What are the effects of a 'shared space' scheme on different users?

There is for a strong interest among street design professionals to consider a shared space approach when re-designing streets with high conflicting pedestrian and vehicle flows. The design principles are outlined in both of the UK’s Manual for Streets documents (DfT, 2007 and CIHT, 2010). Despite much being written on this subject, there is no agreement on the meaning of the term ‘shared space’, nor is there much evidence on whether such schemes are broadly beneficial to users and under which circumstances. For example, some academics have questioned the effectiveness of parts of the Ashford scheme (Moody, 2012), and concerns have been raised on the impacts on vulnerable users, such as the visually impaired (Childs and Tyler, 2010). This study aimed to resolve some of the knowledge gaps acknowledged by a shared space appraisal carried out by the MVA Consultancy (Reid, 2009) and their subsequent more detailed quantitative (Shore, 2010) and qualitative (Dickens, 2010) operational assessments. These studies identified gaps in assessing pedestrian behaviour with respect to movement and risk evaluation, such as the use courtesy crossings and the relationship between pedestrians and the drivers who give way to them. There have also been relatively few studies that have managed to capture video from both before and after a scheme, in particular like-for-like data that can be directly compared and analysed. This paper reports on an MSc dissertation (Horrell, 2014) which looked in detail at the effects of introducing various forms of shared space treatment in Bexleyheath along part of the central shopping street and its approaches. The analysis drew on a recordings from a large number of video cameras, plus business interviews and a range of existing data sources