The best thing about roads and streets is that they have sidewalks that give you the chance to walk and practice walking as an exercise on a daily basis as part of your routine. The appealing thing about these sidewalks is that they urge you to walk, jog or run so that you maintain your health refreshing your body and your blood circulation.
In all the cities around the world, governments dedicate special care to sidewalks and crosswalks. There are always traffic signals to organize the stream of pedestrians walking at crosswalks and they are given the priority so that their paths are always smooth and accident-free.
Today, Riyadh has started beautiful projects to pave the sidewalks of important streets and roads and create different paths in public parks. These are very ambitious projects that will help change people’s habits in the capital city making them ditch their laziness and start walking instead of just using cars.
However, these projects are very few compared to the capacity of the city, and it might not help in achieving the required goal of fulfilling the desires of pedestrians. We want sidewalks to be part of every road and street in this city and every other city.
In our Islamic communities we are obliged to pray five times a day. The Prophet (peace be upon him) advised people to walk to mosques promising that each step they walk will gain them good deeds. Human beings need to walk for their physical and mental well being as well. The issue in Riyadh is not just about sidewalks, our streets are not even paved evenly and with every two or three meters there has to be a bump or a hole to entertain you!
The project of constructing and paving the sidewalks of King Fahd Medical City in Riyadh took around one year to be completed yet the roads were paved in one day. We need to be more proficient and dedicated to such projects if we want them to be successful.
