Basil Jet wrote:
On 2011\09\26 16:08, Robin wrote:
Exhibition Road has had the pavements and kerbs removed to turn it
into a place where pedestrians and vehicles don't quite know who is
supposed to be where. Apparently that's a good thing. Anyway, blind
groups have complained, so the former pavement area is now going to
be covered in ... wait for it... corduroy so that the blind will know
when they are on the former pavement area and when they are in the
former road area. Since the presence of the corduroy will also alert
everyone else to the location of the former pavement area, I can't
help thinking that leaving the original road, pavement and kerbs
intact would have achieved similar results with zero cost or
disruption. No wonder the country's bankrupt.

I doubt if anyone involved is as stupid as someone who thinks readers
will believe they are going to use confuse (cotton fibre) corduroy
rather than the 800mm tactile paving corduroy which is what I have read
will be used. Or did *you* think it was going to be a cotton fibre?

Yes, I did. It did seem strange. But my point still stands - they've
spent a fortune on getting rid of the distinction between road and
footway, only to reinstate it.


The real stupidity is that blind people and other pedestrians will now
be aware of where the pavement is, or was, but drivers of vehicles
will not. So the blind people will feel that they are in a place of
some safety (the pavement) whereas car and van drivers, who won't be
aware of the too-subtle distinction, will just mow them down.

Anyone who wants to see the consequences of such a "traffic
management" scheme should go to Ashford in Kent, where the former
racetrack known as the town centre ring road has been converted into
two way streets, a proportion of which have no significant visual
delineation (from the drivers' point of view) between the pavement and
the roadway. Crossing the road is made immeasurably more difficult
because pedestrians aren't sure where the pavement ends, so they have
to stand well back from the roadway.

In this part of Ashford, there are probably few or no collisions
between pedestrians and cars now. That sounds like a success, and is
probably hailed as such by the scheme's designers, but the real reason
is that pedestrians now completely avoid that area of Ashford because
of the lack of pedestrian safety.

Having driven there several times recently, I have seen car drivers
confused by the lack of kerbs, reserved pavements and signage. I saw
cars driving the wrong way down a section of dual carriageway on three
separate occasions, all for the lack of a keep left sign.

I haven't seen Exhibition Road as rebuilt but I have seen some of the
plans for it and was pessimistic as to whether it would work. Such
schemes have apparently worked in other European countries but as far
as I know, only in narrow streets.