Jobling Purser have been working with asphalt, tarmac, and the traditional road surfacing materials used in Newcastle and across the rest of the UK for many years. We have seen how our roads have changed. And not for the better. In many ways, it seems we’ve gone full circle: from purpose-built, Victorian infrastructure to roads that prioritise function at the expense of form (or often vice versa), yet often fail to deliver on either.
It’s time to Make Britain’s Roads Great Again.
Make no mistake: this isn’t some knee-jerk reaction, some misplaced nostalgia for roads of old, or romanticising the past. It’s a practical proposition, supported by our innovative new product, Quicksetts, the revolutionary quick-setting granite sett system that makes it possible to bring the timeless beauty and subconscious psychological traffic-calming effects of traditional cobbles to the roads and high streets of today.
We know we can do better. And we’re going to prove it.
The ugly truth about modern traffic calming
Driving through Britain today, what’s striking is not how many historic cobbled streets there are, but how few. Replace them, and you’re far more likely to find one of these:
The ubiquitous black rubber speed bump, shunted improbably high off the road by its cylindrical tyre mounts so that your car’s suspension gets battered like a bean bag at an AA meeting.
Garish painted asphalt humps in road markings paint that flake and peel after months, if not weeks.
And of course the new-fangled chicane, constructed out of materials the quality of which suggest they will barely last until April’s first clap of thunder.
Welcome to the not-so-good, not-so-new ‘traffic calming’
The first thing to say about these methods is: we need traffic calming. We do. With more cars on our roads than ever before, and issues around road safety and concerns about vulnerable pedestrians and cyclists around schools and residential areas in particular, the need to slow traffic and discourage heavy vehicles in these areas is greater than it’s ever been.
So why are these efforts, these genuine attempts to make our streets safer, being so comprehensively botched? Why are we using these materials, methods, when there are clearly much better ways of doing this?
Put simply, because we haven’t cared enough. These ugly, shouty, eyesore speed bumps and humps are ugly for a reason – they’re built out of cheap, low-quality materials, and installed with little or no thought for their visual impact.
From an aesthetic perspective, it’s hard to think of a more ugly, uncaring piece of urban design than traditional speed humps or bumps. In a word: lazy.
They weather poorly, with asphalt humps cracking and crumbling and chipped and faded painted surfaces rapidly taking on a shabby, neglected appearance. Asphalt and rubber also stand out on our historic streetscapes, creating visual dissonance as they break up the natural lines and geometric harmony of traditional British roads.
But the problem goes beyond aesthetics. Badly designed and ugly traffic calming measures also have a knock-on psychological impact on how we use and interact with our roads. Speed bumps are confrontational. They’re an imposition, a physical barrier that we as drivers have to deal with, come what may. A speed bump on the road is saying “do it my way or I’ll hurt you” in language even a child understands. Drive over it too quickly, and your car will suffer as a direct consequence.
It’s not subtle. There is no engagement with the public about this, just a brutish demand that we keep to the limit. The result is not only a physical one. Braking harshly for speed bumps, starting and stopping repeatedly creates noise pollution and more vehicle emissions, as well as slowing emergency vehicles. But above all else, it also breeds resentment among drivers, a feeling that they are being punished and had no agency in the process, rather than asked to be good citizens.
Add this to the often ugly visual impact on our historic towns and cities in particular – Britain has some of the most beautiful townscapes and urban architecture in the world, with a centuries-long tradition of streetscape design that has created built environments of incredible richness, diversity, and character – and it’s no wonder we want to look the other way.
Visually, it’s vandalism. Littering our most attractive streets with cheap, ugly, modern materials and urban design just because we haven’t thought about it. Plop a rubber speed bump outside a Grade II listed building and you’re not just being ugly, you’re being needlessly destructive of the very features that make our cities and towns worth visiting in the first place.
The psychology of cobbles: time for a gentler approach?
Now, let’s go back to those cobbled streets for a moment. Try a different drive, somewhere you know has cobbles. It’s a funny thing, but something happens. Drivers slow down. They’re still conscious of speed limits and legal limits, of course, but they’re not racing up and down. They’re driving more slowly, more carefully. And they don’t resent it.
This isn’t an accident or a coincidence – it’s psychology, human psychology. Driving on a cobbled street has an impact on drivers on a subconscious, psychological level.
Cobbles set off a whole set of triggers in most British drivers’ minds. Most of us have been on cobbled streets at some point in our driving lives, whether in a town centre, outside a historic pub, or in a preserved heritage area or conservation zone. These areas are as strongly associated in the public mind with their paving as they are with their architecture. Driving over cobbles, we know instinctively that we’re in an historic area, probably a pedestrian zone, somewhere we have to be careful. Cobbles are subtle, they whisper “slow down” rather than screaming at you.
There’s a tactile element as well. That constant rumble of tyres over setts gives the driver tactile, physical feedback without the more confrontational noise and physical impact of a speed bump. It’s conversation, not confrontation: the road surface is talking to the driver, reminding them to keep to the limit without shouting at them or punishing them for lapses.
Perhaps most important, this is all done at a subconscious level. The driver doesn’t stop and think “I mustn’t speed here because there are cobbles”. They do it automatically, as a matter of course. Because cobbles set off the right signals and expectations.
Add into this mix a degree of respect. Cobble paving is solid, permanent, high-quality. Drivers respect that. We respect things that look well made and built to last. It’s the same psychological mechanism that makes people less likely to litter in a clean, well-maintained park than in a run-down, uncared-for one. Quality begets quality behaviour in return.
The community itself also recognises the visual impact of cobbles and sets the right expectations from the start. Streets with cobbles look like they’re cared for. It’s a sign of quality, a centre of civic pride, somewhere worth going to and worth investing in. Quality begets quality again, maintaining the virtuous circle.
Beautiful Traffic Calming for Britain with Quicksetts
Jobling Purser has developed Quicksetts to take advantage of these psychological and emotional benefits while also solving the main logistical and practical problem that has limited the use of traditional cobbles and setts for traffic calming.
The process of traditional granite sett installation, although entirely practical, is a time-consuming and labour-intensive one. It’s a process that requires skilled craftspeople, long road closures, and massive disruption to the local area and community.
Hand-laying individual setts, levelling and fixing them in place and waiting for bedding and fixing compounds to cure properly before opening the road again are all standard, necessary parts of the process, but one that means traditional cobbles are a non-starter for most councils and highway authorities.
Jobling Purser’s Quicksetts system completely changes this equation. Using a rapid-setting specialist bedding compound, Quicksetts is a revolutionary new product that dramatically reduces installation times without sacrificing quality, durability, or longevity.
What could take weeks with traditional methods can now be done in days or even hours, in the case of smaller installations or retrofits.
The benefits for councils and highway authorities are significant and varied:
Less road closure times
Time is money, and it’s never truer than in road closures. Every minute a road is closed costs local businesses lost trade, local residents anger and inconvenience, and traffic management costs, with other parts of the road network getting clogged up with diverted vehicles.
Quicksetts installs much more quickly, which means fewer hours lost to roadworks and less political and practical pushback against these schemes.
Lower costs
Material costs for Quicksetts are inevitably higher than for basic asphalt speed bumps. However, the overall costs of the process, when you include labour time, length of road closure, and traffic management requirements are often similar, if not lower than traditional methods, as well as the higher material costs.
Longevity also factors into this calculation, as granite setts last almost indefinitely in comparison to asphalt solutions that need to be completely replaced every few years.
Immediate use
Again as a result of Quicksetts rapid-setting technology, traditional cobbles with their long cure times are no longer a problem. Instead of weeks of disruption, Quicksetts installations can be open to traffic again in a matter of hours, which means even less impact on local communities and businesses.
Durability and quality
Granite setts are, for all intents and purposes, permanent. Properly installed, they’ll last decades without requiring the constant repairs and replacements that asphalt bumps and humps need.
That also means they’re an investment in long-term quality. They also simply look and feel better.
Increased property values
There is some evidence that attractive, high-quality streetscaping, including the use of traditional materials like granite cobbles, has a positive effect on local property values. If councils are trying to regenerate or otherwise improve town centres or local areas, installing Quicksetts can be part of a wider approach.
Better public reception
Tarmac speed bumps and speed tables are unpopular, with residents and drivers both. Cobbles, by contrast, are widely seen as an enhancement to the street environment, making them much more palatable from a political point of view as well as reducing the inevitable social media pile-on from local drivers and residents.
High Tech Tools for Beautiful Streets
Quicksetts are the bedrock of our plan for better British streets, but we also know they aren’t the whole solution. A host of other materials and technologies can complement Quicksetts to give even more impressive results:
Resin Bound Surfacing: There are a number of alternatives to traditional asphalt that can look and perform very differently from what we see all too often on British roads today. Resin-bound surfacing uses natural aggregates combined with clear resin to create smooth and permeable surfaces that come in many colours and textures. These are ideal for pedestrian areas, cycle paths and decorative borders that sit alongside Quicksetts installations.
Street Lighting: We’ve already mentioned this but worth underlining just how much modern LED street lighting can work in harmony with historic streetscapes rather than jar with them. Heritage-style lamp posts combined with modern LED technology produce excellent lighting without any clash of aesthetic. In combination with a Quicksetts paving surface they create a consistent and quality look.
SuDS: Permeable paving is another area where Quicksetts installations can be designed to have positive environmental impacts by allowing water to drain through naturally, rather than contributing to surface water runoff. This is a huge issue in many urban areas dealing with increased rainfall and flood risk and by utilising the principles of sustainable urban drainage systems (SuDS) we can make Quicksetts as functional as it is attractive.
Smart Traffic Management: You don’t have to look very hard to see sensor technology creeping in and into our public spaces. Fortunately, this tech can be integrated very discretely and unobtrusively into cobbled surfaces to provide data on traffic flow, speeds and volumes that can be used to inform more intelligent traffic management approaches that don’t require visible and unsightly equipment to manage.
Quality Street Furniture: The success of a Quicksetts installation is as much determined by the quality of the street furniture that adjoins it. Benches, bollards, planters and signage that complement the traditional look of granite setts can make a massive difference to the quality of streets. We’re not trying to create theme parks or Disneyfied towns, but streets that look great and work well. Thankfully, there are a number of manufacturers now producing street furniture ranges specifically for heritage streetscapes.
Roads We’re Proud To Drive On
When you see it written down like that it sounds absurd, doesn’t it? Britain has some fantastic roads, some beautiful streetscapes, and some world class urban design. There is an amazing heritage of truly great urban design right across the UK from the grand boulevards of Edinburgh to the sleepy lanes of the Cotswolds. So how did we let it get this bad? How did we let the use of road surfacing materials become the domain of civil engineers focused on efficiency at any cost and maximum vehicle throughput?
Well, what we’re trying to do with our ‘Make Britain’s Roads Great Again’ campaign is try to go some way to reversing that, to learning from the past and applying modern technology and materials to the way we design our streets so they are both beautiful and functional. It’s about challenging the idea that our public spaces are purely functional and have to be subject to the same efficiency-first mindsets that see them as just transport corridors. It’s about recognising that the quality of the environment has an impact on how people feel about their communities and in turn how they behave, and ultimately on our quality of life.
We think it’s a challenge worth taking on and we believe Quicksetts can help lead the way. Quicksetts are a totally practical solution to the twin problems of traffic calming and everyday street enhancement and can be used on residential streets, town centres, around schools, on high streets and on countless other settings where we could use Britain’s roads better.
We’re calling on local authorities, developers and community groups to think again about how they approach traffic calming products, how they use public space, and whether there isn’t a better, more beautiful solution available. The choice is not between safety and aesthetics, we can have both, it’s not between modern and traditional, Quicksetts offers the best of both worlds. The choice is really just about whether we’re prepared to invest in our public spaces and our communities in a way that recognises and values both.
So what can you do?
If you work for a council or highway authority interested in finding out more about using Quicksetts for your traffic calming or street enhancement schemes, we’re here to help. We can talk you through site assessments, design concepts, costings in comparison to more traditional approaches, and we can provide case studies and evidence from other successful installations.
If you’re a community group or residents’ association looking to better the streets in your local area, we’re also on hand to help there with information packs, visual mockups, and support for community consultations.
None of this is a magic bullet, no one installation is going to transform the UK’s road network overnight, but every Quicksetts installation is a step in the right direction. Each and every traffic-calmed zone and public space that makes a virtue out of enhancing rather than inhibiting the public realm, which prioritises beauty and community as much as function is a step towards a better way forward.
We’ve become accustomed to accepting our roads must be ugly, our traffic calming must be a shout rather than a whisper, that efficiency and aesthetics are somehow mutually exclusive, but at Jobling Purser we’re showing that’s just not the case. One Quicksett at a time we’re not just putting cobbles down, we’re putting pride, quality and a vision for streets that truly serve their communities down too.
We can make Britain’s roads great again, it’s just a matter of when.