2011 will see London’s Exhibition Road, home to countless museums and used by 11 million pedestrians annually, turned into a shared space between people and vehicles, aiming to reduce accidents and improve traffic flow.
A space where cars and pedestrians peacefully co-exist might be hard to imagine, but it has already been successfully attempted both in Britain and overseas. The shared space scheme on Brighton’s New Road has seen a 162 percent increase in pedestrian safety, and a 92 percent increase in cyclist safety, and in Drachten, Friesland, a 2002 shared space project on a busy junction has seen accidents fall from an average of 8.3 per year to just 1.
Part of the shared space philosophy is the removal of curbs, lines, and railings, instead allowing drivers and pedestrians to use their own judgement, a philosophy employed by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, when redesigning the Oxford Circus crossing this year.