2010-03-04
post/426123615
Westminster really seems to have some sort of fever for redesiging its major junctions at the moment. Piccadilly Circus is next, according to the BBC:
Piccadilly Circus will be made pedestrian-friendly as part of a £14m revamp, which will rid the busy central London junction of guard railings.
Westminster Council approved the plan that will see the area go back to what it looked like in 1963, as more than one kilometre of railings are uprooted.
A central island will be built along Piccadilly and Pall Mall and two-way traffic will be reintroduced.
Meanwhile, the firm that planned the revamp of Oxford Circus last year (previously) reports that it’s worked out:
The Atkins-designed Oxford Circus diagonal crossing has proven an instant success with reduced pavement congestion, a doubling of walking speeds and one in six visitors using the diagonal routes.
2009-11-14
Shared space and its discontents
Stupid shared space thing in Sloan Square. This is a road, I wandered out of the tube, was obviously fiddling with my iPhone then out of the corner of my eye saw something big and fast, looked up and a car sped past me a foot away, had I of not stopped in my tracks it would of hit me. three more went past equally fast, you would think drivers would go though slowly, but NOPE.
There’s more at the original post, which you should read. Meanwhile, Phil Gyford posted to Twitter from Oxford Circus (previously):
The new Oxford Circus junction is sprinkled with careless girls squealing as they’re nearly run over. At least it’ll help ease overcrowding.
My own experience came walking down the Embankment on my way to work, head in the phone as I was reading Twitter, a couple of weeks ago. A cyclist on a folding bike rang his bell as he passed. I was annoyed because I thought he should have been on the road; evidently he was annoyed that I was walking around oblivious to my surroundings.
Maybe that’s the problem with the utopian ideal of shared spaces: attention, or rather the lack of it. As Chris Heathcote put it, “people have forgotten that everyone needs to take more notice”. Putting people in jeopardy seems a rather brutal way of forcing them to re-learn the process. Or maybe this is all just teething troubles? Anyway.
