Vision for roads, streets and civic spaces

 

Vision for roads, streets and civic spaces

There is a huge range of roads, streets and civic spaces, that perform many different functions: enabling children to get to school, and adults to get to work, providing a route to see friends and loved ones, or a trip to the shops, making a delivery. Walking the dog, or going for a jog. The use is not only for movement but as a places too. The challenge is to bring these interests into balance, so that people and businesses are as free as possible to do the things they need to do, in a safe, attractive environment.

A sense of fun and freedom

Guides on roads and public spaces can be the dullest documents imaginable. Sometimes the focus is so much on preventing accidents that the opportunities that roads and the public space are forgotten. Sometimes it is finances that are the issue; and it is true this will always be a problem. Many of the ideas in this guide are expensive to bring about, but if we do not have an idea of what we could do, then we risk not doing anything. So let's raise our sights and aim to create in Perth and Kinross the public spaces that will provide a setting to help us live our lives out to the full.

Town centres and squares

Town centres and squares are spaces at the hearts of our communities. They reflect the pride and enterprise of local citizens. They need to be easy to get to, safe to use and attractive.

These places need to be able to compete with out-of-town shopping centres. They need to be

• accessible - by the whole community including people with disabilities, and by public transport
• attractive
• distinctive
• safe
• successful

Ideas from Europe and elsewhere

• being proud - the town centre is a symbol of the vitality of the community - it can advertise
• putting pedestrians first - it is pedestrians that spend the money - they need to be looked after if the shopping area is to thrive.
• encouraging activity and enjoyment: including street artists, festivals, cafe tables, food, street markets, places to sit, play areas: people attract people. People need to be invited to slow down, stop and enjoy the place - rather than speed through. This is why the city of Perth has is an accredited Cittaslow status and Perth and Kinross is the UK's first Cittaslow supporter details
• introducing high quality lighting schemes, including decorative street lighting and the lighting of select buildings and trees.
• public art, including fountains, celebration of local history, events and characters, landscaping.
• reducing noise 20 mph speed restrictions to reduce noise and make it easier and safer to cross from one side of the street to the other
• avoiding the need for large surface level car parks, by providing high quality, frequent public transport services, and networks of attractive walking and cycling routes make getting to the shops easy.

A change in the pattern of the paving in this small high street helps to slow traffic. It is a place to visit in its own right - not just somewhere on the way.		Fountains add attractiveness and life day and night

Main Streets

These roads are the true gateways, to our settlements. They comprise much of what people see of an urban area; they are the arteries that keep the settlement vibrant, but they are also places; for dwellings, schools, hospitals, shops, offices and factories; sometimes they are the most prestigious places of all. The increase in traffic over the years has brought to many of these main streets severance, noise, pollution, and dirt and danger. They present the most difficult problems to tackle.

Objectives include providing:

• A prestigious, congestion free route into town that presents a good image.
• An attractive, pleasant, and safe environment for pedestrians and cyclists.
• Efficient routes for public transport
• Space for businesses to be able to carry out their activities, including deliveries

Ideas for from Europe and elsewhere

• balancing movement and place functions
• providing more space for activities other than through traffic - often it is the junctions that hold up traffic not the width of the road between them. Options being used include
  • placing a central median down the road so that pedestrians can cross anywhere,
  • using some of the space to provide on-street parking mixed with trees
  • narrowing lane width
  • creating shared spaces
• slowing the speed of traffic to 20mph or lower, in order to cut noise to levels that allow conversation, and to reduce the danger to pedestrians and cyclists. The impact on journey times can be negligible.
• providing high quality street and decorative lighting
• minimising clutter

Boulevard style main street - similar to the Dunkeld Road A channelised main street with central median - the narrow lanes allow smooth flow of traffic but discourage excess speed. The median makes the task of crossing the road much easier for pedestrians who only have to judge one line of traffic at a time. Space reallocated - this was once a bleak, local shopping street with four lanes of fast traffic traffic. A redesign changed this to to 2 lanes for civilised traffic, and introduced trees and on-street parking for shoppers. Over ten years the growth in the trees has transformed the attractiveness and viability of this shopping area.

Residential and other urban streets

Residential streets are, above all other things, places for people. They need to provide a pleasant, quiet environment, where children are safe.

Challenges include

• managing the space made available for parked cars - and balancing this with greenspace in the street. There is a growing trend to trade front gardens for off-road parking: much to the detriment of quality of life.
• ensuring traffic speeds and volumes are sufficiently low to protect children who may not have the capacity to judge moving traffic.
• providing safe, attractive walking and cycling routes to key community facilities such as shops, schools and surgeries, and of course bus stops.
• restoring to children some of the freedom they have lost over the past decades.

Ideas from Europe and elsewhere

• Play streets - actually a UK idea from the 1930s - traffic banned during the day time to provide children with a safe place to play.
• Traffic-calmed streets - aimed at keeping traffic speeds below 20mph and discouraging through-traffic.
• DIY Streets - a Home zone on the cheap
• Home zones - designed to be safe enough for children to be out on the street
• Shared space - similar concept to Home zone
• Autonomous vehicle speed control
• Quality lighting, to give people the confidence to go out at night, as well as to create an attractive night-time environment.
• Communal underground waste bins - to eliminate the clutter of wheeled bins in the street
• Car parking arranged at an angle or at 90 degrees, to make more efficient use of the roadspace, save people from wanting to use gardens as parking areas, and helping to stop speeding traffic.
• Protecting front gardens at risk turned into concreted parking areas.

	underground refuse and recycling facilities
	streets don't have to look like through-routes. Careful design and planting can allow traffic access while create a sense of place.
	this is a road outside a school - it has been narrowed, and drivers left in no doubt that it is a place for children.

Junctions in towns and villages

They are essential for getting around either on foot or by car. They are often the thing that limits the vehicle flow on a road system. They also tend to be the places where accidents happen. They are important places in their own right, and are sometimes the setting for some of the finest buildings in an area, with builders over the centuries making the most of the opportunity to show off their skills.

As traffic levels have increased junctions have suffered. Many have become unattractive and cluttered, and measures that were intended to make junctions safer for pedestrians including guardrails have been called into question. The design of junctions has sometimes downplayed the needs of pedestrians. A queue of traffic looks much more dramatic than a crowd of pedestrians huddled in the rain waiting for the green man. And this is often reflected in public opinion, and campaigns for something to be done - council must tackle congestion etc. Yet it is the pedestrians who by walking rather than using their cars who are doing just that.

Ideas from Europe and elsewhere

a raised junction - slows traffic, makes life easy for wheelchair users, and provide a direct crossing route for pedestrians

small roundabouts enable efficient movement of traffic around the junction, are relatively safe, and can be created with the minimum of clutter,

a "shared space junction" - the usual clutter has been replaced by fountains - and what would have looked like a piece of motorway surrounded by buildings instead looks like an important local business centre - which is exactly what it is.

Village Streets

Changes in village life over the past century has seen the village change from a balanced working community into a dormitory providing accommodation for people working in nearby towns and cities. Through traffic has increased massively, bring noise and pollution. Buildings were commonly built right up against the road edge and have been badly affected.

The challenge is to provide a civilised environment, that encourages people to recognise the village street as a place first and as a movement corridor second.

Public transport: bus, park and ride

Quality bus services enable many more people to travel than if we were totally reliant on car use. They make far more efficient use of the space available, both on the roads and in the centres of towns and villages by eliminating the need for large car parks and can be used by everyone: young and old, as well as people who are disabled. Waiting is one of the least pleasant aspects of using buses, but there are many things that can be done to make the experience more pleasant.

Ideas from Europe and elsewhere

• High quality bus shelters
• High quality buses that permit easy access for wheelchair users
• Count-down indicators on bus stops - that tell you how long to wait until the next service
• Information points at bus stops including maps, local amenities, contact numbers
• Divertible buses / on-demand services

Paths & Cycle routes

To help reduce congestion, tackle global warming, and improve health, people should have a choice of attractive, secure and direct walking routes to nearby shops, schools, places of work, parks and leisure facilities. In new developments the opportunity should be taken to develop a segregated walking and cycling network that complements the existing settlement. The routes need to be carried through right to the destination, and that can involve looking at the way space is divided up with towns and villages, as well as the design of junctions.

There should be a range of leisure walking and cycling routes in and around towns and villages: where possible these should be on segregated or 'quiet routes'. The core paths plans are bringing this into effect. "Core paths are intended to give people reasonable access to their local area while taking account of land management needs. They should cater for all non-motorised forms of access such as walking, horse riding, cycling and paddling or sailing on water. Motor assisted vehicles designed for people with disabilities are included here too. Not all core paths will be suitable for all users but everyone should have a choice of routes available to them locally."

Ideas from Europe and elsewhere

Rural Roads

For most people the experience they obtain of Perth and Kinross's stunning natural landscapes is through the use of the rural road network. It is important therefore that these roads should look as natural and unspoilt as possible. Urban features should be avoided. Councils across the UK are often put under pressure to put in lines and signs, and provide warning notices and so forth, where people think a road is dangerous. Problems can arise when a road is made to look safer than it actually is; it can lead to people taking less care, and making drivers more confident to speed. Problems arise when the road looks safer than it actually is, The freedom to use the roads is one of our basic freedoms, and with that freedom comes responsibilities and duties. The law gives drivers a duty to take the road as they find it, and to have regard to their own safety and that of other road users. There is no law that requires motorists to warned of dangers of which they are already aware.

Ideas from Europe and elsewhere

• keeping road signs to a minimum - only signing hazards that are not obvious to responsible drivers.
• removing centre and edge lining - reducing drivers confidence to speed
• not installing kerbs
• making sure lighting, if it is installed, avoids creating light pollution.
• using low-noise road surfaces on more heavily trafficked routes
• providing footpaths away from the road edge, rather than footways right next to the road and its fast moving traffic.

Further information

What makes Perth and Kinross Special? : Rural roads illustrates some of the different types of road that can be found in Perth and Kinross, including roads created by the Romans, in Age of Improvement, and in more recent years.