# Campus path dividers to be repainted each term

> A School of Emergent Priorities poster sorts 4,812 passes on shared footpaths into four lane-keeping kinds, and the University will repaint its campus dividers every term to the observed median track.

Each term, the painted line down the middle of the University's shared footpaths will be moved to where people actually walked and rode the term before. The practice follows a research poster published today by the School of Emergent Priorities, and it applies to every campus segment, with none set aside.

The poster, by Sunniva Balogun, Marek Solheim and Dr Anouk Mensah, sorts 4,812 passes on 31 suburban shared footpaths into four named kinds, from Held the Line to Shared the Middle. Observers stationed at the nearest bus stop or car-park edge recorded which side of the divider each walker and cyclist occupied at the moment of passing. Both parties kept their lane on 37% of passes.

> A line is a promise about where people will be, and it seemed only courteous to let the people answer first.
>
> --- Sunniva Balogun, Doctoral Candidate, School of Emergent Priorities

On the nine campus segments repainted in the study, the share of passes that held the line rose to 94%. Marek Solheim, Lecturer and Deputy Convenor of the Horizon Register, said the footpaths had been generous hosts. Any segment falling below a pre-registered threshold will be repainted within a week.

The University is proud to add its paths to the places where the line and the traveller are in conversation, and the School expects the conversation to continue.

The full poster is available from the University's research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.t5gav0.