Cousin to the road and sister to the bike lane is the sidewalk in Shanghai. My family regularly uses the sidewalks outside of our neighborhood to walk to the subway and all variety of entertaining sights in the city. We occassionally even share the sidewalk with other pedestrians. For a while, with all of our visitors in March and April, we most often used the sidewalk to walk into our little town.
During one of these ventures, C was wondering (read: complaining) why we have to walk to town all the time. He wanted to know why we couldn't ride our bikes. Well, first of all, the bike lane is WAY to dangerous for our kids. On the way to town, the only thing that separates it from the road is a white line. The bigger issue is that the sidewalks are all made of brick here. And I don't mean some of the sidewalks. I can't say that I've walked on all the sidewalks in the city, for sure, but I can say that I've only ever seen brick ones and since I don't have to watch the road (and sometimes don't want to!), the sidewalks are a good alternative.
Brick sidewalks don't make for an enjoyable bike ride. I don't think they make for a bike ride at all if you have kids using training wheels.
My dad and I were discussing the bricks and it came to me - they are brick so that no one will ride their bikes on it. Aha! Clever little trick there, Shanghai. Keep the bikes/scooters/rickshaws off the sidewalks by making them out of brick! If you just said "No Bikes/Scooters/Rickshaws on the Sidewalk" that would never work!
One other interesting sidewalk tidbit: there are paths for the blind on the sidewalks. Bricks with ridges that tell someone who can't see where the safe path is. Different bricks with small circles that say, "Stop! The path ends here." Only in Shanghai, the bricks with ridges sometimes disappear into a retaining wall without warning. Sorry, blind people. And that, my friends, is where the sidewalk ends.
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