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‘Tame’ wide British roads and replace them with boulevards of homes, says thinktank

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  • September 10, 2023 at 5:30 pm #32690
    hawkinspeter

    https://images.rawpixel.com/image_1300/czNmcy1wcml2YXRlL3Jhd3BpeGVsX2ltYWdlcy93ZWJzaXRlX2NvbnRlbnQvbHIvc3YyMTgwOTktaW1hZ2Uta3d2eDc5dWMuanBn.jpg
    ( “Free squirrel on road image” is marked with CC0 1.0.)

    https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2023/sep/10/tame-wide-roads-and-replace-them-with-boulevards-of-homes-create-streets

    [quote]

    Needlessly wide roads should be torn up and replaced with boulevards of new housing, a thinktank led by the UK government’s most senior urbanism adviser has proposed, in a move likely to delight green belt campaigners but rile the motoring lobby.

    Create Streets wants sweeping T-junctions tightened, vast roundabouts “tamed” and expressways narrowed according to a paper to be circulated to ministers and seen by the Guardian.

    Amid a worsening housing crisis that is increasing pressure to erect homes in the countryside, it says: “Forget green belt. This is Britain’s road belt and it’s time to build on it.”

    Early stage design projects to test the approach are under way in Rochdale, Bedford and Southend-on-Sea.[/quote]

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  • September 11, 2023 at 11:54 am #1017345
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    chrisonabike

    T junctions? Even more

    T junctions? Even more convenient for cycling.  Do it the right way and cyclists do not ever need to stop for the lights in some directions!

    Again – it’s really all about what our starting assumptions / goals are.  If it’s “design for the maximum capacity / permeability / parking for motor vehicles, then once that’s sorted squeeze in some footways” or “we’ve already got x space which is required for cars and we don’t want to move kerbs about, that’s expensive and disrupts things – but can we somehow tick a box for cycle provision?” then … we’ll basically get the status quo, possibly with some crap provision for other modes.  Nothing will change, because the goal was not to change things!

    September 11, 2023 at 11:42 am #1017343
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    chrisonabike

    wycombewheeler wrote:

    wycombewheeler wrote:
    The difficulty with taming roundabouts and T junctions is that any junction that can be used by long vehicles like busses and HGVs can be used by cars at relatively high speed.

    You’re showing at least as much thought as our councillors (and likely more).  However as usual the problem is history and (mostly) habit.  “But we’re here, and that’s over there – we can’t get there from here!  Because UK drivers drive as fast as they can round our big roundabouts without looking carefully, if you change anything they will crash!”

    Well… yeah.  If you start with the goal of “maximum motor traffic flow” then “safety”, “lower speeds” and “useable by non-motorised users” are things you will immediately compromise on.

    Where this is actually done, it works fine.  Here’s an example – first a bus using it, then an articulated bus, then a lorry.

    UK roundabouts often have an additional major safety hazard – they have multiple lanes.  This is not good for motorised users but especially dangerous / unpleasant for non-motorised users.  So that’s the first thing to get rid of.  Or make it a “turbo roundabout” which then requires completely separate provision for walking and cycling.

    In one of the countries which has a very widespread use of safer roundabout and junction designs they use: a) smaller overall size – e.g. small radius b) adverse camber c) an “overrrun area” – often both higher and steeper (e.g. with a small kerb as in this video) and sometimes with a rough surface.  Something which while it allows longer vehicles the space to get round (very slowly) still provides feedback to e.g. car drivers – “gonna no do that!”

    As usual, there’s the obligatory article / video.

    I certainly cannot guarantee this won’t lead to vehicles on their sides to start with in the UK.  All the public education campaigns you like (normally “not much”) but people still learn by practice.  So obviously to those who don’t want change it’s a non-starter.  Of course, we need to look at the overall picture though.  After learning has taken place.  And of course right now drivers are rolling their vehicles, jamming them under bridges (“hmm… well that railway doesn’t work there, can we get rid of it?”) etc.

    September 11, 2023 at 10:02 am #1017341
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    wycombewheeler

    The difficulty with taming

    The difficulty with taming roundabouts and T junctions is that any junction that can be used by long vehicles like busses and HGVs can be used by cars at relatively high speed.

    September 11, 2023 at 9:25 am #1017339
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    Dnnnnnn

    I was unclear how they were

    I was unclear how they were defining Finnieston. The report seems to have been deleted but unless you include the neighbouring SEC, I can’t think of any major car parks in Finnieston.

    I think the SEC and Dundee waterfront were derelict land which had large carparks (Tesco in Dundee) built on them in the 80s when there wasn’t much alternative interest (both cities were hemorrhaging population). The SEC did get a railway station, which is well-used at event times, though.

    PS FWIW I agree with much of the rest of your original post!

    September 10, 2023 at 8:50 pm #1017337
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    chrisonabike

    True – they haven’t done a

    True – they haven’t done a comprehensive look across a city.  That would be a reasonable objection – could use stronger evidence.  (And using somewhere other than just Glasgow, which is an outlier in several ways anyway e.g. the city’s previous love affair with urban motorways).  I think looking at Finnieston was *reasonably* representative of “normal” conditions (given that these will vary hugely across a city)?  That still shows a similar large amount of space for the private motor vehicle.  I agree the other two are less “representative”… However on the SEC, actually large “malls” / places we drive to *are* a part of our cityscapes…

    September 10, 2023 at 8:19 pm #1017335
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    Dnnnnnn

    chrisonatrike wrote:

    chrisonatrike wrote:
    the Scotland’s Futures Forum – a government think tank – found that over 1/3 of some Scottish cities is roads and car parking.

    On a point of clarity, it seems they looked at three rather odd sites – not really representative of the wider cities.

    September 10, 2023 at 7:08 pm #1017333
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    chrisonabike

    Hmm… On the one hand it’s

    Hmm… On the one hand it’s not like we don’t have a large number of square miles (or even more km2, to taste) of inefficiently utilised space*.

    And we have examples of far more “advanced” places (read – pleasant, equitable, great for walking and cycling etc.) that have done just this.

    In the UK though it may not be effective to try to get straight to that point.  I think the first couple of things we need to do to support this kind of idea are:

    a) come up with a transport and roads policy which has as its highest goal the safe and efficient moment of people, not “motor traffic” (and possibly notes that simply increasing movement of people and stuff around all the time doesn’t represent an optimum for humans).

    b) sort out the “functionality” of our public space.  In the UK one space is very commonly used for multiple types of function.  So we have residential areas which are permeable to cars in all directions so end up being part of “routes” (the opposite of LTNs).  We have “streets” that have “destinations” (residential, shops or other amenties – so we expect parking) but also have to work as a distributor road or even an arterial.  (See “stroad” – video here).  This does not lead to nice places, nor efficient transport and is actually a waste of money also.  Perhaps surprisingly to those who’ve grown up with this mess, it does not have to be this way!

    * For example the Scotland’s Futures Forum – a government think tank – found that over 1/3 of some Scottish cities is roads and car parking.

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