From The Evening Standard:
Some of the capital's busiest roads could be stripped of traffic lights, white lines and kerbs under plans supported by Boris Johnson.
It is hoped "decluttering" areas such as Oxford Street and Regent Street will reduce accidents and encourage motorists to use their car less. The "naked streets" concept has been put into practice in Kensington High Street, where there was a 44 per cent drop in accidents in the past two years after road markings and railings were removed...
NB, I hold no torch for Boris, who is a bullying, populist and superficial Tory who banned drinking on public transport, but not even he is wrong all the time about everything.
Nope
5 hours ago
9 comments:
I do so hope that you don't hold a torch for Boris - I might get worried otherwise!
Surely he's better than Ken
This works dramatically and has been proven as such in every place it has been tried. Ashford in Kent saw road accidents fall to 0% IIRC.
There is nothing to dislike about it, but apparently the local residents are the main opponents. Years of stick and coercion have blinded them to a 'good thing'.
Apologies MW, but Carrots and sticks.
@ Anon: Red Ken was democratically elected twice, in his own right and as the Labour candidate (I may even have voted for him once or twice, I can't remember) and although he went mad in the end, I thought his heart was in the right place.
@MW, that's a pretty good assessment of Ken.
The sooner barrier-removal gets done in the City the better - walked from Bank to just west of Blackfriars this AM and regularly had to walk on the wrong side of barriers in the middle of traffic (or venture way off course into dodgy subways - yeah, right).
If I had a pair of bolt-cutters and a van I'd make a start on it one dark night myself...
MW & JohnB. Ken's heart may have been in the right place anatomically speaking, but it never has been for any of his constituents. He acted up well. The man is the complete machine politician and as slippery as a snake. There are only two things that matter to Ken; Ken and Power. How he obtains and keeps the latter is of no concern to him at all, it's just having it. And that satisfies the former.
Moving on to the traffic stuff, I have long argued for 'shared space'. Removing massive amounts of signage and barriers and so forth increases safety on basic free market principles. Let people sort it out and they will. e.g. imagine an ice rink. Everybody whirls round, all doing different things, with different levles of skill, at differing speeds and mostly no crashes. Of course this looks chaotic to the lefty mind so they install an umpire with a megaphone on a high chair in the middle to regulate all this chaos. He of course can only look one way at a time so whilst he's yelling instructions to someone in his line of sight the changes ripple out and cause a crash behind him. The incidence of crashes increases. There's only one or two endgames with this; a total skating ban or two skaters supervised by a hundred gauleiters.
Ken's heart may have been in the right place anatomically speaking, but it never has been for any of his constituents.
Speaking as someone who actually uses the city which was made much more liveable by his transport policies, I don't give a fuck whether he's the love-child of Richard Daley and Ted Kennedy: he did, in fact, whatever his motives, do more for the people of London than anyone since Charles Yerkes.
I think Mussolini is said to have had a good effect for rail passengers too, but that's not the only yardstick by which we judge people, is it?
JOhn B - Or, he did 'just enough' for the people of London so that they were content to keep voting in him and his cronies.
The success of his transport policies is moot. And for the avoidance of doubt I am basically in favour of road pricing, as long as it is (a) not an extra tax and (b) all the freedom issues are fully and properly guaranteed.
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