Is this some kind of American joke I’m too European for to understand?

I have a Lidl, an Intermarché and another national store where I live.

Besides the Intermarché, that is an old store that hasn’t seen upgrades or renewals since ever, the two other stores have dedicated access for pedestrians and vehicles.

The Lidl store even has a dedicated foot path you can use, through their garden, to access the grounds but you can, safely, enter through the vehicle entrance: there is a pedestrian cross and a pedestrian access there.

The other store has a vehicle exclusive access, directly from the road. Yet it still has a pedestrian cross on it (connects to a sidewalk on both sides) and has pedestrians access. But it also has dedicated pedestrian accesses built.

I recognize the situation in the comic is real but mostly for older stores. And even those are not exempt of being forced to create or improve accesses to pedestrians.

And thus desire-paths were formed.

In the US they build roads so things are further apart, so you walk less and have to use/buy cars, so you pay taxes on cars/fuel, they use the tax money so they can build more roads … so things are further apart.

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We can’t have crosswalks or walk lights across the busy state owned road anywhere in our town because there are no sidewalks leading to the stop lights. The next town over has sidewalks, so they have 4-5 crosswalks and people walk to the shops all the time.

Tactical urbanism. Set up bollards and tear out bushes to create a path.

It’s the kind of engineering where the law is followed to the letter but no one building it cares to mention the oversight and no one in charge cares to look.

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