In 1987, the English Historic Towns Forum was formed to promote and reconcile prosperity and conservation in historic towns. By 1995, over 50 towns were members of the Forum, represented through their local authorities. One of the Forum's initiatives has been to promote a more environmentally sensitive and higher quality approach to the design of traffic measures in historic towns. Four pilot projects, comprising the introduction of traffic management and calming measures, have been introduced in the `Historic Core Zones' of Bury St Edmunds, Halifax, Lincoln and Shrewsbury. The schemes aimed to be effective in meeting their traffic management and calming objectives while also achieving a significant improvement in the townscape in those areas, by using higher quality design and materials and minimising the use of visually intrusive features such as road signs, markings and road humps. The first two phases of a scheme on a busy route in Shrewsbury town centre are the subject of this report. The main components of the scheme are a narrowed carriageway with widened footways, less obtrusive signing, frequent pedestrian crossovers, and bays for buses, deliveries, taxis and disabled drivers. Stone surfacing of various types is a major feature. Monitoring of vehicle speeds, traffic flows, pedestrian and parking activity has been undertaken, together with surveys of public opinions of the scheme. The report presents the results of this monitoring. (A)
Abstract