New life for main roads

As part of their Revitalising Communities on Main Roads project, Transport 2000 have a new website called New life for main roads. Among the good practice case studies is the fairly well-known Borehamwood example, where signal controlled junctions were replaced by more sensible measures like a central refuge, bollards and raised surfaces. The simple principle is that there is much to be gained from slowing traffic down and establishing a context in which pedestrians and drivers are moving at comparable speeds, so that people negotiate the use of shared space. We know it works (Dutch road engineers have for a long time). What’s striking is that the images are clearly quite old (no dates are given) – I live fairly nearby and I really can’t remember when the change took place - and it’s still celebrated as an example. Yet Hertfordshire’s roads are being subjected to more and more traffic lights. I’ve commented quietly on this before and a recent example on my own walk home from the station perfectly illustrates how road users are inconvenienced by signals: the traffic flows less and pedestrians cluster together on an inadequate island awaiting a chance to leap across between cars. I suspect that the fear of accidents – or rather, the need to be clear whose fault it might be if there is one - is blinding engineers to the disempowering effects of these binary control systems. The value of human interaction in negotiating the ambiguities of shared space is completely stifled. The assumption seems to be that cars should either be moving quickly or not at all, and that human beings on their feet have to be constrained to accept that.

In Watford, not far from Borehamwood, there were challenges to one set of traffic lights, introduced at a point where there had been quite a few injuries in the past. Road users complained, and I heard a council official describe the reluctance with which highways engineers agreed to re-cover the lights with those orange hoods. They now create a nicely uncertain context which slows the traffic down but does not inconvenience pedestrians, and everyone gets on with it.

Transport 2000 have also published Your route to a better high street, a guide for local people to work with authorities to change main roads from “rivers of traffic” into places where people want to be. Expect to see it on their website any moment now.