Hamilton-Baillie tells me it’s “not particularly surprising” that some pedestrians aren’t happy, since “crossing a fairly busily used traffic route is unlikely to feel particularly comfortable in any circumstances”. Hamilton-Baillie’s diagram of the Ashford junction. Parents interviewed for the study said they wouldn’t be happy letting their children navigate the junction alone. The pair found that cars rarely gave way to pedestrians at the junction, even at marked out “courtesy crossings”. They are particularly critical of Hamilton-Baillie’s adaptation of Ashford’s Elwick Road junction, formerly part of the ring road, which has been very unpopular with residents. Abroad, it argues, shared spaces are only introduced to roads with very low traffic volumes, like the residential woonerfs here, both government guidance and shared space firms seem keen to introduce it in busier areas. In a 2014 research paper, transport planner Simon Moody and lecturer Steve Melia argued that the concept has been rather lost in translation in its move from the Netherlands to the UK, and that the government’s advisory note was based on suspect figures. As Hamilton-Baillie points out, though, the reduction in casualties in shared spaces is mostly due to the fact that cars are driving more slowly: “Broadly, you find that the change in safety is to do with the severity of accidents rather than their number.” Speeds and accident both dropped after the junction change, and the three intervening years haven’t changed that. One said he was “delighted”, and that the scheme had restored “vitality” to the village centre. Hamilton-Baillie sees the project as an unbridled success, as do the residents interviewed in Martin Cassini’s film. Its slightly uneven texture and appearance encourages drivers to slow down, much as rumble strips on motorways do. Here it is, in all its unregulated glory:Īs in other shared spare schemes, the road surface is the only hint drivers get of what’s coming: tarmac gives way to lighter, uneven patterned brick, which hints that they should expect the unexpected. It replaced the junction with a bulbous set of roundels, around which cars must now carefully navigate in a figure of eight, avoiding other cars and pedestrians alike. In the end, they opted for a radical £3m reimagining of the junction, which would remove all signals, traffic lights and crossings. As one resident put it, in a video made about the project by broadcaster and traffic reform campaigner Martin Cassini, the junction “changed this place from being the heart of the village to being a traffic signal-controlled wasteland”.Ī bypass had been proposed, but wasn’t forthcoming – so local authorities, and, in turn, Hamilton-Baillie’s practice, were left with the tricky job of improving the junction without decreasing traffic volumes. The village isn’t huge – its population is around 16,000 – but the intersection of two big roads at the village’s centre was destroying any sense of community and delaying journeys, especially those taken by foot. In 2011, the Department of Transport released a special local transport note on shared space, posing it as a challenge to the idea that segregating cars and pedestrians always improves safety. In 2008, shared spaces were discussed in a segment on Newsnight titled “ The Case Against Traffic Lights”. Since then, it’s been gathering momentum. In 2003, Hamilton-Baillie set up a UK-based practice, Hamilton-Baillie Associates, to design and advise on this new type of urban space. As part of a study fellowship, he travelled to mainland Europe in 2000 to see how they were coping with traffic management in towns and cities.Īs he tells me now over the phone, “It was clear that something new was emerging there.” While it played out differently in different towns, there was one common element: “Deliberately engaging the driver in the context of his or her surroundings, rather than trying so segregate them from the processes.” But it was Ben Hamilton-Baillie, a British urban designer, who brought the concept to Britain – and, he claims, coined the phrase “shared space”.
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