It’s good to get up close and personal

When assessing the merits, or otherwise, of any urban design measure there is no substitute for actually going and visiting the site, says John Dales

This month, my inspiration comes from letters and I start with an expression of gratitude to Henry Peacock of Preston. At long last, someone has taken issue with something I wrote. Although it’s been good to receive correspondence of a ‘keep up the good work’ nature, I’ve harboured the view (perhaps shared by the editor) that such politeness means I haven’t been sufficiently chal­lenging. Henry, however, has a variety of concerns about an un-named scheme that I commended.

These concerns are about excessive vehicle speeds, the apparent lack of physical or psychological traffic calming measures and the street in question’s ‘crossability’, in which regards I’m glad to report that, whenever I’ve visited this street, vehicles have been moving slowly and pedestrians have been observed going merrily from one side to the other, whether or not assisted by formal crossing facilities.

It has long been my view that the best ‘psycho­logical’ traffic calming measure in any street is the presence of significant quantities of pedestri­ans combined with the absence of pedestrian guard-railing. In the first place this helps to make it plain to drivers that, to borrow Henry’s phrase, they are 'intruding into a pedestrian area'; and in the second drivers do tend to drive more defen­sively where they realise that a pedestrian or two might suddenly step into the carriageway. When the balance is right both drivers and pedestrians are more circumspect and the former understand that they are welcome to use such a street, on its terms, but that they don’t own it.

Although I should make plain that my visits to this particular street have always been during shopping hours, I trust the additional photos help to show that it’s a busy and bustling street where pedestrians find it easy and safe to follow their desire lines. Quite why this design seems to work is the result of numerous factors that I hope to report on before too long. In the meantime, Henry’s concerns are an understandable response to the top photo in the light of his own experience and this has brought home to me, again, that the best way to gauge the pros and cons of any street, streetscape or public realm measure is actually to visit the blighter. I’ll return to this matter at the end.

Issues of safety in newly-redesigned streets were also raised by Dave du Feu’s letter about that cause celèbre/bête noire, High Street Kensington. He rightly points out that the street’s record regarding cyclist casualties in the two years since the redesign became fully operational is not terribly impressive. However, he then com­mits the same error he criticises: drawing unwarranted conclusions on the basis of subjec­tive interpretation of the numbers. Having described as “noticeable” the difference between an 18% reduction in cyclist casualties for the High Street and a 25% reduction for Kensington & Chelsea as a whole, Dave then appears to regard the difference between a 44% reduction in all casualties for the street and a 35  figure for the whole borough as rather insignificant, con­cluding that the improvement in High Street casualty rates is “probably mainly due” to other factors than the street redesign. He does not mention that the record shows a 64% reduction in pedestrian casualties for the High Street, com­pared with 43% for the borough and 22% for London as a whole.

While I agree that to point to the Kensington scheme as bringing a definitive advance in road safety would be premature, the approach of those genuinely interested in making our streets safer, especially for vulnerable road users, should surely be to focus on why positive changes have occurred and to work on those aspects where there isn’t such good news. Frankly, I just don’t understand why anyone other than a curmudg­eon would want to seem to wish innovative schemes to fail. Dave ends by speculating that “if there do prove to be road safety benefits in the long-term, they may well be more to motorised users than to pedestrians and cyclists” but simply has no objective basis for doing so.

Finally, a quick reference to Julian Cram’s advocacy of an alternative design for cyclist by­passes through kerb build-outs. The basic concept is sound, designed as it is to prevent the feature becoming a litter trap. However, Julian’s photo shows that this innovation has been betrayed by the conventional and excessive appli­cation of signs, lines, bollards and a fascinating array of colours. The measure is certainly cycle-friendly but not what I’d call street-friendly.

That said, I’d certainly not wish in any way to discourage the kind of innovation Julian describes and this brings me back to the reason why I’ve so far failed to identify the scheme Henry Peacock commented upon: it’s so as not to influence you in nominating schemes for the 2006 Urban Transport Design Award. As I said earlier, we need to know about examples of good practice so that we can actually visit them and learn and it’s part of the purpose of this column to disseminate such information.

To date, I haven’t had a very encouraging response to my call for nominations. Perhaps the problem is simply that, as yet, there just aren’t that many transport schemes out there that are praiseworthy from a broader urban design per­spective. But I’d love it if you’re able to disprove that thesis and I’ll make it easy for you to do so by asking you to email me your nominations direct to j.dales@urbaninitiatives.co.uk. Thanks.