Cabstand junction trials
Colin Buchanan has been commissioned by Bristol City Council to provide advice and to undertake the monitoring and analysis for their Traffic Signal Evaluation Trials at two sites in the centre of the city.
Following the success of the trial carried out in Portishead, North Somerset last September, where Colin Buchanan demonstrated that removing all conventional controls had resulted in benefits for traffic and pedestrians, the City Council responded to a local press campaign for signal switch-off trials across Bristol. Colin Buchanan provided advice on junction location and trial format and assisted, along with Martin Cassini - campaigner for the removal of traffic controls - with stakeholder consultation. The traffic signals were switched off for one-week periods at the two sites throughout March. Before-and-after CCTV footage and street-user surveys will now be analysed to see whether or not there were any significant benefits to the removal of traffic controls.
Councillor Gary Hopkins, Cabinet Member for Strategic Transport, said: “The concept of switching off traffic lights is immensely popular with motorists. A campaign in the local press had massive backing. But we knew that their views were not the whole story.
"The modest trial aimed to test out people’s reactions from all sides so that we could all gain a greater understanding of each other’s perspective as road users on wheels or on foot. That's when groups who had remained quiet throughout the debate came forward. Disabled people and blind people said - 'hang on, what about us?’
"It's made the road users across the whole city understand each other a little better when considering shared space schemes. People who thought it was simple now see that it is not. And disabled people expect that if we are to reduce signals - which could still prove successful - their needs should be built into alternative schemes."
Local response has been mixed, with concerns for the safety of vulnerable pedestrians especially the visually impaired, yet the trials ran without any incidents and early results seem to show reductions in journey time for both vehicles and pedestrians.
Keith Firth, Director of Traffic Engineering at Colin Buchanan, is confident that the trial results will strengthen the methodology for identifying sites where conventional control is not required. “We know that there are concerns from all sorts of road-users regarding the concept of uncontrolled or shared spaces, but I believe that we will only discover how to overcome these issues in busier, urban locations through the use of this form of before-and-after trial.” He adds, “Simply removing conventional controls without re-thinking the design of the place is unlikely to be sufficient, but it is possible that the costs of doing so will be recouped through operational, time, environmental and urban realm benefits.”
Click here to see the outcome of the project.
