Genuine questions, how would you do it? How would you get it passed car centric residents?

That’s the problem. People want other people to stop driving down ‘their’ road, but want to be able to drive themselves everywhere.

It’s funny because if you asked people who live in a cul-de-sac how they’d feel about demolishing the ‘cul’ house and making it a through road they’d all be against it. But if you try to create a virtual cul-de-sac with a couple of bollards the locals kick up a fuss about having to drive an extra 1/3 of a mile (diddums).

The first ‘mini-Holland’ trial in London has just finished and that seems to have worked really well. The threatened traffic chaos apparently didn’t really arrive. Instead traffic evaporated, air pollution fell and collisions dropped.

The main problem with the particular case highlighted in the OP is that people are inherently adept at learning. Considering that the council have already said that the design on the road is meaningless, anyone who approaches it more than once will almost certainly completely ignore it.

And a local road to me – bizarre paint and pinch points. Very clear how drivers have adapted.

(The muddy holes are meant to have trees planted (but I don’t hold much hope for them surviving for long).

Paint & pinch points alone don't make a good/safe street. New Park Road. No Ped priority. Tyre tracks on pavement @sustrans @lambeth_council pic.twitter.com/wyQgsVEYYy

— simonstill (@simonstill) November 24, 2016

This is the Leonard Circus shared space in Hackney. Trees protected by metal cages but hasn’t helped much.

I think the comparison to ‘Woonerfs’ is always a bit dodgy. Woonerfs don’t need signs, bollards, kerbs, traffic lights etc because there is virtually no (motor) traffic on them, so there is no need for infrastructure that only exists because of motor vehicles.

Looking at Woonerfs and deciding that a lack of clarity makes them safe completely misses the point that they were already safe. And that safety means that you don’t need to waste time and money building ‘clarity’, in the form of signs, kerbs etc, into the road. If you took a busy through route in The Netherlands and took away the signs (which is the nonsense that we try to do) it wouldn’t magically become safe and the motor traffic wouldn’t disappear. You need to stop these roads being through routes to remove the danger posed almost universally by motor vehicles.

I appreciate the traffic numbers are very different, but some of the principles can carry over.

Here’s an example of a busy through road (amongst other on this website):

http://www.hamilton-baillie.co.uk/index.php?do=projects&sub=details&pid=35

Hmm, I’m very wary of that link. Ben Hamilton-Baillie is one of the people making the most money from ‘selling’ shared space to councils. Funny how the pictures are taken when the roads are deserted (7am on a sunday morning?). Take one at morning rush hour and see how inviting the road is for kids on bikes getting to school.

I don’t think there is any argument that you can cause a slight reduction in speed by doing things like visually narrowing lanes and removing centre lines. It’s quite another to claim that it’s enough to change the character from a through road to somewhere kids can play.

that road he shows has 6-7000 vehicles a day. As supposedly dropped speed by a couple of mph (bu pt doesn’t even say what to). If they’ve dropped from 40mph to 38 it’s hardly made it a quiet village high street.

If they’ve dropped from 40mph to 38 it’s hardly made it a quiet village high street.

A few MPH drop is enough to make a big difference to noise pollution, especially with that much traffic.

Fair enough – not an example without bias there.

Now know-one’s going to play there, but the increase in safety and perception of safety will increase in line with a reduction in speeds. I drive that road in the link and know it before and after. I also cycle on that road occasionally.

Before, I had a clear carriageway marked out and signage would tell me about the bend coming up. Now it feels narrower as the carriageway isn’t marked and the bends feel tighter. The curtilage of the buildings feels closer.

Given that speed limits are rarely enforced, any physical change that slows speeds and forces more driver awareness is better that nowt.

Re speeds – I don’t know but suspect its more like 30 down to 26/27mph.

We’ve pretty much reached saturation point with traffic these days, cars have become too successful for their own good and where you design for them you ruin it for everybody else. Designing for historic traffic growth is also a never ending battle, you make space for it, more people drive, you have to make more space for it, its use needs to be restrained like it or not, and the ideal way would be pricing road use as you drive to a level where traffic moves reasonably well. Little things like the OP posted are a microscopic contribution to that theory, but at least says we’re taking a little back from the car drivers.

cars have become too successful…//…its use needs to be restrained like it or not

Mostly not, only a few bleeding heart liberal do-gooder hippys wanna curtail car driving. MOAR roads!

and the ideal way would be pricing road use as you drive

hmm not sure. Unless you’re using blackbox recorders* and start charging from the second you start the motor, it’s not going to affect all the lazy chuffers heading to the shops/school if you dont have to move in/out of charge zones. Also if you only have charging cameras/sensors on main roads then rat run minor roads are going to be chocka.

*another neat idea that would probably solve a lot of problems but the majority will rabidly shout down.