💾 Archived View for gmi.noulin.net › mobileNews › 610.gmi captured on 2024-08-25 at 07:03:28. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Accidents Halved As Street is Stripped of 'Safety' Features

2008-07-30 02:47:47

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)