Yes says Nicholas Paget-Brown, the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea

Over time there has been an agglomeration of a vast amount of street furniture, signs, obstacles and clutter on our roads. They are from a different age that saw the car as king with pedestrians as something that had to be fitted in around it.

Pure shared space is where a piece of highway becomes shared between all road users. On Kensington High Street the crossings now work on a shared space scheme. The whole high street is a zone that pedestrians can make use of. Since we introduced the scheme in 2003 there’s been an overall reduction in accidents from 71 casualties to 40 casualties. Pedestrian-related accidents have fallen by almost 60 per cent. It is quite significant and it is because everybody — motorists and pedestrians — is looking around and taking more care.

If you take out some of the clutter and street furniture, you put much more choice and reliance back on the individual motorist and the pedestrian. It is a transaction based on eye contact and negotiating each individual crossing. It’s relying on motorists looking at what’s going on and relying less on looking at physical structures. We are working to transform Exhibition Road in London into the most accessible cultural destination in the world, using elements of a shared surface — we are taking out the kerb but there will still be clearly defined zones of pedestrian and vehicle activity. Exhibition Road gets the same number of visitors annually as Venice. We’ve tried to tilt the balance in favour of pedestrians so it is an attractive environment for people on foot. We are removing the areas in the middle of the road where pedestrians wait in an island and imposing traffic speed limits of 20 mph. The way it has been laid out traditionally we’ve had a number of accidents — about 100 in the past three years. This is an opportunity to seriously reduce that. We are consulting with a range of disability groups to get a better understanding of their needs. We want to work with representatives from blind and partially sighted groups to give them a tactile delineator they can use to tell the different zones. They are concerned that guide dogs traditionally prefer kerbs. We think this is going to be a vast improvement for everybody and we will monitor the project for up to two years after it is implemented to assess safety levels.

The single surface concept will make streets more accessible. Previously wheelchair users, people with walking frames or pushing buggies found it difficult to negotiate kerbs. Soon it will be possible to cross the road without having to negotiate differences in height.

Over the years our streets have built up with signs, distractions and clutter. Motorists can’t take all that information in. It makes sense to take stock and say there is too much physical furniture. I see it as having tremendous potential all over the country.

No says Valerie Shawcross, Deputy chairman of the London Assembly transport committee

Shared streets, where the kerb, traffic lights and all road signs and markings are reduced or removed can present dangers for a number of vulnerable groups. A shared street scheme relies on a social negotiation and communication between pedestrian and driver in deciding who gets priority.

The fear is that anyone with a communication difficulty is disadvantaged. Some pedestrians are not equipped to take part in the unspoken negotiation. Therefore they are more likely to avoid crossing and be fearful of the road. Blind and partially sighted people cannot make eye contact with a driver to check it is safe to cross.

In conventional streets the kerb is a physical piece of information that’s understood by both the driver and the pedestrian. Even if somebody is blind they can navigate the kerb and train their dogs to use them. Without marked crossings, children and the elderly may not know when to cross. There isn’t a parent in the land who would want their child to cross a large town centre without the protection of pelican crossings.

People with emotional problems or a learning difficulty or autism may have difficulty interacting with motorists and deciding when it is safe to cross.

It is already difficult for wheelchair users to assert their presence in a busy street and in a shared street system that is a great concern. Disability groups have expressed concern that wheelchair users could be overlooked by cyclists or motorists.

The problem with empirical data that shows a reduction in accidents is that it doesn’t tell the whole story — whether people are too afraid to cross the road. On some busy roads you can get low pedestrian accident rates because people do not venture across. Looking at footfall from the flow of people will show their true confidence.

The current features of road and street design allow policymakers to make clear decisions about priorities and in recent years pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users have been allocated a greater share of the space. In schemes where there has to be a social transaction between drivers and pedestrians, one road user is much more vulnerable. There’s an anarchic view that people will “sort it out”. I’m not sure that we can rely on social mores to slow drivers down. Communities are already campaigning for speedcameras and traffic calming measures because they are suffering from aggressive driving. Public demands for more pedestrian crossings are a constant feature of any politician’s caseload.

Despite the so-called national standards on issues such as road signage, I find that there is a huge variation in the design and layout of roads. Adding shared streets into the mix will compound the confusion. There’s an element of fashion in policymaking. Politicians are trying to make their name with interesting schemes. It is important that we stick to the evidence for making decisions. On street layout, predictable and boring is safest and best.