Pilot home zone schemes: Evaluation of Morice Town, Plymouth

Home zones are residential areas where the built environment is designed to be places for people, not just for motor traffic. Their aim is to change the way that streets are used in order to improve the quality of life for residents including children and those that walk or cycle. A home zone allows a wide range of activities to take place in the street on space that was formerly considered to be exclusively for vehicles. Changes to the layout of the street should emphasise this change of use, so that motorists perceive they should give informal priority to other road users. Both hard and soft landscaping are appropriate. Morice Town, Plymouth is one of nine home zone schemes in a pilot programme set up by the Department for Transport (DfT). TRL was commissioned by DfT to assess the effectiveness of each pilot home zone scheme in achieving it's aims. In order to determine their impact, a comprehensive 'before' and 'after' monitoring programme was devised. This included attitudinal surveys of residents both adults and children, collection of traffic flow, traffic speed, accident data and video recording. This report presents a comparison of the results of these 'before' and 'after' surveys and reaches a conclusion regarding the impact the home zone has had upon resident's lives.