Shared space schemes prove a life-saver

03 October 2007

A government-sponsored demonstration project has shown casualty levels can be cut when different road-users are encouraged to mix on busy high streets.

The Department for Transport’s £10M, six-year ‘urban mixed-priority route’ project has revealed that the provision of informal crossings and shared surface areas – often combined with lower speed limits – can improve road safety.

WSP technical director, Tim Cuell, one of the consultants overseeing the project, told Surveyor that there were ‘consistent road safety improvements’ across the pilots. WSP and Jacobs have studied the first year of casualty data for the nine projects completed by the start of 2006/07, including in Norwich and Hull.

The final project, for Walworth Road, in Southwark, will be finished this autumn. Many of the busy streets had, before the demonstration project, been placed in each local highway authority’s ‘too difficult’ pile, according to Cuell.

‘There was either a history of attempted road safety schemes which had suffered adverse publicity – the perception that there wasn’t enough space for improvements – or there was resistance to change from traders.’

The DfT guidance for practitioners on lessons learned, due to be unveiled by the end of the year, will focus on the process of tackling the problem, including the importance of understanding pedestrian movements.

Unlike on other local roads, the safety issues on these roads were complex, and could not be solved by introducing a single measure at a particular point, stressed Cuell. In the scheme on Oxford’s Cowley Road, for instance, a dedicated cycle lane was only provided where the major road’s layout allowed, with safe mixing encouraged elsewhere by cutting speeds from 18mph to 16mph.

Cuell was confident that similar schemes would be introduced more widely.

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