If you can’t tell where the road begins and the pavement ends – how can you feel safe?

Guide Dogs, a national charity, has been given the go ahead to pursue a legal challenge against the London Borough of Kensington & Chelsea's plan to introduce a single–surface scheme as part of the Exhibition Road Redevelopment. Single-surface schemes involve the removal of raised curbs, allowing vehicles and pedestrians to share the same space. The rationale is that these schemes improve the environment by limiting the amount of clutter on the streets and creating attractive, shared "social" areas that are considered more people-friendly.

To create these schemes the road and areas around it are designed in such a way as to change the behaviour of drivers. The idea is that because they share the same space as the pedestrians, drivers will be encouraged to drive more cautiously as they attempt to negotiate the new road layout. However, the down side to this is that the schemes require pedestrians, motorists and cyclists to make eye contact to establish who has priority - putting blind and partially sighted individuals at a disadvantaged. In fact, shared- or single- surface schemes not only make navigation of the area difficult for blind and partially sighted people but may impact on their willingness and ability to travel in these areas independently.

Guide Dogs have been raising their concerns about these schemes for many years by bringing to the fore the increased risk for blind and partially sighted individuals. More specifically, they are concerned about the delineation being used to mark the boundary between the space for pedestrians and vehicles in the Exhibition Road Scheme.

If you want to find out more about Guide Dogs’ research into similar single-space schemes or you are interested in finding out whether there are plans for single-space schemes near you then visit Guide Dog’s campaign website by following the link below -

http://www.guidedogs.org.uk/sharedstreets/