Residential streets should be pleasant, welcoming environments that encourage people to walk or ride when they set out from home to work, study, shop or socialise. Residential streets should be places where people feel comfortable to stop and have a chat with a new neighbour or someone they know.

Today, too many of Brisbane’s streets have become nothing more than a rat run for motor traffic avoiding primary road corridors. This has created environments where people don’t wish to spend any time on the street, encouraging social isolation, exclusion, and lack of community.

Space4cyclingBNE calls on the Brisbane City Council to return residential streets to the people who live there by removing the incentive for their streets to be used as rat runs.

The most effective and people friendly method is by blocking local back streets to motorised traffic to create cul-de-sacs, but allowing filtered permeability that permits through travel for people riding bikes or on foot. Where such a configuration is not possible, diverted travel for motor traffic can be used, as can be speed control platforms. Street entries to residential areas should also be designed to provide minimal crossing distances by providing pedestrian refuge islands that also reduce motor vehicle travel speeds.