Share Spaces – equal priority for all users

Interesting programme on BBC R4 at the moment

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018xs8t

A passionate advocate of shared space, Monderman and colleagues started small – more than twenty years ago, converted an intersection in the northern Dutch province of Friesland from a conventional signal-controlled intersection to a brick-paved street, giving equal priority to cars, people and cycles. The idea was that people would use their own minds in navigating the streets, building their own informal traffic rules. Research has shown that these kinds of shared spaces automatically reduced traffic speed to under 20 mph – the threshold at which the chances of being severely injured in a road accident plummets. This highly counterintuitive approach – increasing risk decreases accidents is finding favour (albeit slowly and not without opposition) all over the world.

They work the whole world over except for 4 countries – UK, US, Canada and Australia where god has 4 wheels.

Interesting that people manage to regulate themselves, I’d always assumed we have traffic lights etc. in the first place when it became apparent that people couldn’t regulate themselves.

I travel through Poynton regularly. They’ve just “improved” the main intersection in the centre of the village.

Traffic lights have gone.

We now have, not a roundabout, but a “suggestive rotary”.

Whatever that is 😕

Looks like a roundabout. Everyone treats it like a roundabout. although technically vehicles entering from the right don’t have priority. Or some such.

I predict accidents very soon after it’s finished.

Works really well in the Netherlands – and of course it could work here but needs to be done properly

They work the whole world over except for 4 countries – UK, US, Canada and Australia where god has 4 wheels.

Indias 118K deaths, with a general lack of road laws/signs/rules, in 2008 suggests it doesn’t work harmoniously everywhere.

Highways and city intersections often glitter with smears of broken windshield and are scattered with unmatched shoes, shorn-off bicycle seats and bits of motorcycle helmet. Tales of rolled-over trucks and speeding buses are a newspaper staple, and it is rare to meet someone in urban India who has not lost a family member, friend or colleague on the road.

NYTimes.

And while I’d not disagree that fewer signs and regulations seems a sane route (or rather people feeling invincible and “in the right” all the time causes dangerous road use) this following image suggests countries with fewer regulations, road rules etc seem to have higher deaths per head of capita:

Just finished reading “Traffic” by Tom Vanderbilt, a really comprehensive overview of the subject and about as interesting as a book on the subject matter can be.

http://tomvanderbilt.com/traffic/the-book/

Indias 118K deaths, with a general lack of road laws/signs/rules, in 2008 suggests it doesn’t work harmoniously everywhere.

The book above considers India’s problems in some detail. One key difference between there and here is that a huge number of people in India either don’t even have a licence, or get one by paying a bribe. In general, the worse a country is for corruption, the more dangerous it’ll be to drive there.

Just finished reading “Traffic” by Tom Vanderbilt, a really comprehensive overview of the subject and about as interesting as a book on the subject matter can be.

+1. Fascinating book.

Those assuming shared space won’t work in the UK (assuming it’s done properly) need to read up on the psychology of driving a bit first. That book is a great and fascinating way to do so.

I travel through Poynton regularly. They’ve just “improved” the main intersection in the centre of the village

Funny this is where I grew up and where my parents still live. It’s the first place I thought about when I saw this thread.

Park Lane is just a road with a fancy brick surface far as I can tell and scroats in their mark one escorts (people like Josh Bryceland to use a pertinent example) still drive up and down it like the knob jockeys they are except now there is less kerb to mount before you hit a pedestrian.

I spent some time in oregon a while back and was interested in some of the traffic management ideas, eg
4-way junction, usually no road markings, in car terms who has right of way? First person to arrive. Not knowing this, i sat and waited for someone else to make a move. no-one did, so after a couple of minutes, i reckoned it must be me and moved. No waving and gesticulating, everyone just waited till I moved.
Turning right (staying by the kerb, so like turning left here). if it’s safe, just go, regardless of the colour of the lights.
Crosswalks (pedestrian crossings), they are at every junction, just because they’re not painted on the road doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Pedestrians and cyclists have priority on the crosswalk, regardless of the colour of the lights.
Only in America, eh?

coffeeking – that’s because you’re not talking about the same thig – how developed countries might now choose to have non-vehicular centric urban spaces.

they have tried and imo failed at this is some areas in southampton.

It has ended up being a half-arsed affair and I just thought it was a bad road layout.

I would love to see it executed properly.

This amused me

coffeeking – that’s because you’re not talking about the same thig – how developed countries might now choose to have non-vehicular centric urban spaces.

I thought we were talking about shared use areas where no-one has right of way, such as in less developed countries where fewer rules exist and generally its a free-for-all in high traffic areas?

converted an intersection in the northern Dutch province of Friesland from a conventional signal-controlled intersection to a brick-paved street, giving equal priority to cars, people and cycles

And while I’d not disagree that fewer signs and regulations seems a sane route (or rather people feeling invincible and “in the right” all the time causes dangerous road use) this following image suggests countries with fewer regulations, road rules etc seem to have higher deaths per head of capita:

This feels like an Indian culture thing to me. When an Indian lorry driver wakes up in the morning, he’ll decide which side of the road he’s going to drive on. Usually the one that looks the most efficient. That the cars are coming towards him is irrelevant, there’s less of them so this must be the best side. And he’s in a lorry, so he wins most arguments.

As far as the OP goes, I pretty much agree. Car-centric countries will always struggle to adopt these sorts of proposals. Holland is a world away from us in their attitude to road access, it really is quite beautiful. And we’re pretty good in the road safety stakes. But we’re still a world away from Holland.

Just after I passed my CBT I rode through that section of Poynton, and have never been so terrified in my entire life. Traffic coming in all directions thinking they all have priority and pedestrians ambling about without a care!

I’m convinced someone will get seriously hurt there soon 🙁

There’s a traffic light controlled junction near me which consists of a busy single carriageway crossing a dual carriageway. Every morning it is backed up a couple of hundred yards in each direction. I was surprised one morning when I approached the junction at the usual busy time and there was virtually no traffic waiting. The traffic lights had failed and instead of this resulting in chaos people were simply being careful and sensible resulting in the junction being free of traffic and no one waiting.

Most people will do the right and sensible thing in these situations, unfortunately we have to legislate for the idiotic and thoughtless minority who feel that the road belongs to them and this results in a proliferation of control which impacts on everyone.

It would be nice to think that we could introduce these shared spaces, but (as well as the thoughtless minority) many people are now so used to being managed on the roads that they can’t think for themselves and get very confused when called upon to make a decision, so we would need years of re-education to be able to achieve this.

I like the idea. But it does depend on people who are aware of other road users.

I drive through Bradford twice a day and there are a lot of people who ignore most basic traffic laws & road signs 🙁

How many of them come from one of the more dangerous countries though……..

(puts on tin hat…..)

I rode through that very arrangement in Poynton on Monday of this week. As they’re still working on the approach and exits, the roads are very narrow so cars had little choice but to wait behind me but I also predict carnage when it’s all fully open.
They cane it already on the section from Brookside Garden Centre….

Most people will do the right and sensible thing in these situations, unfortunately we have to legislate for the idiotic and thoughtless minority who feel that the road belongs to them and this results in a proliferation of control which impacts on everyone.

It would be nice to think that we could introduce these shared spaces, but (as well as the thoughtless minority) many people are now so used to being managed on the roads that they can’t think for themselves and get very confused when called upon to make a decision, so we would need years of re-education to be able to achieve this.

It would probably sort itself out a lot quicker than you think. Assuming we need years of education isn’t really taking into consideration how good humans are at generally sorting themselves out. We manage it when walking through a busy shopping centre, and nobody teaches us how to do that. We just act like humans.

The reason the current road network doesn’t work well is that it’s not taken into consideration that we are humans. It assumes managing traffic is just an issue of handling flow. So we’ve designed our roads like it were an exercise in plumbing. Roads are pipes, traffic lights are the valves and traffic is the water.

But we don’t act like water, so we don’t need treating like that. Left to our own devices we’re more than capable of getting on with it safely. As shown by those rush hour mornings when a usually busy junction is flowing freely because the lights are out.

It wouldn’t take years of education to adapt. It could be surprisingly quick. To see how quick it could happen, do an experiment. Find the most obnoxious driver you can, in the biggest Range Rover there is. The bloke that bullies other road users, pushes his way into traffic, speeds everywhere as if he owns the road, and generally drives like a dick.

Now ask him to retrieve his car that you’ve positioned in the middle of a busy pedestrianised shopping area at 1pm on a Saturday. See how carefully he’ll drive.

We drive the way we do because our roads don’t encourage cooperation. They encourage selfishness, self righteousness. People sail through green lights without the merest scan of the junction to check its safe. They just assume it is because the light says so.

Take that light away and people assume nothing. Because their safety depends on paying attention. Our current road network assumes we’re all thoughtless, murderous idiots with no regard for our own safety. So it treats us like we are. And as society proves time and time again, when you treat people like idiots they act like idiots.

For 5000 years we’ve built our cities around humans. For the past 50 we’ve built them around the car. The way things are right now is wrong, a temporary and rather strange blip in the history of the built environment, and an obvious dead end. Thankfully it’s quite easily reversible. The only thing standing in the way, as it does with so much potential for progress, is our general inability as a society to accept anything that deviates from that to which we’ve become accustomed.

Germany is very much a car centric country, but they also have lots of residential areas based on the “shared space” system, which seem to work quite well.

It would be interesting to see some analysis of figures between Germany and the UK, iirc there are more road deaths per capita in Germany than the UK, but how do they break those figures down further. Urban and residential areas always seem safer in Germany to me, for cars, bikes and pedestrians. But on a wet motorway at night I would rather be in the UK 1000 times over, German autobahns are badly lit and the road markings are very poor.

Just after I passed my CBT I rode through that section of Poynton, and have never been so terrified in my entire life. Traffic coming in all directions thinking they all have priority and pedestrians ambling about without a care!

That’s part of the design of these kinds of spaces. If you feel unsafe, your response will probably be along the lines of “slow down, pay more attention”. Roads with wide, separated carriageways where you can hoon it are safer in one sense, but under certain circumstances they can also see more accidents, with worse consequences.

Apparently that Poynton section has already slowed down the speed of the traffic passing through it, which, whatever people say, is a big factor in pedestrian and cyclist safety. Being hit at 30 mph versus being hit at 20, for example, is a world of difference. If anyone’s annoyed at the though of having to drive at 20 mph for short urban stretches, this is the company you’re in:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2080986/BMW-driver-threatens-sue-local-council-plans-blanket-20mph-limit-saying-damage-cars-engine.html

“Apparently that Poynton section has already slowed down the speed of the traffic passing through it,….”

The central reservations are still being worked on so there are bollards and road signs all over the place (up until last Monday, anyway) on the London Road sections. I think Chester Rd and Park Lane are bollard free already.
It’s actually two implied roundabouts if I remember properly but an impatient car driver was griefing us at the time so I may have made that bit up.

The brickwork road layouts still channel lanes in each direction with different coloured bricks and clearly has one (I’m sure there are two) roundabout in very easily identifiable differing brickwork.

Would the exact same coloured shared space surface have been better? The paved sections are as identifiable as standard white markings. It seems to defeat the point other than there isn’t a raised kerb for pedestrians.

Still, they must know what they’re doing. It’d be mint if it works.

Aha! Not made up! Two roundabouts! http://www.hamilton-baillie.co.uk/index.php?do=news&nid=25

The brickwork road layouts still channel lanes in each direction with different coloured bricks and clearly has one (I’m sure there are two) roundabout in very easily identifiable differing brickwork.

I thought it all looked the same in the dark and wet, but I was a bit pre-occupied with cars and vans trying to occupy the same point in space and time that I was taking up. 🙂

I thought we were talking about shared use areas where no-one has right of way, such as in less developed countries where fewer rules exist and generally its a free-for-all in high traffic areas?

It’s a false comparison, because in many less developed countries the amount of driver training, safety awareness, or consequences for breaking the law are greatly diminished. To use a less Prince Phillip-esque example, the rate of accidents in France declined after steps were taken to end the widespread practice of “settling” speeding tickets at the roadside (i.e. paying off the cops).

As for the suggestion that the number of deaths in Iraq is down to lack of road signage or traffic lights… 🙄