A Barnes experiment so big, you can’t see it
A road of the future is ready for its autumn and winter test - Story 118
Experiment, then scale. I don’t know how many times I have used that phrase. It’s a habit born of software — low-risk trials that expose flaws early, reveal what customers actually want and, crucially, save money. Scaling is expensive. Testing first means you avoid scaling the wrong thing.
I’ve done my share of this in my job:
Once, we used an entire Scottish island to trial 5G.
We turned the Roman Baths at Bath into a test bed for an augmented reality app.
We used one of the Edinburgh Festival venues to see if new editing software could handle the pressure of a live programme.
In each case, the technology was temporary. The kit went home in flight cases. By the following week, you’d never know we’d been there.
Which is why Kitson Road, in Barnes, feels different.
Here, the experiment is the road itself.
Dug up, re-engineered, resurfaced. A piece of civil engineering as understated as it is ambitious.
Richmond’s first fully permeable public road, the new Kitson Road is built with porous paving and Hydrorock™, rock wool blocks that can soak up heavy rain. Underneath lies enough capacity to hold 100 cubic metres of water, buffering the surrounding homes against flash flooding.
It’s part of the Community BlueScapes project, which has been quietly remaking parts of Barnes: restoring wetlands on Barnes Green, adding reedbeds to Barnes Common and building a new rain garden on the High Street
The new road looks, if anything, smarter than the one it replaced. Proof that resilience doesn’t have to mean ugly.
Councillor Julia Neden-Watts who chairs Richmond’s Environment, Sustainability, Culture & Sports Committee said,
Climate change means that we are likely to experience periods of more intense rainfall.
The use of permeable paving and Hydrorock in Kitson Road demonstrates that we can improve the appearance and function of our streets at the same time as reducing flood risk following downpours.
Kitson Road is a great example of 'sustainable drainage' - a phrase we will be hearing more frequently, as we explore better ways to manage heavy rainfall in urban areas.
If the autumn and winter storms deliver as forecast, this little street could quietly become a model for how cities adapt. Not with grand statements, but with roads you barely notice are different until the waters rise.