11 February 2016
Drawing the Line
by J.R.Thomas
There can be nothing more dangerous to the common good than when experts all agree a new orthodoxy that will save the politicians money. “Care in the Community” may well have been an enlightened approach as to how to treat mental illness; but it became the intellectual justification for closing most of the psychiatric hospitals in the country and ejecting into the hostile world many distressed people who would be so much happier being cared for in a safe semi-closed environment. Their former safe havens were sold for redevelopment, their care and welfare thrown upon kind neighbours and relatives, and an overworked social care system had to pick up the pieces.
Mr Corbyn is hoping for a money saving new orthodoxy when it comes to defence – protect jobs by keeping building the generation of nuclear submarines, but save money – and create international peace and fraternity – by not loading them with those pesky nuclear missiles. Big savings in the defence budget and the world made a safer place. Rightly or wrongly, that is not yet received wisdom but just wait until the treasury bean counters present the maths to Chancellor Osborne and watch it fly (whoops, unfortunate pun).
Coming back to earth, a new orthodoxy looks set to save local authorities money, and maybe create some savings for the National Health Service. How do you slow the traffic down, make the roads safer, and at the same time do it at less cost? Sponsor traffic lights and use the income to install yet more? Build higher kerbs and raise central barriers with advertisements on them (long thin advertisements)? Heap up more and higher speed bumps? – the local car suspension repair specialists might well contribute to that one…
No, no no. Think laterally. Do away with all of that, scrap the existing controls, peel off the white lines, lower the kerbs so that they merge into the roadways. Punctuate the smooth tarmac with genuine Victorian style rumbling cobbles. Eradicate any hint of any sort as to where the middle of the carriageways are, or which bit is for pedestrians and which for motorists. Instructions as where to cross or park or turn – all gone. That way, motorists inch along, full of care as to where pedestrians may wander or cyclists may weave. Everybody slows down; everybody is more careful, considerate, and cautious. Less accidents, less conflict, less pollution, less cost.
Less cost? Well, to taxpayers it might not look like less cost. It might have been if this were happening on the first installation of new roads and pavements. But of course, it isn’t. This happy state of anarchy can only be achieved by taking away, cutting down, digging up, demolishing what is already there. That is very expensive. But not to the well trained bureaucrat. The cost of removal comes from some capital budget already created for road safety or neighbourhood enhancement. The lower costs of not constantly repainting white and yellow lines, powering traffic lights, keeping kerbs in good repair, are all savings to the local authority budget, helping achieve those vicious budget cuts imposed by the Chancellor.
Leaving aside the accounting techniques, does it work? It has been tried for some years in Continental Europe, especially in the Netherlands which some fifteen years ago started small scale experiments with removing traffic lights at junctions. Chaos, you might assume, but in fact everything seemed to work much better. Drivers approached cautiously, rights of passage seemed to evolve naturally. It was discovered that popping a tree or planting shrubs in the middle worked even better, whether because of the calming effects of greenness or simply because it had to be manoeuvred round is not entirely clear. Accident and injury rates fell, quite dramatically, motorists were more alert and considerate.
The Dutch advocate of this was an engineer, Hans Monderman, who believed that uncertainty made drivers slow down. He worked on his ideas with a British academic, John Adams, whose favourite way of proving his theory was to take sceptics for a fast drive on a motorway and at full pelt in the fast lane tell the driver to remove his seat belt. Always, they immediately cut their speed. Making drivers not wear seat belts (or its logically stretched alternative, have a large spike installed in the middle of every steering wheel) was a bit too counter intuitive. But Monderman worked on other ideas to create caution without increasing risk.
What he came up with was to remove all the road instructions one could. Traffic lights abolished wherever possible. Next step was to remove road markings and even pedestrian crossings. That too seemed to add to this safer and happier new world. The trend has become widespread in Dutch towns and in the last seven or eight years has spread through northern Europe, into Germany and Denmark and Belgium. A couple of years ago the wave of road liberation reached the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, who have started to free its streets from every sort of road marking, signage, and directional instruction. Walk from South Kensington Tube Station to the Albert Hall. You will stroll along a relatively clear boulevard where paviours have replaced tarmac, signs have been sent for recycling, and the unbounded vastness under your feet is unsullied by thick white paint. Cars drift slowly past, and somehow at junctions the walkers and the motors sort themselves into safe priorities. Somehow, even parking seems to unfold organically with straight lines of vehicles neatly arranged (albeit with rather wider gaps than normal). At the crossing of the Cromwell Road (or A4, to the hurrying motorist) there are still barriers, signs, and traffic lights. Only at this one place does nanny take over.
It feels civilised and safe, and it works (it did cost a lot of money to carry through). This and other urban schemes have now convinced the grand master of control, Transport for London, that this is something worth trying elsewhere, and they have removed the central white lines on several A (trunk) roads, including on busy suburban sections of the A22 and A23. Without a central division of the road, drivers seem to go more slowly and accident rates so far have reduced. TfL is proceeding very cautiously on this. Users of the Embankment will notice that the message of freedom has certainly not reached the team working there. The amount of signage, raised pavements, white painted long lines in varieties of duplication, broken and wavy, complete with aggressive hatchings, must bring joy to the heart of any road manager. But would those who walk, cycle, drive, jog, and park by the Thames actually be safer without all that clutter? Logically, yes, so will TfL reverse its programme and allow pristine clean tarmac to flow beside the Thames?
Is this going to be the occasion when cost accountants, safety and behavioural theorists, and libertarians find common cause that really does bring happiness to the world? Almost certainly not on main roads or winding country roads – traffic safety campaigners have pointed out that the widespread introduction of white lines and extra signage in the 1960’s and 1970’s brought about a significant fall in the number of road casualties; and that those roads carry much more traffic now than then. But in suburbia and the inner-city, deregulation seems to be the answer; theory and economy will meet joyously, white paint will be seen no more, granite curbs rest unquarried on Dartmoor, disregarded road signs beaten into new electric cars (now, there would be irony); and everybody will roam, free, safe, and happy.
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