Naked streets the way to go, planners say...
London: Reasonable people might believe that any busy city street stripped of all markings, barriers, traffic lights and even kerbs would spark little but chaos and carnage. But they might be wrong.
The concept of the "naked street" has won rave reviews in Europe, so much so that traffic-clogged London plans to try out the idea on Exhibition Road, a popular thoroughfare in Kensington that is home to big tourist draws.
Rather than using the standard array of road markings to tell drivers and pedestrians what they should be doing, the theory goes, they should be encouraged to use their own reactions in a "shared space" to take greater responsibility for their behaviour.
Urban planners believe the experiment will be an effective one. Not only will it calm traffic by bringing about reductions in speed, they argue, it will also decrease the number of accidents.
"No longer will we be treating drivers like they're zombies," an urban design specialist, Ben Hamilton-Baillie, said. "If you treat people like idiots they'll behave like idiots."
...from smh.
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