News & Events

Street Design and Traffic Management in our towns

(Crewkerne)

Ben Hamilton-Baillie, the Urban Design and Traffic management expert, produced a report on Crewkerne's issues in late 2007. Many thanks to Martin Pakes of ABCD's Urban Design Group for supplying this.

This will be of great interest to many towns with issues regarding speeding traffic, narrow and poor quality pavements, ineffective signage, priority given over to vehicles rather than people, and historic buildings that are blighted by poor quality streetscapes and public spaces, just like in Crewkerne.

The report identifies the key issues and offers some ideas that could solve these; piloting these in areas and then developing them across the town as funds become available. It also offers a criticism of the County Highways one-way proposal for North Street, as well as giving examples in the UK and Europe where, by creating a noticeably different environment (by using 'gateways', different materials and removal of centrelines), speeds have been reduced.

This report could form the basis for a framework of street enhancements in the town centre, but a detailed scheme will be needed. With the CLR Key site coming, traffic is only going to get heavier in Crewkerne sadly so the status quo should not be an option.

You can download the report below;

Crewkerne Streets and Parking Report

You can view the Hamilton-Baillie Consultancy website here.

There are, of course, other Urban Designers and Landscape Architects who also understand current thinking around calming traffic and re-making places for people; SMTF is building a list of these and has already given two towns contact details of suitable practices/consultancies that could tender for town centre streets improvement work. 

We also hope to meet with County Highways to see if the process of initiating non-LTP works can be 'mapped' to assist towns in avoiding difficulties and frustration.

 

Created on February 3rd 2009

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