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Suburban street reimagined without carsSuburban Street reimagined

Suburban street reimagined without cars

Capthorne Avenue in Harrow has had a digital makeover, replacing private cars with public space...and it looks great
by Laura Laker
Sun, Mar 13, 2016 14:50
4

Ever wondered what your town, or your street would look like without any cars?

A digital mock-up of Capthorne Avenue in Harrow shows just how much public space is given over to private cars, and what that space would look like replaced with a suburban park.

The digital rendering of Capthorne Avenue, with trees and grass replacing asphalt, is how some believe some streets could look if we ditched the private car and only used cars when we really needed them.

Google defends driverless car project after collision

The fly-through on the BBC’s website shows planting, benches, play areas, a footpath and people on bicycles and foot enjoying the street, with a driverless car on a track stopping for a crossing pedestrian.

Interestingly, Harrow, in North West London, falls under London Mayor and Conservative leadership hopeful, Boris Johnson’s constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

The local newspaper reported last month Transport for London is in “active discussions” with Google in a bid to trial driverless cars on London Streets. So far trials have been limited to Mountain View, California but London’s Deputy Mayor for Transport, Isabel Dedring, said officials from the Mayor’s office had spoken with Google “at least a dozen times” over the past three years about bringing trials to London.

Dedring said: “It's going to have to work in big cities so why don't we start trialling it now?

"Google have said they are focused on the States, but they're starting to think about going elsewhere so we're in active discussions.”

"We met them a few weeks ago to see whether they would do trials here.

"It is still very early days but we would be keen for trials to happen in London whenever Google are ready to move them into other countries."

In January it was announced Harrow would develop a Low Emission Zone, thanks to government funding aimed at encouraging electric cars, offering traffic and parking priority for those using plug-in vehicles.  

You can see the street's transformation, complete with soothing music, on the BBC’s website, here.

What do you think? Should our streets look more like this? What would you do with the space we currently give over to cars?

driverless cars
car free streets
pedestrianised area
Laura Laker

Laura Laker is a freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience covering cycling, walking and wheeling (and other means of transport). Beginning her career with road.cc, Laura has also written for national and specialist titles of all stripes. One part of the popular Streets Ahead podcast, she sometimes appears as a talking head on TV and radio, and in real life at conferences and festivals. She is also the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network.

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4 comments

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Mr Agreeable | 8 years ago
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I actually think naffly utopian digital visualisations like this do more harm than good, as people see them and think "How do these places function if nobody can drive a vehicle through them?"

 

Last year I visited Vauban, a suburb of Freiburg in southern Germany, which is often held up as a model of sustainable development as 70% of households are car-free. Cars aren't banned, but they are restricted.

 

The side streets are laid out as cul-de-sacs, you can't park outside your house permanently (you have to buy a space in a large communal garage which costs around €10,000) and when the development was being planned they made sure that public transport networks were extended to cater for it. The main street is dominated by a grass-lined tram track (which I bet inspired the Harrow visualisation) but there's also still a decent width of tarmac given over to motor vehicles.

 

There are actually relatively few places you can't drive, and on the main street there are a lot of parked vehicles (pictures of which never seem to make it into any of the "urbanist" pieces gushing about how livable the place is). What you don't get is the constant flow of traffic you see in most UK suburban streets, which makes it a much quieter, friendlier place.

 

//www.freiburg.de/pb/site/Freiburg/get/params_E-384273682/302672/Vaubanallee.jpg)

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P3t3 replied to Mr Agreeable | 8 years ago
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Mr Agreeable wrote:

I actually think naffly utopian digital visualisations like this do more harm than good, as people see them and think "How do these places function if nobody can drive a vehicle through them?"

 

 

I agree, reckon if they just put a picture of a standard dutch "home zone" it woud do much better to be honest.  

Doesn't matter how utopian it is people still need to take delivery of a sofa/washing machine etc now and again.  

The silly automated electric car track is a nonsense and even at this stage an outdated concept.  They aren't going to need special trails in the tarmac to follow like the back to the future visions of the '80s.  

Archtects having fun I guess, let them off the leash and its this or the equally stupid "garden bridge"...

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dodgy | 8 years ago
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My local village has a thread on Streetlife (like a hyperlocal Facebook) bemoaning bad parking/too many cars/not enough parking space in the village. You get the idea.

I posited that too many people drive half a mile to the village to buy milk, when they could walk/cycle *even in the rain*.

I'm not expecting a warm response, too many cars is an 'other people' problem, never the person driving.

 

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rct | 8 years ago
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Living literally around the corner from Capthorne Ave, this would be idyllic, but unlikely to happen in modern Metroland.

A little research would have been nice though Laura as "Interestingly, Harrow, in North West London, falls under London Mayor and Conservative leadership hopeful, Boris Johnson’s constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip." is about as wrong as you can get.  My fellow constituents in Harrow West are too intelligent to vote for that buffoon and live next door where we returned Gareth Thomas (Lab) as our MP.

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