Sidewalk survey · Meralco Avenue, Pasig

Doña Julia Vargas → Estancia

One phone video, measured metre by metre with two off-the-shelf vision models and no training. Each strip below is one attribute of the sidewalk, laid along the metres walked; every measurement is filed at the spot it describes, not where the camera stood.

Along the walk

Hover or drag across the strips to see the spot. Arrow keys step a metre (Shift: 10).

What stood out

The first 200 m are the best walking on this route. From 0+000 to about 0+080 (0 to 62 s), the sidewalk runs under an almost continuous tree canopy, between a stone wall and a railing that separates you from traffic. Tree trunks and roots stand in the walking line and some slabs are heaved, so the clear path is about 1.6 m, dropping under 1 m at the trunks. After a side-street crossing and driveways (62 to 92 s), the sidewalk widens to about 2.3 m and stays shaded to 0+200 (158 s). It is cracked in places, and the railing is gone: the curb sits directly on the traffic lane.

Then the shade ends and the sidewalk breaks down. From 0+200 to 0+235 (158 to 194 s), it narrows to about 1 m between planter walls and utility poles, in full sun. From the crosswalk at 0+235 to the fire station at about 0+318 (194 to 280 s), motorcycles and SUVs parked on the cracked sidewalk push you into the curb lane, past orange water barriers. The man walking ahead of you is in the road too (213 to 222 s).

Past the fire station: tiles, then driveways. The tiled sidewalk behind a railing (280 to 292 s) is narrowed to under 1 m by motorcycles parked along it. Then come driveways, an SUV parked across the walkway, a detour sign standing in the middle of it, and an intersection. The Petron frontage (340 to 375 s) is 3 to 6 m wide, but it is a driveway apron, not a protected walkway.

The last stretch is partly mislabelled. Under the trees past Petron, you walk in the road beside parked motorcycles for about 12 s (378 to 390 s). But from 408 to 424 s the model calls a raised concrete path with painted lines "road", so the "in the road" share for this stretch is overstated. The walk ends crossing the Estancia entrance and going indoors.

Same sidewalk, two walks. 0+235 to 0+318 is the stretch your first video covers in the other direction, filmed on an overcast day and taken from the YouTube copy. In the road: 65% then, 67% now. Vehicle on the sidewalk ahead: 38% and 39%. Median clear width: 1.1 m and 0.9 m, mostly under 1.2 m both times. Distance doesn't agree as well: 63 m then, 84 m now. My stretch boundaries are only good to about ±10 m, and the rest is the odometry error the method table warns about. Canopy (24% then, 9% now) can't be compared across different cameras and skies.

A definition to settle. Crossing a side street counts as "in the road" here, the same as being pushed off a blocked sidewalk. Those are different problems and probably need separate measures.

Firming it up

    How each strip is measured

    StripHow it is measuredTrust
    Every metre as a table
    PositionTime of dayUnderfootClear widthWhole sidewalkGap to trafficRailingIn the wayOverhead coverSunSlope