Towards the Legible Street

Blad: NRC Handelsblad
Datum: 2001-06-02
Door: Tijs van den Boomen

A new approach to traffic engineering emerges from Denmark and The Netherlands. Out go all the signs, traffic lights, kerbs and zebra crossings of traditional street design. Instead enlightened traffic engineers rely on ambiguity and uncertainty to reduce speeds, encourage eye contact and integrate drivers into the social realm of the street.

'Has the Council gone nuts?' 'Does a child have to be run over before the barriers are replaced?' Incredulous parents in Amsterdam's Floris Versterstraat discussed the recent removal of all the barriers, speed humps and signs on the short street that runs between two primary schools. In their place, an undifferentiated raised road surface invites children to play with friends on the other side of the road. "Typical of a council officer with no children" was the general opinion.
But after a few weeks, opinions shifted as the new approach dramatically changed traffic behaviour. Motorists, confused by the absence of familiar road markings, slow right down to figure out who has priority and how they should proceed. It is precisely this confusion that appears to calm traffic and reduce speeds without conventional bumps or controls. And the children themselves are more street-wise, knowing that they cannot rely on barriers.
A quiet revolution in urban design and traffic engineering is taking place in the Netherlands. It eschews the conventional traffic measures of control and separation of users such as traffic signals, pedestrian crossings, speed humps and bicycle lanes. Instead it employs lessons from design psychology to influence behaviour through the deliberate mixing of different types of road users. No hierarchies, no defined space for pedestrians, cyclists or drivers. Subtle visual tricks replace signs and street markings, requiring all users to interact and negotiate. The new approach has yet to be named, but has its roots in the Dutch "woonerf" principles established in the early 1970's. These principles are beginning to be applied in the UK as "Home Zones" in certain residential areas. But the Dutch and Danes have moved far beyond the limited borders of 1970's woonerven.

"The Dutch underestimate the contribution made by the introduction of the woonerf or home zone", says Ben Hamilton-Baillie. He is a specialist in urban design and movement, and has recently returned from a year's fellowship at Harvard University following research into traffic and street design in North West Europe. He has become convinced that the new approach represents a means to reconcile the needs of vehicle movements with the potential to return streets to the social fabric of cities.
Urban developer Niek de Boer coined the term woonerf during a large-scale expansion of Emmen in the Netherlands at the end of the 1960's. Early examples were mainly concerned with reallocating space from cars to pedestrians. A few years later his students, including Joost Váhl, interpreted the concept differently. VÂýhl and his contemporaries challenged the principles of road hierarchies, welcoming the car on an equal basis to all parts of the city, but on pedestrians' terms. Only on motorways and major freeways did the car retain its clear priority.

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