Come on, Boris, free our streets of this clutter

Queue fever: London still has 6,000 time-wasting traffic lights, much loved by traffic engineers
12 April 2012

Of all the places to start a revolution, the last on my list would be Ealing. Yet to Ealing goes the palm, spurred by a minor revolt in the equally unlikely Kensington and Chelsea.

The solid suburban burghers of Ealing are putting to shame the Camdens and the Islingtons. They will be the first in Britain to do what half the rest of Europe has been doing for years. They are banning red lights.

Years ago, when I first campaigned for this libertarian cause, I dreamed of throwing the first switch and watching London step from darkness into light - or lightnessness.

London's 6,000 traffic lights are a costly, timewasting, polluting, infuriating, anti-technological emblem of a dead religion, that of pre-war traffic engineering.

Its acolytes are morbid priests, obsessed with street clutter and persecuting (indeed killing) pedestrians.

They have not even caught up with New York's "rolling greens", queue-sensitive phasing or the digital countdowns on red, familiar in cities such as Islamabad, which allow drivers to relax and save petrol while waiting.

Ealing is following the "shared space" ideas of the Dutch Hans Monderman, dubbed everywhere but in Britain the "world's most famous traffic engineer".

Monderman's trick was to conduct interviews walking backwards through the uncontrolled traffic at intersections in his village of Oudeshaske. Only at major intersections did his roundabouts operate a rough-and-ready discipline.

Hundreds of municipalities across Europe have adopted his methods, and seen a fall both in accidents and, paradoxically, in journey times.

It is London's refusal to countenance even the safety case for shared space that makes its road planners criminal in their resistance. One day, someone should sue them.

In its crude form, shared space holds that drivers should always be watching and taking account of other road users, rather than being distracted by and relying on lights, markings and signs.

This spells the end of traffic management that sought to segregate users who have eye contact with others (pedestrians and cyclists) from those who do not, that is drivers of all sorts.

Mix them up, goes the theory, and the evidence indicates that every user looks out for everyone, indeed adopts a self-preserving courtesy.

In the famous Dutch scheme in the town of Drachten, crashes virtually ceased while overall traffic speeds across intersections doubled. The outcome was entirely benign. It was even safer for the disabled.

The message is admirably set out in Tom Vanderbilt's recent book, Traffic, with traffic in towns proving safest at below a maximum of 20mph. This is the highest speed at which drivers and pedestrians can respond to each other within eye sight.

"Smooth roads, enormous signs and distorting markings," says Vanderbilt, "soothe our brains into believing that we are travelling more slowly than is the case."

Such traffic management is dangerous. A sign warning of children ahead does not slow the driver but distracts his eye from the child.

When traffic has to weave its way through competing users, the brain enables it to negotiate danger responsibly. Pedestrians need not be dragooned behind railings, forced into detours and kept waiting at kerbsides.

They need not be ordered to "cross" even when it is actually dangerous to do so. Drivers need not stand for minutes at red lights, belching fumes, while an expanse of tarmac stands empty and unused ahead of them. They need not navigate a maze of one-way streets, adding to pollution, irritation, congestion and time.

Even Kensington High Street's half-hearted scheme has led to accidents falling by some 60 per cent. Similar success has followed tentative shared streets in Ashford in Kent and New Street, Brighton, where pedestrian use has soared 160 per cent. In London there has been almost nothing, apart from the enjoyably unregimented Seven Dials intersection in Covent Garden.

The danger is that the revolution is half-hearted. Such revolutions often fail. The Mayor, Boris Johnson, claims to be a fervent enthusiast, as well might any true cyclist.

He already wants powers (which he must get, absurdly, from central government) to permit cyclists to jump red lights when they can see a crossing is empty. This infuriates other road users but only because they do not enjoy the same liberation. Now they should.

Ealing is proposing merely to put hoods over some of its traffic lights to see what happens. This is risky.

It can leave motorists confused and still looking for the light, still racing to the next green and still not seeing pedestrians hovering tentatively on the kerb.

The transformation of streetscape must be emphatic. Drivers entering a shared-street zone must understand that they are having to surrender all primacy.

There must be no lights at all, no road markings except for parking. Road use must be policed by that military familiar, "the mark-one eyeball". Short cuts and rat-runs are rationed only by congestion, as are most market streets today.

There must be no kerbs, only raised ramps at crossroads with guide studs for the blind.

An ideal neighbourhood for the Mayor to start would be Mayfair, bounded by Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly and Park Lane.

It is substantial, not just an oasis. It has the benefit of a local authority, Westminster, that is archaic when it comes to traffic, making the shock all the greater.

Its one-way streets, dating from the 1960s, are today beyond comprehension, compelling hapless pedestrians and drivers to travel two or three times the shortest distance between two points. Stalin himself could not beat Westminster's road staff in control-freak dirigisme.

I would bet that more than half the traffic lights in London could be abolished with ease, leading to the smoother running of cars, buses and taxis and the easier passage of pedestrians.

The only loss would be of unused road space. After Mayfair, perhaps Soho and Covent Garden, Camden Town and Islington, Shoreditch and Bermondsey could follow suit.

This is not a matter of reckless experimentation. It has been shown to work, and with added courtesy, in cities abroad. London is in the dark ages.

Shared streets are a seriously exciting innovation. They would be Johnson's greatest legacy, contrasting with his predecessor's grim increase of 20 per cent in the number of red lights in London.

But like Galileo, he must first confront the reactionaries and flat-earthers of the city's most dyed-in-the-wool profession, traffic engineering.

He must wave his hand over the fuming traffic jams and defy the freaks. Having liberated the road space, he must declare with Galileo: "And still it moves".

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