Rapid transit looks best when you don't notice it

John Dales is on the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment's enabling panel and is responsible for helping to deliver CABE's 'Streets for People' programme of urban design training for highways and transportation professionals. He is direc

30 November 2006

Different approaches to fitting rapid transit into the streetscene: the signals and signs on the Leeds guided busway

Different approaches to fitting rapid transit into the streetscene: Strasbourg's more subtle approach

Different approaches to fitting rapid transit into the streetscene: Nottingham Express Transit's forest of poles

This month, having been challenged by a correspondent to do so, I'd intended to turn my thoughts to the matter of accommodating cyclists in busy high streets. That'll have to wait until the next episode, however, and I hope you can bear the suspense. For a number of reasons that will become apparent I've decided this time to consider the matter of how transit schemes do, or should, fit within the streetscene.

The first reason is that someone who really should know better recently asked me to...