Politics is much about deception these days – fake news about fake news. Unfortunately, it is a culture that pervades many avenues. This avenue is traffic.
On the other hand, perhaps I’m just increasingly jaded with age; local experiences, approaches by the local council or, to be more accurate, the engineers who lead them, are catalyst for my cynicism? We shall see.
You share; I’m driving
Locally, to start me off, the acronym SUP is being used to justify the destruction of one of the most beautiful, wide, tree-lined avenues in my home town – a gateway to our world renowned ‘area of outstanding natural beauty’ (AONB), the Gower peninsula. The avenue, largely unencumbered with traffic signage, adjoins Clyne Park, a green gem of the city.
An end of year budget scheme reduces the carriageway width to 6m, with new kerbs and drainage, double-yellow-lines, no stopping, traffic-light-controlled crossing places – classic highways; you know, one of those that says, “Aren’t we good, letting you have some of our road space? By the way, we confirm that, visually and functionally, it is ours”.
The game of convincing funders (and politicians) is easy these days – just mention ’Active Travel’ and ‘Future Generations’ here in Wales and everything is hunky dory. You might even be able to steal their money. SUPs slot so well into Active Travel fake news.
The acronym is for Shared Use Path, a term promoted by highways people. Surely that is a nice concept? No. It is a deception.
A shared use path already runs all the way round Swansea Bay. It is a source of much conflict between pedestrians, dog walkers, disabled people, young cycle learners and cyclists, all of whom enjoy some or all of that 5 or 6 km trip round the bay, to and from Mumbles; not to mention the lycra versions, exercising or commuting. We use it too, as both strollers and cyclists.
Tension between walkers and cyclists heralds that old ‘divide and rule’ maxim. If they fight amongst themselves, they will leave us alone. Greenery is recruited to be a sharer too; environmentalists join the bunfight.
The green avenue in Mayals is the same. ‘2 metres of road-space conceded and a Shared Use Path’. They might have added, ‘Now, go fight amongst yourselves’.
In fact, the cycling lobby and a very large constituency of residents raised numerous objections to that scheme, and rightly so. It is currently under construction, with virtually no concessions. In fact it drove on (sic) with newfound justification by cutting down 19 mature trees (some legit due to ash dieback). This is not the occasion to rehearse the design discussion(1), we are on acronyms here.
Sharing, in this context, means ‘sharing between cyclists, pedestrians and the environment’. That nice ‘sharing’ concept is to distract you from the primary objective of minimising disruption to the flow of motor vehicles on the road.
Of course, there are occasions and locations for different applications of sharing, but this is not one of them. Cyclists, especially those that seek to use their bikes as a regular part of their daily lives, need constantly improved, direct routes, with safety measures to protect them from speeding flows of car, van and lorry drivers. Sometimes, these will be ‘off-road’ but most times, the preferred route is on the long established (long before cars) desire lines. In short, when spending a fortune on avenue reformation, the primary objective is to enhance the street-scape environment for pedestrians, cyclists and others, by incorporating vehicle speed-reducing measures.
Shared use is a concept emanating from Netherlands and other European states describing changes to qualities of public spaces, making them safer and pleasant for all users by introducing physical measures to force (yes, I am afraid so) drivers to an awareness that they do not own the road or, indeed, any public nodes, hubs and squares.
LTNs: Think ‘traffic’, not people
Until recently, the term ‘Home Zone’ has been used in Britain to describe safe residential streets, first initiated in the Netherlands as ‘Woonerfen’ – Living Streets, where the street-scape is designed to accommodate, yes, residential motor vehicles, the occasional through driver, deliveries and services but, most of all, people: children playing, perhaps neighbourhood outdoor seating, resident managed planting – allsorts, a bit like a street park. Drivers welcome but this is 10mph territory, eye contact, awareness of others.
Recently, the term ‘Home Zone’ has been subverted and replaced by LTN (Low Traffic Neighbourhood). You may have missed that social tensions have been rehearsed and exploited in the media, pitching drivers against safer, ‘shared’ streets in the many ‘LTNs’ that London has introduced, not least during the traffic-and-pollution-reduced opportunity bestowed by the pandemic.
The sleight of hand is the ‘fake news’ campaign to revert to a traffic based concept of ‘safe streets’, living streets, Home Zones. Safe streets, even in Britain, have become a valid subject of urban design and traffic management, not just for residential streets or, narrowest of all, for areas outside of schools, but for busy main streets like London’s Oxford Street, Exhibition Row, Ben Hamilton Baillie’s Poynton (3) town centre and, perhaps busiest of all, Manhattan’s Times Square (2).
Be assured, traffic related injuries and fatalities have reduced very significantly in Britain over the past couple of decades, not that we should be complacent. The reduction by about half of traffic related incidents is highly significant although the reasoning is complex and rarely the sole product of ‘safety audits’ and cultural changes in the Highways world. Britain’s useful Manual for Streets, currently awaiting its third edition, is ignored by a significant cohort of that fraternity. New York’s Street Design Manual, first published under the Bloomberg/ Sadik-Khan reign at the end of the noughties is arguably a more challenging document, recently in its third edition. The transformation of New York’s heavily traffic loaded streets and other public spaces is a pleasure to behold. Many other cities have picked up the mantle.
Qualities of streetscape become the measure, not just traffic numbers and speeds. Perceptions of pedestrian and cyclist safety, of comfort, well-being, and a degree of ownership, are the terrain of urban design, all too often finding itself pitched against transportation. As bed-fellows we can achieve much.
Yes, it is complex – residential density, household and neighbourhood composition, functional activities, public transport, social resource provision, allsorts, come into play. That is a lot more than ‘low, high, fast or slow’ traffic environments. In fact, I am reluctant to let the term ‘neighbourhood’ be used if we are not to be given equal rights on our streets, virtually all our urban streets and many of our rural ones too.
end
Endnotes
- Papers on alternative schemes for Mayals Road, Swansea https://4cities.wordpress.com/2020/10/08/an-approach-to-the-proposed-cycle-provision-on-mayals-road-swansea/ and https://4cities.wordpress.com/2020/10/30/mayals-road-going-backwards/
- Janette Sadik-Khan, TED Talk on New York alternative transportation and placemaking (circ 15 mins) https://www.ted.com/talks/janette_sadik_khan_new_york_s_streets_not_so_mean_any_more?language=en
- Ben Hamilton Baillie’s Poynton, circa15 mins, see https://www.urbanfoundry.co.uk/?portfolio=reconciling-people-places-and-traffic
- Data on traffic related incidents in Britain can be found at https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/custom-downloads/road-accidents
- Further reading https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.191739
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