less likely to walk to the shops.

Sauchiehall Street was just the pilot in what's a quite large programme of works for street renovations and active travel corridors across the city centre. Many more are in the planning stages, and some have even had their plans publicised and are now at design and tender stage. My point is, it's not a tiny stretch of renovation done in isolation, just for the sake of it. It was the first step in what could quite legitimately be described as the biggest transformation the city centre has experienced since much of it was constructed in Victorian times.