Saturday 10 March 2012

Reclaim our streets


Inspired by campaigns such as Sustrans "Free Range Kids" and The Times Cycle Campaign I decided that 20mph speed limits were the answer for my own village of Stoke Golding. However as I started to dig around and talk to people the answer became less clear to me. I took a step back and thought about what I was trying to achieve. The answer to this was easier - I wanted streets where people could live, play and socialise rather than it being just a thoroughfare for cars. In short I wanted to hand back streets to the people who live there - but how to do it?

Traffic speeds are critical, but streets also need to look and feel like a "place" rather than a highway. This can become a virtuous circle as research shows that drivers will naturally slow when there are people about and when the street "tells" them they need to go slow. This is generally talked about as "natural" or "psychological" calming. Designed correctly you should not need lots of hard calming measures such as speed bumps. This is all very well for a new development, but harder to achieve for existing streets.


I took a trip out to have a proper look at the neighbouring village of Higham on the Hill which is a "home zone". This has been done very nicely - not too many signs, no speed bumps, but subtle changes in road colour and texture, narrowing of roads. Planters, benches and attractive bollards. All great, but a whooping price tag of £400,000!!

This set me talking to the DIY Streets team at Sustrans. Their premise is that there are effective changes that can be made to streets

at low cost. A build out here and there, some changes in road texture or colour or a planter or two. The key here is that some of these can be done by the community themselves. This keeps costs low and builds ownership. They passed on some very useful resources that give some principles for street design, and also some ideas for how you can enliven streets - a temporary or moveable street cafe or a street side art gallery for example. Anything that will bring the community out and allow them to reclaim their streets.

So whilst I haven't given up on 20mph limits, I now believe that they are not enough on their own. At best they will achieve a marginal reduction in speed, but that alone will not be enough to reclaim the streets.

So where do I go from here? Well I have a slot at the Annual Parish Meeting in late April where I am hoping that I can achieve buy in to the vision and get support from the Parish Council and community. What I would then like to do is:
- start properly campaigning for reduced speed limits in the village;
- pick a particular problem and get some changes implemented on the ground; I think this is key to building momentum and credibility
- get an streets design for the village identifying affordable changes (Sustrans DIY Streets team can do this)

As ever funding will be a challenge, but we can but try. I will keep you posted through the blog as this develops.

I have unearthed quite a few good resources during my research - get in touch if you are interested and I may be able to point you in the right direction. Equally if anybody out there has been there / done it I would love to hear from you.