Let's make our dead end streets come alive!

We invite you to participate in this initiative of IFP

The guerilla way of signing a dead end street (Italy)

We recently started the living end road pilot project, and would like to know whether you see value in working around living end roads in your country. Living end roads are roads that are dead-ended for cars, but not for cyclists and/or pedestrians. You find more about this in the attached description of the project. The goal of the project is not simply to have that information available to the cyclist or pedestrian passing by. The “collateral” effects might be as important. By making municipalities and people in their administration aware that to much of the streetscape is still car-centric, and offering them the possibility to correct a small portion of it through a low-threshold project, they might be sensitized and motivated to take pedestrians (and cyclists) rights and issues more into account in their daily work. And the road user might discover new routes, and maybe even decide to explore them leaving his/her car behind.

Your involvement can take several different forms. Depending on the legal situation, the actual signs used today for dead end roads in your country, and your possibilities and priorities, this could consist of stimulating municipalities to modify their dead-end road signs, of lobbying for taking in the living end concepts into regional or national guidelines, or of promoting existing means to indicate living end road.

The project will be launched initially in Belgium, partly because the legislation allows the local road authority (the municipality) to adapt those traffic signs that are “information signs” such as the dead end road sign, and because the signs have space allowing the pedestrian and bicycle pictogram to be added. But we want to share as soon as possible the experiences gained from the early pilots in Belgium with all of you, and get feedback from you regarding what you believe the possibilities are in your country, what strategy would make most sense to you, what questions you have, which support you would value.

The Voetgangersbeweging, member of IFP, will drive the project in Belgium. We start with 2 pilot municipalities, and target a press event on March 23, when one of those municipalities will modify their signs where needed. Interesting was that in the preparation for both municipalities, it became obvious that the vast majority of their dead-end signs actually were on living end roads. In one urban municipality, a quick screening revealed that at least 48 (and likely more) of their 68 signs (or 70%) deserved to be modified into living end signs. The other (rural) municipality has screened only half of its territory so far, and found at least 29 of the 34 sign (85%) in need of modification. Just identifying this was a surprise to them, and a strong motivator to continue the project.

So please let us know whether you are interested in this project or not. We can then start working together on what the next steps could be, what needs to be verified on the practical and/or legal side, who to contact and so on. Working together and exchanging information on this project could also be a step stone for each of us to contribute to and profit from the value that the IFP could bring as an international platform of pedestrian associations.

Best regards

Geert van Waeg
Vice President
International Federation of Pedestrians
+32 475 66 20 87
geert.vanwaeg@johanna.be

The official way of signing a living end street

A short guide to an important improvement in our cities and towns (pdf / 369.3 KB)