Re-imagining our urban streets
Stephen Wood has recently retired following a career as a Chartered Transport Planner working in consultancy, academia (part-time) and Northern Ireland central government. Latterly he has worked closely with local and regional planners to prepare transport plans and policies that seek to deliver sustainable and equitable towns and cities across Northern Ireland. He has been a strong supporter of professional institutions as a neutral space to exchange and debate ideas.
We’ve all heard and possibly used the phrase ‘re-imagining’ and we all are signed up to ‘vision-led’ planning. And now, in Northern Ireland, we have a chance individually and corporately to take a bold step towards re-imagining our urban streets. Helping to take them back as ‘places’ rather than merely traffic routes; reducing collisions, increasing community interaction and pedestrian footfall and encouraging walking, wheeling and cycling as modes of transport, improving health and well-being.
As professionals we surely recognise that whilst private cars play a huge role in personal mobility and providing access to modern day essentials, there is no doubt that they have over-run many urban environments. This is no more true than in Northern Ireland where a relatively dispersed settlement pattern and ‘hollowed-out’ town and city centres with extended suburban housing and out of town retail and employment has perpetuated car dependency and a level of ‘motonormativity’ in policy-making.
So what if there was a single policy lever which is cheap, simple to engineer and implement and proven to produce positive results – should we not be clamouring for its use? What if it was true that it could make our urban streets:
- immediately safer for all road users including children and adults walking, wheeling and cycling?;
- immediately less dominated by vehicles accelerating and braking?; and
- In the longer term, places where more people socialise and choose to walk and cycle improving their personal health and reducing air pollution from private cars?
Well, we now know from detailed monitoring that there is such an effective policy lever and it produces those immediate effects; in 12 months it has reduced urban road casualties in Wales by 26% and average speeds have dropped by almost 4mph. The longer term effects are borne out of European experience and are consistent with established policies. This is not a risky policy lever to pull, Northern Ireland would simply be keeping pace with Wales, Scotland and many local authorities in England and cities in Europe.
All that’s necessary is to set the default urban speed limit to 20mph.
With urban default 20mph limits in place our jobs as professional ‘place-makers’ becomes so much easier; we will have resisted ‘motonormativity’ thinking and have set a new more rational and objective basis for considering how to balance how public space is used in our urban areas. We will be cementing the principles of DfI’s own Place and Movement Framework promoted in the Transport Strategy that foresees 20mph limits on roads and streets where people walking and wheeling come first in the hierarchy of users.
The Department for Infrastructure’s road Speed Limits Review is consulting on options throughout Northern Ireland, including restricted roads currently limited to 30mph. We have a chance to take a practical step towards vision-led planning and send a clear message – that 20mph is the appropriate limit in urban areas in cities, towns and villages where vehicles and pedestrians mix.
