

By , Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor




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Uncertainty breeds caution




"We have fewer accidents and the accident which do happen are less severe," says Koop Kerkstra, a senior official in the northern Dutch town of Drachten. "We see a better flowing of traffic than when everything was regulated. With the new infrastructure, they can flow through Drachten in much less time."

Drachten is one of a half dozen northern Dutch towns experimenting with the new deregulated traffic system. But Mr. Kerkstra says it's not just about safety.

"What we find important is that we want to design the public space more as a meeting place where social activity is important," he says.

Meet me in the 'homezone'

Several British cities and towns, from Ipswich in the east to Bath and Bristol in the west and Manchester in the north, are catching on, setting up pilot projects of their own, from small-scale "homezones" to more holistic "shared space" redesigns that encompass several blocks of town centers.

"People want their space back," says Daniel Moylan, deputy leader of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council, the local government authority. "It really is now questionable as to whether the traditional approach to traffic is promoting road safety or not. People are genuinely sick of [cluttered] streets full of guardrails."

Early evidence from homezones highlights mixed success, however.

Many made-over zones are little more than the old road with speed bumps and a sign indicating "Pedestrian priority." There are plenty of drivers who will ignore both, as this correspondent discovered (almost ruinously) during a recent foray into a particularly hazardous homezone.

"The trouble with most homezones is that they are halfheartedly reconfigured," says Ben Hamilton-Baillie, a specialist in urban design and movement who has been involved in a number of shared space projects in Britain and continental Europe. "Signs have very little influence on human behavior; we pick up signals about behavior from the environment in much more complex ways."

The campsite model

Thus, he says, a driver will happily ignore a sign telling him to drive at 20 miles per hour, but will rapidly assimilate signals from a changed environment. If he drives onto a campsite for example or into a parking garage, he will kill his speed, start looking out for pedestrians and behave in a totally different fashion. This is the essence of what "shared space" is all about.

"Any driver who drives on a campsite will know how to behave," says Hamilton-Baillie. "You'll find cars and all sorts of activities mixing perfectly easily. There is no legislative framework, no signs to tell drivers how to behave. It's perfectly obvious. If someone does misbehave, then people feel empowered to tell him how to behave."

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