APROBACIÓN, SI PROCEDE

The role of urban design and land-use planning in providing safe and accessible infrastructure for older road users has not, in the past been fully integrated with road safety policy. According to Ewing and Dumbaugh 2009) much conventional transport planning begins from the premise of identifying bottle-necks in the infrastructure and looking for ways of alleviating them. Once this need is identified,

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safety is addressed by designing improvements with higher design speeds in mind, on the basis that higher design speeds will lead to better safety performance.

This approach can be traced back in large part to the 1963 Buchannan Report, “Traffic in Towns” (Buchanan 1963). Its central conclusion was that traffic movement should be segregated from social and leisure activities and pedestrian movement. However, according to Hamilton-Baillie (2008b), widespread implementation of measures to separate motorised and non-motorised traffic has led to unanticipated negative consequences:

“The need for underpasses, bridges, traffic signals, barriers and controls, implicit in achieving segregation, has reduced accessibility for non-motorised traffic. Isolation, inequalities and a fragmented and degraded public realm were outcomes not anticipated by Buchanan”

The overall effects are difficult to quantify, and as a result, less is known about the intangible aspects of urban road design (for example, the inter-connections between the environment and health, the informal use of public spaces, walking) than is known about the tangible ones (motorised traffic volumes, road accident casualties). This may be a partial explanation for the design focus on throughput of motorised traffic, rather than the quality and attractiveness of urban space.

In addition, to presenting physical barriers to the movement of pedestrians and cyclists, separation of infrastructure imposes more nebulous barriers connected to people’s perceptions of the environment. According to Buchanan the engineering

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required for efficient movement of large volumes of motorised traffic reduces the visual attractiveness of the urban landscape. He describes the average UK streetscape as being;

“dominated by standardising features associated with conventional traffic engineering. White lines, yellow lines, zig zags and garish cross-hatching…traffic signals, road signs and steel pedestrian guard rails”

Stating that the outcome of this is often

“isolating small residual spaces for pedestrians from each other and from the traffic”

According to Ewing and Dumbaugh (2009) “the empirical evidence on traffic safety strongly suggests that safety and mobility may be conflicting goals, at least in urban areas.”

It could be argued therefore that policy-makers have deliberately prioritised pedestrian safety and driver mobility (as demonstrated by separation of motorised and non-motorised traffic and higher design speeds) over pedestrian mobility (as demonstrated by allocating road space to pedestrians and leisure activity). Possible explanations for this include -

1) The case for designing for throughput of motorised traffic, as stated in the Buchanan report, being more coherently and persuasively made than the case for designing for the mobility of non-motorised traffic.

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2) The relative ease with which variables connected to vehicle traffic can be collected and verified compared to variables connected to vulnerable road users and/or mobility.

3) The emotive aspects of road death, making safety a more “newsworthy” policy objective than the more intangible and nebulous benefits associated with mobility.

4) The economic imperative to reduce congestion, keep traffic moving and avoid the well-documented costs of traffic fatalities and injuries. These costs vary according to the precise calculation method adopted, but are reckoned to be in the region of £1.6 million for each fatality (Spackman et al. (2011).

On the other hand, the possible negative consequences of prioritising casualty reduction and vehicle throughput include;

 Premature deaths resulting from air quality issues generated by vehicle emissions. According to the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (2010) these amount to nearly 29,000 deaths in the UK, or a loss of life expectancy from birth of approximately 6 months.

 Decreases in the use of “benign” modes such as walking and cycling.

The notion that separation of pedestrians from traffic is the best or only way to promote safety is not universally accepted. Other approaches which aim to provide more of an equal balance between safety and mobility, and the needs of pedestrians and motorists may not necessarily lead to less safe conditions.

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“Shared Space” is an idea which has been promoted as an alternative to segregation.

According to Kaparias at al (2012)

“Shared space is an approach to improving streets and places where both pedestrians and vehicles are present, with layouts related more to the pedestrian scale and with features encouraging drivers to assume priority having been reduced or removed. It creates a more pedestrian-friendly environment than conventional street layouts, which are based on greater segregation between pedestrians and vehicles, while at the same time introducing uncertainty… leading to lower vehicle speeds and improved safety”

In the UK, examples of “Shared Space” schemes can be found in Kensington (illustrated in fig 5, below) and Coventry (fig 6).

Fig 5; Shared Space, Kensington, London Source: I Bike London

85 Fig 6; Shared Space, Coventry

The idea behind Shared Space is to better integrate different types of traffic, without the need to extensive segregation, engineering measures or signage, allowing users to form their own strategies for appropriate behaviour, based on perceptions of risk. According to Hamilton-Baillie (2008a), this results in a situation where traffic is integrated into a public space without loss of safety, accessibility or mobility.

Ewing and Dumbaugh (2009) believe that,

“contrary to accepted theory, at least in dense urban areas, less-“forgiving” design treatments—such as narrow lanes, traffic-calming measures, and street trees close to the roadway—appear to enhance a roadway’s safety performance when compared to more conventional roadway designs. The reason for this apparent anomaly may be that less-forgiving designs provide drivers with clear information “

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They conclude that a better understanding is required of the interactions between design, travel behaviour, safety and mobility.

2.15 Conclusions

This chapter has looked at existing literature which examines the related issues of safety and mobility for older drivers and older pedestrians, drawing conclusions about the key issues, appropriate methodologies for assessment, and the policy trade-offs that have been made in designing urban road infrastructure solutions.

A number of factors have been identified which promote or hinder the safety of older road users in urban areas. Different methodologies for assessing the degree to which urban infrastructure meets the safety needs of older road users have been assessed, with a thematic inspection of infrastructure selected as the appropriate method for the aims and objectives of this study. The methodology will be elaborated in detail in Chapter 3, but will incorporate a subjective assessment of driver workload using an engineering-based measure. For pedestrians the thematic inspection will highlight known risk factors for older pedestrians, many of which relate to road crossing.

A number of factors which promote or hinder the mobility of older road users in urban areas have also been identified, with infrastructure audit also found to be the most suitable methodology for the purposes of this study.

At first glance, safety and mobility and the needs of motorised and non-motorised traffic do indeed appear to be competing ends, at least in urban areas where the

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complex needs of different users must be met. The traditional approach to mobility – that of prioritising throughput of motorised traffic, with safety catered for by grade separation of different types of traffic – has been critiqued. Alternative solutions have been presented, and their potential to balance competing needs in a more optimal way has been discussed.

The following chapter describes Performance Indicators, setting out the theoretical arguments for their use, the features they should possess and their potential to aid analysis of the safety and mobility issues encountered by older road users in urban areas.

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