Saturday 16 March 2024

The Non-story of 20mph Enforcement In London

A few weeks ago, Times consumer affairs correspondent Andrew Ellson authored an article on 20mph speed enforcement in which he took some umbrage at how London's Metropolitan Police deals with enforcing that particular speed limit.

A 20mph zone sign

I'll come to what he wrote in a minute, but this comes at a time when we've had all sorts of nonsense from people decrying any measure to rein in the impact of decades of traffic growth and indeed, enforcement action taken against those behaving dangerously.

I am a supporter of 20mph as the default speed limit. This doesn't come from a political position, it is a consequence of the science which underlies part of the sustainable safety (also called safe systems) approach to highway engineering. In short, the human body can withstand certain forces in terms of being hit by a vehicle or for the occupants of a vehicle, and the relationship between driver speed and the energy of an impact is non-linear. 

20mph (30kph) is the sweet spot for where people both inside and outside of vehicles are much more likely to walk away from a crash and so from a sustainable safety point of view, places where mixed modes operate will benefit from this speed limit. I wrote more about this back in 2020. Let us also be very clear here, 20mph is a limit and not a target, because in some situations it is fully appropriate for people to drive well below the limit because of what is going on around them.

I think that in some respects UK driving culture has got us to a point where some people think about the speed limit as a bit of a guideline and with well-publicised police enforcement approaches, many people realise they are very unlikely to be taken to task for being a little over the limit and in the event they do get caught, some people get very noisily upset and that's grabbed by some to stoke their silly little culture war and presumably it must also help sell newspapers or drive traffic to news websites.

So back to Ellson's piece. While he did mention police forces across the UK, I am going to stick with the Metropolitan police as he seems most upset with them.  The headline to his piece (that he won't have written) leans into the government's current culture war on anyone not driving with "Record fines for 20mph speeding despite PM’s pledge to scrap zones" and in the piece after talking about 20mph, Ellson states:

"The Met alone has issued 595,000 of the fines — the equivalent of one ticket for every four cars registered in London — amid a crackdown on speeding initiated by Sadiq Khan as mayor."

In June 2023, there were 2,608,538 cars registered in London and with Ellson's figure of 595k fines, that's a ratio of 4.38. Now according to the data provided to me by the Met around 20mph enforcement, there were 243,110 offences detected by camera and 2,637 Traffic Offence Reports (TORs) - i.e. detected by a police officer in 2023. That's a total of 245,747 which is a ratio of 10.6. In fairness, the data I have is all offences and not just cars, but it doesn't appear to be the 1 in 4 as suggested in the article.

Ellson then took to Twitter to talk more about this and we find out that just maybe, he was feeling a little sore about the subject and so I obviously couldn't resist a dig. His answer was interesting and I did ask to see his data, but reply there came none.

Me quote tweeting Ellson and him responding.

The 10% +2mph here refers to a commonly held belief by some drivers that they are fine to drive at that speed before they run the risk of enforcement. For 20mph, this is taken as 24mph is fine, enforcement will be from 25mph and greater. Except that's completely wrong because the Met confirmed its 20mph approach in November 2021 as follows;

"The Met threshold for enforcement of 20mph roads and issuing a speeding ticket is 10% + 2 mph. Enforcement from 24 mph and Prosecution from 35 mph."

So if they catch you driving 24mph to 34mph (officer or camera) you are more likely to be dealt with through the fixed penalty process or a speed awareness course, and from and including 35mph, that's probably you off to court.

Ellson's tweet is even more interesting because he is talking about between 21mph and 25mph. He didn't confirm if that was an inclusive figure, but anyone caught speeding at 24mph and 25mph will be subject to enforcement. But let's have a look a the actual data which shows that in 2023 from a speed camera perspective, not a single person was subject to enforcement in London for 21mph to 23mph inclusive which is in line with the 10% +2mph which starts at 24mph. 

For enforcement by an officer for 21mph to 23mph, one person was subject to enforcement and that was dealt with by a speed awareness course. There were no enforcements by an officer at 24mph and there were just four at 25mph (1 case ongoing, 2 for potential prosecution and 1 dealt with by a speed awareness course). Back with the cameras, there were 80,267 enforcement detections at 24mph and 56,764 at 25mph.

Ellson is being a bit naughty quoting the range of 21mph to 25mph because that's taking in 21, 22 and 23mph which objectively is not being enforced against, but it's good framing when you want to create criticism even though we still talking about a 20mph limit and it feeds the social media set-piece of unverifiable stories about old ladies being done for driving at 22mph in a 20mph limit.

But let us put this into perspective with the Met's total 20mph enforcement figure of 245,747. About 42% of camera detections ended up with a speed awareness course and about 13% when detected by an officer, but as officer detections are about 1% of the total, you've got to be quite "unlucky". About 17% of camera detections led to people paying their fines (and taking 3 points), less than 4% going for prosecution, about 29% remain ongoing cases and about 9% led to no further action.

In terms of mileage driven in London, in 2022, there were 19.1 billion miles driven. I don't have a breakdown of how many were on 20mph streets, but that's one 20mph enforcement detection for every 78,000 miles driven in London each year and I'd say we've actually got some good compliance out there which makes Ellson's whole story rather disproportionate in the grand scheme of things. And besides, physics and biomechanics don't care.

I've provided the Met data below, feel free to challenge by maths as I don't always get it right!





Saturday 10 February 2024

Taking The Rough With The Smooth

The asphalt fairies have been out round my way and it gave me an opportunity to have a look at what they were up to a few nights ago.

The road in question is a 50mph trunk road which cuts through the community of my corner of London, and as such, it carries lots of motor traffic. It's built on good old London Clay which means it's susceptible to long term movement from getting saturated and drying out annually and for this road, a couple of sections had been on the move making the road surface a bit of a rollercoaster twisting lorries as they went over the defects.

The maintenance response was to relay the kerb lines to the correct levels and then resurface to suit and it is the resurfacing that caught my ear - yes I do mean "ear". Let's have a quick video and you'll see what I mean.


You might need to listen to this clip a couple of times to get your ear in, but the change in noise level between the new surface to the right and the old surface to the left is noticeable. Some of you might even be able to pick up the little thump as the vehicles go across the tie-in point between the two.

So what's happening here? For the answer to that, we need to take a closer look, courtesy of my creaking knees.


Above is a photograph of the old surface (taken where it has been ended in a side road - I wasn't going to bend down on a high speed road!) The black and white squares on the top of the reference card are 10mm so you can get a idea of the size of the pink and black stones that cover the surface which I'll come back to in a minute.

The surface itself is called "hot rolled asphalt" (HRA) and it is a mix of a bitumen binder, stone, sand and fillers (such as limestone dust). It is laid by machine and when properly compacted, forms a dense matrix which is very durable and waterproof. As a result, it has a long design life and in the scale of things is reasonable cost effective. Quite good for a trunk road carrying lots of lorries.

The problem with HRA however, is it isn't that great at attaining skidding resistance unless one chooses a variant which has a high proportion of high quality stone to leave a "rough" surface, but that puts the cost up. Instead, we add "pre-coated chippings" (PCC). PCCs are the pink and black stones you can see in the photograph above and come with a thin coating of bitumen to help them stick when they are laid. The pink stones are granite and the black are probably basalt - two very hard stones and as they are quite expensive, they are used sparingly on top rather than in the mix itself.

HRA surfaces are usually laid by machine with the PCCs added while the surface is still hot and prior to being compacted by roller (but not too much otherwise PCCs will be pushed right in). This leaves all the PCCs sticking up a little bit above the general surface leaving a rough texture. The PCCs sticking up creates a "positive macrotexture". The stones are also rough when you look at them at the microscopic level which gives us a "microtexture" which is also part of the grip story.

The action of tyres over an HRA surface is such that the stones grab and deform bits of the tyre in contact as they roll over the surface and the noise comes from the rubber "pinging" back as the stones lose grip as the tyre rotates. It's all happening very quickly, constantly and at a small scale, but all of the little pings add up to generate the noise we can hear in the video and of course, frictional forces are gradually wearing the tyres out. Asphalts generally absorb some noise from tyres, but the type explained above is fairly impervious and so much of the noise is reflected up.

PCC laying machines "chippers" were almost becoming museum pieces a few years back as there was a trend to use surfacing that didn't require them because they are often awkward to use because they are wider than the section of surface being laid, which usually led to road closures. Have a close look at this video to see the chips falling out of a chipper from a grooved roller fed by the hopper.


From a maintenance point of view, getting a chipper in for smallish scale work isn't economically viable and hand-laying PCCs isn't a great option for a high speed road from a quality perspective which is probably why for the bit of work I'm talking about, a different choice was made.


The new surface (above) is quite different to the HRA. In this case we are dealing with what is generally termed as "asphalt concrete" (AC) which is comprised of higher quality stone with fewer fillers and more stones of a similar size to give an "open" texture, but which still has bitumen to bind the mix. Whereas HRA provides grip with the PCCs sticking up, AC provides this by having lots of voids in the surface otherwise known as "negative texture" and of course the stones we see on the surface have a rough microtexture.

From a noise perspective, the voids in the AC are much better at absorbing the noise from tyre action than the reflective nature of HRA and so they are often favoured where there are residential areas as a result. The new surface here is probably a "thin surface course system" (TSCS) which is a more advanced type of AC where the bitumen binder has been modified using polymers to provide greater strength and durability, because basic AC is generally less durable than an HRA equivalent and which is an important consideration for areas with high traffic flow and lorry movements.

If we wanted to get even better at reducing noise, we could go for a porous asphalt which has more voids, but we need to take care that water entering the pores can drain away. This can be properly integrated with drainage design to provide a surface that throws up very little spray and even surfaces which will drain to engineered lower layers and sub-drainage systems.

So there you have it. A little bit of maintenance works can send us down the start of an asphalt rabbit hole which is a whole branch of engineering in its own right. It's a pity that the same amount of care wasn't applied to the uneven and cracked footway I was walking along.

Saturday 30 December 2023

The New Adventures of Monsieur Nugget de Poulet

Those following me on social media will know that I acquired a tandem cycle a couple of months back and as with my cargotrike, it has further sharpened my appreciation for how streets designs help and hinder non-standard cycles.

The wonderful machine was an eBay find and is an Arcade Cycles Tandem Coffee. It's a bit rough around the edges, but mechanically very good. Being aluminium, I can manually handle it a bit and with 7 hub gears from a twist shifter, it is very easy to ride, even without a stoker

A black tandem cycle with brown seats and chrome handlebars on a cycle track with Portcullis House and the Elizabeth clock tower behind.

The other thing I like about it is that it is cruiser style meaning a nice upright seating position (which I prefer). The only slight downside is that it is not step-through, but that's a personal preference of mine linked to how bendy my joints are!

So, why the name? Well that's my youngest daughter's doing. I have never been a bike namer, but happy to make the exception for her and being of French heritage we've Monsieur Nugget de Poulet. After a little TLC he was ready for some new adventures.

A black tandem cycle with brown seats and chrome handlebars parked against a stainless steel ccle parking hoop.

The obvious thing to note is M. de Poulet is much longer than a standard cycle, he is 2.4m long; not quite as long as the 2.8m of the LTN 1/20 Design Cycle (p42), but pretty long nonetheless. Sure, it's easy to lock him to a cycle stand, but not every installation has space as generous as my local retail park (above).

Handlebar-wise, the front set are a touch over 600mm wide and the rear a touch under 650mm wide which sets the overall width envelope at that height (i.e. not clipping posts on the street), but in comparison with the cargotrike, I have less of an issue avoiding kerbs as I can make fuller use of any cycle track with in-line wheels.

A blue cycle track with a grey pavement to the left and a grey passenger area for a floating bus stop to the right. There is an ambulance parked at the bus stop.

The length of the machine means the rear wheel doesn't closely follow the front when the the turn is sharper, and so one has to have this in mind when getting through tighter spots. The floating bus stops on Cycleway 2 in London felt a little awkward for this reason, especially given the fairly sharp horizontal deflection and the need to constantly watch the high kerbs (above). Some of the idea of the deflection is to slow some people down, but it doesn't work and it makes life harder for the users of non-standard cycles.

A black tandem cycle with brown seats and chrome handlebars parked between a series of white metal staggered barriers.

The other problem is chicane barriers. We of course know these metal monstrosities make it hard for many people to pass, but of course it is even harder with the tandem because of the length. Above is a photo of a set of barriers that were impossible to get through without dismounting and even then, I had to handle the cycle round them.

A black tandem cycle with brown seats and chrome handlebars on a crossing island with staggered crossings points either side.

The other length-related problem to highlight is that of staggered crossings. Above is a local staggered toucan which is a pain to use on a standard cycle, but almost impossible on a tandem. There are two problems here. First, at low speeds, cycles become less stable and with two people on a tandem it's even trickier. Second is the turning circle where the rear wheel doesn't follow the front on a tight turn making it very easy to catch the rear handlebars on the push button pole.

A black tandem cycle with brown seats and chrome handlebars parked inside a train by double sliding doors.

After checking with Transport for London, we took M. de Poulet on the Elizabeth Line this week so we could cut out the traffic sewers of east London and have a ride from Stratford into Central London. On the outbound leg (where the train was quiet), we used the folding seats section, but the tandem stuck out and blocked a fourth seat so on the homeward leg, we used the doorway which was easier, despite the vertical pole in the middle of the vestibule. As the doors open on one side for most of our trip, this seemed the better option and the double kick stand was very stable.

In terms of rules, TfL told me that the rules for a tandem are the same as non-folding cycles and so for our trip, we headed to Maryland which is my station of choice for a trip to Central London because it is way quieter than nearby Stratford and they have long lifts with doors at each end. As it turned out, M. de Poulet and my daughter and I fitted into the lift (just) and so I only had to carry the tandem down a handful of steps at the main entrance (there is a lift, but for a few steps, I could manage). 

A black tandem cycle with brown seats and chrome handlebars with a girl in a blue coat and white hat. They are in front of a blue cycle track with a road and buildings beyond.

It's probably not much of a surprise that the things which are awkward with a standard cycle are worse with a tandem, but it is always worth pointing this out because the message hasn't got through to everyone yet.

However, despite the annoyances, getting out on some decent cycling-friendly streets was a blast and we are looking forward to continuing the new adventures of Monsieur Nugget de Poulet into 2024.

Saturday 30 September 2023

Voorrangsplein! Part 3

One of the things that constantly impresses me about Dutch highway engineering is that they are not afraid to experiment and improve.

I was lucky enough to visit the Netherlands again a few weeks ago and my nerdy highlight was a cycle infrastructure safari around Utrecht with Mark Wagenbuur of Bicycle Dutch blog fame and our ride took us through a type of junction which has been intriguing me for ages - the voorrangsplein or "priority square" junction.

This post is actually part three of a series in which I wrote about the junction form back in February and March of 2021 as we were still grappling with Covid and I was wondering when I might venture back across the North Sea. Fortunately I have been able to visit several times since and each trip gives me further insight into the kind thinking that we could easily import into the UK and that includes the voorrangsplein design.

My first two posts looked at the design from first the motor traffic point of view (because it is a motor traffic feature) and then how walking and cycling could be added. My trip to Utrecht allowed me to see a couple of examples in the flesh and Mark provided some additional local knowledge. 

The other little development is I put out a little slideshow of my latest trip which included one of the junctions and that prompted a discussion with a Dutch colleague who pointed me and another UK colleague at the general design guidance for the junction type as featured in the CROW ASVV Recommendations for Traffic Facilities Within Built-Up Areas 2021 which is a much larger piece of design guidance than the CROW Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic which many in the UK will have heard of. I have the 1998 English version, but the current one is only in Dutch and so I've had to do a bit of translating with Google!

I will add my usual health warning that Dutch guidance has no legal standing in the UK, although lots of it will be of interest to a UK audience and many practitioners use it for inspiration and ideas (myself included - more on law and guidance here). Some of the tools, techniques and layouts are not compatible with UK legislation, but in my view we could very easily import the voorrangsplein design.

As we found out in the second post of this series, the layout was first used in Hilversum in 2007 to replace a signalised junction. The design developed from the LARGAS idea - langzaam rijden gaat sneller or driving slowly goes faster.

Since 2007, the junction has become a feature of guidance and the design has popped up all over the Netherlands. In Utrecht, it has been used at a couple of junctions which are part of the Western City Boulevard project which is squeezing out some motor traffic capacity in favour of more space for people and green space on the city's ring road. I made a video of a section of the project from my recent visit in which you'll see a couple of voorrangsplein junctions.


The project still has retained a fair chunk of capacity at the larger junctions and given these are largely the flow constraining features, removing a lane in each direction between them isn't a huge problem from a capacity perspective. Before we take a closer look at one of the Utrecht examples, it's worth taking a slightly deeper dive into some of the features of the junction type. 

The guidance suggests that the design should be used at intersections of distributor roads with access roads, and that the main road can operate with a maximum of 25,000 vehicles a day. As you might recall from the previous posts, the junction is part of a single carriageway layout (locally dualled or with a very large traffic island on the approach) and so 25,000 vehicles a day is a very high flow indeed. 

When the main road is running clear, the guidance also suggests that the main road can feed up to 1,200 vehicles a day in each direction through the junction type (just under 10% of the daily flow). In some situations this might be seen as potential constraint because peak hour flow might be a touch higher, but as I have suggested, 25,000 vehicles is very high for a single carriageway road and we really need to be designing for traffic reduction in my view. 


The junction type is not for high speed roads and indeed, the guidance suggests that it is a useful "gateway" feature for stepping driver speed down. Because of the horizontal deflection it provides on the main road and for the side roads being mainly for access, it's a chance to reinforce a change of environment. Above is a simplified layout I have flipped for the UK and I've annotated some of the key features. The main thing to consider here is that it can be easily seen that drivers are able tackle the junction in stages, dealing with other traffic streams in bite sized chunks - it is an easy junction to drive through!

The lane widths are interesting. The guidance suggests they be in the range of 2.9m to 3.5m. The narrow lanes help keep driver speeds down, but there are options to add overrun areas to accommodate larger vehicles - rammelstrook or rumble strips. I can see some UK network managers shuddering at the narrow and locally dualled sections which might be a problem in the event of a breakdown, but we probably shouldn't design for what is a fairly irregular event.

The junction form is still space hungry, but compared with a signalised junction of a similar capacity, the layout tends to be elongated and provides space for landscaping where being used in retrofit. So, the Utrecht examples are interesting because the overall highway footprint remains, but the elongated nature of the junction and the general road diet means an awful lot more space is released for landscaping as well as walking and cycling space.


Let's take a look at one of the junctions - Marnixlaan with Royaards van Den Hamkade/ Van Egmondkade (above). In the photograph the main road (Marnixlaan) splits either side of the kidney shaped central island. Around this island you can just see a left turn lane and the black car to the left is entering the other left turn lane coming towards us. To the right there is a black car emerging from Royaards van Den Hamkade just out of shot that car has also cleared the cycle track to wait in a pocket before joining the main road.


Above is a photograph where I turned a little more to the right and the cycle track and footway can be clearly seen, both with priority over the main side road. The video below is a pan across the junction from its south east side and then a quick look at how the Royaards van Den Hamkade arm works. It's worth watching a couple of times to see how well things flow for all users.


Royaards van Den Hamkade is part of a route which connects to the city centre and so arguably it is more of a distributor road than an access road, although the route does tend to fizzle out as it meets the city's ring-canal. The Van Egmondkade arm is also more of a distributor road which continues as a route to meet the regional road network. 


The other thing to note is there are two way cycle tracks on both sides of Marnixlaan whereas the guidance shows (but doesn't require) with flow cycle tracks. Of course, walking and cycling is an additional to the basic motor traffic junction and locally, the two way tracks make sense at a network level. 

The photograph above is the the left of the first one which shows an uncontrolled crossing for walking and cycling of the main road which is in accordance with the guidance (but signalised crossings are used elsewhere) and you can just make out that the cycle track coming in from the left is one-way as is the crossing by virtue of the no entry signs. For cycling, this junction is the interface between one-way cycle tracks coming from the southwest and the two side roads and then becoming two-way on both sides of Marnixlaan off to the northeast so save having to cross the main road further on.


The final piece of interest here is the set of traffic signals on each approach to the junction on the main road. I have already said that the junction form is unsignalised, but in this case, the signals are used to hold traffic for a very short time if the junction has started to hit capacity which in theory could be from traffic on the side streets, turning right in the junction or perhaps lots of people cycling across. The photograph above shows the signals on the southwestern approach and you can note the one-way nature of the cycle track.

You can also see the signals here which are just red and green aspects when in use and some traffic loops for drivers and cyclists here. The traffic signals only switch on when needed and are set away from the junction so they don't create any confusion that they are part of the junction.

And there you have it. Hopefully this has helped get under the skin of the voorrangsplein to show lots of little things working together to create a really useful junction design.

Friday 25 August 2023

Railton Revisited

Just over a two years ago, I paid a visit to the Railton Low Traffic Neighbourhood, to the southeast of Brixton town centre in south London. I revisited because I had seen photos on social media of the project being made permanent and I wanted to have a look myself.

Functionally, the project is the same as it was on my last visit with restricted motor vehicle access to Atlantic Road from Coldharbour Lane at the northwestern end (below), with that first section essentially creating a cul-de-sac just beyond. At the southeastern end, a bus gate has been retained near Herne Place which means there is a low traffic link from Brixton to Herne Hill station. 


Crucially, Shakespeare Road remains closed to motor traffic at Mayall Road and so with pretty small scale work, an entire area has been freed from being a cut through for motors while maintaining full access to buses, emergency vehicles and service vehicles.

A shopping street with lush planting areas on both sides with a bus driving away in the distance and a person crossing from right to left with a buggy.

So on that basis, this post is actually quite short because the previous one went into a bit more of that detail. The key thing is how the London Borough of Lambeth has made the project permanent and so let's look at the Atlantic Road end a bit more closely. The first 35 metres (from Coldharbour Lane) is only for buses and loading permit holders, and it is dominated by new planting (above).

A bench in a quarter circle with timber slats for a seat and back with metal legs and armrests. A grey bike with an orange bag on the front rack is parked just behind.

In theory the only way in for loading permit holders would be from the opposite arm of Atlantic Road given the banned turns from both arms of Coldharbour Lane and so only those in the know would go that way. Other deliveries can be made by accessing Atlantic Road via other routes. Because this first section restricts motor traffic, additional footway space has been provided along with seating (above) and cycle parking.

A street with a road narrowing on both sides to create a pair of lush planting beds with an informal crossing point beyond. A person on a small folding bike has just passed through.

The modal filter just south of Marcus Garvey Way has also been upgraded (above) so it is more obvious that people shouldn't be driving through southbound. Northbound is allowed due to the way the local traffic circulation plan has been arranged. This is a bit of a theme and while needing to allow buses through, the road layout has been changed to help reinforce the prohibition of general traffic intention of the design.

The pair of buildouts from the other direction showing no motor vehicle signs and the words BUS GATE on the road.

One issue I have is with the signage which in common with the entrance from Coldharbour Lane uses the written "BUS GATE" marking with the no motor vehicles traffic sign (above). I'm afraid that this is not an approved combination and Lambeth needs to either remove the markings or swap the signs to one of the 953 series (one for the sign geeks) within which exemptions to the traffic regulation order can be made for "authorised vehicles" but not permit holders.

A section of street with a rail bridge over it in the distance. The road has been coloured buff and there are staggered planting beds on each side and a group of timber and metal chairs to the left. There is a no motor vehicles traffic sign to the left.

Other main change has been at Shakespeare Road where a short section of street has been essentially pedestrianised with the temporary materials giving way to permanent materials which work to explain to drivers they shouldn't be here (above). To the north of the railway, Shakespeare Road is now a quiet cycle route up to Loughborough Junction station.

The same as above, but a closer view of the seating which has an armchair and a pair of two person benches.

The street layout in the wider area is a bit awkward due to the railway cutting through, and so from an emergency access point of view, the pedestrianised section of street has space for vehicles to pass through with CCTV enforcement. The layout is such that there isn't a clear view of the route ahead which is another design reinforcement to drivers that they are not permitted to pass. The seating and planting work to block this view through while allowing a route that standard fire engines can tackle.

The street closer to the railway bridge with a pair of no motor traffic signs and the planting on both sides.

The photograph above is from the north looking south and again, the winding nature of the emergency route can be seen with the planting providing the visual break. Below is a closer look at the planting here which are all rain gardens with a square of granite blocks providing a bit of water energy dissipation before the planting.

A close up of a small squarish rain garden with a square of granite blocks closest to the viewer.

There are also poems from local poets within the area as part of a local heritage trail (below).

A poem in yellow and white on black asphalt: "we make the place trendy, vibrant Brixtonians make a Splash, never silent. When injustice arises to fight us we fight back with a roar that's righteous. The youth stay current, Electric Pattern up 'cause life can get hectic. We grieve loved ones no longer here. We kiss our teeth to conquer fear. We rise, Elevate above friction. Respect the village, love Brixton. BRiES.

So, while the project hasn't functionally changed from my last visit, the permanent materials and planting don't just look good, they help reinforce the layout to make it a bit more self-explaining to drivers which I think is a good thing. Even though people driving should understand traffic signs, making it easy to understand counters the often claimed confusion argument. So, I shall leave you with a quick video of the project and I wonder if you'll see the little surprise (just before the 3 minute mark)?