Attempts are increasingly being made to improve safety and quality of life in rural villages by reducing the speed of through traffic. The Village Speed Control Working Group (VISP) concluded that large reductions in major road traffic speeds in villages could only be achieved through comprehensive traffic calming schemes. Changes to legislation, together with special authorisation procedures, now enable local authorities in the UK to install schemes incorporating a range of measures. These include both vertical and horizontal deflections. The Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions' Driver Information and Traffic Management Division commissioned TRL to monitor comprehensive schemes, particularly on trunk roads with traffic flows more than about 8,000 per day and with heavy goods vehicles forming at least 10% of the flow. The paper describes the results from surveys carried out before and after the installation of traffic calming schemes on major roads. The impact on traffic flows, vehicle speeds, accidents and noise levels is presented, together with the findings from opinion surveys of local residents carried out after the introduction of schemes. In all, nine schemes across England have been studied, three of which involved horizontal/vertical deflections. Conclusions are drawn concerning the relative effectiveness of the measures used, their appropriateness in different situations, and good design principles. All of the schemes were successful in reducing speeds and where noise levels were measured, reductions were observed. However, residents were often dissatisfied with some of the measures and their effect on the local noise climate. Possible reasons are discussed.
Abstract