Painting the Streets as a Community Project

I've just been contacted by one of the people who have set up the website for a street-painting initiative in St Paul, Minnesota, inspired by a pilot project in Portland, Oregon. They have formalised the process of painting their own streets, with full acquiescence of the local authorities. They use ordinary domestic latex paints and maintain it all themselves by formal 10-year agreement with the local authorities.

Although the designs themselves are a far cry from what we've been bouncing around, their methods and experience could be extremely useful if we need or we choose to go down the community painting project route rather than the professional route. This site is a very thorough and useful resource, complete with sample agreements, notices, and a tried-and-tested procedure for getting good results, all of which could have been very useful in making the most of our first paint trial two years ago!

http://www.paintthepavement.org/

On-street residential cycle racks in Hackney

An existing on-street cycle parking place in Hackney. It does have build-outs to protect it, but at least there's something of a precedent in a UK residential street.

http://www.hackney-cyclists.org.uk/parking/

Thermoplastic stencils

The stencil pattern in Providence RI is in fact a pattern done in a thermoplastic product.

The company (based in the US, but active around the world--including the UK, Spain, Canada, Australia, Israel) www.integratedpaving.com

Their products basically divide into two groups. "Streetprint" is more of an imitation brick and paving sprayed through a stencil, leaving the grey tarmac visible in the gaps where the rendering would be. "Duratherm" is in effect the opposite...a thermoplastic stencil that suggests colour 'rendering' and leaves the tarmac to show through, making 'bricks'of the tarmac.

Click links to see:
Standard Duratherm patterns

The project gallery, a mixture of Duratherm and Streetprint treatments

This product must be professionally applied using specialist machinery, so it's a fairly far cry from DIY, and pricier. However, it would certainly last a whole lot longer than any paint.

Plantation Road Coloured Surface

I had a good look at Plantation Road's coloured stone road surface. It's ever so slightly warmer a colour than the standard tarmac, but you'd be forgiven for not noticing it's a different colour at all. Nothing as dramatic a difference as Banbury Road, and even that's not gone far enough to create a 'room effect' in my opinion.

"Victorian" Cycle Rack, version 2

This is version 2 of the "Victorian" cycle rack.

It's composed of architectural salvage I already have.

The OCC has already flagged a concern about the tall archway on one end, so this will either have to be positioned along the gutter side of the road (instead of closer to the centre of the street) or just done away with altogether.

Structurally, the current design needs to have an arch in order to be accessible to cyclists parking inside the two railings, and as the OCC concern was initially about the stability of the stand, I will lobby for it to stay and design more stabilising features. The arch is the old Woodstock Road Baptist Church archway I bought when it was removed a few years ago.

Would the hamlets that include the other two cycle racks prefer some sort of a Victorian salvage constructed cycle rack rather than the standard 3-hoop design?

Click on the image below to see it enlarged.

Road Paint Patterns

It seems these three paint patterns are the candidates for road-painting: "Carpet", "Victorian Tile" (2 different layouts here), and "Fan". All three schemes involve a colour combination of sandstone and terra-cotta, closely matching the colours used in the Victorian tiles in front of many BCR homes.

We'll take a vote on whether we want to use more than one pattern along the street (if hamlets have differing preferences), or if consistency is a majority concern, perhaps we can settle on just one pattern.

PLEASE NOTE that both the Victorian Tile options are shown here as solid colours, where in fact they would need to be applied as smaller squares (similar to 'Carpet') to allow for easy maintenance.

Below
1. "VICTORIAN TILE" OPTION A
2. "VICTORIAN TILE" OPTION B
3. "CARPET"
4. "FAN"










Please see the posting on the paint test issue below.

Road Paint Testing

How many residents would be happy to proceed with a road-paint treatment (subject to agreeing a pattern) based only on artist's impressions? And how many residents feel uneasy about progressing towards any road-painting without some sort of a trial? We dont have any accurate numbers for this, but the paint-test issue came up as the main concern at the January street meeting.

A paint trial presents itself as a sensible way forward for a number of reasons. It would be useful as well as reassuring to assess how effectively (or not) the whole combination of racks/trees/paint works to create the 'room effect' in the street space.

But before the BCRA were to commit to conducting a paint test though, we'd need to consider this:

1. FUNDING FOR THE TEST. We dont have figures for this yet, but at present there's no existing funding for it from Esme Fairbairn/Sustrans nor from the OCC. Existing funds from both these sources still fall short of the funding we need to pave and kerb the street and install the DIY bits. Additional testing funds will have to be found, and additional volunteer time will need to go into campaigning for this.

2. REMOVABILITY. A worthwhile test, using the exact materials and pattern, could be quite difficult to remove entirely, just as removed grafitti is often hard to completely iradicate. Tennis court paint might prove to be an even more formidable removal challenge. Removal would also incur still more expense, both for materials and labour. Would we as a street prefer a test even if it meant possibly living with the incomplete pattern or a paint 'ghost' until the street was resurfaced?

Just thought I'd get the discussion going...

Has Your Hamlet Met Yet?

Individual hamlet meetings should be arranged by each hamlet. Please forward all modifications and tweaks to the BCR/Sustrans DIY Streets Proposal Map Draft 8 to Ted Dewan, headwitch@roadwitch.org.uk so they can be forwarded to Sustrans and OCC. Bear in mind that in the absence of any detailed comments formally agreed upon by individual hamlets, the specification of items such as cycle racks and tree planters will be the standard ones sourced by the BCRA Management Committee with the agreement and advice of OCC. For details of these items, please refer to the specification document in the LINKS section to the right (BCR_Sustrans draft 10_2 illustrated spec 3_09 lo.pdf) Specifications are subject to possible change as a result of the ongoing discussions with OCC. Paint patterns still need to be decided upon and as of March 2009, no single hamlet has put forward a description of their preference. PLEASE MEET WITH YOUR HAMLET TO CONFIRM YOUR DESIGN PREFERENCES.

BCR/SUSTRANS DIY Streets Proposal Map 10.2

Here's the map (10.2) that took into account the comments from the all-street meeting at the end of January. It's the map that was forwarded to Oxfordshire County Council. The map is mainly concerned with the footprint of each of the items, with the details and spec coming into focus as different hamlets discuss and fine tune their preferences. You can view this map at a larger size by clicking on the thumbnail below. The latest specification document that accompanies this map is also available in pdf format. You can find this spec doc on the following linked page on our old Google Groups site. If it doesn't appear near the top, then click on the heading 'sort by date' at the top of the dates column on the right side of the window: BCR/SUSTRANS DIY STREETS DRAFT 10.2 ILLUSTRATED SPECIFICATIONS, VERSION 03_09

You will also find a high resolution pdf copy of the BCR/SUSTRANS DIY Streets Proposal Map 10.2 on that same page.