Pedestrian congestion is a big problem in lots of major urban centers. Go down to Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo or Times Square in NYC and you'll find the same problem of big crowds of people clogging areas that weren't designed to accommodate the sheer volume of traffic.

Idk if I'd call it "unnecessarily long travel" so much as "a necessary consequence of this many people living in a limited space". If you don't want that level of crowding, you've got to move outside this hyper-dense city.

[–] megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

I mean, NYC has a fairly healthy level of pedestrian traffic in most areas. Times Square is mostly just full of tourists. I’m not as familiar with Tokyo but my understanding is a a lot of the more dense areas have a sort of 2/3 level layout of commercial, but there is level interconnects or they’re set up in conjunction with transit. So like, there are fairly large underground commercial strips at subway level, or sky bridges between blocks for 2nd story commercial.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

They all get backed up during rush hour. It took me ten minutes to get into Shinjuku station one sunny afternoon, because that corner of town was so crammed with people.

Similarly, if you've ever been in the subway tunnels of NYC or DC, you'll know when a game lets out at Madison Square or a parade is happening though the Washington Mall, because these otherwise spacious underground enclaves are stuffed with people.

At some point, you have an issue of induced demand. These urban centers are designed to encourage the free flow of pedestrian traffic and... that's exactly what they create.