The above photos were taken on July 23, 2014 at Jalan Masjid Negeri. The location was the pedestrian walkway in front of Penang Free School. It was newly built and friendly to both pedestrians and wheelchair users. Unfortunately some motorcyclists have started to ride on this walkway. They must be stopped.
One possible way of stopping these people is to build wheelchair gate on the walkway. The photos below illustrate my suggestion. The first photo is the current walkway. The photo below that is a concept photo (drawn with a computer software) showing how a wheelchair gate can be build to deter the motorcyclists from using the walkway. Please note the blue arrows. The logic is to create twist and turn in a narrow passage. The passage should be wide enough for wheelchairs but not motorcycles. More about wheelchair gate can be found in the link HERE.
How would wheelchair gate affect vision-impaired and mothers with prams?
ReplyDeleteA good valid question. Personally I too prefer an open walkway. But in many places in Penang where enforcement are problematics, bars were build to deter motorcyclists from abusing passage ways. My suggestion is that when you have to build bars it is better to build wheelchair gate as alternative. To answer the question directly, prams and visually-impaired persons are smaller in size than a wheelchair. So the wheelchair gate should not post any problem. If necessary, we can always instal guiding blocks to help the visually-impaired negotiate path.
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