LAST DROP BILL DEAN
BETTER
TOGETHER?
Exhibition Road and the end of ‘shared space’
By Bill Dean
PHOTOGRAPHY VARIOUS98 TRUCKING August 2019 http://www.truckingmag.co.ukT
he 1986 case of Lang v
Hindhaugh established the
public had the right to pass and
re-pass by foot, horse, vehicle (as
long as road-legal) and drive
animals along anywhere designated as a
‘public highway’. Everyone had always
assumed this was so, but the principle that
roads were common spaces shared equally
was only enshrined in law at that point.
Even so, it was a strange judgement
because it contradicted the evolution of
roads over the previous 150 years. Successive
legislation had defined who could and
couldn’t use pavements, footpaths,
bridleways and motorways. It had seemed as
though the three main highway users – ie,
pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles – were
each moving towards having their own
mutually exclusive space. Pedestrians, in
particular, needed their own safe area, even
though it was only a small kerb that
protected them from speeding traffic. The
whole ethos of road safety since the
introduction of the motor vehicle had been to
keep motorists and pedestrians apart.
Unfortunately in Fryslan, Holland, road
traffic engineer Hans Monderman had
noticed that when traffic lights failed,
motorists coped by reducing speed and
making eye contact. Similarly they slowed if
they saw a pedestrian, such as a small child
or drunk, whose movements they couldn’t
predict. Uncertainty made drivers take more
care, and therefore made them safer.
So the theory went that removing all road
markings and pavements, completely
befuddling them, would make them safer
still. The concept of “shared space” was born
and became the well-thumbed page 3 in
Traffic Managers Weekly throughout Europe.
Given licence by the 1986 court case and
DfT guidance on road markings that central
white lines need not be used because
Highways Act 1835 makes it a legal
requirement to keep left, shared spaces
started appearing across the UK. Their
original introduction was in quiet suburban
streets or pedestrianised town centres with
bollard or warden-controlled delivery vehicle
access, and they work well. However, boththese areas have motorists – local residents
or professional drivers with a vested interest
in being careful.
Then came the inevitable mission creep.
Planners decided shared space was a
solution for places where large volumes of
pedestrians and motorists met in town
centres. In 2009, DfT commissioned MVA
Consulting to research “evidence-based
design guidance on shared space highway
schemes”. This was difficult, as schemes had
not been running long enough to build up
sufficient data.
One they gave a big thumbs-up was Elwick
Square, part of Ashford’s ring road in Kent.
They said speeds had dropped – and they
did, but 85 per cent of drivers still exceeded
the speed limit (KCC’s Paul Scrivener
27/2/09). They also claimed pedestrians were
now able to walk across the busy junction –
they didn’t; they walked round just as before,
as videos taken by Dr Melia, a senior lecturer
in planning, showed. Dr Melia also found 80
per cent of pedestrians interviewed felt safer
pre ‘safe space’.But a bandwagon was now rolling.
Exhibition Road in Kensington was such a
problem needing solving. It was built in 1851
to access the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park.
The three museums on it attract 11 million
pedestrians a year, and it had a traffic flow
of 700 vehicles an hour – though most of the
time it was clogged with parked coaches.
Daniel Moylan, then deputy council
leader, took the task on in 2003. He was
behind the de-cluttering of Kensington
High Street (safety barriers, bollards, etc). It
was to be the flagship shared space, the
largest in Britain.
Completed in 2011 at a cost of £30 million
to a design by Dixon Jones, it was heralded
as a great success. Boris Johnson, then
London’s mayor, said it gave families “spaceto wander unhindered in an area that puts
people first”. The Guardian’s Justin McGuirk
said the inlaid pink and black granite setts
and York stone paving evoked Robert Burle
Marx’s promenade along Copacabana beach.
Bless. Council leader Sir Cockell opined it
“sets a new standard in urban design”.
However nice it is (and considerably better
than the dank, long access tunnel from the
tube station), drivers and pedestrians still
took their cues from the street furniture. The
centre white line has been effectively
replaced by line of 28 “bespoke tapering
lighting masts designed to co-ordinate with
the Geo street furniture range”, and the kerb
edge by a continuous drainage channel.
Pedestrians stay one side, drivers the other.
Ironically this is probably the only shared
space scheme where the blind, who need
physical clues, kerbs and tactile paving (with
little bumps) were belatedly thought of.
Following a court case by Guide Dogs for the
Blind, a groove has been cut where the kerb
“should” be as the corduroy flags laid as a
marker were insufficiently proud. Given thethinking behind shared space is drivers
acknowledge and engage with pedestrians,
this has to be the best admission that the
thinking is flawed.
Anyway, following monitoring by the
council – which found the 20 mph speed
limit was being ignored by 75 per cent of
drivers, and that traffic volumes had not
fallen – planters and “clutter” would be
installed to separate cars and pedestrians.
Amazingly, neither the 2017 Uber cab crash
here (11 injured), nor the Westminster
Bridge or Nice atrocity were given as
reasons to abandon the award-winning,
expensive design.
Either pedestrianise or protect the
pavements. Shared spaces are not safe. They
never were. ■Amazingly, neither the 2017 Uber cab crash, nor
the Westminster Bridge or Nice atrocity were given
as reasons to abandon the award-winning,
expensive design.