Forum topic: What a street in a Quieter Neighbourhood might look like

I’m told the design started from the common sense start point of where the Council left the workshops, ie with the street seeing either Modal Filtered or Point No Entry traffic. As the debate between street residents has homed in on this aspect it has been seen as practicable, on that point at least. The discussion of Quieter Neighbourhood / calmer and safer street life intra the street, its key purpose, continues.
The author is a Master of The British Association of Landscape Industries, indeed their 2016 UK prize winner. However both parties could doubtless learn from the rapid fire common sense approach to issues shining out from the Lakes Estate - again.
Attached is a good example of residents looking to work together on this very subject. Pro-active, collaborative, helpful, open. I’m sure there’s a lot to learn and benefit from.

The part of Walthamstow Karl highlights is nothing like the Estate or any other substantial part of Palmers Green. It was originally developed in Victorian times, built to house what in that era would have been called the skilled working class, artisans and the like. The streets are significantly narrower and the housing denser.

Typical of the era, there are small squares, corner shops and other small retail clusters. Gardens were just small yards for utilitarian activities such as doing the washing, maintaining tools and accessing the toilet. Privacy wasn’t considered that important and much life took place on the streets. And pretty rough it was too.
I can see why some might want to reinvent this, but rather more refined and for the modern relevant world.

Despite all this 6,000 people signed a petition calling for the closed off roads to be reopened, which for one London Borough, perhaps with respondents concentrated in the most affected part is quite astonishing and perhaps shows a council bulldozing through a policy, popular with an elite few.

http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/15091979.6_000_people_call_on_Sadiq_Khan_to_reopen_roads_closed_by_Mini_Holland/?ref=mr&lp=13

Back to the Edwardian Lakes Estate, build for an aspirational lower middle class. Of course, it is unlikely the designers imagined or planned that one day there would be a car parked in front of every house. That came in the interwar period. But, the streets are certainly laid out to facilitate passing traffic and delivery vehicles and there is ample room for private cars, even if that was not the intention.

Generously proportioned houses and large gardens meant people could live comfortably in privacy. You chose who you would socialise with and would make sure all the family was smartly dressed in public. Since then, personal privacy has become an even more highly valued asset.

With wide pavements walking is easy and safe. I cannot help feeling that a small number of people are imagining a non-existent problem. Even though there is some nuisance issue with the speed of traffic much of it could be generated by locals

As far as “Quieter Neighbourhoods” goes, the official term “residential cells is more apposite.

Karl refers to the design workshops and the two options presented at the second one, supposedly based on what residents asked for at the first, road closures or width restrictions.

This is most definitely not what most residents were calling for. At the first workshop very few supported this idea. Road closures seems to be an agenda promoted by council officers supported by a few activists
I for one like the idea of making the roads bendy to slow traffic, but, there does not appear to be a practical way to make this happen without a significant loss of parking. All the personal injury RTAs in recent years have been at junctions, so to make the roads safer, junction treatments are all that are necessary.

The problem we have on our residential streets is not 'non-existent'. There is a very real sense that even on streets that are purely residential, drivers have priority. Our road in Palmers Green is used a cut-through by people doing short local journeys in their cars who often exceed the speed limit in their haste to cut out the lights. It is not therefore possible for elderly people to cross the road, for children to play on their own street, or for anyone but the most assertive to feel safe on a bicycle. I'm sorry, but that is wrong. That is a real problem.

The Dutch addressed this by creating 'Woonerfs' or living streets where the design clearly signalled to drivers that people on foot, on bikes or at play took precedence. It is now a Dutch principle that roads have to be classed as one of three types, 'access' being the usual type for a residential road, and on these roads clear priority is given to people over traffic. Cars are 'guests', not rulers, as we see on our streets. The same thing has been acheived in Walthamstow by the use of modal filters, preventing any through traffic in a given residential area, and this has only resulted in a mild increase in traffic on main roads, as much of it has 'evaporated' rather than being displaced. No surprise there - on streets without through traffic but just residents leaving/entering, it is blissfully easy to walk, cycle and play. Children do now spontaneously play outdoors now on those streets.

Conclusion: we need the quieter neighbourhoods, we need them to be radical, we need them to priorities people, especially the most vulnerable, over motorised traffic.

It seems the original approach for Quieter Neighbourhoods, one very clearly communicated at every public meeting, that the council would be “hands off” but instead have ideas come forward from local residents via workshops and other channels based on street-specific challenges may no longer be the final way forward. But that said, the second workshop had started to generate a wider pan-area understanding of mutual issues and their reverberations across almost all street representatives, and the Council did go away with requests for pilots to stop all rat-running on a number of our streets, including but I can’t say limited to: Devonshire, Old Park, Amberley, St Georges, Burford and I believe Grovelands. Meadway were also very much in that frame as a Southgate 5-ways bypass, while Selbourne sought a mid-point closure. There was a small minority alternate view, as is the case on most local matters.

Totally agree with Colin.

BTW. Have just spent 5 minutes standing at the entrance of Devonshire Road. In that time five vehicles entered. One per minute. None of them going too fast, not even the BMW. And none was a bicycle.

One of these five was a shopper who parked in the bay outside the security equipment shop. Some of the other drivers may well have been residents in the street. What reasonable person could resent them?

To me, that not does not seem to be a lot, right next to town centre shops and taking the location into account the problem appears to be exaggerated out of all proportion, though I expect it will become real when the cycle lanes works starts in that part of PG.

Drivers don’t have priority on the street, only on the carriageway, along with cyclists. Pedestrians have a wide pavement, albeit in dire need of renovation to use.
What you should all be asking is why there is so much new housing development beside the A406, where there really is an awful lot of traffic? That area needs greening, not concreting.

By all means have a raised entrance to strengthen the priority pedestrians already have there. But, leave the rest alone. History has shown that radical solutions to non-existent or vastly exaggerated problems make matters worse, not better.

Basil, I know as well as you, it wasn't scientific, but a simple illustration. But, as a local, I would bet my bottom dollar it is not untypical. If there is a traffic sensor in Devonshire Road, I will put an FOI request for the data to be released as soon as possible, once the survey has been completed.