13th December 2006

Stroud Town Council have agreed to fund a study into a radical new scheme to remove Stroud's traffic lights, signs, road markings and barriers in an effort to reduce accidents.

Front page of the Stroud News and Journal covered the story writing:

Advocates of the Shared Space initiative believe drivers proceed more carefully on roads stripped of all but the most essential markings because they are forced to slow down to navigate around pedestrians.

The scheme has also been shown to improve traffic flow in the Dutch towns of Makkinga and Drachten, where it originated in the 1970s. More recently, it has been introduced in Kensington's Exhibition Road, where accident rates have fallen by almost 40 per cent since the £35 million project began.

At their meeting on Monday, Stroud town councillors agreed to commit £5,000 to fund a study into the feasibility of bringing it to Stroud town centre. They are also hoping Stroud District Council will contribute a further £5,000 towards the research.

The decision followed a presentation about the scheme by Stroud district councillor Sarah Lunnon (Green, Valley) last week. "It takes away some of the predictability of the road so drivers have to think about what they are doing," she said.

"This makes people automatically reduce their speed because they don't feel safe. People don't drive at 50mph round a camp site, even when there are no signs forbidding it. You don't have to tell people exactly what to do all the time - they will work it out for themselves."

The initiative also has advantages for drivers, who will no longer suffer the frustration of waiting at traffic lights when there are no pedestrians in sight if it is introduced.

"It's one of the few traffic engineering methods where everyone wins," said Mark McArthur-Christie from the Association of British Drivers. "If you go to Drachten you see people in the cafes sitting in the road in a chair chatting to drivers as they go past. It has a wonderful humanising effect."

See Green party's "Better Streets for Stroud District" reports here. And article in Resurgence by Cllr Philip Booth here.