Guide Dogs welcomes Manchester City Council decision to ban dangerous street design

Guide Dogs welcomes Manchester City Council decision to ban dangerous street design

Traffic experts at Manchester City Council are to ban a trendy street design that makes roads no go areas for blind and partially-sighted people.

In the council’s soon to be published Street Design Manual, “shared surfaces” where kerbs are removed and the road and pavement are at the same level, will be outlawed.

Guide Dogs’ Director of External Affairs, Tom Pey, said: “The council has told us that they have reviewed the research and that their new policy is evidence-based.

“Shared surface streets are simply dangerous for blind and partially sighted people, young children and for many other people with disabilities. If you can’t tell where the pavement ends and the road begins; how can that be safe?

“Manchester’s decision is one we and the 18 other disability organisations who have been fighting shared surfaces warmly welcome.”

The unequivocal decision by Manchester will add pressure on London Mayor Boris Johnson and Kensington and Chelsea Council who are planning to turn London’s Exhibition Road, home to the Natural History, Science and VandA Museums into a shared surface scheme.

Dozens of similar schemes are planned across the UK but council experts in Belfast and Matlock in Derbyshire have joined Manchester in rejecting the discredited shared surface concept.