01-09-2016, 04:03 PM
(01-09-2016, 03:23 PM)plam Wrote: Thing about walkways is that sometimes they are much slower than the direct outside route.
That depends entirely on design. The only reason this is even a discussion is because of absurd mistakes made when the campus was initially built. At first, links were not normally built between buildings, even when it would have been easy. When E2 was built, there was a maybe 10m gap between it and E1 (now DWE). Recently (in the last couple of years), this gap was finally filled by a bridge on level 3. Who builds buildings with 10m gaps between them in this climate?
In some cases buildings are built further away for strategic reasons, and in this case it may well make sense not to have a link. I don’t expect indoor passages to be built across enormous distances. But failing to bridge (or tunnel, or otherwise cross) short distances is just incomprehensible. Even recently, I understand that there was some debate as to whether or not to build the NH-STC link. Given that both ends of the link were built at the same time, it’s an absolute no-brainer.
The right way to proceed when the campus was first built would have been to lay out a plan of main corridor routes covering the entire campus, and refuse to hire any architects who would not agree to respect the corridor plan. That is, as each new building was built, it would have filled in whatever portion of the corridor plan was needed to serve that building. Initially, some buildings would have been built further away for various reasons, but it’s safe to say that by now everything inside Ring Road would be linked, and by connections more convenient than the ones that have actually been built.
I should mention that this failure to take into account the actual use of the buildings is not limited to our climate. Once I was in San Diego. As one might expect, buildings tend to open out to the outside more there. I was “in” what would here be a shopping mall like Conestoga Mall, except it was mostly open to the air. So far, no problem — the climate is enough different there that it is entirely reasonable to have things more open. Except that it was raining that day, and I actually experienced being rained on … while riding an escalator. There was lots of roof around — it wasn’t that it was a completely open-air mall — they just didn’t think that maybe the escalators and other major elements of the circulation routes should be top-priority for being covered.