Bollards are an interesting architectural feature found in most urban settings worldwide. Bollards are typically defined as short posts, poles, or concrete mounds used to restrict access to private areas, protect pedestrians, and prevent motor vehicles from entering or driving in prohibited areas. However, you may know them better as the concrete posts children jump on when walking down a sidewalk.
Bollards are so commonplace in our cities that we sometimes need to remember their critical role in keeping our urban settings safe for pedestrians. But at StreetScape, we understand their importance and look to improve them by providing a wide range of concrete and steel bollards. To drive home the significance of bollards, let us look at 5 important places in your city where they can be found and the advantages of their placement!
Parking Lots and Garages
Suppose you were to think about any place in your city where a barrier for the differentiation of pedestrian walkways and vehicle parking areas would not only be helpful but essential for safety. What place comes to mind? Due to the high pedestrian and traffic intersection rate, I immediately think of the large public parking lots or public garages near major retail outlets and malls. StreetScape offers a wide range of steel bollards that will add a modern finish to public garages. Helping minimise risk in these areas and providing the garages around your city with neat and stylish trimmings.
But maybe you need a little more convincing? Well, that’s perfect because I have three advantages that should help convince you that installing StreetScape steel bollards is necessary at the public parking lot near you.
Advantage 1 – Improved Safety:
The safety advantage of bollards is their ability to prevent vehicles, even when travelling at speed, from penetrating through them. When thinking about the large volume of cars that enter and exit a garage daily, the chance that a faulty vehicle could lose control is significantly increased. A firm barrier of multiple StreetScape bollards can prevent this issue from turning into a full-on emergency by stopping the vehicle from colliding with pedestrians or other cars.
Advantage 2 – Increased Security:
In many cases, but especially when public garages are near commercial sites, the parking lots make provision for specific areas to be cordoned off to be used by only a particular subset of the garage’s inhabitants. Here bollards can be helpful to increase the security of these areas by preventing just anybody from utilising these parking spots.
Advantage 3 – Improved Traffic Flow:
If you have ever found yourself wondering where the exit or entrance of the garage you are currently in can be located, there are others just like you. These areas can be confusing, and people often drive in circles looking for the right directions. With some strategically placed bollards, this issue can be overcome by directing traffic directly to the exits, thus improving traffic flow in these public parking areas.
Retail Areas
Although retail areas are designated for customers who are in the process of shopping or strolling through the site, sometimes shopping districts can be significantly large and may span over a couple of city blocks. Especially when these areas also contain other attractions for entertainment, lodging or business conferences. The Victoria and Albert Waterfront in Cape Town is a perfect example of this large retail area. In these cases, it is impossible to separate traffic from the shopping areas completely because the roads cut through the city blocks, and shops often need large deliveries to the shop front.
Like the case mentioned above, here is another area where people and traffic are near one another. Whenever this is the case, the risk of collisions and bodily harm caused by vehicular accidents is significantly increased. Implementing bollards can help reduce these risks and result in a safer area for both people and cars. But that’s not all. Here are another two reasons why installing bollards in shopping areas can be so valuable:
Advantage 1 – Enhanced Security:
Unlike parking garages, in shopping areas, specific areas are security sensitive. Either because they are near financial institutions like banks and ATMs or because the site is designated for private loading bays so shops can conveniently load stock off delivery trucks. In these situations, you want to ensure that you have an area that can only be accessed by authorised vehicles, like armoured trucks for cash transport or delivery trucks. At StreetScape, we have the bollards for these very situations. Especially our Removable Sleeve bollard that, when unlocked, can slide into the ground, providing an entryway but, when locked, remains a firm barrier of entry to those unauthorised to access the area.
Advantage 2 – Increased Storefront Visibility
How can a simple bollard increase storefront visibility? If anything, this may sound counterintuitive as bollards are barriers and would restrict the store’s visibility from those driving past them. But not with a bollard from StreetScape. Some of the bollard designs in our concrete catalogue provide stores with a perfect opportunity for advertisements. For example, our Cube 4040 design and the Bastion are large and rectangular and provide adequate space for giant advertisements, mainly because they are in a highly competitive area right in the eye view of millions of motorists every month, making them ideal for attracting new customers to your store.
Historic Buildings
Urban areas inevitably come with long histories. These histories are reflected in historic buildings and public spaces that remain standing even today. This is especially true in a place like Cape Town, with a long list of significant buildings around the city. These include:
- The National Gallery
- Iziko Museum and Planetarium
- The National Library of South Africa
- The Slave Lodge
- St. George’s Cathedral
These are just a few of the multitude in the Cape Town inner city. Due to their location within the city, they are surrounded by large amounts of traffic daily. As a result, it is common at any of these sites to already see bollards erected. But what makes them so valuable for these areas? Well, let’s find out:
Advantage 1- Protection of Historical Structures:
The bollard can be multifunctional when protecting historic structures, especially within city limits. This is because they can be used not only to protect the system from the traffic around them but also to protect the structure from visitors to the locations.
Regarding vehicles: The bollard not only acts as a barrier between the busy city road and the historic structure. This prevents accidents from spilling over the historical grounds and damaging the facilities. It also denies vehicle access on historic grounds, which protects the integrity and sustainability of the sites.
Regarding visitors: Many times, historical buildings and the grounds they are built on can be very fragile, depending on the materials used. So, although visitors may be welcomed into the environment, they may need to stay away from dangerous areas. Here bollards like StreetScape’s steel Bollards with Chain design can create a cordoned-off path, allowing tourists to see the historical sights but not approach them.
Advantage 2 – Aesthetic Preservation:
A critical factor in preserving historic buildings is maintaining the aesthetics of the time. This includes using materials that would have been present at the time and ensuring that all furnishings to the landmark property align with the style choices of that time. For example, at StreetScape, with our extensive catalogue of concrete and steel bollards, there will be a style that matches the look and feel of the building. Thus, contributing to the aesthetic preservation of the sites.
Schools
Another prominent location for the implementation of bollards is around schools. These barriers protect children when they are not on the school grounds but just outside, waiting to be picked up or dropped off. If you have ever dropped your children off at the school rush at seven in the morning, you can recall the congested traffic and people rushing to drop their kids off and make it in time for work. At the same time, you can picture the scene of children running over the streets in a mad rush not to be late for the bell. This close meeting of traffic and pedestrians, especially when the pedestrians are children, can be dangerous. But bollards can help protect against accidents and thus are necessary around school grounds.
Although the safety of the students is the primary and most obvious goal of installing bollards around the school, secondary uses make a bollard even more appealing. These include:
- WayFinding and Orientation: StreetScape’s Taper bollard can help orient new students or guests to the school. These smooth oval-shaped bollards can serve as wayfinding points by painting them in vibrant colours, thus acting as quickly identifiable markers on or around school grounds.
- Branding and Identity: Another creative use of the bollard around school grounds is utilising these concrete or steel structures as school branding opportunities. Lining the street near the school entrance with StreetScape’s Ball Head 50 bollards painted with the school colours or insignia is a stylish way to increase school branding. The Cube 4040, mentioned previously, is also the perfect place to advertise school events to parents picking up or dropping off children.
- Outdoor Seating: Not all children are picked up at the same time. Sometimes your child will have to wait just a bit until you can get there. With StreetScape’s Penny or Half-Penny concrete bollards, you can be sure that your child will at least have someplace to sit near school grounds until you can arrive.
Hospitals
The final urban setting perfect for installing bollards is around and even on hospital grounds. Depending on where hospitals are situated in the city, they can be a meeting place for pedestrians and traffic like the previous urban environments mentioned above, thus increasing the risk of accidents. Furthermore, unlike any other setting, hospitals consistently deal with medical emergencies. Therefore, access to the building can be of paramount importance. Here to bollards can be helpful, let’s look at several reasons why bollards should be implemented on hospital grounds:
- Can help cordon off walkways for pedestrians and prohibit vehicular access to these areas.
- Can help designate specific areas for emergency vehicles only, thus allowing ambulances to get patients into the hospital quickly.
- With strategically placed bollards around the hospital parking, congestion in these areas can be improved.
- Act as seating outside for people either waiting for patients to leave the hospital or for patients waiting to be picked up.
- Bollards can be decorated with murals, sculptures, or other works of art, creating a more welcoming and calming environment for patients and visitors.
Bollards and Urban Settings
In this article, we have taken a tour around the city and spotted many places where bollards are ideal. Although sometimes they go unnoticed, this article has shown how many advantages bollards can provide to city residents, tourists, students and patients. At StreetScape, bollards benefit urban areas and strive to provide you with the right bollard for the right situation, delivering a wide selection of steel and concrete options. So don’t hesitate to improve your urban setting with new bollards today!