They recently added a pedestrian island in the road near where I live. It is not unnoticeable. With paint lines, high reflective markings, and literally a concrete wall.
Literally on day 1, a car made an illegal left turn and hit the clearly marked island at 20mph faster than the speed limit. It jumped the 3 foot high barrier, but the pedestrian on that island was saved.
Make car life in cities miserable.
Make life in cities miserable, is more accurate. The reason is that transit is worse than cars always. If you make travel in cars worse, then all you did is make life worse for everyone.
And in reality it simply means that fewer people go there, because going there is miserable. The city starts converting to low income because anyone with income goes elsewhere.
As long as 'always' is restricted to a certain lifestyle and worldview, and doesn't take into account the excellent transit systems that exist around the world.
> And in reality it simply means that fewer people go there, because going there is miserable. The city starts converting to low income because anyone with income goes elsewhere.
That's incredibly naive, and I think a lot of European cities are direct counter examples to this. It often makes things a lot less miserable for the people who actually live in the denser urban areas that were previously overrun with cars.
Otherwise, what you're describing sounds like someone looked at this well-circulated cartoon and said "hey that's a great idea! Just raise the planks by 15 feet!" https://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/18/7236471/cars-pedestria...
Would you say they encourage a vibrant street culture of cafes and shops?
The ones I've seen, especially in Berlin and İzmir, are loud and a hassle to cross. That's because walkways and bikeways over multi-lane roads are car infrastructure. They are there to prioritize high-speed automobile traffic with few interruptions. I'm happy for the one going up at my gym, but I know it's there to ensure bike/ped political forces can't endanger the trunk road underneath. True pedestrian infrastructure there would involve a major speed and size downgrade to the road, which is unacceptable, thus the political defensive move to pay out the nose for something car advocates would never normally fund.
Pushing a stroller for the last few years, plus spraining my ankle a few weeks ago has given me a little taste of what trying to use sidewalks is like for people with even tighter mobility constraints, and this in an area that is relatively accessible without a car.