Bollards, benches and bins made the news a couple of days ago because Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary has called for a reduction in "street clutter". He also includes items such as signs, advertising hoardings, and even traffic lights. Eric is concerned about safety and the damage done to the character of English towns and villages. I think we do have too many signs. We have too much paint on our roads and we are told to do things too often, but many people make a living out of painting white lines or writing signs.
My particular concern was the traffic lights. Inevitably when we have traffic lights that are out of action, the traffic flows easier. We have a T junction in Lancaster at Scale Hall. It was added while I was driving to Morecambe nearly ten years ago from the other side of Lancaster. It made matters worse. I believe it was part of a plan to make everyone want a link road to the motorway. Goodness knows the traffic is bad enough anyway but if it is so bad then everyone should support the link.
The one advantage of organising traffic jams is that you must lower the possibility of accidents at speed. I wonder if Eric thought about a better traffic flow when he asked councils to get rid of clutter.
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Benches and bins are useful items of street furniture (traditional ones can even enhance the streetscape), so the BBC reporter made an elementary mistake including them in the condemned list. The stuff that should go is the stuff that represents state control over freedom to use our own judgement and act sociably. More on the subject at FiT Roads.
ReplyDeleteI agree - thanks for your comment Martin.
ReplyDeleteThere should be more signs and places of refuge to protect pedestians, including parents with prams and children. Motorists,generally, are inconsiderate of all other road users; have an accelerator and a horn but no brakes! Not only kill themselves but many other innocent road users too.
ReplyDeleteThat's one to take up with Eric Pickles!
ReplyDeletePolicymakers in the traffic arena see the trees, never the wood. They treat the symptoms of our problems on the road, never the cause. ggd wants more signs. No! Signs are signs of failure. Failure to design streets and roads in a way that expresses a social context. Failure to replace the anti-social system of priority with a culture of equality. Failure to support reform with changes in the law. Signs will never remedy the system's diabolical requirement for children to beware motorists, when it could and so obviously should be the other way round.
ReplyDeleteI think you have to take each sign on its merits. My pet hates are signs that tell me I am going too fast when I am travelling within the speed limit and feel competent, signs that change the speed limit after the need to change has started and signs that look like they should be for road safety but are simply adverts.
ReplyDeleteThere are signs that are useful so we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bath water.
I might be exaggerating to make a point, but to my mind, most instructional traffic signs are signs of failure, as described above. The road network is littered with them, telling us the obvious, or prohibiting this that and t'other - but where are the directional signs when we need them!?
ReplyDeleteI've used hyperbole millions of times.
ReplyDelete