Creating safer high streets for pedestrians and mobility impaired people is a key way to improve footfall to our local shops, restaurants, cafes and other businesses who have been hard hit over the last year.
Many of the UK’s towns and villages have historic centres that have evolved over time and are not ideally suited for the volume of cars and pedestrians that now require access to them.
Finding design solutions to these challenges is a particular area of expertise for our talented Transport & Highways Team.
A great example of this is the recently completed traffic calming and pedestrian improvement works carried out on Goring-on-Thames High Street.
Goring-on-Thames in Oxfordshire is an ancient riverside village joined by a busy bridge to the Berkshire village of Streatley. Goring and Streatley are both popular tourist locations. Goring’s High Street serves as the main commerce area for both villages and is populated by an array of shops and hospitality venues.
In recent years, residents and the parish council have become increasingly concerned about road safety on the High Street and incorporated improvements to the area in the Goring Neighbourhood Plan following a consultation.
Our team worked alongside Oxfordshire County Council to come up with a design that would provide traffic calming and improve pedestrian safety whilst also enhancing the experience and access for visitors to the High Street.
Our detailed designs included a neat drainage solution on the crossing table.
The increased use of road humps in traffic calming schemes can sometimes create drainage problems. The hump can act as a dam, but if gaps are left to maintain gutter continuity there is an increased hazard to pedestrians who tend to prefer to cross at road humps or tables where the road level is raised to the same height as the footway.
To address this problem, we employed the use of a Kingshurt Bypass Kerb in our designs. The innovative kerb works by removing a section of the existing kerb and replacing it with a duct which collects the surface water on one side of the hump, diverts it past the obstacle and returns it to the gutter once the hump has been passed. This allows for a smooth transition between all kerb profiles often without the need for dropped kerbs.
The new layout has proved popular with residents and users so far. Goring Parish Council will monitor the impact of the scheme over the next 12 months to see whether further action needs to be considered.
