This wayspot was recently removed, apparently shortly after a description edit for it was approved:
Wayspot Title: Brightwood Fountain
Location (lat/lon): 36.073143, -79.58686
City: Whitsett
Country: USA
Screenshot of the Rejection Email (do not include your personal information): N/A
Additional Information (if any): My guess is that it could have been removed for safe pedestrian access. However you can see there are sidewalks leading directly to it. Yes, you have to cross a residential street first but if sidewalks were built leading directly to it, clearly it was intended as a place one would walk to. It’s odd that it was removed within days (or less) of a description edit being approved for it.
Whilst there is some safe pedestrian access on the roundabout itself, there are questions as to the safety of pedestrian access to the roundabout. One could make various arguments on how safe it is based on local knowledge, but Niantic’s view (and people without local knowledge) will most likely be that in the absence of clear and demonstratable safe access to the roundabout, it will need to be deemed unsafe. I appreciate you may say it’s safe, but there is no way for anyone else to know that for sure.
I understand the Niantic rule but can only make an appeal to common sense here. Why would a sidewalk – complete with ADA curb cuts – be made if it was felt that pedestrians could not safely access it? Clearly (at least to me) the design and intention was that people would walk to this object.
BTW, and FWIW, I neither nominated nor reviewed the POI.
What you deem to be common sense isn’t necessarily common sense to someone else. I could make arguments about what I deem to be common sense, but it doesn’t make it so. What you deem to be safe based on your local knowledge may not be deemed to be safe to someone else.
It is extremely unusual to have marked crosswalks on neighborhood streets, so I see how the inference could have been made from satellite view that this was not safe to access. But this appears to be a park area for the community to me.
I do find it funny the developers made a point to put that nice leveled “ADA curb cut” leading to stairs.
Absolutely agree that folks are intended to be able to gather once there. I noticed there were no painted crosswalks on the sidewalk going around the outside of the circle, but the lack of a clear “path” to the middle is strange.
There is actually one painted crossing, going across the southern entrance and exit to the roundabout. I’m not sure why there aren’t others if they’ve bothered to paint that specific one.
At any rate, there are tactile paving slabs at nearly all of the crossing points including the two on the inside of the roundabout (but not opposite them on the outside of the roundabout for some strange reason). Tactile paving slabs are used to tell visually impaired people they’re at a crossing point, so I would see these as valid examples of pedestrian crossings, even if they aren’t painted. I do think they could’ve done better with designing the crossing points though.
When you get out of big cities, expect the unexpected? As others have pointed out better than me this is intended as a spot safe for pedestrians to access.
I’ll still shake my head over a curb cut and tactile crossing that leads directly to stairs, but that’s another issue.
If I was designing the fountain the sidewalks around it, the main N/S sidewalk would have been shifted 45 degrees to the east, so as to better align with the homes and other amenities you can’t see in my first screenshot.
