Not long ago, a downtown Seattle intersection at Second and Virginia, over the period of a few hours, gave me the experience of a pedestrian squeezing along at the edge of moving traffic, followed by a driver’s perspective confronting folks forced to walk in the street.

It was eye-opening but not fun.

The experience is familiar to walking and pedaling Seattleites, from 11th Avenue on Capitol Hill to Fourth and Denny downtown. A construction project blocks off a sidewalk and/or obstructs a bicycle lane. Pedestrians walk into the street to get around it. Bicyclists must merge into traffic.

“This happens all over the town, all of the time,” Dominic Holden wrote last March in The Stranger.

The city fathers (and mothers) of Seattle can witness obstructions close-up while making their way to good-cause breakfasts and luncheons at the Westin Hotel. In one notorious case, the sidewalk on the south side of Virginia Street, a block from the hotel, was shut down for months.

Talk to Seattle City Council members about this, and you’ll get empathy — all over you. They walk downtown, too, and know exactly what you are talking about. But action never follows.

Some years back, by contrast, I and several reporter colleagues watched slack-jawed as a powerful Chicago alderman threatened to alter the anatomy of a contractor who was blocking a busy sidewalk in his ward. “He’ll find a way to fix this and I expect a contribution from him,” joked the alderman. Without missing a beat, he returned to presidential politics.

We now have a benchmark to apply to the problem.

Incoming Seattle Department of Transportation boss Scott Kubly was asked about blocked sidewalks at the news conference where Mayor Ed Murray announced his nomination.

“I had the same experience walking back from dinner last night,” Kubly replied.

Are you going to do something about it? A strong “Yes!” came simultaneously from both Murray and his new SDOT director.

We hear a lot about transportation “vision” and “integration” in Seattle. Well, that ought to include the right to see where you’re going and move along a street that provides for pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists.

Construction has been a boon to Seattle. It has carried the city — and helped carry the state — out of the Great Recession. We are, as Mayor Murray keeps telling us, the fastest-growing city in the country. It’s better to see downtown building up than suburbs sprawling out.

At the same time, however, the city must push back, just as Alderman Burke was doing in defense of his bungalow neighborhood. A maxim of the great California Congressman Phil Burton comes to mind: “The only way to deal with exploiters is to terrorize the bastards.”

Even the brief public shutdown of one dangerous construction site would serve as a lesson to all.

And City Hall should make an example by getting its own projects done without inconveniencing people. SDOT should be able to plant trees and create “parkettes” without creating a prolonged mess.

And look at danger spots. Where Fourth reaches Denny, the Howard S. Wright Co. has blocked off a sidewalk. Pedestrians are instructed to go across the street. But there’s a row of planting on the water side of Fourth, with signs telling people not to walk on it. Not good!

As well, somebody on the City Council should make himself/herself a nuisance over this. Sure, Nick Licata has taken tentative steps. But somebody ought to be kicking butt. For inspiration, look to the face on a new U.S. postage stamp: The martyred San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk was a pioneer gay rights champion, but he engineered an ordinance requiring that dog owners clean up their pets’ poop.

And finally, for displaced pedestrians and bicyclists, raise a little hell.

Pick a City Council member to pick on: My target would be Tom Rasmussen, who chairs the transportation committee and is vice chair of human services. Or Bruce Harrell, the chair of public safety, who has lately shown an ability to constructively get his dander up.

The tone of this column is lighthearted, but … if the city doesn’t push on this, a pedestrian walking in the street will be hit and badly hurt. Or a bicyclist is going to swerve into a vehicle lane and get clipped.

City Hall must — literally — get ahead on this.