Bad Tactile Paving
Issue 125 of my PhD Journey
Hello friends 🤗
It was a rocky start to the week. After reading contractor reports for twelve solid hours, I doubted whether I would be able to find interest in tactile paving. But by Thursday, I had found my enthusiasm for it. Or rather, rage. Wherever I walk now I can see poor, incorrect and downright dangerous installation of tactile paving. Today’s newsletter is just a taster…
📆 Activities 🛼
Wednesday 11 June. Email template meeting
Thursday 12 June. Therapy
Friday 13 June. Doctor’s appointment; pedestrian signal recreation meeting; know your rights workshops meeting
🚧 Tactile Paving Atrocities🚦
The point of tactile paving is to provide non-visual information to visually impaired pedestrians to aid safe orientation and mobility.
Each type has a specific meaning, but the most common pattern is ‘blister’ paving - that’s the one with the dots. They are supposed to be installed at crossing points where there are dropped kerbs. Dropped kerbs are necessary for wheelchair users, but can make it more difficult for blind pedestrians to distinguish between the pavement and road.
As an aside, blister paving is also used in rail stations to warn of the platform edge. While the government researchers wanted to have a distinct pattern to distinguish platform warnings from road crossings, the blister paving had already been installed at several stations by the time they were asked to come up with recommendations. So, they just rolled with it.
Sounds simple enough, right? Well, turns out there are many opportunities for things to go wrong, rendering the paving ineffective, misleading or dangerous. Here are just some of the problems that can (and have!) occured:
Height of the blisters not manufactured to the minimum standard of 5mm – making it difficult or impossible to detect underfoot
Cutting the slabs into smaller pieces to fit a curve (simultaneously creating a tripping hazard as the slabs are more likely to come loose)
Laying the slabs with the blisters facing downwards (apparently believing the blisters were for added grip on the pavement surface)
Choosing the wrong colour, resulting in poor contrast against the surrounding pavement
Planting street furniature in the middle of tactile paving!
Using blister paving as a guide path to follow, or just placing it in random locations
Using blister paving on corners, directing visually impaired pedestrians into the middle of a junction rather than across the road (to be fair, this is a result of having dropped kerbs on corners, where they should not be)
Only having blister paving on one side of the road, even though there are dropped kerbs on both sides!
It would not surprise me at all if there were more bad installations of tactile paving than there were good installations. Certainly, walking around Salford (even the fancy new areas of Media City), the situation is pretty bleak.
Here are just three photos I took just along a small stretch of street on Thursday, seconds apart. See if you can spot the problems
If you want to learn more about tactile paving nightmares and see some funky illustrations, I highly reccommend Beata Duncan-Jones’s Understanding Tactile Paving at Pedestrian Crossings: Support Material for Tactile Paving Providers. Written by a London mobility officer, it was published in 1995 and there is a 2015 edition published online here.
🗞️ Sharing the Joy 🥳
I have resisted emailing or texting Neil all week since he is on holiday, but I am bursting to share some developments with him. Thankfully, we have a supervisor meeting on Monday so I can off-load everything I have stored up to him and Duncan.
For posterity, I am adding them here:
External reviewer really liked my chapter for the emotions edited collection!
Was invited to write an article on disability and the history of material culture for Oxford Annotated Bibliographies
I reached out to a musicologist who has linked me with a PhD student who should be able to help me to recreate the ‘bleep’ described in the 1979 specifications for an audible pedestrian signal
One of the pioneer users of the sonic guide has gotten in touch and turns out he has kept a bunch of documents and video tapes. Not sure whether or how I would be able to access them, since he is all the way in New Zeland, but it is exciting nonetheless
🧩 Entertainment 📺
📖 Reading The Psychopath Next Door
📺 Finished watching Ginny and Georgia, started watching Love Island and Sprung
🎮 Tears of the Kingdom – another boss defeated, a sand shroud cleared. Now I’m stuck again
Glad you have found your tactile paving mojo. Mum and I are now identifying pelican and puffin crossings as the latest game
You have talked so much this week I am now also an avid tactile paving spotter.