Shared road space

Here's a Tweet from @christinefarm about the shared space scheme in Poynton:

It is really good. The traffic gives way to pedestrians and everyone is so courteous, Its is another world!!

Bit late to this - in Poynton on a couple of wet days passing thru on club rides the surface felt very sketchy. Certainly wouldn't want to lean.

I suspect that as such schemes where rolled out traffic would evaporate as more people would be happy to change mode.

Why? All the people in the video said it was much better for driving through as the tailback was gone. This scheme has solved a massive congestion issue for drivers. Look! we actually CAN accomodate this high level of vehicle use. How does that "evaporate" anything?

Love your optimism tho! ;-)

True less congestion and also less perception of risk for other modes which can lead to modal shift. (Not just optimism)

These schemes are not designed to generate modal shift per se. In fact, one of the ways in which they are 'sold' to local authorities is through the claim that motor traffic capacity does not need to be reduced. The main gain is in, as Patrick Field often puts it, moving 'from a culture of compliance towards a culture of consideration'.

http://www.madegood.org/bikes/magazine/poynton-the-way-ahead/

However, in a roundabout way these schemes can achieve something related to straightforward modal shift. Traditionally, in many Continental towns making town centres more attractive used to be done by banning motor traffic from the (often old) city centre and constructing coronas of large car parks. People then drove as far as the car parks and walked around the main retail zone. One consequence of this sort of policy was generally the construction of a motorway ring/box or a town centre bypass.

In English towns, there are quite a few bypasses and the like, too, but not as many as have been built in Continental towns in some countries. Rather, town centres here were preferentially fitted with one-way gyratories that in their unsignalised state increased motor traffic capacity through the town centres. (Most have since become signalised as the crash levels were high and they have in this way lost most of their motor traffic capacity advantage.) There are relatively few one-way systems in Continental towns, although of course they exist there, too.

Now, one-way operation essentially killed most town centres, making walking and cycling very difficult, and reducing the key advantage of accessibility that town centres traditionally had. Both the Continental as well as the UK policy led to the development of quite a lot of out-of-town retail. In the UK, this was because town centres lost quite a lot of their attractiveness, and on the Continent because the additional orbital highway capacity that was generated greatly increased the profitability of marginally-located retail outlets, despite town centres having been made more attractive. Both were motor-centric policies to an extent.

The cost of most such schemes as described above has nowadays risen immensely and it is hard to claw back what has been lost. I'm speculating here, but the town of Poynton would essentially have faced a choice of bypass or no bypass, and this would have been a problem weighing heavily on local transport policy for years, perhaps decades. The option of no bypass is generally considered undesirable. Look at what happened in Newbury, which chose to go for a bypass. The promise was that it would relieve the town centre, but it now has the same level of motor traffic in the town centre as before, plus a bypass, and far more motor traffic than before--an example of an utter failure of policy. In small town centres, as in Poynton, the perceived problems as documented in the video often hinge on just one or two junctions, as they are the crucial points for motor traffic capacity (you can see that reducing the approach lanes on the links down to one each way works perfectly well if the junction no longer includes the signalisation delay).

So, tl;dr--by remodelling the junction in this way, Poynton may well have staved off the threat of a bypass for the foreseeable future and made interacting in the town centre nicer to boot. This may in due course lead to more activity in the town centre again and by not justifying the town being bypassed may, in this indirect way, reduce the threat of a future increase in motor traffic capacity over a wider area. As I said, the design isn't primarily about modal shift, and it remains to be seen whether the 'culture of consideration' may cause more people to choose to cycle and walk more there.

So it is about modal shift Oliver only in many more words: )

No, not in itself. It may prevent a future increase in 'strategic' highway capacity there (which is good), but other outcomes are uncertain.

Very interesting. I hadn't heard about this project before. I think what I like the best is the layout of the approaching carriageways.

I have to qualify this slightly. I watched the video in a higher resolution yesterday and what I thought was just a visual narrowing of the carriageway on the approaches is actually cobbled setts which are very poor for cycling. Obviously, cycling isn't a mode that wouldn't have been considered prominently there, but that's no excuse. There appears to be no way for cyclists of passing queues within the lane without having to ride over those cobbles. Chances are that with traffic flowing more freely they might not have to wait that long, but it's still a poorly-thought out detail.

Might not be perfect, but it's way better than what Poynton was like before. This should be what all towns/villages are designed like.

Until i moved to london in june I drove through poynton nearly everday, and its awful for motorists I can't imagine it being that great for cyclists either,

The main problem is that people that pass through it irregularly have 0 idea whats going on (which i guess would be solved by wider spread adoption)

Its also caused huge delays through poynton, I was hoping this would have been solved after it'd been around a while but I drove through numerous times over christmas and the traffic backlog is causes is ridiculous.

But depending on point of view, the pedestrians in the area love it

Why? All the people in the video said it was much better for driving through as the tailback was gone. This scheme has solved a massive congestion issue for drivers. Look! we actually CAN accomodate this high level of vehicle use. How does that "evaporate" anything?

Love your optimism tho! ;-)

I don't know where this has come from, because its not true at all, tailback is way worse.

Also the video really doesn't portray what actually happens at the junction on a normal day.

Most of it is drivers driving straight over the middle of the roundabouts so they don't have t swerve round them and wait for peds

lots of beeping by people thinking its their turn to drive, and peds still running across the road not sure whens safe to cross

The film is really inspiring, give that to anyone who objects that removing signals is madness.

Rogan, surely people not knowing what is going when they arrive at the junction is precisely what makes it work.

Will be attending a lecture about Shared Space this week by Tim Pharoah

Synopsis
Shared space is becoming the “must have” new street technology, but do the proponents understand the context in which it works, or doesn’t work? It is not an objective in its own right, but the approach of fewer traffic rules and equipment can help to strike a better balance between different street users, and reduce the negative aspects of motor vehicles in sensitive locations. This lecture will examine some of the key issues, including provision for people with disabilities, traffic flow and streetscape. Most (all?) shared space schemes so far have been retrofitted junctions and streets. This lecture will include a shared space scheme for a new “village” centre as part of a large urban expansion, which the author has worked on.

Will post anything interesting that I pick up.

you'd think that but when they just carry on not stopping for peds as they aren't made to by lights and straight over the roundabout it doesnt really work

dont get me wrong its a good idea, but only if its further adopted so that people actually get used to it and follow the idea of it, but poynton it currently traffic hell

Rode through here from the coffee tavern at Pott Shrigley yesterday, turned right at the double island to head towards a6 Stockport.

Into Poynton there was no chance to safely filter past the long tailback without hopping up onto the cobbled central reservation = design fail. It'd have been 5+ minute wait had we behaved and queued with the motors.

At the open double island, it was a free for all. The confusion did slow cars allowing us to get through easily. The "paving" is one fine grade of sandpaper from being smooth marble, as mentioned before - a huge relief it wasn't wet.

Fine on a sunny Sunday lunchtime, but say in November at 6.30pm in the rain when folks are rushing home after a shit day at work? No thanks!

Thanks for confirming that. It's what I thought after looking at the footage more closely.

+1 to the points above about the width of those entry lanes. Bad for cyclists. Also, in the video it seems that the few cyclists that are about all use the perimiter of the space.... almost as if they were on cycle lanes.... Could it be the high number of massive lorries?

Poynton.

Eerie images Will. No one walking or cycling. Despite that it looks calm and slow.
Where is it?

It's Poynton in the photos, as far as I can make out. The same shared use scheme discussed above. Doesn't look perfect, but way better for peds than previous layout....if there are any...

Yeah it is poynton

Yeah it is poynton
I knew that ;)

"DameSarahStorey: Can't wait til I can climb hills again properly+will be able to avoid the disaster zone that is Poynton. #uselessroadsystem #wasteofmoney

Original Tweet: http://twitter.com/DameSarahStorey/status/323073502842343424 "

I haven't and probably won't ride through Poynton....too far north is all....but from what I understand/have read, its loads better than before overall.
It was designed to improve the situation for peds and if the general traffic speed is lower, that's better for cyclists too. As for narrower, well you just take the lane as you would on a narrow road anywhere. It might not be perfect for cyclists, not space to filter etc, which is frustrating but I don't get why people are against this when its such a huge step forward in terms of road building in the UK. Am I anywhere close Andy? - trying not to see just the bike point of view here.