Highways engineering needs a complete shake-up to create people-friendly places

The seminal report One False Move by Mayer Hillman et al (1990) demonstrated that the increase in personal freedom and choice arising from widening car ownership had been gained at the cost of a loss of independence, play territory and choice for children. 

The insidious swamping of residential streets with traffic has long been known to have a profound effect on our freedom and quality of life. Appleyard and Lintell’s 1969 research on traffic and neighbourhood social interaction found that as traffic increases people socialise less with their neighbours. They are less likely to form friendships and stress levels rise. This study was replicated in 2011 by Hart and Parkhurst who found that traffic had a particularly detrimental impact on the degree of independence granted to children. 

Why are practitioners still failing to resolve these issues despite the problems being documented since the 1970s? Engineers may believe they are today providing for people other than car travellers by ‘compromising’ capacity to create crossings and ‘if there’s space’ cycle lanes. But the fact remains: our most vulnerable citizens – children – are not free to walk and cycle independently on most roads. Women favour segregated cycle facilities, particularly if they are accompanying children, and children of course depend on walking, scooting or cycling to get about independently. 

A lack of crossings and protected cycle routes, and the dominance of high-speed, hostile, overly-engineered road environments therefore disproportionately limit the lives and travel needs of children, the disabled, and of women – who are less likely to hold a driving licence or have access to a car than men, and more likely to be trying to get children from A to B.

Transport must diversify. Other disciplines – architecture, social sciences and health – need clearer signposting into the profession.

The title of Hillman’s seminal study was cribbed from a 1980s Government road safety campaign poster ‘One false move and you’re dead’ – a warning to children, and no doubt their mothers, that they must rein in their movements or risk being killed. Note that no such demand is made on the motorist who poses the danger. 

Many engineering techniques enshrine this ethos, ensuring the most vulnerable submit to the motorist: generous splays undermine pedestrian priority at side roads; convoluted staggers and pedestrian stages are fitted in around motor capacity requirements; railings corral pedestrians away from desire lines; multi-lane roundabouts lack crossings because ‘it’s not safe to cross’. Modal filters and ‘Woonerven’ (not the weaker UK “Home Zones”) remain the exception, not the norm, on residential roads. Mention of continuous footways, light segregation or concepts such as traffic evaporation can still be met with blank looks or baffled disbelief by senior transport practitioners. 

Part of the problem lies with the training and culture of highways engineering. The expectation that children might cycle or play outside has been eroded out of the common imagination by engineered roads and associated road hierarchies and their inherent bias towards motor traffic. As noted by Culver, “Traffic engineering has long been understood as crucial for the (re)production and hegemony of automobility” (A bridge too far, 2015). The widespread application of design standards set out in the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges (DMRB) in towns and cities, even though it is intended mainly for out-of-town trunk roads and motorways, comes at a cost to those walking or cycling. The excellent new cycling annex to DMRB (IAN 195) is yet to be acknowledged by most highway engineers, let alone used in designs.  For transport authorities to diverge from design standards throws up misplaced fears of liability and being sued. Yet most casualties occur at sites where those standards have been religiously followed. And who is held accountable for those ‘accidents’? 

Querying inherited wisdom and taking design risks is essential to improving our roads. Yet analysis of transport MSc syllabi – researched for my own MSc thesis – revealed that, with one or two exceptions, engineering-orientated courses were considerably weaker than planning-orientated courses when it came to critiquing the status quo or encouraging students to strive towards alternative visions for transport. 

Designing for walking and cycling is often an ‘add-on’ in engineering modules, appearing in only one or two sessions in the academic year, rather than as an integral part of highways engineering. But most highway design topics – geometric highways design, traffic flow, or traffic signals – have a major impact on the comfort and safety of those walking and cycling. ‘Road safety’ was present in all engineering modules, though usually appeared to be taught in isolation from engineering for pedestrian and cycle traffic. 

This conceptual split between engineering/road safety, on the one hand, and walking/cycling, on the other, is potentially problematic: it reinforces the continued exclusion of walking and cycling from mainstream highways engineering. Engineering for pedestrians and cyclists is only seen as relevant when addressing a cycle/pedestrian KSI or ‘accident hotspots’. Fortunately there is increasing recognition that reducing road danger lies at the heart of safety. London’s draft transport strategy refers to ‘road danger,’ rather than ‘road safety’ – an industry which has largely failed to enable walking and cycling. As noted on Twitter recently, “hi-vis and helmets don’t make the roads less intimidating”.

A review of LinkedIn profiles for UK local authority heads of transport (for my MSc research) found skills relating to major road schemes/road safety continue to be held in higher regard than walking/cycling/urban design skills. Why go down the tricky route of reallocating car space to cyclists when a shiny new road brings more prestige? 

This LinkedIn research also revealed 2% of heads of transport had design-based training compared to 69% with an engineering background. Yet as part of the built environment, designers have much to contribute to highways. A striking 91% were male. Men drive more than women and may favour car-orientated environments. Women make more walking trips and, given the right infrastructure, cycle more than men. Equal representation of women in transport could help promote walking and cycling.

Gone are the days of simply finding technical solutions to providing for the car. Transport must diversify. Other disciplines – architecture, social sciences and health – need clearer signposting into the transport profession. A multi-disciplinary team of professionals could be instrumental in the future of transport. Greater cross-fertilisation of ideas between industries would assist with the sustainability curriculum by moving road design away from conventional engineering towards a more holistic and effective transport system. Authorities must adopt people-friendly design habits: pedestrians and cyclists need priority over turning traffic on side roads, more crossings, protected bicycle space on busier routes and modal filters or Woonerfs on residential roads. Today’s transport practitioners need to know not only how to design for ‘motorway man’, but also ‘walking woman’ and ‘cycling child’.