Another short post on street furniture (you can definitely tell I haven’t got out much in the pandemic as this is the sort of mundane detail I’m focused on at present). Once again these are, as much as anything, notes for myself.

The Ranty Highwayman wrote a great detailed post about the different types of tactile paving and how they should be used in the UK: https://therantyhighwayman.blogspot.com/2015/02/tricky-tactiles.html. It’s very helpful if confused about the various types, and may help to spot incorrect layouts (which can be tagged).

My only additional contribution is to note that in the UK the tactile paving slabs tend to come in a very restricted set of sizes:

• 40 cm square. The most usual size for both blister & corduroy (hazard warning) paving. There are 6 blisters up & across. I haven’t counted the lines.
• 45 cm square. A bit less frequent, 7 blisters across (illustrated in the blog post above).
• larger (perhaps 60cm+). Blister interval possibly bigger than in the previous two examples, 9 blisters a side. I haven’t measure these slabs precisely, but this is an example on Mapillary.

More examples of tactile paving can be found on suppliers’ sites such as this one.

So far, so unbelievably nerdish, but there’s a nifty bit of knowledge from this info which can be applied to mapping much more widely! Knowing the paving slab sizes makes it easy to estimate the width of pedestrian crossings, crossings at dropped kerbs and any pavement/sidewalk where the corduroy hazard slabs are used. This can not only provide a simple way to survey widths without using a tape measure or laser device, but can also assist in estimating widths based on experience.