The Daily Telegraph, Saturday July 29th 2000

The Road Ahead - Can a continental approach to traffic calming work in Britain? Many have their doubts says Andrew Baxter

'Home zones' set for reality test

Controversial pedestrian friendly "home zones" aimed at taming the car are under fire from both sides of the transport lobby as nine pilot schemes are launched.

Anti-car campaigners say continental-style measures being introduced this summer don't go far enough, but critics believe they are ill-conceived and road safety experts do not expect a fall in accidents in neighbourhoods subjected to a mixture of traffic calming, cosmetic landscaping and 20mph speed limits.

Home zones are common in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Holland, where pedestrians and cyclists have legal priority over traffic on 6,500 streets with extended pavements that incorporate playground equipment.

The AA and RAC have reservations about their introduction in Britain, however, and the Association of British Drivers believes they will further alienate motorists already under attack from a raft of measures. ABD Chairman Brian Gregory says "We should encourage children to play in parks if we really want to improve road safety. Roads are for vehicles, not playgrounds".

The pilot sites vary from quiet cul-de-sacs to large-scale regeneration areas, but detailed designs have yet to be agreed by local councils and residents' representatives.

Cavell Way in Sittingbourne, Kent, is a 400-yard dead end road with few cars. The Nobel Road area of Nottingham, meanwhile, contains a number of cul-de-sacs on a housing estate where a shortage of children's playgrounds has led to tension with older residents.

In Manchester, the council is buying up Victorian houses in Northmoor to demolish them and develop recreation areas. Plymouth has a scheme that focuses on a network of roads around Devonport naval dockyard, a deprived area with high crime rates and a derelict playground.

The main problem in the typical London inner-city area of West Ealing appears to be non-residents who clog up the narrow Victorian streets with parked cars, while in Magor, Monmouthshire, few of the roads around the village square have proper pavements.

In addition to government sponsored pilot projects there are trial schemes afoot in Bristol, Milton Keynes, York, Leicester, Hertfordshire, Lewisham and North Tyneside.

Transport Minister Lord Whitty insists these should improve the quality of life, but admits they will be successful only if they are "effective in meeting the requirements of the community as a whole"- and that includes motorists - which most observers think will be difficult to achieve.

The Children's Play Council is demanding pedestrian priority be enshrined in the law along with 10mph speed limits, but the government stopped short of new legislation when it announced a three-year study.

Director Tim Gill fears home zones might look little different from areas treated to traffic calming if the government fails to plough more cash into them, but an internal briefing document prepared by officials at the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions revealed that they are regarded as a "relatively low-cost measure" and councils have been warned not to expect extra money.

Traditional traffic-calming measures such as speed humps and chicanes will commonly be employed but the most controversial measure is an "advisory" 10mph speed limit which, though not mandatory or enforceable, could be sanctioned in at least one location.

Extra residents' parking will be provided where roads are wide enough by rearranging existing bays to face the pavement and parking for non-residents is likely to be banned on some streets.

One feature that many of the pilot projects have in common is an active residents' group - including one in Leeds neighbourhood known as the Methleys, which took the law into its own hands by turfing over a road one weekend.

Yet in many places, it is local residents who are mostly to blame for the dangerous driving. "Rat-running" motorists from outside the area are only a cause for concern in Ealing and in Peterborough's New England district.

The Transport Research Laboratory will report its evaluation of the experiment in 2002, but project manager Roger Layfield predicts it is unlikely to cut accidents. He says "Accident rates are already low. Most of the traffic is local, so it is a matter of educating drivers who are residents".

Research also indicates that drivers obey 20mph speed limits only within 4000 yards of their own home - beyond that, they are likely to become frustrated at going slowly.

Paul Watters, the AA's head of road and transport policy, says: " Home zones are not a panacea and can't be done properly on the cheap. You can't just put up 20mph signs and expect everything to be rosy. They ought to be sparingly applied it would be counter-productive to litter the country with them".

Edmund Kind, executive director of the RAC Foundation, added: "Home zones should not become no-go areas for cars. We should concentrate more on places where accidents happen, like outside schools and recreation areas, rather than have token blanket speed reductions".

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