At the December 2009 LTT-sponsored Shared Space conference in London, delegates heard that a great deal more research needs to be done before the shared space concept can be fully evaluated, with worries about the potential road safety impact of such schemes being of particular concern and the needs of blind and partially sighted pedestrians remaining a key issue.
More on shared space: the livable streets streetswiki
Groups representing blind and partially-sighted people remain vehemently opposed to schemes incorporating 'shared surface' elements.
There is a great thirst amongst transport professionals for more knowledge about shared space urban design schemes at the moment - this was aptly illustrated by the sheer size of audience at the LTT-sponsored conference held in London last week – with more than 200 delegates gathering to pick the brains of the leading experts in the field. Not that even the experts know everything in this rapidly-evolving field, however.
According to Stuart Reid, sustainable transport director at MVA Consultancy and project manager for the current DfT study into shared spaces: This is a work in progress. It is not a done deal, there is more work to do.' The aim of the DfT research is to produce a Local Transport Note in 2011.
This comment refers specifically to Reid’s work for the DfT, but one of the key questions that has yet to be adequately determined, Reid told the conference, is exactly what a ‘shared space’ is. The definition being used by MVA in its current work for the DfT is: 'A street or place accessible to both pedestrians and vehicles that is designed to enable pedestrians to move more freely by reducing traffic management features that tend to encourage users of vehicles to assume priority.'
One indication of the current lack of certainty about what shared spaces are and what we need to know about them is, according to Reid, that one thing the Department asked MVA to do was pronounce on whether there is merit in shared spaces. 'But this is a meaningless question,' he said. 'It is like asking if there is merit in public parks. It depends, doesn’t it? Shared space can fail,' Reid cautioned. 'Merely labelling something as shared space doesn’t mean that it will deliver.'
'There’s a lot of it about already,' he added. 'But there’s a slight aura that this is something pretty hip and trendy… A whacky European idea that it would be exciting to try here… [and] I’ve been aware of a slightly disturbing trend of highway authorities putting schemes in just because their elected members say they want one.'
The most controversial aspect of the shared space concept is the use of ‘shared surfaces’, but Reid warned that this term may actually be unhelpful. 'In the DfT research thus far we have chosen to use the term "level surface",'he said, defining this as 'a street surface that is not physically divided by kerb or level differences into areas for particular uses'.
'Shared surface is a term that has quite a lot of baggage,” Reid added. 'It tends to imply a lot of undifferentiated mingling, but most actual schemes contain a lot of demarcation. Sharing is a value-laden term and many visually impaired people are not comfortable with sharing,'he said. 'They are not wanting to mingle in physical space.'
So what evidence do we have so far that shared spaces are worth having? 'User responses to surveys indicate that they are generally popular,” Reid said. “They tend to enhance the visual amenity of a place. Perceptions of security are generally improved and users are saying that they are now using places more as destinations, which helps improve economic activity.'
User perceptions of road safety in shared space schemes do tend to decline, Reid conceded, but the existing evidence was that this decline is strongly asymmetrical (with pedestrians seeing little or no degradation in road safety but car drivers often perceiving a significant decline).
Reid warned, nevertheless, that a potential problem with this was an almost complete lack of evidence about the extent to which concerns about shared space schemes discourage certain vulnerable user groups (such as the blind/partially sighted) from using them. He also cautioned that there was some evidence that children under ten years old may struggle to understand how to behave in a shared space environment.
In addition to MVA’s work for the DfT, work is also currently underway to expand on the street design guidance contained in Manual for Streets away from predominantly residential areas. MfS2 will, according to Phil Jones, an independent consultant working on the project for the Department, provide guidance on street design for locations such as town and city centres; high streets; boulevards; ring roads; urban extensions; village centres; rural lanes; and rural inter-urban routes.
A draft document is due to be ready by next May, Jones told the conference, with final publication scheduled for October 2010. Research to inform MfS2 centres on risk and liability issues associated with the tricky question of visibility. 'We are looking at urban areas across the UK at the junctions with the worst collision records and measuring the visibility at them to see if there is a relationship,' Jones explained. 'And if we find there is no relationship then what have we all been worrying about?'
According to Tim Cuell, technical director at consultant WSP, the DfT’s Mixed Priority Routes schemes 'tick all the boxes for shared space schemes', and so a consideration of their effectiveness should provide useful data on how well the concept can work.
'They have only been finished for two years,' Cuell cautioned. 'So there is not enough data yet to say if they have been a wholehearted success… We are still awaiting the final result of scheme evaluation in 2010, so caveat aedificator [let the builder beware].'
His preliminary findings, however, seem very positive. House prices around the Hull scheme have increased above the trend for the surrounding area, Cuell noted, and the nature of local retailers has also changed (moved ‘up market’). In Liverpool, meanwhile, there has been an increase in adult crossing activity and an increase in mobility impaired crossing activity, while Hull reports a 30 per cent increase in footfall. The Oxford scheme, for its part, Cuell said, has also been able to report significant casualty reductions (down 35 per cent for all injuries, compared with -16 per cent for all 30mph roads in the city).
Organisations representing blind and partially sighted people remain strongly opposed to shared space (and especially shared surface) schemes, however. Jill Allen-King, from the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, for example, told the conference that she was 'extremely concerned' about the proliferation of shared spaces and said she has received extensive feedback from her members to the effect that many will never travel through a shared space scheme.
'There are 2.6 million blind and partially sighted people in this country and the DfT’s research is simply not taking into account the needs of this large number of people,' Allen-King said. 'I personally won’t go out in a shared street and we have every right to use the streets like able-bodied pedestrians.'
