‘Tame’ wide British roads and replace them with boulevards of homes, says thinktank

wycombewheeler wrote:

The difficulty with taming roundabouts and T junctions is that any junction that can be used by long vehicles like busses and HGVs can be used by cars at relatively high speed.

You're showing at least as much thought as our councillors (and likely more).  However as usual the problem is history and (mostly) habit.  "But we're here, and that's over there - we can't get there from here!  Because UK drivers drive as fast as they can round our big roundabouts without looking carefully, if you change anything they will crash!"

Well... yeah.  If you start with the goal of "maximum motor traffic flow" then "safety", "lower speeds" and "useable by non-motorised users" are things you will immediately compromise on.

Where this is actually done, it works fine.  Here's an example - first a bus using it, then an articulated bus, then a lorry.

UK roundabouts often have an additional major safety hazard - they have multiple lanes.  This is not good for motorised users but especially dangerous / unpleasant for non-motorised users.  So that's the first thing to get rid of.  Or make it a "turbo roundabout" which then requires completely separate provision for walking and cycling.

In one of the countries which has a very widespread use of safer roundabout and junction designs they use: a) smaller overall size - e.g. small radius b) adverse camber c) an "overrrun area" - often both higher and steeper (e.g. with a small kerb as in this video) and sometimes with a rough surface.  Something which while it allows longer vehicles the space to get round (very slowly) still provides feedback to e.g. car drivers - "gonna no do that!"

As usual, there's the obligatory article / video.

I certainly cannot guarantee this won't lead to vehicles on their sides to start with in the UK.  All the public education campaigns you like (normally "not much") but people still learn by practice.  So obviously to those who don't want change it's a non-starter.  Of course, we need to look at the overall picture though.  After learning has taken place.  And of course right now drivers are rolling their vehicles, jamming them under bridges ("hmm... well that railway doesn't work there, can we get rid of it?") etc.

T junctions? Even more convenient for cycling.  Do it the right way and cyclists do not ever need to stop for the lights in some directions!

Again - it's really all about what our starting assumptions / goals are.  If it's "design for the maximum capacity / permeability / parking for motor vehicles, then once that's sorted squeeze in some footways" or "we've already got x space which is required for cars and we don't want to move kerbs about, that's expensive and disrupts things - but can we somehow tick a box for cycle provision?" then ... we'll basically get the status quo, possibly with some crap provision for other modes.  Nothing will change, because the goal was not to change things!

chrisonatrike wrote:

the Scotland's Futures Forum - a government think tank - found that over 1/3 of some Scottish cities is roads and car parking.

On a point of clarity, it seems they looked at three rather odd sites - not really representative of the wider cities.

True - they haven't done a comprehensive look across a city.  That would be a reasonable objection - could use stronger evidence.  (And using somewhere other than just Glasgow, which is an outlier in several ways anyway e.g. the city's previous love affair with urban motorways).  I think looking at Finnieston was *reasonably* representative of "normal" conditions (given that these will vary hugely across a city)?  That still shows a similar large amount of space for the private motor vehicle.  I agree the other two are less "representative"... However on the SEC, actually large "malls" / places we drive to *are* a part of our cityscapes...

I was unclear how they were defining Finnieston. The report seems to have been deleted but unless you include the neighbouring SEC, I can't think of any major car parks in Finnieston.

I think the SEC and Dundee waterfront were derelict land which had large carparks (Tesco in Dundee) built on them in the 80s when there wasn't much alternative interest (both cities were hemorrhaging population). The SEC did get a railway station, which is well-used at event times, though.

PS FWIW I agree with much of the rest of your original post!