The key to successful shared space with motor vehicles...

is the rising bollard

There's a excellent post on Shared Space streets on 'As Easy as Riding a Bike' and other good posts on several other blogs, not least because this is the subject of this week's Street Talks arranged by the Movement for Liveable London . It gives me a chance to sing the praises of the centre of Bordeaux, which is fantastic to walk and cycle around.

There is the occasional motor vehicle, delivering stock to a shop or removing rubbish. But drivers absolutely know they are guests in the space - they can't enter without sufficient good cause that the bollard is retracted into the ground to allow them to pass. There are very few motor vehicles and the pedestrians stroll as they wish, with cyclists carefully weaving around them.

If only Exhibition Road could be like this