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Comment by moltar | Hacker News Reader

It is a perfect example of an over-engineering and a hostile design. Looks impressive on a mock up and from the air. But a terrible solution for pedestrians.

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What's hostile about it? You can get to the other side without ever having to wait for the cars to stop and you don't even need to walk up the stairs because there's an escalator.

I have been there several times and I hate it. Circular means more walking to get to the other side.

My, my! Such inconvenience!

You are fortunate to consider unnecessary walking an "inconvenience" rather than an impediment. My partner, while recovering from a spinal cord injury, would regularly come home from work raging about a closed sidewalk that had required her to cross the street or a bus that missed its stop, adding an extra 2 blocks of walking (or navigating a wheelchair over ice and slush) to her commute.

Hm. I didn't think of that. Sorry. I've just seen the escalators and thought of it as OK because of that.

You can't cross through the round-about regardless, it wouldn't take longer than a sidewalk would.

Hostile because pedestrians needs to ascend and descend to navigate the intersection. People with mobility issues will need to use an escalator, or even an elevator (if there is one, and if it actually does work). And what happens when an escalator breaks?

As a rule of thumb, any overpass or underpass is any or all of the following:

- hostile design for pedestrians (majority)

- money sink / expensive to build and maintain

- architect's wet dream / resume building

- only looks nice on paper / rendering, but in the real world, at 1:1 scale it is ugly and makes the city look ugly

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