DfT to research benefits of shared space

16 July 2008

The Department for Transport is to commission research to identify the benefits of shared-space schemes and ways of managing any risks for road-users.

Guide Dogs for the Blind has welcomed the DfT bid to get a better handle on the risks involved in creating a shared-space carriageway, having called for provision to be made for the blind and partially-sighted in the schemes since 2006.

Patricia Hayes, DfT director of road and vehicle safety, said the study would focus particularly on safety issues for the blind and partially-sighted. The move followed evidence suggesting that reducing segregation between road-users on busy high streets by, for example, removing guardrails and introducing informal crossings, improved safety (Surveyor, 19 June).

However, Carol Thomas, Guide Dogs for the Blind’s access and inclusion manager, questioned the DfT’s apparent assumption that the schemes were beneficial. ‘Shared-surface is seen as being a de-facto good thing. But we ask, Where’s the evidence? Our own research found no way of delineating shared-surface areas that was safe for the blind or partially-sighted and wheelchair-users. ‘And is there any evidence of benefits for other groups, such as the elderly, for parents with young children, or for public transport users?’

The hope was that researchers would interrogate this assumption, she said, as well as attempting to identify ‘best practice for managing the risk’ when designing schemes – the task as it was described by Hayes. It was ‘one thing to reduce segregation between road-users, another to remove footways’.

The Manual for streets suggests shared-space schemes will only work on streets with fewer than 100 vehicles per hour, otherwise pedestrians treat the general path taken by vehicles as a carriageway, removing the need for motorists to take greater care.

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