But calling the short walk to campus a treat would be an overstatement, despite the gently curving Limbopad over the Dommel. And that has everything to do with crossing the Professor Doctor Dorgelolaan, which brutally separates the city from the campus.

To get across this sixty-meter-wide concrete desert, pedestrians have to navigate three separate traffic lights. Cyclists face as many as five. As a pedestrian you also encounter at least seven different types of paving, including loose tiles. I suspect this crossing was designed by a blind, budgetless modernist with no sense of the thousands of pedestrians and cyclists who pass here every day.

Sometimes you find yourself waiting with dozens of others while cars—always given priority—stream past. Cyclists are both companions and competitors: not everyone is familiar with the Dutch cycling mindset, and the right-of-way rules seem blurred. The start of the Limbopad, unfurled like a red carpet partly across the bike path, only adds to the confusion.

Every now and then a group of pedestrians takes matters into their own hands, ignoring one or more red lights. Risky, yes, but it saves time, frustration, and lungs. Where John F. Kennedylaan ends symbolically with a bowling-themed artwork, a statue of Frogger would be equally fitting here. This frog from the 1981 video game had to be guided by the player across a busy road. Leap for your life!

It’s a poor gateway to a university that prides itself on technological innovation and its roots in Eindhoven. Anyone hoping to convince high school students to come study here is already starting at a disadvantage.

Pieter Pauw is assistant professor in the Technology, Innovation and Society group. The views expressed in this column are his own.