roadworks and car speed

With the slowdown in traffic speed, people who used to drive through Kalk Bay on their way to somewhere else, are now looking around them, seeing shops they never noticed before, stopping.  It's not the car that's the problem, it's the speed.

During the past two years of road works there has not, to my knowledge, been a single collision in Kalk Bay, whereas before they were regular and frequent. What roadworks do is they slow us down and wake us up. When I drive from Muizenberg to Kalk Bay and have to change from one side of the road to the other,  pay attention to signs, go over humps in the road, avoid slipping into the excavations,  I navigate consciously instead of driving on automatic - and a the same time I drive more slowly.  Or is it because the road is sensibly one way?

designing for place and people

There are 19,000 cars on the Main Road between Muizenberg and Kalk Bay each day.  I estimate that 1,000 of these are travelling to or from Kalk Bay.*  Most of the rest - some 18,000 cars - pass through Kalk Bay on their way to  somewhere else. Many small towns on the N1 used to be like this. The highway divided the village until bypasses were built and residents regained the use of Main Road, the heart of any village.    In A New Theory of Urban Design architect/planner Christopher Alexander calls for town planning to be turned on its head. Instead of placing the needs of the car first, we should design for place and people.  Once we have done that we connect these places up as best we can. Thats how places with character  - the places we love to visit - evolved.  It's that quality - the narrow cobbled stoned roads which one has to negotiate with care -  that makes Kalk Bay such a sought after place to live.

*Using a method suggested to me by the road engineers, I counted the number of parking places in Kalk Bay and added 20% to arrive at the number of cars in Kalk Bay,  and then doubled it to allow for a return journey.

How to stop car crashes

Collisions between cars and cars crashing into parked cars and even into shops  (see photos) have in the past been a regular occurrence in Kalk Bay. A year ago the road was made one way and traffic speed reduced  because of roadworks, and since then... no more collisions. Not a single one.
 

The modified idea

The idea is to eliminate through traffic and turn Kalk Bay into a destination on the weekend by closing the road at the Clairvaux Road (Boyes Drive) intersection. During those two days Kalk Bay Main Road precinct would be like many Italian piazzas, a zone in which cars and pedestrians mix (as they do in the parking areas of shopping malls) because cars travel at a pedestrian-safe speed. Through traffic would use Boyes Drive. 

Persian carpets slow down traffic

The idea that a different colour and/or texture of the road would slow down cars was demonstrated today when Jo of Japs Carpets laid Persian carpets out on the road - as they do in Persia, she said. Car speed was noticeably reduced and pedestrians were able to cross the road more easily.

Latest

IN THE NEWS:

- New York Times Square car free voted permanent by 74% of two million residents polled.

- Proposal to make Long Street, Cape Town car-free. ( 'Man-about-town' column in Cape Times)

ON THE KALK BAY STREET:

- Kalk Bay much more pleasant to be in with one-way traffic only on Main Road. People are asking can it be permanent?