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Thursday, October 14, 2010
Carpet patterns final
Here are the various designs for the road carpets C1 to C5, showing position of planters and cycle racks. Each design varies slightly in order for the repeat to work out just right, and for yellow lines to fall in the right place as required by Thames Valley Police and Oxford City Works. Note that Carpet C1 will need to be substantially repaired following the city's patching, and the retro-reflective beading needs restoration as it did not adhere as it should have (we have since worked out how to fix this, some trouble was caused by rain and moisture).
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6 comments:
This project is both dangerous, futile and downright irritating. I cite the following examples:
The fact that car owning residents have destroyed the pavement by lowering the entrance to accept their cars yet leaving in between raised and difficult to walk along. It is the pavement that needs attention not the road. No wheelchair could go along it due to it's camber and uneven surface. The residents are effectively forcing able and disabled people into the road and into the path of traffic.
Perhaps the car owning residents would consider reinstating the pavement and parking their cars somewhere else? Now that would really cut the traffic in this road. Are they willing to do that? No, as they are all hypocrites.
The fact that a taxi driver nearly ran over a child playing in the road even though she was wearing a bright red coat because she her form was momentarily broken up by the patterns in the road. I was in the taxi at the time and she was far more visible on the contrasting black section of road.
The fact it does not work once a driver has been down the road once and is familiar with this route.
The fact that access is denied to delivery vehicles and that virtually every weekend and that non car owning residents are forced to collect groceries from the end of the road even though they pay for it to be delivered to their doors. I do not have a car unlike most of the residents on Beechcroft road. Again, do you see the hypocrisy of this scheme when carried out by resident car owners?
This project smacks of people with nothing significant to concern themselves with. I would suggest that you look around at the wider world as your time would be better spent being concerned with serious problems such as stoning women to death in Iran, the plight of children in Darfur and other deprived regions of Africa or even the homeless on the streets of Oxford.
For god's sake grow up!
In contrast to the posting by “Anonymous”, here are some real facts.
Amongst the residents and other volunteers who actually created the scheme, there were at least a dozen non-car owners.
“Anonymous” also made a claim (and tried to pass if off as a fact) that drivers only slow down on their first drive through the scheme, after which time it becomes ineffective. Curiously, this “fact” was posted on the day the planters were being installed, 24 hours before the completed scheme first opened to traffic.
Yes, BCR suffers from a horribly pavement, ruined by cars parking in gardens and vans hopping the kerb. I trust that "Anonymous" will now join the decade-long campaign to secure their restoration. I'll be disappointed if "Anonymous" turns out to be satisfied with merely ranting from a computer keyboard with no intention of actually doing anything themselves, as I'll have wasted my time responding to nothing more than a source of human exhaust fumes.
Indeed, there are many serious problems out there, perhaps more serious than reclaiming public space from the cars, even if cars do manage to kill and maim hundreds of pedestrians, cyclists, and children nationwide. If "Anonymous" is a property owner on BCR, my research suggests that the value of their property will rise by around 10% simply as a result of the “futile” traffic-calming installation (they rise from 10-58% in Homezones across the UK). If just half of Anonymous’ property windfall is given to charities working to stop women getting stoned in Iran or assisting deprived regions in Africa, this could make a substantial difference. Please could “Anonymous” make a posting here to let others know if he or she will actually puts his or her money where his or her mouth is?
I'm proud to live amongst the people "Anonymous" derides as "hypocrites". Amongst the hypocritical residents who created the installation are people who work for Oxfam, homelessness charities, the National Health Service, housing associations, University environmental research departments, Samaritans, etc etc. Most of them inherited a street where the front gardens were ripped out in the 1980's and 1990's in response to Oxfordshire County Council's policy of "clearing the streets". The only front-garden foliage ripped out to make way for car parking in the 2000's was done by one of the few households that chooses not to join the residents’ association.
I'd like to see more discussion on this blog, even if it is ingorant ranting. However, ranters will need to do their research, or at least read the blog a bit more carefully, because if their facts stink, they'll hear from me. If they ridicule or throw insults at my beloved neighbours, they will already have made online asses of themselves and there will be no need to insult them back.
Love to all,
Roadwitch
What a load of bullshit this scheme is. It distracts drivers that travel down this road. I know this as a fact as I have driven down the road.
I've also seen the papers that were submitted supporting this scheme and they show that there have been zero (that is none what so ever) injury accidents in this street in the last 10 years. It also points out that when surveyed the trafic in the street was modest and travelled at moderate speed. How is the scheme meant to reduce an accident rate that is already at 0, it's an impossible task and a complete waste of £10,000. In this financial climate that is a complete waste of money.
If work is to be done it should be done to national road standards, ie Raised curbs should be put around items. Deformable posts with proper reflectors should be used to lessen the risk of any accident and any injury that may be a part of it.
National standard road markings should also not be messed about with. They're standard for a reason.
Hi
Thanks for the feedback "Anonymous" - interesting, two comments now from "Anonymous". I recommend you check out Sustrans' Quality Streets project - http://www.quality-streets.org.uk/ and the wealth of information on the Department for Transport Manual for Streets site - http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/sustainable/manforstreets/- the world is changing and roads are changing. Beech Croft Rd worked very closely with county and city council road engineers on safety issues.
I drive, walk, cycle and live on Beech Croft Rd and it's working out very well so far. A number of comments in different places have said drivers will be "distracted" by the features. This is ludicrous - I guess your recommendation would be to build 20 foot high white, featureless walls on the sides of all roads and maybe a divider down the middle of the road too - we wouldn't want drivers "distracted" by cars coming the other direction and maybe a roof so drivers aren't distracted by birds, planes and other things in the sky (like the sun, for example).
Yours - not anonymously.
First, I'm not the first anonymous, it was just the simplest way of putting my comment on here, but to answer you points:
1) Sustrans have done other projects elsewhere but each and every one of them has raised curbs around there features, check their website. I would agree their other projects are quality, yours is not, it's a mess. None of the other projects have messed with the standard road markings, nor have they placed objects directly on the road surface. It's going to be fun to see what happens to your cars if we have snow and ice as we did last year/ earlier this year. With no raised curbs there's nothing to stop you sliding right into all those obstructions you've places in the road. I hope you've got good insurance as your going to have to pay for the damage you cause.
As for your white wall Straw Man argument. For the stupid out there to suggest that something cannot possibly distracting by saying that there are other things in the world that are distracting and you can cope with them is stupid. We are talking about items directly placed in the road and a road surface that has been painted in many odd colours. These patterns not only serve to camouflage items and people in the road but are distracting as they take your attention away from the act of driving and place it on trying to work out what the hell the patters are trying to tell you about the road. So far the only thing I've been able to work out from the patterns is that a load of at best misguided people have been let loose with paint on a public road. As I said before there is a reason that public roads are marked the way they are, it tells the driver about the road, your scheme removes those vital cues. The things you mention as distractions are common place in every street in the world, the whole point is that your scheme is different and thus distracting.
Curiously, there are no raised curbs to stop motorists sliding into the obstructions parked the road known as cars. So why fuss about a plastic planter, which is far more forgiving and lighter in a crash? Is there a good explanation for this duplicity?
Yes. I call it "Vehicle Denial"--the inability to see vehicles as obstructions or their effect on the visual environment. Several people have exhibited symptoms of V.D. during the project's development; they fretted about the effect of any changes on the Victorian atmosphere of BCR while simultaneously having a large motorcar blocking the view out their Victorian bay window.
Readers may be interesting in Googling what's been going on in NYC. I was just there in November. Times Square and Herald Square are both transformed. Much of the roadspace was recently reclaimed by the city authorities for pedestrians. How? They placed stone-effect fibreglass planters right on the road surface. No kerbs, no signs. They also used some road paint. Seems we're catching a wave on BCR.
Re insurance, the County Council is legally liable for this scheme following a legal "adoption" procedure in November. They are more than happy that the scheme complies with the Road Traffic Regulation Act of 1992. In some cases, the safety standards of "Beech Croft" are twice the legal requirement.
Other schemes in the DIY Streets scheme have unkerbed items in the roadspace (Clapton Terrace, amongst others). Our tenacious correspondent seems not to have bothered to get their facts right. I do hope any other readers are not so easily taken in by this nonsense.
If there’s a need for a kerb at all, it’s a kerb on this person’s behaviour online. I’ve heard enough from our correspondent to pick up the whiff of a time-sink here, and I know that stink all too well. I suggest if this person actually cares about their street, rather than spout prejudice and ignorance, they attend the next street meeting and get real-time feedback on their opinions. I suspect they might behave in a more grown-up fashion when not hiding behind an e-mask.
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