Success Stories
The two main methods transport planners are currently using to encourage more people to walk more are through improved design and by marketing. Unfortunately the lack of a consistent evaluation methodology doesn’t allow us to confirm which is a more successful approach – yet – but we suspect authorities need to do both to maximise the full potential of any vision that they may have to encourage more people to walk.
Two schemes stand out as having monitored as well as invested on such a vision:
The Sustainable travel demonstration towns project, which focused on Individualised Travel Marketing (ITM) in the towns of Darlington, Peterborough and Worcester to see if talking to people and giving them the right information actually encouraged them to walk more and drive less. Impressively walking increased by 29%, 21% and 17% respectively, indicating a strong latent demand for walking and giving all authorities a clear signal that re-focusing transport policies on people, not vehicles can have significant benefits to the community.
It will be interesting to see if there is a knock on demand, post project, for information to continue and infrastructure to improve. It would also be interesting to know how the health and well being of people in these towns has been affected over time with such policies. Please let us know is you have such data that we can share or a methodology for evaluating it.
Fearing the impact of a massive new indoor shopping mall in near-by Shepherds Bush the Royal borough of Kensington and Chelsea undertook to make Kensington High Street as accessible and attractive as it could to keep the interest and attention of existing shoppers and attract more from neighbouring, less attractive areas.
The Council carried out a major programme of improvements focusing on creating an improved look and style as well as a safer and easier street for pedestrians to use and enjoy. Restrictive guard railing was removed, together with other unnecessary and redundant street furniture, the lighting and road crossings were enhanced and pedestrians generally given a sense of empowerment from a more open streetscape.
The new Whitley’s Centre in Shepherds Bush is yet to open so the true success of the scheme cannot yet be measured but based on collisions data alone (a rather limited evaluation tool but in this case symbolic) casualties fell from 71 in the period before the street was remodeled to 40 afterwards - a drop of 43.7%. Kensington and Chelsea remain proud of their street and are keen to maintain and enhance the vitality, viability and attractiveness of other streets in their Borough in forthcoming years. It will be interesting to see how well the street fares, in relation to other rival high streets, once the new centre is open.
If you have experienced Kensington High Street, before or after the improvements and wish to comment please join our forum and post a message. If you have more success stories to share and inspire others to invest more in marketing or infrastructure improvements please let us know.