Nice idea.

On a larger scale who pays.

I know I'm going to upset a lot of people saying this but, taking into consideration the numbers of disabled returning from Afghanistan and acknowledging that the figures are only going to increase, it seems like a very good idea.
Forgive me Lorna if I appear to have demeaned your article by my response, it was not my intention...I am incensed by the obscenity of what is happening to our troops, 3500 miles away, serving (according to the Chief of the Defence Staff) our national interest.

Catostreetcon

You do realise that the numbers of disabled returning from Afghanistan are tiny compared with the number of disabled people already living in this country? By that token, your response does demean them - it's as though you're saying those whose disability wasn't acquired through our foreign wars are somehow less important.

But your main intention was to try to hijack a thread on a completely unrelated topic and turn it around to your favourite talking point. I politely suggest you bugger off to a thread that's actually about the war in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Remembrance Sunday, or something related.

My personal concern is that shared by Guide Dogs for the Blind. The visually impaired make up another significant minority in this country, and it appears that we have two current concepts of street design, each of which is inaccessible to one group of disabled people. The textured paving and kerbs which prove so troublesome for wheelchair users provide the blind with points of reference in order that they can safely use our streets. These shared spaces look frankly dangerous in this regard.

Is there a compromise which will enable the maximum number of people, whatever their needs, to enjoy our public spaces and travel around our cities? At the moment, we seem to have an either/or proposition with no concept that suits everyone.

Pode

it appears that we have two current concepts of street design, each of which is inaccessible to one group of disabled people

Bang on. Could one compromise be for crossing points with lowered kerbs be half 'textured' and half smooth, so the visually impaired could still find the safe point but the mobility impaired would not be jolted or tripped up? Most would appear to be wide enough to include this...

...streets with lower pavements and less clutter ? will allow disabled people to travel with ease and confidence

Yes, but much depends on the mix of paving used. Visit Brentwood High Street on a rainy day for an example of what not to use. Try walking over the Council's shiny new paving slabs in normal shoes.....disabled people and grans beware!

I've always wondered. How do blind people cope with clearing up their guide-dogs' poo or are they trained not to go in the street?

@ Rippleway

"Try walking over the Council's shiny new paving slabs in normal shoes.....disabled people and grans beware!"

Try it with wet leaf litter!

I think innovative ways of looking at existing street furniture is one of the ways forward. I remember a few years back reading about a public loo that would rise out from under the ground in the evening and then sink back under at dawn (although it was unclear what would occur if you happened to be walking over it in the first case or being in it in the second).

And last night there was a report on French TV about a small village that was cluttered by having large dustbins in its narrow streets. The mayor decided that they should all be replaced by smaller bins, but this then lead to the issue of refuse collection having to be done on a daily basis rather than weekly(basically multiplying fuel costs for the dustbin lorry by 6). So he invested in a horse and cart like in the old days, which now has the advantage of being eco-friendly and quieter as well as cheaper.

There are many ways of making streets more pleasant spaces to be and navigate in.

Regrettably, it took me to actually witness one prospective client at work attempting to enter our building in a wheelchair for me to appreciate the sort of crap disabled folk have to negotiate every day in order to live as normal a life as possible.

The event was so embarrassing that my boss ripped out the vestibule and installed a wider door. It's a shame that we need to be embarrassed ourselves to appreciate others' dificulties enough to act upon them.

In larger towns and cities, an area of "shared space" can only be a good thing. So long as cars are not treated as Devils. They're not, for many disabled people rely on their cars to access towns and cities in the first place.

While making streets easier to negotiate for people of different needs is an admirable thing to aim for, the writer does her cause no favours at all by seemingly wanting the needs of wheelchair users such as herself trump those of the blind and partially sighted. Blister and corduroy paving is there to assist those who have sight problems, and Guide Dogs for the Blind are voicing a very real concerns about the 'shared spaces' that the writer extolls. This article does nothing to address these problems, in fact, almost seems dismissive of them. I can see the whole idea descending into a messy battle over which non-existent 'community's' needs outweigh the other, rather than the compromise that there needs to be.

The issue with the blind has a technological fix: hyper accurate geolocation using street located position transmitters.

But the real question here is if done on a large scale, who pays? Tragically the UK due to economic incompetence is sinking financially into having the public cash funds of a third world country and such good ideas are going to be shelved.

I find that wherever the council lowers the pavements for wheelchairs, people park their cars to block the way. Where the council widens the pavement for people to get through, restaurants fill up the space with tables. Where a council pedestrianises a street, other streets get blocked with traffic. In places such as copenhagen, where councils introduce cycle tracks, pavements fill up with parked cycles. Where there are no cycle tracks, pavement cyclists claim to have been forced there by cars, but then happily speed along while texting.

Sorry, but we need park and ride systems, with parking towers on the outskirts (shops on the ground floor, a café with a view on the top) and a ban on motor vehicles (24-hour public transport and pre-booked deliveries only) within the circles. This way cyclists will become dominant, and should be kept in order (and off the pavements) by confiscation of cycles and the need to take a cycling test.

Pavements should have, at a minimum, a through lane and an overtaking lane before any street furniture is put out.

With accepting the relevant problems re the re-training of guide-dogs to recognise shared spaces - as 24/7 power-chair user can I add that anything that rids the environment of kerbs would be great, but why oh why is it that the main concern is for commercial areas while the streets we need to traverse to arrive at our newly disability friendly town-centres remain back in the Victorian age?

The lack of proper building regulation means that many disabled people can't even get out of their front door let alone up the street. Figures show that there are at least 40,000 disabled living in housing unsuitable to their needs.

NHS wheelchair provision is a lottery and the private industry that supplies the market remains nothing less than a self serving cartel.

Trains won't be regulated to be fully accessible for decades and still demand 48 hours notice prior to travel to guarantee help. Buses in the outer metropolitan areas are still mostly inaccessible (try sitting in a wheelchair for yet another 30 minutes hoping the next bus will be board-able during the winter months) and the taxi industry remains spasmodic and slow to introduce any regulated vehicle that can accommodate wheelchairs whilst our Government have constructed a Disability Discrimination Act that places all responsibility for pursuing redress firmly on those with the least ability to protect themselves.

Vehicle free shopping areas leave little space for the mobility impaired to park & shop within a reasonable distance while the fraudulent use of Blue-badge parking by the fit & able continues unabated.

So can I respectfully suggest we achieve the means to get to these places prior to worrying about how nice they are to be in?

how about more empty disabled parking spaces in car parks?
Just what we need.

Seems to me we have lots of clever architects in Britain producing lots of shiney new commercial buildings, yet nobody seems to design the public spaces in between. Highways Departments usually end up covering these in tarmacadum, cheap paviors and random junk. We need to design these spaces every bit as much as the buildings and include high quality amenities which offer no commercial return - public toilets, seating, shelters, somewhere for mothers to breast feed etc. We need to get away from this culture of public squalor.

This article makes me very glad to live in the USA. In my city every bus has a wheelchair lift, every curb regular cut-outs, most businesses accessible entrances, and those that don't feature kind, helpful proprietors who will meet me at the door. The Americans with Disabilities Act has made life much easier for quadriplegics like me. Now if only we could legislate away the blank-eyed religious crazies who accost me on the street to fervently assure me that I can be healed if I accept ol' JC as my 'personal savior' or whatever. Assholes...

I'm puzzled by the objections of the visually impaired lobby. My memory of the pavement along Exhibition Road is it's narrow, crowded and cluttered to the point where it's almost unwalkable by a fully able-bodied sighted person at busy times with every change of being accidentally shouldered into the road.

I can't imagine many wheelchair users or blind people fancying their chances along it at the moment so what do they have to lose?

I'd be very interested in hearing from visually impaired people who have walked along the pavement of Exhibition Road at a busy time with the current layout and find out what they made of it.

On the other hand, it'll make it easier for idiots to drive their cars up onto the pavement to park, all the while honking angrily at pedestrians to get out of their way.

Lazman, I'm sincerely happy that you're catered for where you are. The more I think about what it's like to be a wheelchair user, the more I realise that, shamefully, I haven't really thought about it before.

As one of the otherwise thoughtless able-bodied, I do now notice and stare at people - brave huh? - who park over dropped curbs or park in a disabled space and then leap, athletically, into Morrisons.

But no article in this paper is intended to make you feel happy about living in America. Surely its accommodation of wheelchair users is somehow offset by something negative you can think of?

Sounds good - hope it works out for all concerned.

To many people in the UK, pavements and the roads they drive on are of little interest.

I am disgusted at the state of the roads and pavements where I live. The many broken pavements are often a hazard, especially at night, and the roads are full of deep holes. I've twisted an ankle a number of times on the pavements and god knows what effect these holes are having on my car's wheels tyres and suspension. I'm able bodied and reasonably young - it must be ten times worse for the elderly and disabled.

A local counciler recently suggested leaving the holes in the road because they could have a 'traffic calming effect'. She's obviously never noticed all the drivers swerving around trying to avoid these holes...!

A local counciler recently suggested leaving the holes in the road because they could have a 'traffic calming effect'.

An interesting way of saying that the council can't/won't pay for the repair!

Pode

Fair comment, and yes I agree with everything you've said , except one thing, everything is related. If you view of the world is limited by the headline of an article and you feel constrained by that limitation, so be it.
I wish, so strongly do I wish, that I did not have to write about Afghanistan, but the compulsion will not go away. Not until British troops are removed will I stop voicing my concern. It is not a' favourite' talking point. It is an obscenity and it needs to be constantly in the forefront of all our minds.

well, i DID mention the rather dense concentration of religious idiots seeing me as low-hanging fruit for conversion...

"Guide Dogs for the Blind, for example, considers shared surfaces problematic and is campaigning for the UK to remove them. But while they are not perfect, I believe these projects will have a positive effect for many disabled people. Places should be designed to be as inclusive as possible, but we also need to remember that one size does not fit all, and compromises will have to be made."

So long as it's the blind that have to make them, and not you eh?

ShireReeve2

I've always wondered. How do blind people cope with clearing up their guide-dogs' poo or are they trained not to go in the street?

Guide dogs are so well trained they visit human toilet facilities. Well, they do where I live.

IN.

This piece is incredibly one sided and does little to inform of the audience of issues faced by disabled people as a whole, it focuses on the individual writer which does little to accurately paint the scene for people with alternative disabilities.

I am a Guide Dog owner so shall attempt to explain the problems that many visually impaired people face with share streets.

The main problems are of orientation, if you cannot see the end of the pavement how do you know where the road ends and where the safe areas begin?

The answer is that you feel for the curb with your long cane (AKA: white stick) or command your guide dog to' 'find the curb'.

Guide dogs are currently specifically trained to walk in a straight line until they get to an obstacle or a curb. This means the dangers of a blind or partially sighted person ending up lost in the middle of a duel carriageway are significantly reduced.

Put simply the curbs are landmarks for the dogs to locate and find and stop at, remove the curb and the dog is unable to determine where the path ends and the road begins.

Whist the movement towards shared streets and schemes such at the new diagonal crossing at Oxford Circus may be of benefit and improve safety of some disabled people they are at high risk of endangering other disabled people.

For more information about the difficulties blind and partially sighted people face when using shared strreets I would suggest looking at the Guide Dogs 'Say No to Shared Streets' webpage

A couple of people have already pointed out that removing or dropping kerbs just makes it easier for motorists to co-opt the pedestrian way whenever they find that their vehicle is too large for the road. In Lewisham, I regularly get sworn at, clipped by wing-mirrors and even buffeted by cars when I decline to make room for cars on the pavement. My vote is for higher kerbs with ramps at crossing points, just as we have now.

As for street furniture, it is typical that most of this is for the benefit of motorists, while it is pedestrians who must cede space to it. When I am emperor, A-board signs on the pavement outside shops will be eliminated too.

My current bug-bear, though, is the crowds of smokers outside pubs, which apparently have been given the right to tape off large parts of the pavements of Westminster and Camden, forcing me to 'share space` with the motor traffic if I want to get by.

So the blister paving, which is to help blind people, is difficult for wheelchair users. I have sympathy; but I see a further splintering of identity politics. What happens when the divisions and splits end up with a single person whose needs are not commensurate with all of the provisions made? Will all building and highway regulations be reassessed to accommodate that hypothetical single person?

On balance, I think the benefits of differences in pavement for blind people outweighs the problems for sighted wheelchair or crutch users; they are able to see and possibly navigate around potential problems. Blind people can't, and their exceptional guide dogs cannot be expected to surmount problems that require considered judgement.

In the drive for "access to everything for everyone" we're in danger of losing attractive differences in our buildings. Of course, public buildings should be made accessible but if they are attractive then the main facade should not be disfigured with zig-zagging ramps. This doesn't imply that wheelchair users are "second class citizens" if they have to use a different entrance; only that the building has value and should be preserved.

Concrete ramps leading up to the main entrance of a beautiful building are an eyesore and I don't believe that wheelchair users would generally be offended by having to use a designated entrance. I wouldn't, anyway.