Trail Mix | Urban running in Hong Kong just got a lot better, thanks to protesters’ removal of metal fences

If you do any running on the streets of Hong Kong, weaving in and out of crowds has become easier of late.

The reason: a lot of those metal railings that line large sections of pedestrian pavements are gone, dismantled and removed by protesters.

The metal fences are installed by the government all over Hong Kong’s streets, ostensibly to keep people from crossing outside pedestrian crossings, to protect pedestrians from vehicles, and possibly also to dissuade vans and trucks from unloading goods.

Instead, the railings end up wasting precious space on already narrow and packed pavements. They also create unnecessary bottlenecks, as pedestrians are forced to cross the road strictly within the designated area, preventing people from spreading out along the pavement when crowds are dense.

The fences are not designed to protect people from wayward cars, either. As landscape architect Melissa Cate Christ told Zolima Citymag: “They are not built to withstand car crashes.” Instead, as the author of the article, Christopher DeWolf, notes, “It’s the other way around: the railings are meant to block pedestrians from getting in the way of car.”

Running on the urban streets has often meant jumping on and off pavements, weaving in between pedestrians, hopping onto the road to avoid crowds when the coast is clear, then jumping back onto a pavement when cars pass by.