Found a woonerf a couple miles from me! Colourful housing too. Southend on Sea

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Pictures from the end looking down then entry.


Street view.

These are the fronts of these houses; out back are just gardens. You can have a look around the satelleite imagery and Street View. Shame this is the only street like this, the others nearby didn't get this treatment.

Of course upon leaving this estate you have the standard British vehicular cycling environent to deal with.

Edit: Blurred residents' numberplates.


Any idea when it was built? It looks fairly recent

AKA TownMouse

pete owens

Could do to be a bit more permeable.

There appears to be only one way in and out - which is fine if you go everywhere by car, but makes for long detours on foot or by bike. There doesn't seem to be any connection with the cycle path running along the eastern edge of the development. Also, where there are cut throughs within the development, these are designed for pedestrians only whith no dropped kerbs to allow cyclists to use them.


I'm guessing you mean this line running roughly north/south, east of the estate on the map? Looks like only a footway. I might take a look but looking at satellite imagery on google earth/maps it seems to cross the railway at-grade... so probably has a gate blocking pedestrians (thus leads nowhere except Southchurch Blvd to the north)

I agree with everything else, it needs more permeability. Their thinking might have been "keeps kids in, strangers out". Improving the main through roads in the area for cyclists is more important though, I feel


Strikes me as odd that one street at the end of the road network there got the brick paved shared space treatment, then it just turns back into more or less standard British street for no reason

pete owens

Yep, thats the line I mean - I just switched on the "Bicycling" tag on google maps and it showed up green - no guaruntee that means anything on the ground though. In any case even if it is only a footpath then there should be pedestrian connections.

The reason for the treatment only being applied at the very end of the cul-de-sac will be to comply with the local planning regulations. They will not tolerate anything that slows down cars to that extent for any significant length so there will be a strict limit to length of street and number of dwellings that can be served by a shared surface. There is also another less obvious change as you exit the development the road becomes wider, gains a centre line and has a huge bell-mouthed junction where it meets Lifstan Way.



Bloody hell. Even in a dead end residential street where traffic volume will be tiny. Can you give a quote from a local authority who said this? I'd like to believe it could be wrong. We have a long way to go if we want to encourage transport other than cars.

pete owens

In the Warrington design guide for residential roads shared surface roads are 5th in a hierarchy running:

District Distributor Road - Local Distributor Road - Major Residential Access Road - Minor Residential Access Road - Shared Surface Road. Each of these specify the maximum number of dwellings they serve and in the case of shared surface roads that is 25. I would guess most LAs would have very similar standards as the sort of street layouts they give rise to are pretty universal.

In this terminology, most of the estate consists of "Minor Residential Roads" until you get to the red brick hump at the edge of the estate where it becomes a "Major Residential Road". In Warrington, even a Minor Residential Road could only serve 50 dwellings and cycle tracks are required for Major Residential Roads.

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