Currently in Bruges for a long weekend break. I asked our hotelier why there appeared to be such harmony betwixt motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. He told me that a new law was passed 4 years ago. Even if a pedestrian dressed in a clown outfit jumped off the pavement in front of your car shouting "ner ner ner-ner-ner", it is your insurance that pays the bill. If a cyclist in a deranged fit rode up a one way street the wrong way and collided with your car, your insurance pays the bill.
There are bikes everywhere coming at you from all directions, but nobody swipes at them with briefcases, brollies or fists like they do in London. By and large, cyclists seem to behave well and, in return, respect is returned by other road users.
Lessons to be learned?
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Yes - there was talk of this in the UK a few years ago. Imagine the scope for spurious claims though.
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The benelux countries have been at the forefront of fairly long running experiments in a concept called "shared space". It has been the idea of the recently deceased Hans Monderman in Holland. A significant number of Dutch towns now have town centres with no traffic lights, practically no signage and with a common surface for all road users - no separate pavements for pedestrians. Effectively cars, bicycles, pedestrians etc have to manouever through by "negotiation". No one person has priority and eye contact and awareness are everything.
The concept is very current in the urban design/enlightened highway engineer fraternity and on a piece meal basis some of its principles are being introduced here. The biggest difficulty is with the blind and partially sighted pedestrian and their representatives. Still be prepared to see more of it in the UK as the planners and road designers experiment.
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"Woonerf" principle, I think, after the town where it was first tried?
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Piecemeal implementation does not cut it. In Holland its done full scale, where the entire town/village centre is de cluttered and no right of way given, and part of an entire transport policy where a bypass road is built (or designated / improved) and park and ride train/bus/cycle link.
Where its done completely like that it works wonderfully.
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My experience in some major Dutch towns is that it is not "open space" as such - the cyclists and pedestrians are seperated to a certain extent.
Quite frankly I can't see it working over here, firstly because everyone is so rude and ignorant, and secondly because we have a very strong "blame" culture and this would be a green light for massive claims......
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Its already happened here, the Home Zone concept in Wythenshaw I think without Googling.
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There are two different things being discussed here (I work in the urban design sector and read/speak on it regularly)
Homezones - these are the original Woonerf idea for residential streets with generally a single surface, planting and car parking arranged so that the vehicles do not dominate the street. Low speed limit and generally on very low traffic roads in residential enclaves. Has had an initial set of examples built or retrofitted into existing residential neighbourhoods. Interest in them is dying out as many seem often to achieve very little other than creating garish mad arrangements of paving blocks. Interest now is more in designing residential streets which are less overtly traffic calmed but through fundamental design are more amenable to non car users.
Central town/village shared surfaces with sign free public realm. This is a more recent phenomenon based on the Monderman led examples from Netherlands eg Drachten. The idea is much more wideranging focussing on removing alot of the unnecessary signage in town centres, removing "cattle pen" barriers herding pedestrians around, removing of main road priorties and creating a single surface (sometimes delineated by bollards to give partially sighted people some helpful markers.
Difficulty is that in the UK there are decades of current (bad) practice to get over. a generation or two of transport engineers raised on an infamous document DB 32 that has effectively caused almost all of the car dominated highway design in town centres and also has led each town centre to look similar.
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I'd have thought that this sharing arrangement would cause problems in Belgium, given how good their beer is...
Make mine a Hommelbier...
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>>>>>>>>I'd have thought that this sharing arrangement would cause problems in Belgium, given how good their beer is>>>>>>>
Funny enough, had two bottles of beer in a bar overlooking the main square in Bruges Saturday night, and felt my legs disconnecting from my body. Squinted at the label and it was 11% (Kasteel Brown by the way, and very nice it was too)
I think there is a cultural thing which is unlikely to make it work here. The Belgians, along with the Dutch have a long history of cycling, kids cycle to school at a young age, people cycle side by side and chatter without causing offence to impatient motorists, even seen people cycle whilst holding an unmbrella and chatting on a mobile "Look, no hands Jans".
I just had to drive off Eurotunnel train onto M20 to realise it had no chance here.
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Difficulty is that in the UK there are decades of current (bad) practice to get over. a generation or two of transport engineers raised on an infamous document DB 32 that has effectively caused almost all of the car dominated highway design in town centres and also has led each town centre to look similar.
I would disagree with that, It seems more and more was/is being done in towns to inhibit the use of private vehicles by councils etc.
I do think that the Homezones and shared space ideas are excellent, I have seen them working in Holland and thought then that they were great - When we had a bit of a problem on the road I live in I approached the Highways authority here about maybe doing something similar and they looked at me like I was an alien!!! No forward thinking here thats the problem, rather then working a solution around what you have (People, bikes and cars) they would rather try and eliminate cars seeing them as the problem!!!!!
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