Conventional highway measures
Declining high streets, deserted villages, streets where the usual civilities of communities disappear.
Streets configured for the movement of vehicles come at a cost. Fewer conversations, fewer children, fewer shops opening onto pavements.
Noise, pollution, danger, discomfort, and the congestion and frustration of stop-start traffic.
Conventional traffic engineering rarely contributes to successful public space.
Is it necessary to dedicate so much space to traffic? Do we need to banish children to back gardens – pedestrians and cyclists to the margins? Occasional crossings and guardrails merely reinforce the wider priority for vehicles.
Signs, markings, signals, cameras and all the paraphernalia of highways encroach into the streets and spaces that have always served as the backdrop for exchange, for interaction – for life.
Slower, safer streets
Streets can be revived. Villages can recover their identity. Neighbourhoods can be reconnected. Urban space designers have researched and developed design principles and practical measures to reduce the dominance of traffic.
Street designs and village centres that change drivers’ expectations. Places that foster civility and communication between drivers and other street users. Streets that engender human responses – where pedestrians can cross a street confident that drivers won’t ignore them.
Above all, streets where traffic speeds are slow enough to allow such confidence to develop.
The late Ben Hamilton-Baillie
Urban Designer
1955- 2019
Ben Hamilton-Baillie was an architect whose pioneering work sought to reduce the impact of traffic in towns and villages. He became the UK's most influential and innovative voice promoting the idea of “shared space” – that is, equal priority for all road users.
In 2011, with Dorset county council, he authored the Traffic in Villages document, a toolkit to address growing rural traffic issues using “psychological traffic calming” rather than signage. Together with publicity from Poynton, word spread across rural communities, many of whom commissioned Hamilton-Baillie reports on taming traffic and reviving a sense of place. The document continues to be influential in local policymaking.
