New Streetlights

Now that most of the lights are installed and running, you might want the details of the person to give your feedback to:

Cliff Sadler
Southern Electric Contracting Ltd
1 Woodstock Road
Yarnton, Kidlington
Oxford OXON OX5 1PR
Tel No. 01865 845866
cliff.sadler@sec.eu.com

Also, to Jean Fooks who helped change the spec of these lights from the normal 'peachy' spec to pure white: jean.fooks@oxfordshire.gov.uk

It would be terrific if individual residents who are pleased with the white light and the repositioned poles could write directly to Cliff Sadler so Cliff and the crews 'feel the love'.

Comments I've heard so far have been very positive, although a few people have felt a lowering of the intensity of the lights might be preferable. If you do have a suggestion for improvement, perhaps it might be best to wait until the DIY Streets Scheme is in place and we can see how the whole thing works together.

The team leader working on the street said it really does make a big difference to his department to hear good feedback, since all they tend to get is complaints. Please use this blog for a discussion on the new streetlights rather than posting them directly to committee members so that everyone can read them, including Southern Electric and Oxfordshire County Council.

Here's one of the old lamps going down:

"Smiley" gets a lift...

...and is slowly laid to rest




Goodbye to an old friend (but we wont miss the evil orange glow).


Bottom photo is the far less charming but effective and white-lighting Philips Iridium.

BCRA Safety Audit Passed/Consultation

The BCR/Sustrans DIY Streets Proposal v 10.3 passed the Oxfordshire County Council's first safety audit in late September. The next step is to have an official consultation sent to all the residents. This consultation will also include the raised table across the end of the road on the Banbury Road end of BCR.

It is especially important for EVERYONE to return this consultation. If you are supportive or even marginally supportive of the plan, PLEASE make sure you return this consultation in a timely fashion. It is likely that residents who do not support the scheme will let their opinions be known, and without the positive voice, the council will not be given an accurate reading from BCR.

Yes, it does seem a bit absurd for a resident-led scheme to then go to consultation to the residents from the council, but this is the protocol. A successful outcome is by no means guaranteed in the end, as unfortunately, when it comes to making changes in Oxford, no matter how positive or carefully planned, it can take just a few vociferous 'no' voices to unravel the entire process.

Whatever you think of the DIY Streets scheme, please make it a point to discuss it with your neighbours, especially if you and your neighbours dont see eye-to-eye. The BCRA committee has worked countless hours to steer this process successfully, and hear from everyone, to the point where we were worried about 'consultation fatigue'. If you are still skeptical or concerned about the scheme, and dont find an answer to your concerns on this blog or on the Google Groups site linked to it where the meeting's minutes are stored, then please make an effort to speak with a member of the BCRA committee: Mark Hull (18), Graham Bray (44), Monika Prodhan (46), Ted Dewan (37), Shirley Clark (24), Jeremy Irwin-Singer (16), or Ed Pentz (39).

First Pics of Manchester DIY Street Installation

The residents of one of our 'sister' DIY Streets, in the Manchester area, is already installing their DIY features. In this case, the features include a 'totem pole' and a planter they've created. They were working with a community artist on this scheme. For more information, see www.sustrans.org.uk

Road paint 'patch test'

BCRA has been invited to do a small 'patch test' of the road paints in preparation for the larger test. This will be done within a parking bay mainly to test the appearance of the paint on the road surface and how well the colours work, not to test its resilience or the pattern in the roadway itself. This will happen in the next few weeks and BCRA committee will be conducting it. The test will consist of a range of hand-mixed tennis-court paint colours within the terra-cotta/ochre range that may or may not appear in the larger paint test.

Child-shaped bollards help slow traffic

Just to show creative the authorites are starting to become when it comes to traffic-caliming, I thought I'd post this item from 13 August. Child-shaped bollards that give the impression they are about to cross the road are the latest attempt by a council to slow drivers as they pass local schools.

The steel mannequins cost £350 each and have been placed outside Avenue Primary School in Leicester to help enforce a 20mph speed limit.

A spokesperson for the Environmental Transport Association (ETA) said: “Any measure that highlights the importance of slow speeds outside schools is welcome. The danger faced by children is highlighted by the fact that one of these bollards has already been knocked over.”

http://www.eta.co.uk/2009/08/13/child-shaped-bollards-help-slow-traffic

Straw Bale Trial and Street Party

Road painting in Brooklyn

A friend in New York alerted me to this item. It does seem that authorised DIY road painting is starting to blossom in cities across the US. It's been going on in Portland, Ocean City, and now Brooklyn. Given its ambitions for permanence, our proposed street pattern painting is just that much further evolved. I sort of like the idea of a street in Oxford being culturally 'ahead' of Brooklyn...

Paint the Pavement With Brooklyn Students, May 15, 2009

Students from the Community Roots Charter School will be out in the street from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., working on a new mural covering the street in front of their school, and volunteers are welcome to join in. The mural painting is the joint handiwork of DOT's Urban Art Program, Livable Streets Education, and local artists and teachers. Sound unusual? It is. We're told this may be the first time NYCDOT has ever approved a pavement painting project.

While DOT isn't calling the mural a street reclamation, the spirit is similar to Portland's "intersection repair" and Ocean City's "traffic safety quilt". Those projects created can't-miss patterns for drivers to slow down and look out for people. Let's hope that tomorrow's pavement painting is the first of many.

Road-paint test-pattern

Proposal 10.3 delivered May 2009

Click on the image to open up each page of a 4-page pdf of the detailed specifications for the DIY Streets proposal as submitted to Oxfordshire County Council.

Proposal 10.3 delivered May 2009

Here's the document showing the proposed placement of the road paint patterns as well as the other DIY features. A separate document details some of the specification for the different DIY features.

Please note that, although we have decided on a theme for the road paint pattern test, it is subject to tweaking by the Oxfordshire County Council with regard to highways regulations. The pattern exhibited here is a variation on the agreed-upon "Victorian Tile" theme, although it may not represent the final appearance of the road paint test.

Street Lighting

I'm trying to find out how strongly residents of BCR and greater Summertown feel about the design and functioning of our street lights.

The existing lantern design does a miserable job of throwing nasty yellow light into our first floor windows all over Summertown, and not a great job of lighting up the pavement. Replacement lanterns are on their way in the near future, and they'll undoubtedly do a better job lighting up the streets, especially as they're going to be casting white light instead of orange or yellow.

However, the new design appearing outside Oxford's conservation area is pretty ugly.

How do people feel about this? The current lantern design characteristic of Summertown streets may do a lousy job lighting them up, but their profile is at least a bit more palatable than the proposed replacement (Philips Iridium). I'm hoping that the council will change their mind and install lanterns that do a good job of lighting the streets as well as being decent objects of street furniture in their own right.

With all the work we're doing on BCR to settle on an elegant and popular design, it seems a shame to allow the street light design to let us down and subvert the overall design quality.

Below are photos of the existing Summertown lantern and a similar more attractive lantern recently installed in Soho. The third picture is the Philips Iridium due to appear all over Summertown.

Position of 'Victorian carpet' road patterning/paint

This map shows the positions of all the features, including the road patterning/paint, of the BCR DIY streets proposal as it will go to Sustrans and then onto the OCC. It will then be included in the package the OCC will chew on for awhile before coming back to us with comments/adjustments.

Bear in mind that the amount of road patterning/paint might call for funds beyond our budget, but I'm hoping we can keep them all so as to create an effective string of 'Victorian carpets'. However, if we have to take a few out, I'll have to consider another arrangement.

If this design removed a patterned area you were hoping to have in front of your home, please understand that this particular arrangement allowed for the best symmetry along the length of the street, as well as creating s series of regular-sized 'carpets'. Where possible, the carpets have been positioned to embrace the vertical features and therefore make more convincing 'rooms'.

Please offer comments on this if you like.

Click the map to open up a hi-resolution version of the map.

Victorian Tile 2-Diamond variations

Here are some variations on the Victorian Tile road paint pattern range voted on at the BCRA meeting of 9 May 2009. Some variations include features of the "Carpet" design with the "Victorian Tile" design range. If you'd like to comment on the various versions, please refer to them by letter in your comments.

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VERSION A
The original Victoria Tile-inspired design presented on 9 May 2009:


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VERSION B
Carpet straight edging, 9-tile ochre central diamonds:


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VERSION C
Carpet straight edging, 16-tile ochre central diamonds:


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VERSION D
Carpet straight double-tile edging, 16-tile ochre central diamonds:


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VERSION E
Carpet sawtooth edging, 16-tile ochre central diamonds:


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VERSION F
Carpet sawtooth edging, 16-tile ochre central diamonds, ochre corners:


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VERSION G
Diagonal ochre-bordered edging, 16-tile ochre central diamonds:


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VERSION H
Diagonal edging, 16-tile ochre central diamonds:

Getting the hump - or two

Remember the unexpected pavement works which introduced the two yellow bobbly pavement slopes at the Banbury Road end of Beech Croft Road?
Well, according to Summertown Councillor Jean Fooks, the workmen will be returning later this year, to create a "raised entry treatment" (an extended hump or 'table'). Apparently the new Banbury Road pavement down from Summertown was always supposed to include this unexpected, but very welcome 'table' across Beech Croft Road but there was some mix-up and the table was forgotten. A 'table' is a raised area across the entrance to BCR that maintains level pavement heights all the way, and necessarily slows cars down as they go up onto the table and then down again. However, Jean informs us that Beech Croft Road will be getting a "raised entry treatment" some time soon, at both the Banbury and Woodstock Road ends of BCR, and that Thorncliffe Road is included as well.
So generally very good news for this part of Summertown. You read it here first! ...

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.

Psychological traffic calming report

In an effort to raise the quality and integrity of the discussion about road colour and its effect on traffic, here's a link to a 44 page pdf report on "Psychological Traffic Calming" prepared for the Department of Transport's Traffic Management Division by the consultants TRL LTD. It covers a number of tests done with different types of psychological traffic calming techniques, but it's specifically page 11 that I'd draw attention to.

http://groups.google.com/group/beechcroft/files

It's well illustrated, so the 44 pages go fast for those who want to study a bit more in depth. I've also set up a link to this pdf in the links column on the right side of this blog.

You will need Acrobat Reader to open this pdf file. The link I've posted here will take you to the top of the documents storage area of the old BCRA Google Groups site. The title of the report is "1_Psychological traffic calming 2005.pdf". You may need to scroll down the list of documents to find it--the list of documents seems to rearrange itself in no particular order.

New road surface possibilities

The City Council is not promising anything just yet, but there is a possibility Beech Croft Road could be resurfaced this year.
Resurfacing can mean anything from just a bit of grit and tar spread on top of the old bumpy road to a whole new inch of top surface. Obviously, we would all like the potholes at the edges filled in, provided, as people often say, it doesn't encourage cars to race down the street. But, hopefully, our range of psychological calming methods will induce less frenetic responses in drivers. This top end possibility would make the road smoother, more waterproof, and leave no potholes or rough edges. However, we might lose the three rows of setts (cobbles) at the edges, although they could re-used as part of a new dropped kerb treatment to keep the pavement flat and level all the way along (see other posts on this blog). If we were to get this Rolls Royce surface then the street's drainage would also improve, as the road surface would at last be higher than the gullies!
Another possibility is a less comprehensive resurfacing - a cheap job. But this still gives us a great opportunity to change the colour of the road if we wish to: the road doesn't have to be Henry Ford black. The new Summertown scheme has white chunks in the road which creates some psychological impression on drivers (pedestrian area? car park? you are on a runway?), and Plantation Road has been turned brown recently, so have a look, think about it, and let us know your views.
But road resurfacing also offers us another great opportunity: to temporarily pilot, and live with, alternative road painting designs, before they are covered by the new surface. All we need is advance notice of when the resurfacing is going to occur, a small budget for paints (we have), and some volunteers. Then we can trial designs, live with them, and once the road has been resurfaced (in a new colour?), take our time to reflect on which designs worked best, and how we liked living with them.
So some exciting possibilities in 2009. First, though, we must wait until we have a definite work proposal from the Council. We'll keep you posted on this blog, but let us know your views on designs and road colouring.

House prices go up when traffic slows down

The very interesting (in parts it can have too much detail!) book "Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do (and What it Says About Us)" by Tom Vanderbilt highlighted a few studies that show traffic calming increases house prices. One of the references is to a paper by the Victoria (Canada) Transport Policy Institute that itself has references to some peer-reviewed journals with articles about increases in house prices due to traffic calming measures.

The VTPI paper states: Most homebuyers prefer homes on streets with lower traffic volumes and speeds...Reduced traffic speeds and pedestrian amenities can also make small commercial districts more attractive and accessible to nearby residents. One study found that traffic restraints that reduced traffic volumes on residential streets by several hundred vehicles per day increased house values by an average of 18%.84 Other studies find similar results.85

84 Gordon Bagby, "Effects of Traffic Flow on Residential Property Values," Journal of the American Planning Association, Vol. 46, No. 1, January 1980, pp. 88-94. doi:10.1080/01944368008977020

85 William Hughes and C.F. Sirmans, "Traffic Externalities and Single-Family House Prices," Journal of Regional Science, Vol. 32, No. 4, 1992, pp. 487-500. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9787.1992.tb00201.x

House Prices?

"In home zone areas throughout the country house prices have risen from 10-58 per cent of their regional value and properties are selling faster than in areas outside the home zone." (Source, Bournmouth City Council)

Although a DIY BCR would not be as transformed as the street in the photo, the evidence from homezones suggests that our project could have a significantly positive effect on house prices. I believe that BCR's value as a street is let down by the current domination by cars in gardens and street. Far from facing a threat to the house prices, I think failure to do everything we can to redesign BCR to signal its role as a multi-function space would cause the most damage to house prices.

In addition, data from Victoria, Canada, suggests an increase in house values with every mph of lower traffic speed (see above posting)

And an integral part of the proposal is how we handle all those acres of very non-period tarmac.

A full-blown homezone costs £150K to £200K for a street like this, most of it going into repaving with non-tarmac materials. DIY Streets is all about exploring just how inexpensively a similar effect can be achieved without looking cruddy.

There's nothing inherently flaky about painted roads (pardon the pun). The lace-brick paint pattern that I showed from Providence Rhode Island is in the middle of a very sensitive 18th/19th century part of the campus of Brown University, where the ferocious Providence Preservation Society is heavily involved. Many streets in French villages use painted or otherwise coloured road surfaces to signal a different form of use other than just cars and parking.



I think the whole paint issue hinges entirely on quality of materials and design. I hope fear of uncertainty doesn't end up ruling our thinking about this before we've had a chance to give it more thought and discussion. At a recent hamlet meeting, the best way forward to resolve the paint issue emerged as a testable paint trial. This way forward would significant logistical and financial issues that need to be resolved.

Any further thoughts on either side? Please keep this thread on subject, or post a new topic in a separate post.

Another 'listed' cycle rack

Here's a cycle rack composed of cast iron pieces I already have. The arch I bought from the Woodstock Road Baptist Church four years ago when they removed it. The railings currently form an ad-hoc cycle rack in my front garden (a bit beat up right now). The brown trough/trellis planter at the northern end is readily available for £31 (it's about a metre tall). This design would create a nice profile on the street while offering parking for four cycles and have a planter to buffer the traffic. It would probably cost no more than £400 to cover what I paid for the materials (around £100), and to put it together and install...the same price as a three hoop ordinary cycle rack. Kate Arnold-Foster has raised the prospect of BCR possibly installing the country's first 'listed' cycle racks.