At first, you might not notice what's happened. But then you'll see the oddly-curtailed road-markings, the strange mid-pavement placing of a lamp-post. A mid-pavement gutter. And then you realise - the pavement has been built-out onto the motorists road-space! What?! We can see no good reason at all for this unilateral annexation of the roadtaxpayer funded carriageway space in favour of the tax-dodging pestestrians.
The location is Aberdeen's Guild Street and this road forms part of the vital giratory system at the heart of the city's inner-city ring-road. Where once the giratory was three-lanes wide, now it is pinched to just two at this spot outside the Station Hotel. That's a 33% re-allocation in favour of the scroungers.
From this giratory, important executives in their nice Aberdeen Cars are distributed west to the ever-popular upmarket villas of Ferryhill, south to the oil-industrial estates of Tullos and Altens and north on the Denburn Dual Carrageway to the rest of the city. This makes it all the more perplexing and worrying to us that the anti-car, anti-economy, Sinister Forces of roadspace reallocation have chosen this spot to go about their foul business increasing the size of the pavements. We understand that this extended footspace (is that what it's called?) is intended to 'accommodate' increased pestestrian flow between the Trinity Centre shopping mall and the Union Square shopping mall. But that can't be right; both these malls have large car-parks, so what sort of person would want to walk between the two and get all windswept?
A closer look at the photo above perhaps gives us some clues. Not one of these people is wearing a suit. None of them carries a briefcase. What with all those casually-dressed people walking around Aberdeen these days rather than use the lovely big road, the place is looking a bit like DSS-land or StudentVille or something. This sends out all the wrong messages.We can only thank Ford that they are constrained behind those aluminium railings, lest they just come out of nowhere and endanger our no claims bonuses!
But, on a very serious note, this roadspace reallocation work sets a dangerous precedent. We are aware that the Sinister Forces of re-allocation are girding their loins and have the Denburn Dual Carriageway in their sights. That's why it's vital that all Aberdeen Drivers of good faith join our our popular campaign to to "Save the Denburn Dual Carriageway!" ('like' us on FaceBook, 'follow' us on Twitter)
Our numbers are swelling. Our collective voice will be heard!
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