Our Thinking: The Myth of Shared Zones
Why is Melbourne's attempt to turn “Little” streets into pedestrian-friendly promenades failing?
On the busy streets of Melbourne’s CBD, the latest foray into shared streets has proven to be a monumental failure.
In 2020, four heavily-populated laneways – Flinders Lane, Little Collins, Little Bourke and Little Lonsdale – became “shared zones”. Pedestrians were given right of way, speed limits were lowered to 20 km/h – vibrancy and the spirit of sharing was touted loud and proud. What could go wrong?
In short, everything. Pedestrians were scared to cross in front of cars. Cars drove at 40km/h or over. Fast and vehicular continued to assume supremacy on the road and sharing went out the window.
Why did it fail? Poor education, a lack of considered design, and a little bit of crossed cultural wiring.
Decoding shared spaces
The concept of “shared spaces” began, as many good things do (being Dutch I’m biased, but it’s true) in the Netherlands.
Originated by Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman and the Keuning Institute, the original aim was to reduce congestion and accidents and to increase traffic flow.
And it worked, well, in the Netherlands at least. There’s a few reasons why shared space works for the Dutch. The main reason being that their approach to networks and street design is inherently equitable in its execution.
The most obvious evidence of this is that nearly 80% of streets in the Netherlands have speeds lower than 20 mp/h (or 30 km/h). This means that cars are (in theory) restricted by speeds low enough to allow for mixed traffic, encouraging a shared street environment. It’s worth noting that the Dutch picked that speed limit for a reason. It’s a brisk walking pace. With everyone going at the same speed, the social contract between pedestrians, cyclists and vehicular drivers is clear – we’re all here to share the space at a common speed.
In essence, Dutch shared spaces are by design built for equity between people and vehicles. Streets are safer, traffic volumes are improved and it's good for businesses, especially for retail and hospitality. People feel safer walking and cycling in the same space as cars.
Sounds like a utopian society right?
For many urban design planners outside of the Netherlands, the shared space concept seemed like the silver bullet to inner city design challenges. Unfortunately, the approach to shared spaces in many cities, including my adopted home of Melbourne, have been fundamentally flawed for a few reasons.
#1 Lack of education
First failure – no one has a shared understanding of what a “shared zone” means.
What is the speed limit? Who has the right of way? What are the rules?!
In Australia at least, I’m certain there would be different answers to these questions in a shared zone at any one time. Until there’s an understanding of how to behave in a shared zone, no one will be able to participate in it correctly, or confidently.
#2 No thoughtful design changes
Beyond the education problem is the design one.
In Melbourne at least, no effort was made by the urban planners to differentiate these spaces from other regular roads.
The pavements still looked like the only place for pedestrians you be, as did the road for drivers still narrow. No visual obstructions were created to intuitively encourage vehicles to give way. As one review put it, a lack of “traffic calming” measures were apparent.
The planners made no effort to communicate to drivers that these spaces were different. So, drivers followed that direction, and treated them as any other road.
#3 Over-reliance on signage
In the absence of an education or design effort, a lot of expectation is put on the signage in these spaces. In the Melbourne case, the shared zone signage is doing a lot of the heavy lifting to keep the zones operating without incident.
As Victorian Walks executive officer Ben Rossiter puts it, the “shared zone” signs were “insufficient” to change behaviour. Damn straight they are – because no one knows what the correct behaviour is!
We’ve railed about before – signage can’t fix bad design. Nor can it fix a problem as complicated as reshaping how shared public spaces “work”.
So, what’s the answer to shared zones in Australia? There is no easy one. But as we see it, it starts with reeducation and the implementation of good intuitive design principles.
In Australia's busy centres, as in many other cities experimenting with shared zones, it’s going to take a lot more than adding a couple of signs on a few streets to change an entire city’s attitude to pedestrians' right to share the road. But it’s an attitude shift worth fighting for, for everyone’s safety.