Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Why shared streets are a bad idea...
The Guide Dogs for the Blind charity are campaigning against the Shared Space Design Concept for town centre and high street developments, often delivered by means of a shared surface street design.
In most cases the design involves removing the kerb that has traditionally separated areas for vehicles and pedestrians creating a shared surface street.
The shared space concept aims to create attractive shared ‘social’ areas and to reduce the dominance of vehicles to make streets more ‘people-friendly’.
In shared surface street design of the road and its surroundings are altered to cause changes in the behaviour of drivers, encouraging them to be extra cautious as they negotiate the new road layout.
Pedestrians, motorists and cyclists need to make eye contact to establish who has priority.
However this puts blind and partially sighted people at a serious disadvantage.
Blind and partially sighted people, particularly guide dog owners and long cane users are trained to use the kerb as a key navigation cue in the street environment. Its removal, without a proven effective, alternative feature, exposes blind and partially sighted people to greater risk, undermines their confidence, and so creates a barrier to their independent mobility.
Find out more here
photo by Dominic Campbell
In most cases the design involves removing the kerb that has traditionally separated areas for vehicles and pedestrians creating a shared surface street.
The shared space concept aims to create attractive shared ‘social’ areas and to reduce the dominance of vehicles to make streets more ‘people-friendly’.
In shared surface street design of the road and its surroundings are altered to cause changes in the behaviour of drivers, encouraging them to be extra cautious as they negotiate the new road layout.
Pedestrians, motorists and cyclists need to make eye contact to establish who has priority.
However this puts blind and partially sighted people at a serious disadvantage.
Blind and partially sighted people, particularly guide dog owners and long cane users are trained to use the kerb as a key navigation cue in the street environment. Its removal, without a proven effective, alternative feature, exposes blind and partially sighted people to greater risk, undermines their confidence, and so creates a barrier to their independent mobility.
Find out more here
photo by Dominic Campbell
Tags for Forum Posts: Ladder traffic solutions, Wightman Road, road safety, shared space, tfl, traffic
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Thanks to Liz for highlighting this campaign.
Seems to me that the issues raised are already relevant to many of the not particularly ambitious schemes which Haringey Council and Transport for London have done. For instance, last summer I was contacted by a resident who discovered that TfL's new pavements in High Road Tottenham had made it almost impossible for her to reach her GP.
We solved the problem, but it should have been planned from the beginning - without needing intervention by a local councillor. I've suggested three times that the Council should involve people with disabilities in identifying such issues at the planning stages - rather than do catch-up and patch-up afterwards. I'm still awaiting a reply on this point.
A lot of the new thinking can seem counter-intuitive to people used to the Green Cross Code. For example, it seemed dangerous when Kensington & Chelsea removed guard railings at the pavement's edge.
So I fully support the point made by Steve and others about learning from elsewhere; and that one-size does not fit all. And while we should be open-minded about new ideas, we need to ensure that hard evidence is collected about what works and what doesn't.
We also need to keep a sharp eye out for unintended consequences.
For nearly eleven years I've been trying to get a crossing in Stoneleigh Road Tottenham which enables easy access to the High Road by someone using a wheelchair or pushing a buggy. It's now almost complete. But there are real safety concerns.
Perhaps a key lesson in all this is the need for a more effective dialogue between the various people involved: traffic professionals; local residents and traders; and the bus companies, of course. But also, including organisations such as the police, local schools, and disability groups.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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I work near to the Royal National Instute for Blind People in Kings Cross and every time the road or pavement layout changes (as it does almost daily due to the Kings Cross development) I see staff on their way to work confused by the change in layout. Those who use sticks recognise their route from being able to tap wayfinder objects (pavement edges, walls, postboxes etc) while those who use guide dogs rely on the dog's familiarity with the streescape. Even minor changes cause real problems.
On the other hand I am a big fan of shared spaces as I think it ultimately makes all public space users more aware of what is going on around them (for instance, the green man does always mean that a speeding car won't knock you down).
Maybe what is needed is better involvement of people who are differently abled in the design of the public realm rather than the automatic assumption that it exists for able bodied pedestrians and drivers.
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Permalink Reply by james walsh on
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May i ask what would happen if ALL street signage was removed.
I tried a mental experiment the other day where i read every single road sign whilst driving. I found it impossible while making progress onwards. When i slowed down to read each sign motorists behind began to beep me. I gave up and tried instead to count each road sign. Again i could not without obvious hindrance.
What does this say about road signage and the ability to take in all that information ?
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Permalink Reply by Rachel Fisher on
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This is so bizarre. I just had a meeting at work about this very issue.
I'm probably not in a position to comment specifically on the Guide Dogs Campaign because of work issues, but my personal thoughts are:
- Shared Spaces are not the same as Shared Surfaces. The loss of the Kerb has come to dominate the argument, which is actually about de-prioritising motor traffic and creating a redistribution of power back to pedestrians.
- Shared Space / Surface will only ever be used in particular circumstances. We need to have creative people working in the realm of transport planning.
- The focus for transport planning of any kind needs to be on destinations rather than just pushing people to go further faster to reach their destination. In the context of Green Lanes we've got a lot of crossings which allow people to access the many ammenities on both sides of the road - so that's a good thing. I'm not sure what the purpose of leveling off the intersections with the Garden / Ladder Roads. I'd prefer narrowing the entrances instead as this is probably better for slowing people down than the stationary bollards which are at some of the intersections (please note that I am not entering the rising bollard debate!)
- with the Passage - we've got the road narrowing at the enterences and exits of the passage onto the various ladder roads. Some work better than others. It's probably important to note that there isn't a consistent approach across the different roads. But it seems to me that we've got an awful lot of traffic calming measures already in place on the Ladder roads. The ones I drive down definitely force me to go slowly, but some roads get more use than others...
There's a lot of research going into this agenda at the moment. But we need a grown up debate about creating inclusive roads and public spaces. Really cool to see the debate on HOL!
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Three - no five - cheers for Rachel's grown-up debate and for hiring creative people. And for a willingness in all of us to look and learn.
Rachel (or anyone else) - a short reading list on the Shared Space ideas would be very welcome. (Preferably easily accessible online stuff.) So would suggestions for places to see different road layouts. (London or further afield.) Especially if someone has a cousin or friend nearby who’d be willing to give-up fifteen minutes explaining why some road layout works - or doesn't.
There are some interesting and very radical new ideas here; which are being trialled across Europe. (Including in Suffolk.) But there are also small local changes happening which seem to be influenced by the same cluster of ideas and experiments.
For example I'd guess that the chicanes, raised entries and other traffic calming in the Ladder roads followed this thinking. (Though I don't know if Haringey's traffic professionals explained this to local people.)
I previously mentioned the crossing in Stoneleigh Road N17. The plan for a paved, raised, single surfaced crossing to the small market was seen as making it possible for people in wheelchairs (and their carers in some cases) and other disabled and/or elderly people to get from their homes to the shops and back without having to go up and down kerbs, navigate uneven road surfaces, and squeeze past parked cars.
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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@Rachel & Alan:
I personally think that raised crossings are definitely the way forward, because they clearly indicate that pedestrians have the right of way, as well as making side streets look less important.
Rachel, IMO just narrowing the entrances to streets often causes confrontation between vehicles and pedestrians. In such situations, car drivers tend to accelerate so as to get out of the situation asap, rather than slow down, which surely isn't the right response. Levelling the entrances, does as Alan says, enable all pedestrians to move more quickly, ensuring that vehicles do need to slow down in order to continue.
Alan also mentioned that other cities that use traffic calming measures. I passed this example at the weekend and managed to get a couple of shots:
Notice the entrance to the side street here has been raised, as well as narrowed.. and a traffic signal has been installed in a rather strange position.. only controlling the traffic on the more important road to allow station users to cross easily.
The red strip is a bike lane..
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I'm not really advocating any particular method of traffic calming, and I think that there really is a lot to be said for single surface and other forms of shared space.
But my main point is about a creative response to transport planning. Like everything planning has fads. At the moment shared space is seen as a solution to slowing traffic / increasing pedestrian and cyclist numbers etc, but it's not going to be appropriate in every circumstance. The danger is that you end up having these schemes (which are pretty pricey) implemented in inappropriate places, when you could have done something cheaper and less invasive that would have the same or similar result.
Alan you asked for a reading list.
The Department for Transport Manual for Streets http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/sustainable/manforstreets/mfssummary.pdf is a good starting point, as is CABE's Civilising Streets http://www.cabe.org.uk/files/civilised-streets.pdf
CABE has been doing a lot of work on the importance of good, inclusive street design which can create a sense of place / destination as much as a way of getting to things...
One of the issues I've been thinking about a lot is the need to create a better approach to risk in our public spaces. Again, CABE has done a lot of thinking about this http://www.cabe.org.uk/files/Living-with-risk-the-briefing.pdf
But I'd be interested in your thoughts as well. What are the real issues with traffic in Harringay, taking it as a neighbourhood wide issue, and what kind of changes would be appropriate?
For my part, traffic isn't one of my particular concerns with the neighbourhood, I just take it as fairly typical urban traffic. So many high streets are divided down the middle by railings which encourage cars to go speeding through. Green Lanes, with it's multiplicity of pedestrian crossings keeps the traffice slow when lots of pedestrians are about.
One thing I've never understood though is the 1 way turning system from St Anne's onto Green Lanes and the no right turn from Salisbury Road onto Green Lanes. The first example decants lots of traffic onto Harringay Road, which is a totally residential road, and the other sends lots of traffic up Warham Road, and ultimately onto Wightman. It's particularly silly when you can turn either direction from the Garden / Ladder Roads, and those don't even have the benefit of a traffic light.
As I'm not actually a transport planner I presume that there's a reason for this, but would be pretty curious to find out what the justification is...
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Rachel, Many thanks for the further reading links. Each one - I'm delighted to see - is brief, well-written and nicely designed. I hope Hol members will read them and perhaps add comments.
About the layout of the one-way roads you highlight, I'm sure there are many people around who know about or were part of the discussion/consultation when decisions were made on these. This would include councillors for Harringay and St Ann's wards. So maybe they can help with this information?
The problem with any one-way scheme is that it's difficult to achieve consensus - either about introducing it or changing it later.
A friend in Maryland provoked a big local row by suggesting a stretch of one-way street to enable kids to enter and leave school buses without going in the road. He naively thought he'd made a sensible and entirely non-contentious proposal to improve children's safety!
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Rachel wrote: Like everything planning has fads.
That's true and that leads straight on to your other point: I've never understood though is the 1 way turning system from St Ann's onto Green Lanes and the no right turn from Salisbury Road onto Green Lanes.
In the 1960s, the one-way system was seen as the cure for all traffic-jam evils.. They sprung up all over London and some were very extensive.. I'm thinking here of the Camden Road/Parkhurst Rd, Shoreditch and Tottenham Court Road Systems, not forgetting the Tottenham one-way system with it's contra-flow bus lane, the first in London, which opened in April 1970.
The Salisbury Road scheme, may have come into existence with the Green Lanes Controlled Area Scheme in 1963, but I have a feeling it was introduced a little later, probably around 1965. The Gardens & Ladder streets weren't used as cut-throughs at that time, so it wasn't necessary to do anything there. Therefore, I think the Salisbury Road system was, as you mentioned, introduced as a fad and wasn't really necessary.
The main problem with most of the one-way schemes is that they took buses (at least in one direction) away from where people wanted to go. This problem was solved in Tottenham with the contra-flow bus lane, which was also introduced later at other locations, TCR & Piccadilly.
Over the years, many schemes have been abandoned or revised. i.e Tottenham made smaller or Shoreditch abandoned. Perhaps it might be time to see if the Harringay, Salisbury Road scheme could abandoned and what affects for the residents that would have.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Cars take longer to make a turn than go straight ahead. What they wanted was that traffic cleared out and through the lights ASAP. Also, that right hand turn (which many people would probably rather make I agree) could potentially have you snarling up in the lights at St Anne's causing traffic to be left in Salisbury Rd.
Of course, if you could cut through the gardens this would not be a problem...
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Permalink Reply by GillianM on
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I have a slight concern with the idea of loss of the kerb in that a physical kerb is a clear marker to young children of the edge of the safe area. Until they're old enough to cross the road on their own surely you teach your children always to stay on the pavement? Kids will run / cycle / scooter / heely ahead and then wait for mum at the edge of the pavement. If the demarcation between the safe and dangerous areas isn't clear they might be less likely to stop. Just a thought. (Have just started taking my 17 month old son out walking around the ladder with reins on and has opened my eyes to how terrifying children + cars is......)
And when we come out of the passage he invariably tries to charge straight across the raised area of road leading invitingly to the next exciting stretch of passage to be explored. It looks nice, it's easier for people to cross, the wider areas of pavement are a nice place to stop and chat, cars are more likely to stop to let you across BUT it's still a road and still dangerous and should be treated as such.
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