Worthington Street, Leicester

Worthington Street is a turn of the century-terraced road with houses fronting directly on to it. The Highfields area is a diverse population with a mixture of ethnic groups. There are five streets in parallel between two heavily trafficked routes; all have been closed to through traffic except Worthington Street. The street contained 80 terraced houses and before the work had a peak flow of 130 vehicles per hour along it.

The objectives were to redesign the road into an area principally for the relaxation and enjoyment of the residents, without closing the street to through traffic, in a 'woonerf' style. The Council did want to deter unnecessary through traffic and encourage the traffic that did use the street to travel slowly and carefully. The residents were heavily involved in all stages of the scheme design. The road was replaced with a level shared surface, with designated parking spaces, flat-topped humps and planting. The residents were involved in the selection of materials and street furniture. The speed was restrained by the use of flat top humps, lateral shifts designated by planters and 39 coloured parking spaces. The local shop had railings and archways located outside it and hanging baskets were supplied to people who agreed to maintain them.

The total cost was £180,000 including professional fees and renewing the underground services. There was a successful bid to the Urban Programme grants, which met a significant part of the budget. There was an attempt to introduce supporting bylaws to enhance pedestrian status on the roadway and to reduce speed limits to less than 20 mph, however this failed. These measures had to be achieved through physical measures alone.

Two years after the scheme was finished the City Council undertook a questionnaire of the residents to appraise the scheme. The response was disappointing, both in terms of number of responses and the individual responses to the questions. Three quarters of those who responded thought that the environment had been improved by the scheme, however there was a level of dissatisfaction with parking, safety and speed through the street. The councils 'before and after' surveys do not back this up, speeds down to an average of 16mph, and the level of traffic reduced by 55 percent. There have been no road-related accidents in this street since 1990.

In 1995 the council received a petition for the removal of the planters in the streets and the creation of additional parallel to street, parking. This demand was in tandem with residents observations that car ownership had doubled in the previous 5 years.

Council car counts and speed measurements failed to back up the residents views, they noted that cars were parked illegally in the street even though there were legal spaces a short distance away. The Director of Environment and Development recommended that some of the planters were removed and additional diagonal parking installed.

Summary
Worthington Street makes extensive use of techniques such as shared surface planters and resolved parking problems, all in consultation with the residents. Whilst some might see the petition for removing the planters as a failure of the street, it is actually more positive. One of the strengths of the Dutch system is this continual re-visiting and re-designing of the street to cater for changing needs. Leicester City Council listened to the views of the residents and acted to ensure their revised needs were met. The traffic management, public participation and environmental techniques make this scheme the closest Britain has to a continental Home Zone.

Copyright: Matthew Bridgestock, Home Zones Good Practice in Britain and Henbury, Bristol Feasibility Study, Publication date March 2000.

If you are interested in the full publication, e-mail Matthew