Inclusive healthy streets

What can we learn from Oxford Street, asks Neil Taylor, Director, Integrated Transport Planning

Oxford Street was perceived as hard to get to, too crowded and difficult to navigate by less mobile groups

Oxford Street was perceived as hard to get to, too crowded and difficult to navigate by less mobile groups

Maintaining accessibility for the 12,000 people each day that use buses to make short-hop trips along the 820m stretch from Oxford Circus to Selfridges was a challenge

Maintaining accessibility for the 12,000 people each day that use buses to make short-hop trips along the 820m stretch from Oxford Circus to Selfridges was a challenge

It appears very hard to argue with the Healthy Streets agenda. Who wouldn’t want safer places that welcome people from all walks of life and are easy to move around; provide regular shade, shelter and resting places; aren’t too noisy and help people relax; that attract people travelling on-foot, by bike and by public transport; and provide clean air for people visiting?

Nowhere does this feel more relevant than Oxford Street in London, which consistently ranks among the capital’s least safe streets due to frequent vehicle/pedestrian/cyclist collisions and poor air quality. Yet public consultation on pedestrianisation plans highlighted that not everyone agrees; particularly if increased activity and traffic dispersal around the wider district are perceived consequences. So what are the lessons that we might draw from work on this project to date, focusing particularly on accessibility and inclusive design considerations?

Who’s using public spaces?

‘Where will people and vehicles go if Oxford Street’s pedestrianised 24/7?’ was a key local concern. Understandable, when you consider that currently, even when the main department stores are closed, a reasonable number of people can be found using Oxford Street. While many appear to be just passing through, heading to Tube stations or waiting for buses, it doesn’t take long to notice that relatively few evidently experience some form of mobility impairment or disability. Talking with disabled and older people’s representative groups revealed that Oxford Street was perceived as hard to get to, too crowded, difficult to navigate, and very challenging to get around.

While it’s hard to predict the impacts of major public space transformation projects, evidence from New York, Paris and Mexico City often focuses on two outcomes. One is the empirical reduction in total vehicle trips, as some people switch travel modes. The second is the subjective sense of reclaimed roads yielding more vibrant public spaces that unlock new opportunities for leisure and recreation (heralded by many commentators as the post-retail future of British high-streets).

Often overlooked in the analysis is who comes to use these places before and after they are transformed.  Discussions we had with people who experience different kinds of impairments that affect their mobility highlighted their aspiration for Oxford Street to become, post-transformation, a more accessible and accommodating London attraction.

Plan alternative forms of access, for everyone

Maintaining accessibility for the 12,000 people each day that use buses to make short-hop trips along the 820m stretch from Oxford Circus to Selfridges was a challenge specific to Oxford Street. While blind and partially-sighted groups welcomed complete traffic removal as this would reduce, in their perception, a significant mobility risk, many wheelchair users and people with walking impairments were understandably concerned about how they would access destinations given the distances.

Developing alternative mobility service options was complicated by the need for Hostile Vehicle Mitigation (HVM) at points of entry (anti-vandalism and anti-terrorist protective measures). We concluded that any such alternative mobility service would either need to run on parallel streets, regularly crossing Oxford Street to provide access to department store/rail station side-entrances, or travel along Oxford Street itself. The latter required HVM to be more widely-spaced than is desirable, or able to raise and lower, which is both more expensive and operationally demanding. Either way, the most appropriate alternative mobility vehicle was considered to be a fully accessible, electrically-powered, small form-factor bus staffed by a driver who could be on-hand to assist passengers, as needed.

Neither option was universally popular, but either could have been trialled to scope demand while works were underway. We recommended it be available for everyone and integrated with Oyster; recognising that short-hop trips are also made by parents with small children, people carrying heavy shopping bags, and those avoiding bad weather.

Level public spaces

The practical challenges of designing, and perceptions of, ‘shared space’ are complex. The potential need for Oxford Street to function as a service access road overnight and a pedestrian priority space during the day is common to a number of prospective Healthy Streets; with pedestrian numbers justifying traffic removal at certain times of day, but servicing needs requiring vehicular access at others.

Our work, prior to DfT’s recent request that local authorities pause shared level surface schemes, reminded us that one person’s tactile guidance strip is another’s obstacle. One observation was how infrequently the ‘flat-topped bar’ guidance strip paving surface is currently applied to UK public space, prompting us to wonder whether this needs a collective re-think.

While DfT’s research findings and advice on shared level surfaces and tactile treatments cannot arrive soon enough for many, the lack of robust evidence on the best way to manage this balance while meeting everyone’s needs – particularly where the role of public space changes temporally – remains a fundamental 21st century urban design challenge.

Define, and revisit, your key principles

Finally, we defined a set of guiding accessibility principles well before proposals were being tabled, so that highway and urban design teams could adopt them as ‘desirable aims’. By revisiting these whenever things like seating area designs or relative kerbside priority being allocated for competing demands appeared to be moving in a less inclusive direction, we were able to encourage more inclusive thinking.

Neil Taylor is a Director of ITP who specialises in accessible mobility research and inclusive design advice. He is speaking at Healthy Streets 2018 in London on 12 October.