worst practices: vanishing medians

One thing that can make suburban roads less intolerable for pedestrians is a large median, so that the pedestrian can cross a huge road two or three lanes at a time, instead of having to cross an entire six- or eight-lane highway in one mad dash.  

I recently saw an excellent example of how not to design a median: instead of being parallel with the sidewalk and ending at an intersection, the median ended 20 feet or so south of the intersection, thus forcing pedestrians to choose between using the median (but having to jaywalk to do so) and crossing at the intersection and accompanying traffic light.  Obviously, this sort of design makes the median less useful to pedestrians.