Sorry for the delay in the publishing of this article; this is mainly due to my incompetence and laziness.

What do they mean exactly by "shared space" for pedestrians and motorists? Is that a euphemism for making a narrow road weven narrower as a part of fascist ken's war on the motorist?

Perhaps the idiots don;t get it but if you continue to fight the motirst in this city with more ridiculous pavement indentations, islands, longer red light times, more unneccessary bicycle lanes (like the stupid rectangles thast mean one has to stop 2m back from the traffic light for no good reason at all) then this city will continue its decline into 3rd world status. This plan reeks of livingstone's destructive powers.

agtain back to my albania analogy. In albania the roads were narrow, but that was no problem because the only people who could use them were the communist party leaders as they were the only people who could afford cars. that is why people did not have enough to eat (lack of adequate transport of supplies) medicine was poor (much like the NHS or our local monster the IC health centre). On the subject of Ic health centre, I think that a prize should be given to the secretary- something like most incompetent jobsworth 2004...

then again a certain female doctor could be given the title of most anathemous species closely related to humanity....

oh leftists/ communist s trade unionists can;t you all go off to north korea and leave us law abiding hard wolking folk free to pursue our lives in peace!!!

by the way i include, in my definition of leftist abominations, and creatures anathemous to normal law abiding hard working humans, certain tiddbits and smithies.

By shared space they mean exactly that. No pavements, no traffic lights, no crossings. People would be free to mingle with cars - neither cars nor pedestrians would have right of way, so it's first-come first-served for occupying roadspace.

Probably not the best idea to try this on a road full of school-children for a large proportion of the year.

So this would be reverting to the types of road that used to exist in London 100 years ago, perhaps? Curious.

Wot, not that "Red" Fascist Ken Amram?

Political extremes meet Mr.C . Ken is as much a fascist as communist just as the Nazis were national socialists.

Wow what a brill idea- no traffic lights, no zebra crossings, all victorian style. How fitting, not only are we reverting to 3rd world standards we are literally going backwards in time. perhaps we should all use horse and carriage instead of those pesky internal combustion engines!

During construction of the Tanaka building, did College pay to replace the pavement outside? The pavement they're now going to dig up...

(They may not have done, I can't say I've paid much attention to the pavement).

Amram,

If you think we are reverting to "Third World Standards", not only are you politically incorrect in your terminology but you have also quite clearly not been to the "Third World."

We have the right to free speech in this country. Please try not to abuse it. To shorten a phrase used during the Second World War: "Careless talk costs!"

Hmm.

Hall of residents on one side.

Student union with cheap bar and late license on the other side.

No pedestrian crossing.

Accident waiting to happen?

It has taken about 100 years for streets to become no-go areas, especially for small children. Car drivers like me now take it for granted, even in busy town centres, that people on foot should get out of our way. Why? Well we're bigger and 'arder than them.

Perhaps projects like this are the beginning of reversing that trend, by expecting car drivers to act like grown-ups rather than providing them with an environment that does everything for them.

More importantly, this is a sign of innovation and creativity in street design, which is in desperately short supply in an environment otherwise grossly dominated by regulation, jobs-for-the-boys over-specification, and standardisation; and worst of all, features that are built in the name of safety, but simply serve to help the cars travel faster and with greater ease.

Standardisation sounds safe, but can breed complacency to the point that we drive around in a Radio-based coma waiting for something bright to flash at us. Inconsistency sounds dangerous, but it forces us to think and to take real responsibility for our actions, just like those on foot have to.

Real innovation dares to risk failure. Without failure we cannot learn. Let's see how the baby-driver copes without being spoon-fed.

Can I bring my horse?

Exhibition Road does take traffic lights surrounded by barriers a bit to the extreme but then if you've got 30 kids and about 3 adults to supervise them thats what you want- everyone else walks around the barriers and ignores the traffic lights.

The thing that makes me laugh (or cringe) is the fact that people research into low C02 emmission tyres and super-effiecient engines when you could cut emmissions by not making cars stop and start every 3 meters! (some places its justified but a lot of the time it's not)

I've started ranting now so I'll continue; traffic light controlled roundabouts and roundabouts with cycle lanes on them which would kill any cyclist trying to turn right who follows the lane- grrr!

Knock it all down and bring Exhibtion Road back to it's 1826 glory.

Dan Houcke from Mech Eng 4th year has been run over by a taxi in Exhibition Road and fortunately escaped unhurt.

Wonder what that'll do for the shared space plans- wake people up to the fact that there's real people using this road or can 'they' use it to argue that it wouldn't have happened if it had been a shared space?

I don't know what the statistics would be but there must be *some* number of accidents on the road every year otherwise they couldn't possibly have an "improvement" to announce after it's been naked for a bit.

I think the idea is that cos its nude the cars pay more attention. It's not like it's especially pleasant for drivers if they do hit someone. Obviously not all drivers will because the world is imperfect but if *enough* people are concentrating more *enough*...

I think it is an interesting experiment. I'm unsure of the wisdom of trying out in an area with so many massive (generally unaware) groups of children visiting the museums.

Thank you Chris for raising the point of the Mech. Engineer involved in Tuesdays incident.

Can I point out that I was present at the incident and no he was not "run over", rather, only slightly scratched and well shaken as anyone would be. But interestingly it was the taxi driver who called the police and waited till they arrived, which re-inforces the belief in responsible driving.

I wonder if a porsche carrera 4s drivers would have cared....