After a designer unveiled a reimagining of the roundabout free of traffic, Jeremy Vine praised a cycling tsar’s proposal to remove all vehicles from London’s Marble Arch to create a safer zone for pedestrians and bicycles.
After Adam Tranter, the West Midlands cycling and walking commissioner, tweeted about the recreation of the five-lane crossroads in the West End, the BBC broadcaster and cycling enthusiast referred to it as “inventive thinking.”
In the movie, barricades, traffic lights, and cars are raised into the air and replaced by seating places, table tennis players, dog walkers, joggers, fountains, and flora. Cyclists also use a blue bike lane.
The 40-second video was made by Hamburg-based designer Jan Kamensky, who is well-known for his Visual Utopias project, which features brief animated videos showing streets with a high concentration of cars that have been converted to pedestrian-only zones.
Yesterday, Vine tweeted about it with the message, “I know it’s 40 seconds, but do watch this.”
Many thanks to @jackamayorcas [Wandsworth Labour councillor Jack Mayorcas] and @adamtranter for their support.
The 57-year-old host of BBC Radio 2, who frequently shares footage of his commutes and is frequently spotted cycling to work, later added: “I’m in Nottingham where they’ve actually done it.” I believe that everyone gains. This city is incredible.
In response to his initial tweet, which sparked significant discussion about the advantages of a car-free Marble Arch, one Twitter user retweeted: “Now show us what supermarkets may look like if trucks are forbidden from delivering… unless we do it by bike.”
However, someone else countered, asking, “Who said anything about prohibiting anything, including delivery trucks? Prioritizing anything does not entail forbidding something else.
Where do I put my six bags of groceries and three kids, Mr. Vine? asked the third.
Another tweeter asked: “How do you get food and other delivery to shops?”
Then the bins were emptied. There are no business or service cars in that clip. Another means of restricting people’s freedom, said a fifth.
For its recently established Future Cities project, bicycle component maker Shimano hired designer Mr. Kamensky to redesign Berlin’s Karl-Marx-Allee and Marble Arch.
‘It’s evident that cities like Berlin and London today have too many streets and roads that are dominated by and designed around automobiles and not people,’ said Anna Schmalko-Methorst, a marketing manager for Shimano.
We have developed an alternate future vision where our cities are healthier, safer, and ultimately more fun places to live, beginning with the Karl-Marx-Allee and Marble Arch.
And Mr. Kamensky continued, “Transformation also starts with how we perceive the world. Utopia is useful in this regard. It contradicts the ways we usually view.
It is upsetting. It gives us a fresh perspective on the present and influences how we behave. Let’s start to have a fresh perspective on the world.
Due to the ‘Marble Arch Mound,’ a failed £6 million tourist attraction that was criticized by visitors and was forced to close in January after only opening last July, Marble Arch has been in the news frequently over the past year.
The debacle, which resulted in the resignation of the deputy council leader, also caused the plans for the restoration of Oxford Circus, which called for the erection of two temporary pedestrian piazzas on either side of the intersection, to be shelved.
Although the suggestion to pedestrianize Marble Arch has not been made in any official capacity, if it were to be implemented, it would not be in line with London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s alleged “war on motorists” since the pandemic first started.
In order to prevent particular residential roads from being utilized as shortcuts, low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) have been established.
Certain LTNs restrict traffic so that vehicles can only approach these residential roads.
Drivers in London have been fined £33 million in the past year for breaking new traffic laws enacted as part of LTNs, while the introduction of new cycling lanes has also drawn criticism for supposedly worsening congestion.