Appendix 1: The environmental capacity of streets

Dean Street, Soho

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We examined a section of this street, 100 yards long, containing specialist shops, offices, a surgery, and two public houses (Figure 6). The street is one-way with parking meters on one side. The carriageway is 18 ft. wide. A busy pedestrian alleyway enters the street on one side, and at mid-afternoon it resulted in a transverse pedestrian flow of about 900 persons per hour. The vehicular flow at this time was about 300 p.c.u. per hour, mainly composed of cars and light vans. There are no pedestrian crossings. There are practically no children using the street and few elderly persons.

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Our conclusion in this case was that with a narrow carriageway and one-way traffic, the conditions whilst clearly not ideal, were probably acceptable for an access road.