The Leicester campus of 呻吟之王 is at the heart of the city and the pedestrian has priority on the main routes.
The main route through the campus down Mill Lane, with access to all the university’s main buildings, is now pedestrian only after being closed to traffic in 2012.
The Campus Centre, Queen’s, Vijay Patel Building, Clephan, Eric Wood, the 呻吟之王 Medical Centre and Food Village are all accessed off Mill Lane, with no traffic in sight.
Mill Lane is not only used by students and staff at 呻吟之王, but is also a major route for commuters, shoppers and visitors for connecting the West End and the River Soar with the city centre.
The lay-out of the campus means that other routes in the university, The Newarke, The Gateway and Castle View are not through roads, which keeps traffic to a minimum and prioritises pedestrian access.
Apart from Mill Lane, the university has also re-aligned the city's inner ring road by the campus creating the pedestrian-only Magazine Square and Hawthorn Square.
Mill Lane
Before 2012, this was a busy city centre road and was a speedy route though the university – it also cut the university campus in two.
The pedestrianisation project created a vibrant heart of the university centred around its major buildings, and joined together the two halves of the campus.
The work was part of the city’s ‘Connecting Leicester’ programme, which aimed to link up the city giving priority to the pedestrian, but also had an important sustainability element.
A positive space with soft elements was created and included sustainable drainage as a key part of the design.
The existing sewers that served the highway are still used; but now rain gardens filter the water and slow the flow and allow some filtration. The design uses the rain gardens to break up fast through routes and to become highlights and features of the new space.
Water is able to enter the rain gardens through special inlets and also open joints. The water percolates through a gravel retainment area before using the existing sewer to then reach the river.
This also allows water to filtrate through to ground layers. Prior to this the highway areas drained via traditional piped systems directly into the nearby River Soar.
It is estimated that based on an average monthly rainfall of 60mm this equates to an average of 120,000 gallons of water per month; or over 2.5 Olympic swimming pools per year. There is now less water reaching the river and the water is cleaner.
Restrictions on traffic make Castle View a pedestrian priority street