29 July (Part 3) - Clowns and Circuses
I
was told the other day that I shouldn’t refer to the Trinity Place idiocy as a
Magic Roundabout - so named by a reader, not me - and it was more of a Circus as
in Oxford and Ludgate. Who am I to argue?
As readers who have been paying attention will know, my son is well into road
and vehicle safety and has worked with all the major vehicle manufacturers on
crash testing and has been a regular visitor to the Department of Transport.
At one time he was on the receiving end of all the UK’s heavy vehicle accident
reports and I learned the gory details of some which I would rather not have known about.
Obviously he is my first port of call for an expert response when Bexley Council
does something apparently stupid and road related. He once looked at my photos and suggested that
the road designer was either incompetent or malicious. In another case he couldn’t believe that
Bexley would design a roundabout that a bus couldn’t negotiate. (Wickham Lane.)
When Bexley first started to go crazy for Shared Space I was hoping for similar
condemnation but I was disappointed. My son said that he was personally
sceptical about the theory behind them but it was too early to come to a
definitive judgment, more data was required.
Five years on and the data is becoming available.
The Times reported last week that Shared Space is “too dangerous for large
numbers of pedestrians”. The Department of Transport has called for the roll out to be suspended.