The Exhibition Road Scheme

For the benefit of anyone not so familiar with South Kensington, Exhibition Road is the long boulevard that connects South Kensington tube station with Kensington Gore, at Hyde Park. Along its way, the road provides access to a long and impressive list of museums, and other culturally significant institutions – not least the Royal Albert Hall. This makes it a very busy place, particularly for pedestrians.

To improve things, the “Exhibition Road Scheme” was proposed by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, to:

“improve the pedestrian experience and increase safety for all road users”.

“The project also includes high quality paving materials and street furniture, better lighting, more tree planting and public art to make Exhibition Road a world-class streetscape.”

As it should be – sounds good. As much as I’m a bit of a petrolhead, I think any good idea to improve the beauty and utility of Exhibition Road should be welcomed.

However, controversially, the proposal involves a complete redesign of road architecture using the so-called “shared space” concept. This was the brainchild of a Dutch civil engineer and traffic planning expert, the late Hans Monderman. His theory was that if all symbols of demarcation are removed from a road, then drivers and pedestrians have to “negotiate” for use of the shared space, and therefore, being more socially integrated in the activity, the risk of accident diminishes. Or in simple terms: road markings, footpaths, traffic lights, and everything else indicating a right of way gets chucked out: therefore cars have to slow down, pedestrians can mill about anywhere in the shared space, and everyone has to be more careful.



A Shared Space

But I’m sceptical.

There are a couple of, admittedly, ad hominem bases for scepticism. Firstly, Ken Livingstone’s thumb prints are all over this project. Livingstone has a pathological hatred of private motor cars, and as mayor, had a record of trying to tax or indeed, to physically push cars off the roads. So why would we not expect this scheme to represent yet another unfair deal for drivers? Secondly, looking at the “Shared Space” website, I’m dismayed to see it’s utterly replete with left-wing dogma and other statist nonsense:

“It is necessary to create more space for human beings for the wellness of individuals and the survival of our democratic constitution”. (Yep, I knew we’d need the smelling salts again).

“The primacy for the planning of public space, which is now controlled by technology, is handed back to the politicians”. (…EU funded initiative of course).

In other words, these guys are quintessential social engineers: using real engineering principles to physically modify and control social behaviour.

More than any of this however, my gut feeling is that cars and pedestrians just don’t mix. I hope I’m wrong, but I reckon someone’s going to get hurt, or flattened, and the police will have one helluva job to prove culpability in a court of law. I think we’re adopting an inappropriate solution to a genuine problem on the basis that we have some phoney EU funded, ideologically driven, research suggesting that in particular road environments we get improved safety. But what if they’re wrong? If they’re wrong, who now among the politicians is volunteering to carry the can? Isn’t there a better way of doing this, even if it means more restricted access for drivers?