A recent BBC radio 4 programme entitled Thinking Streets takes listeners on a refreshing tour of traffic management schemes that are elevating the status of pedestrians and cyclists relative to that of those in motor vehicles. The effect, as researcher/presenter, Angela Saini notes, is civilizing – while also reducing accidents. The programme features Ben Hamilton-Baillie, who …
Category: shared space
May 04
Where and when is shared space safe?
Presentation for PRIAN Public Realm Course, Bedford, 28 April 2008. Traditional highway engineering assumes that safety requires the spatial segregation of pedestrians, cyclists and motorized vehicles or, where this is not possible, rigorously enforced rules, signs and signals dictating temporal segregation. Road users, according to the established paradigm, are irresponsible, stupid, selfish automatons whose safety …
Sep 08
Shared Space – would it work in Los Angeles?
(Commissioned, but not used – and worse not paid for – by The Los Angeles Times. So published here free of charge on the slightly-smaller-circulation Adams’ Blog) There is a growing enthusiasm amongst European transport planners for “shared space”. It is an intriguing idea pioneered by Hans Monderman, a highway engineer in Friesland. He removed …