Desire path for straight sidewalk
this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2025
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Desire Paths
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Desire paths Desire paths can be paths created as a consequence of erosion caused by human or animal foot-fall or traffic. The paths usually represent the shortest or most easily navigated routes between origins and destinations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path
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bet you $10 the pole was there first. The cost of working with the cable company and paying their approved expensive team to remove it and moving it vs just taking your existing city contracted cement team and doing a little squiggly
money is always the motive
I'll throw in another $10 that the sidewalk was somewhere else initially.
I'm betting the road was narrower, and the sidewalk further to the left (in the photo). The pole was to the right of the sidewalk. These were all planned/built around the same time.
Then the road was widened. The sidewalk had to be pushed (moved/rebuilt) further to the right. They could've put it far enough over to be completely on the other side of the pole, but that would have other implications - including running into the fire hydrant in the background.
man I'm so glad we don't have to deal with that here. All poles are owned by the town here, if they wanna move a pole they give notice to the utility companies "hey this is being moved on X date, if you wanna keep services on it we recommend you be there" (coordination wise, we still have many regulations to follow)
In some places it'll be the phone company and the power company and the cable TV/internet companies as well. You'd have to coordinate with all 3. And there may be regulations about how close it has to be to the street to enable repairs -- regulations put there for the safety of the workers, as well as to keep the lines away from tree branches that might take them down during a storm.