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Accidents Halved As Street is Stripped of 'Safety' Features

Posted on: Thursday, 5 July 2007, 18:11 CDT

By DAVID WILLIAMS

ACCIDENT levels have almost halved in a London street where "safety" equipment

such as guard rails, white lines and signposts were stripped out.

The redesign of Kensington High Street has been such a success that the "naked

road" concept is set to be rolled out to other cities in Britain and around the

world.

Engineers removed railings, scores of signposts and combined traffic lights

with lamp posts to reduce clutter.

They cleared the road surface of superfluous white lines, re- aligned the kerb

to follow the line of shop frontages and junked the different coloured surface

materials used by other councils.

Now Kensington and Chelsea council aims to capitalise on its success by

pressing ahead with a major new road scheme near South Kensington Tube station

a key stepping stone towards a multi- million-pound redevelopment of Exhibition

Road.

In spite of warnings from the Department for Transport that the scheme would

worsen safety, figures obtained by the Standard show that the number of

accidents in Kensington High Street has fallen from 71 a year to just 40 a drop

of nearly 44 per cent.

Accident levels on comparable roads across London have fallen by only 17.5 per

cent, an internal council study shows.

Since the scheme was completed in September 2003, the number of pedestrians

hurt has fallen from 26 a year to nine.

Although cycle accidents fell by only 18 per cent (from 11 a year to nine)

against a Londonwide drop of nearly 26 per cent, the council attributes this to

a sharp rise in commuters cycling.

Today the scheme's champion, councillor Daniel Moylan, said it would be copied

nationwide.

"We are having visitors from all over the UK and indeed from overseas and they

all want to produce their own versions," he said. "It is about re-establishing

eye contact between road users. They are now looking at each other instead of

just signs" The report says vehicle speeds have fallen and drivers appear "more

alert to the presence of pedestrians and that they cross the street over its

whole length". Engineers also installed new lamp posts producing "white light"

to mimic daylight and improve vision.

The proportion of night-time accidents fell from nearly 31 per cent to around

21 per cent.

Removal of some centre-lane markings has reduced collisions linked to U-turns

from four a year to just one.

Kevin Delaney, of the Institute of Advanced Motorists, welcomed the report. "It

shows that imaginative public spaces can be combined with road-user safety," he

said. The findings coincide with a Commission for Architecture and the Built

Environment study which said that "forests" of signs and barriers "give an

illusion of safety but could be making streets more dangerous".

OFFICIALS ignored expert advice when they scrapped a congestion- busting system

at the Blackwall Tunnel, it emerged today. Transport for London's suspension of

the system that let northbound drivers use one lane of the southbound tunnel

during the morning rush hour sparked delays of more than an hour. Today the

London Assembly Conservatives said they had obtained advice commissioned by

TfL, urging them not to suspend the scheme..

Source: Evening Standard; London (UK)