Best Of

London wouldn’t move if every cyclist used a car. Stupid post.

Not every location is London. Stupid post.

London has the most traffic in the country. Therefore if it applies there, it will apply anywhere.

Quite an interesting little thought provoker - look where people drive in slush to see which areas of the carriageway are "redundant". And therefore - in my head - which bits that we can consider recovering for pedestrians.


It is a piece from Robert Weetman, who is a designer of streets:
https://robertweetman.wordpress.com/2026/04/14/redundant-carriageway/

That's a very car-centric attitude. Why should everyone else have to accommodate the motorist? How about looking at where people want to walk and cycle, and then designing the roads so as to allow them to do do?

As a thought provoker, I think it is about exposing that it is not - on current patterns - purely a zero sum game, so the "repurposing carriageway" is not a downside for motorists, since our habit has been to incorporate all sorts of otherwise useful space by default into dead space on carriageways. And it is a way of starting a useful conversation.

On the piccie I have posted, there is little or no loss to taking the space indicated off the carriageway, as it is not used so there is no benefit in keeping it.

In Central London a space like that would have street furniture and perhaps cycle parking on it - providing a benefit of keeping such off the "used" part of the footway, where street furniture, litter bins etc are often placed.

The benefits for pedestrians and carriageway users could be that the time to cross a narrower roundabout entrance is is much reduced, so safety is improved and traffic flow is eased. Plus the visual visual perception cause slower speeds at the roundabout. I'd be moving pavement clutter out of the routes used by pedestrians, and into this formerly redundant carriageway space, perhaps including a bench for older or disabled pedestrians to rest (the national guidance is every 50m or so), and some greenery.

To me making use this sort of are opportunities for adjustments with zero downsides for carriageway or footway users, and upside for all groups - in other words low-hanging fruit.

Quite an interesting little thought provoker - look where people drive in slush to see which areas of the carriageway are "redundant". And therefore - in my head - which bits that we can consider recovering for pedestrians.


It is a piece from Robert Weetman, who is a designer of streets:
https://robertweetman.wordpress.com/2026/04/14/redundant-carriageway/

That's a very car-centric attitude. Why should everyone else have to accommodate the motorist? How about looking at where people want to walk and cycle, and then designing the roads so as to allow them to do do?

Ban all cars !!

Not at all. But designing our roads to make it easy to get around with or without a car makes good sense. Better that than regarding anything other than car transport as an afterthought.

Yes but whining about roads designed many years ago when priorities were different achieves nothing.

Clearly no one who designs and measure car parking spaces has ever driven a Car other than a Smart Car

I agree with that one ! My car is longer than the spaces at my local supermarket, which I assume are the minimum 2.4 x 4.8m.

Car spaces are from a different era. I discovered yesterday that Xpeng have a car coming to the UK that is 5.4m long - good luck parking that in your typical supermarket space

Back in 2004 I ended up with a Mercedes S Class, it used to occupy parts of four parking spots and I am an excellent parker, I needed all four when I opened a door.

I miss having a carriage clock in the car.

Apparently the looming problem with some car parks is that they cannot cope with extra weight of EV vehicles.

Early modern psychometric test
https://www.theodramatist.com/early-modern-europe

Who would you have been in early modern Europe?
The years between 1500 and 1789 broke the world open. The stability of church, of knowledge, of political order, even of our place in the cosmos—all of it was called into question and left unsettled, to be fought over. Out of that turmoil came a crowd of new movements: some drove the changes, some struggled to make sense of them, some fought to undo them, and not one came through untouched. A few you’ll recognize. Most you won’t. But every one of them still leaves its mark on the world you live in now. They are gathered here, and the questions that follow—most of them about you as you are today—will find where you would have stood in the chaos.

I am apparently:

The Virtuoso
later 1600s · England · experimental philosopher
Boyle, New Experiments Physico-Mechanical
You trust the thing you can build, run, and watch over any grand system. You think the way to settle an argument is to rig the apparatus, gather honest witnesses, and report exactly what happened.

Representative figures Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, Margaret Cavendish

Robert Boyle was a centrist dad of his day. Who knew?