Editorial: Shared streets fine if balance can be struck

Opinion

Inner-city street designers spend a good deal of time and effort trying to reconcile pedestrians and cars. Streets may be reduced to service lanes, footpaths widened, crossings broadened, parking bays provided, cafe tables permitted and public furniture artfully placed. But it seldom works to even the designers' satisfaction for very long. Every few years they tear up the paving and try a new layout.

Now the Auckland City Council's urban design group have proposed something entirely different: rather than try to separate people and cars, they suggest, let them mingle. To that end, the council's transport committee has agreed to remove footpaths and car-parking spaces from a number of narrow streets in the inner city and allow pedestrians to stroll in the traffic.

It may sound like a recipe for chaos but it works in old European town centres where streets of medieval vintage are sometimes barely the width of a car. With buildings at their edge there is no room for footpaths. People walk in the street, cars move through as quickly as the foot traffic permits, nobody minds.

Auckland City's urban design group manager, Ludo Campbell-Reid, calls the concept "democratic" in the sense that conflicts will be worked out by popular practice rather than civic planners. Pedestrians and motorists will know they both have the right to use the designated streets. The only rules will be that cars must give way to people, who in turn must not impede vehicles unduly.

The idea will be trialled in four precincts of the inner city: Elliott and Darby Sts, Lorne and Rutland Sts, O'Connell St and the lanes between lower Shortland, Fort and Customs Sts including Commerce and Gore Sts. Some of these are already too narrow to invite much car traffic. Without footpaths they may be more inviting to vehicles if pedestrian traffic does not increase.

In other cities where shared streets have been introduced, including London, New York, Copenhagen and Brisbane, they have been judged a success for reclaiming space for foot traffic without the need to ban motor vehicles. It must be hoped that is not the only measure of success Auckland's urban planners will accept.

The concept will serve us well if it lets all the chosen streets and alleys find their own balance between conflicting uses. In some of them business owners will have to make an effort if they want to turn them into inviting pedestrian plazas. In others, such as O'Connell and Elliott Sts, the transition should be easy and the removal of car parking a boon to them.

The removal of footpaths will force shop owners to decide for themselves whether foot traffic or vehicle access is more valuable to them. If it is the former, they will be able to do something attractive with their street frontage after the removal of kerbs and parking spaces. If they place more value on vehicle-born customers they will need to provide off-street parking for them.

But whatever they decide, the alternative is not entirely lost. Vehicles will still nose through the foot traffic - and service vans will surely be able to park for a moment - while pedestrians will still be able to walk freely along those of the designated streets that continue to attract mainly motorists.

Mr Campbell-Reid says the principle is "pro-pedestrian but not anti-cars". In its element of democratic choice, he says, "it will be a good fit with the New Zealand psyche, so we'll grow to love it." In time that may be so; initially it will require quite a mental adjustment for a community accustomed to fairly rigid regulation of road use. Generally we demand rules to be clear and definite. We may struggle with the idea of sharing space with moving cars, but may find it works on the best rule of all: be considerate.