Effective road and traffic management

Written evidence from Living Streets (ETM 48)

Summary

· Living Streets considers that effective road and traffic management has an important role to play in creating safe, attractive and enjoyable streets where people want to walk.

· Effective governmental intervention is crucial in alleviating congestion and the key long-term solutions are modal shift towards active transport (and public transport) by making active modes more attractive, and the effective integration of transport planning with spatial planning to set a norm of compact, mixed-use and walking-friendly neighbourhoods.

· Living Streets believes that 20 mph speed limits where people live, work and play have a role to play in improving traffic flow and road safety, as well as in delivering to achieve wider sociability and environmental benefits. Governments and local authorities have a clear role to play in making lower speed limits easier to implement.

· Living Streets considers that pedestrians are part of the traffic, not separate to the traffic, and that this understanding should be adopted when considering any traffic management measures in order to give a more realistic view of the potential effects on all road users.

· The highway code is a crucial document; however, certain aspects of antisocial behaviour which undermine effective traffic management, including pavement parking and pavement cycling should be addressed.

· The issue of liability for collisions should be prominently addressed at the national level.

· While intelligent traffic management systems have a role to play, they should also cater to the needs of pedestrians, particularly the more vulnerable.

· Roads and streets should be designed holistically with the people who use them in mind, rather than solely as vehicular traffic corridors, and integrated with other modes of transport and longer term behavioural change and mode shift endeavours. Innovative design approaches such as shared space have a part to play in improving the ways in which road users perceive and interact with the street environment and with other road users.

1. About Living Streets

1.1 Living Streets is the national charity that stands up for pedestrians. With our supporters we work to create safe, attractive and enjoyable streets, where people want to walk. We work with professionals and politicians to make sure every community can enjoy vibrant streets and public spaces.

1.2 The history of Living Streets demonstrates the strength of our agenda. We were formed in 1929, as the Pedestrians Association, and have grown to include a network of 100 branches and affiliated groups, 28 local authority members and a growing number of corporate supporters. As well as working to influence policy on a national and local level, we also carry out a range of practical work to train professionals in good street design, and enable local communities to improve their own neighbourhoods. We run high profile national campaigns such as Walk to School and Walk to Work Week, to encourage people to increase their walking levels and realise a vision of vibrant, living streets across the UK.

2. Impacts of traffic management on quality of life and social outcomes

2.1 The quality of our streets plays a significant role in how people use their streets and local areas, and heavily trafficked and congested streets have a markedly negative effect on a community’s quality of life. Aside from the disincentive to physical activity, people living in streets with high car traffic where walking was not the norm were found, in a recent study, to have 75% fewer local friends than those in streets with low car traffic [1] . Additional car journeys and increased congestion also leads to the generation of more air pollution [2] – already a major issue for urban health and quality of life according to half of Manchester residents and 77% of Londoners. [3] There is a clear role for Government and local authorities to intervene in this area.

2.2 Living Streets considers that effective road and traffic management has an important role to play in creating safe, attractive and enjoyable streets where people want to walk. For example, the setting of lower speed limits can be part of a congestion management solution, with speed limit reductions to speeds as low as 40mph being used as part of variable speed controlled motorway schemes. Similar principles are being applied successfully in more built-up areas. Living Streets campaigns, alongside many others, for a default speed limit of 20 miles per hour where people live, work and play. Well-implemented 20mph speed limits can improve road traffic flow, using road space more efficiently by reducing the safe stopping distance that vehicles require and allowing more pedestrians to cross the road informally, reducing delays from signalized crossings. Walworth Road in the London Borough of Southwark, one of the Department for Transport’s Mixed Priority Route pilots, has been a widely-praised example of a scheme which improved the urban environment for all users and reduced the number of road casualties with no detrimental effect on traffic flow, whilst Transport for London and the London Borough of Camden’s have trialled a pilot ‘green wave’ system, which coordinates signalized junction timings with 20mph limits. 72 per cent of British drivers would support 20mph limits on residential streets. [4]

2.3 The key benefit of 20mph speed limits is in road safety: a recent longitudinal study found that 20mph areas experienced a reduction in casualties of over 40 per cent, as well as a reduction in the severity of those casualties [5] . Stronger national guidance making it easier for local authorities to implement area-wide 20mph speed limits (rather than just the more expensive 20mph ‘zones’) on their full range of roads would be helpful in empowering communities to improve local road safety. With the average road traffic collision carrying an estimated cost of £75,000 – and a fatal incident costed by the Department for Transport at nearly £2m [6] – the direct economic value of pragmatic, high-quality people-focused design, combined with the potential to safeguard human life and improve quality of life and perceptions of safety, is undeniable.

2.4 20mph speed limits can also contribute to broader social, environmental and health-related goals [7] . Traffic management should not be viewed in a silo, but with explicit reference to this broader picture. Active travel – walking and cycling, now and in the longer term will have an important role to play in reducing congestion with the inevitable decline of natural resources and the people’s receptiveness to walking more (TfL research [8] found that walking is easily the most appealing transport mode. 2008 TfL research [9] also found that over two thirds of Londoners are receptive to walking more over the next year (as opposed to one in four who were receptive to cycling more) and a third would definitely consider walking more).

2.5 However getting the quality of the built environment right is crucial to making streets and places where people want to both walk and spend time. "The design and management of the built environment can create barriers to physical activity – or they can create opportunities for activity that make an active lifestyle an attractive and compelling choice" [10] . TfL research [11] also showed that the top three potential motivators for walking more included new and improved public spaces with new seating, new and improved crossing facilities at junctions alongside new and improved walks for pleasure. Involving the community and auditing the quality of streets is the first step to getting the quality of the built environment right.

3. Reintegrating pedestrians into traffic management frameworks

3.1 Living Streets recognises that walking, whilst a hugely significant part of the everyday transport mix for people in the UK, cannot be the sole solution to the transport challenges that the UK faces. To that end we would advocate a wider framework of transport investment which also supports, promotes and expands cycling and public transport as alternatives to the car.

3.2 This integrated approach requires the use of definitions and design principles that relate more realistically to human behaviour. Typical interpretations of the terms ‘traffic’, ‘traffic flow’ and ‘congestion’ are generally limited to vehicular congestion and traffic alone. This represents a missed opportunity to design streets, places and traffic management solutions that benefit all road users. A glance at a typical high street, with heavy pedestrian traffic and congested footways, is a simple demonstration that pedestrians should be considered within traffic flow. A more holistic understanding of ‘people-flow’ would enable a more realistic understanding of transport constraints across modes. Though less applicable to motorway schemes, Living Streets would reiterate the point that pedestrians need to be recognised as traffic in themselves, rather than an obstacle or impediment for traffic, and traffic management systems should be built with regard to this principle.

3.3 Allied to this broader understanding of the role of traffic management, there is a growing recognition of the need to strike a balance between streets as places and streets as corridors for movement. Over time there has been a tendency for policy to focus on movement functions over place functions. Recent guidance, such as the two Manual for Streets publications, does more to recognise and strike this balance, but needs to be better promoted and endorsed and disseminated by national Government.

3.4 Some aspects of road user culture impact negatively on pedestrians and specific national and local government action to tackle anti social pavement behaviour would be particularly useful in re-striking the balance between movement and place.

3.5 Pavement parking is a major problem, particularly outside London, as it not only restricts accessibility for pedestrians, particularly those with mobility difficulties, but also damages pavements, placing already inadequate maintenance budgets under greater pressure, and could also cost lives if, for example, it prevented emergency services vehicles from gaining access to an area. Living Streets would like to see a national framework that assumes a general prohibition of pavement parking, with powers for Local Authorities to designate exemption areas if necessary and desirable, and supports the decriminalisation of enforcement. Whilst we welcome the recent encouragement to councils to use their existing powers to prevent pavement parking from Local Transport Minister Norman Baker, we are concerned that an approach based on designating areas in which pavement parking is prohibited does not go far enough to address the issue and may lead to an increase in street clutter.

3.6 Walking and cycling are healthy, environmentally friendly, and inexpensive modes of transport and a solution to many of our urban transport problems. Living Streets wants to see more people cycling; however, there is a need to ensure that the needs of more vulnerable pedestrians are adequately prioritised. Living Streets advocates awareness-raising campaigns and improved enforcement to address anti-social pavement cycling behaviour, which can cause anxiety, restrict mobility and deter people from using public space.

3.7 The civil liability framework in the UK is currently such that it discriminates against vulnerable road users and must be reformed. As it stands, motor vehicle drivers are presumed not liable for damages in the event of a collision with a pedestrian or cyclist. This is in contrast to most of the countries in the rest of the EU, where the burden of proof falls upon the driver to demonstrate that they were not at fault in such collisions. In this way, by establishing an element of fairness in civil liability, we can move towards a culture wherein motor vehicle drivers take their responsibilities more seriously than at present.

4. Design principles and approaches

4.1 We would draw attention to the importance of adequate pedestrian infrastructure, particularly easily navigable, safe and attractive interchanges, as a major influence on mode choices.

4.2 Currently there is a culture of separating pedestrians from the street environment

unnecessarily. We need to reach a situation whereby drivers expect to encounter pedestrians more regularly on our streets, and so can adapt their behaviour to the situation – rather than continuing to promote an outdated approach which implicitly places car drivers at the top of the local street hierarchy. This means, among other things, greater enforcement of Highway Code rule 170 (stating that drivers must give way to pedestrians; removing hard ‘infrastructure’ barriers to walking from gyratories and labyrinthine subways to excessive street clutter and minimizing the use of roundabouts to create a more pedestrian-friendly environment.

4.3 The application of ‘naked streets’ design principles such as decluttering and widening of pavements, which encourage more cooperative and responsible road user behaviour through design rather than regulation, can also have benefits far outstripping their costs if they are well-implemented. A prominent example is Kensington High Street, which saw overall road casualties drop by nearly half after a naked streets redesign. [12] The Government’s Mixed Priority Routes schemes also showed that taking into account the needs of all road users can have wider reaching benefits, for example one of the results of this scheme was increased bus usage and reliability [13]

4.4 Street Management and maintenance is also crucial, it is imperative that at local authority level ensure that they set a joined up vision incorporating asset management, public space and maintenance programmes to ensure effective street maintenance that reduces clutter, maintains the quality of a street and uses public space more effectively, too often inadequate visions and incoherent programmes lead to the degradation of the urban streetscape.

March 2011