Redistributions of urban movement space is necessary. This paper investigates the acceptability of different modal mixes in urban streets. When any element of a multi- mode street's traffic is removed, the primary objective is usually environmental, though it also constitutes an effective restraint measure. At one extreme is the noisy, air-polluted and dangerous primary or secondary route, at the other the fully-pedestrianised street. In between are all sorts of hybrids which permit all traffic provided it does not exceed walking pace; the bus and pedestrian street; the peak-time pedestrian street, with access permitted outside peaks; the play- and access-street; the bicycle priority street. Because these hybrids are perceptually difficult grey areas, they attract suspicion, infringement, even rejection, from pedestrians, politicians and private car users. What is lost in such subjective decisions is an understanding that the hybrid measures are designed to maintain, or improve, accessibility to an environmentally-improved street. A problem for decision makers is that there is no current measure to show the level of acceptability of one of the hybrids - that is, of saying whether a street can safely and attractively share its space between say pedestrians and buses. The Transport and Environmental Studies organization (TEST) has worked on this for two years: in two London restraint studies, in perception of buses studies in Wandsworth, Harrow and Slough, and in a current study for London Regional Transport which attempts to aggregate these findings and to go beyond them into the realm of space-time needs of different transport modes.
Abstract