Safety barriers come down — to improve safety .

Safety barriers are to be stripped from hundreds of busy streets after a trial
found that using railings to separate pedestrians and vehicles made roads
more dangerous.

People will be encouraged to cross the road wherever they like rather than
being herded towards crossings.

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, will also order that signposts and utility
boxes be shifted from the edge of the pavement to make it easier for
pedestrians and drivers to see each other.

The results of the trial, in a West London road, challenge the orthodox view
that roads are safer when vehicles and pedestrians are separated by
barriers. The number of collisions fell from 71 a year to just 40, a drop of
nearly 44 per cent, in the three years after September 2003, when 600 yards
of railings were removed. The number of pedestrians injured more than
halved. Collisions on comparable roads across London fell by 17.5 per cent
over the same period.


Ashford in Kent is also digging up railings from its ring road and removing
some traffic lights. Edinburgh, Bath, Oxford, Liverpool and Sheffield are
among other towns and cities beginning to remove railings.

Mr Johnson said: “The pavements have become an obstacle course of pointless
street furniture and sheep-dip-style railings, fencing and herding
[pedestrians] and reducing their enjoyment of public space. We are going to
do everything in our power to make walking through this city as enjoyable as
possible.”

Mr Johnson is the most senior politician to endorse the principle of a “shared
space”, a concept from the Netherlands, where signs, lines and traffic
lights have been removed from many roads in an attempt to create confusion
over who has priority. The idea is that cars, cyclists and those on foot
coexist more safely when the boundaries between them are blurred.
Pedestrians and drivers start to become more aware of each other.

Pedestrians will, however, have to keep a sharp eye out for cyclists in
London. Mr Johnson plans to allow bicycles on to some wider pavements.








We could do with Boris on steps , living streets.