(no subject)

[fanf]

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1105614487492&call_pageid=970599119419

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1427660,00.html

I'd like to see them try this in Cambridge, if only because the clutter on the streets in the city centre is incredibly ugly. This is assuming, of course, that it has the right effect on taxi drivers and other cretins. But given that our councils have very old-fashioned and rules-bound approaches to road design, I don't have much hope.

Comments

[sparrowsion]

Trinity Street already effectively operates on this principle, and it's quite clear that it "operates" not "works". At least from the point of view of anyone other than a pedestrian. Many people already seem to resent having to accommodate bikes and cars on the road—to make it their right to behave without consideration for other road users will make a street indistinguishable from a pedestrianised zone. Not that pedestrianisation is necessarily a bad thing, but this is not a genuine alternative.

[fanf]

Why would you say it fails to work?

[sparrowsion]

Because it requires the pedestrians to be aware of road traffic and care about it.

[fanf]

And why do you think they are insufficiently aware and careful? Why is their behaviour a problem?

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Because nothing can go sufficiently fast down the road to hurt them, because of all the unaware pedestrainas in the way...

[fanf]

Sounds like a success to me.

[sparrowsion]

(a) Because people are like that.
(b) Because it severely impacts the usability of the road for non-pedestrians. As I said, it effectively provides a pedestrianised road, whereas the goal appears to be maintaining general purpose use.

[arnhem.livejournal.com]

My own experience is that the only time it impacts the usability of Trinity St (and friends) is when there is an extremely large number of users of the road (eg hordes of pedestrians on Saturdays, or hordes of cyclists at 8:55 during term-time).

But then, the same can be observed on the M25 ...