CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Infrastructure

Low cost zebras

(13 posts)

  1. neddie
    Member

    Cllr Neil Ross put in a motion to Full Council to install "low cost" zebras in various locations. These are basically paint on the road zebras, without the full flashing "belisha beacons", to be used on side road crossings (where pedestrians already have priority).

    Cost at around £1000 each, instead of £40,000, but Cllr Ross wants to take the money out of the active travel budget. Imagine it scaled-up and a £1000 spent, multiplied by 4 for every crossroads in the city. Is it still value for money? Or simply a way to burn through the active travel budget on paint, without doing anything meaningful?

    Anyone know if the motion passed?

    https://democracy.edinburgh.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=150&MId=7293

    Posted 1 week ago #

  2. pringlis
    Member

    Still being discussed, as of 1515 they're having a break and still about 3 motions ahead of it so should be about 1600 I think.

    SMPS PC put in a deputation of support. We have a few side streets on the walking route to school which are meant to have crossing guards but they haven't been able to recruit any for the past 10+ years. There are weekly near misses and we recently had a kid hit by a van at one of the junctions when the driver served round without looking when he was half way across. We've asked if they can trial zebras on some of those streets which are meant to have crossing guards, since there's 0 chance of actual zebras with belishas.

    I didn't realise the money would come out of the Active Travel Budget but I still do think they're worthwhile. Most motorists either don't know about or ignore the section of the Highway Code that states they have to give way to pedestrians at side streets so a physical reminder may be helpful. (Or may make it more dangerous as people assume they can walk out and cars will definitely stop? That's why it's a trial.)

    Posted 1 week ago #

  3. neddie
    Member

    Based on the experience of the red painted-on cycle lanes, I'd say that paint is not protection.

    Motorists only understand hard physical measures that might damage their precious metal. Bollards, kerbs, bike racks, raised tables, junction radii tightening, Czech hedgehogs. And even then they still manage to crash into them!

    Posted 1 week ago #

  4. Dave
    Member

    It seems like a good use of the active travel budget to me. If you go to any large shop or retail centre it generally has paint-only zebras all over the place and if you use them to cross, everybody stops (at least as much as they do for regular crossings)

    Posted 1 week ago #

  5. neddie
    Member

    The problem is that it may benefit a handful of junctions that get the treatment. But at every other junction, drivers be like, “no lines here, charge on through!” So at the untreated junctions, you may get the opposite effect.

    So it ends up the affluent areas getting the safety measures, while the less well off areas struggle.

    It simply isn’t scalable to treat every junction in the city with mini-zebras. And in more progressive cities eg Oslo, they’re getting rid of the paint, and dealing with the source of the problem instead (by reducing through traffic, treating cars as”guests”, and making it illegal to park except in marked bays)

    Then there is the matter of maintenance - we all know CEC struggle to maintain the basic infrastructure. This just multiplies up the amount of paint they now have to maintain, and we all know it won’t get done.

    The paint is also made of plastic - as it breaks down, it washes directly in to the rivers and oceans. Adding to the serious microplastics pollution problems we already see there. We’ll never survive as a species if we keep adding plastics to the ocean.

    The cynical part of me thinks this is just Neil Ross filibustering and diverting active travel resources and funds on bullshit that won’t inconvenience drivers in the slightest.

    Posted 1 week ago #

  6. Dave
    Member

    Some fair points there although I'm not sure why they wouldn't generalise (any infrastructure is bad, eg pavements, because in the absence of it etc)

    Posted 1 week ago #

  7. Dave
    Member

    The other thing that strikes me as interesting is the question of how many car tyres would need to be diverted by painted lines before the net effect is a reduction in plastic pollution. There are some millions of tons of plastic pollution from tyres, and probably not millions of tons of paint (but maybe I'm wrong! Could be a good thesis for some post-grad somewhere)

    Posted 1 week ago #

  8. bakky
    Member

    One has to wonder how much of the issue of side street crossing would be resolved by better awareness around the updated highway code on priority for folks on foot - i.e if it’s a de-facto invisible zebra for turning traffic anyway, does it need paint?

    Posted 1 week ago #

  9. pringlis
    Member

    The awareness aspect does need looked it, from both a road user and pedestrian point of view. When I'm walking and I step out to assert my priority then I get angry reaction from drivers, when I'm driving and I stop to let pedestrians go first I get confused looks from walkers and often end up having to go anyway as they won't start crossing!

    The trial in Manchester seems to have gone well - https://beeactive.tfgm.com/walking/side-road-zebras/

    Absolutely fair points on maintenance and paint though. Hopefully considered as part of any trial/decision.

    Ideally awareness campaigns would be enough, but realistically I'm happy with either filtering side streets or painted zebras at identified problem crossings. I remember being on holiday in a tiny village in France and being surprised at just how many painted crossings there were - every side street and dropped kerb.

    Posted 1 week ago #

  10. Arellcat
    Moderator

    Why stop at zebras? Why not leaves?

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    Posted 1 week ago #

  11. neddie
    Member

    Interesting that the French village shown seems to have used a "thinner" kind of paint, that needs to be repainted every year. Typically, this is used in snow areas, where gritters and snowploughs are likely to remove much of the paint during winter.

    In the UK, we tend to use a much thicker (maybe 7 or 8mm high) thermoplastic paint, that lasts longer (maybe 10 years).

    The downside of the longer-laster paint is that the authorities tend to paint it, then forget about it.

    Posted 1 week ago #

  12. neddie
    Member

    Jeez, look at the speed of those cars travelling through the "leaves" / California junction - the raised tables seem to have barely any effect - and "might is still right!"

    Posted 1 week ago #

  13. Dave
    Member

    I'm really not a fan of the "shared space" "driver confusion will make everything ok" sort of philosophy. If you look at more or less any successful harm reduction thing it typically involves removing the human choices and codifying things.

    So eg you don't get "we made the chainsaw really confusing to hold so people are more careful using it" but "we made it so that you have to squeeze the trigger with one hand and another lever on the other handle so you can't use it one handed" and so on.

    Obviously the gold standard of harm reduction is a no through road but IMO we're better off with marked infrastructure than hoping the human condition changes and makes drivers become different people

    Posted 1 week ago #

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