Sign & Vote (Please!)

Short post this week with me asking if my readers would consider signing a really important petition and vote to give recognition to a Lottery-funded walking and cycling project.

First, we have a Government e-petition calling for the implementation of the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group Report "Get Britain Cycling". The convention is that if a petition gets 100,000 signatures, it is considered for a debate in Parliament.

I know I have posted about this a couple of times, but it is really important we keep the pressure on as sadly, the Government have been quite dismissive so far and in particular David Cameron feels it is best left to local councils to deal with rather than providing any real leadership.

The summary and recommendations of the report can be downloaded here and the petition can  be signed here. At the time of writing there is about 68,000 signatures and so it needs a big push. Please let your friends, family and colleagues know if they currently cycle or would like to cycle.

The second thing is that the National Lottery are running the The National Lottery Awards 2013 Vote. The awards are an annual search to find the UK's favourite Lottery-funded projects. In the "environment" section, there are seven projects vying for the award and among them is the Sustrans Connect 2 project, which has expanded the National Cycle Network over the last 3 or 4 years with emphasis on schemes which deal with physical barriers preventing longer routes from "connecting up".

The Two Tunnels project in Bath, part of the Connect2 project and
the longest cycle tunnel in the UK.
Image from Sustrans.

I will declare an interest as I have been involved with the construction of one of the individual projects (out of around 80 across the UK) and I am a volunteer for the organisation, but it would give recognition to the expansion of the NCN and the work put in by the hundreds of people (if not thousands) who have been involved including Sustrans themselves, landowners, local authorities (including engineers!), volunteers, cycling groups, users, schools - the list goes on.

So, you can look at the environment category here and read more and vote for Connect 2 here. It shows the amount of effort required to improve walking and cycling networks, but it also shows that there is an appetite from the public for better provision as they voted for the scheme to be funded in the first place back in 2007! The projects have helped more people access walking and cycling routes, with many away from traffic. For cycling it has help local areas improve their modal share and hopefully helped to get people to demand more dedicated infrastructure.

BUT IT'S GOING TO COST A FORTUNE!

a technical question in the office quite often turns into a wider discussion, debate or indeed a rant. what started as a question about how to build a small access to a site ended in row over spending money civilising neighbourhoods where the driver becomes the visitor.

Many people are aware that the roads system in the UK is pretty much set up these days to service motor vehicles. Many people are happy that the roads system is geared towards vehicles and feel that motoring-related tax should be hypothecated to spending on roads (I am not going anywhere that one). But there are many people who are fed up with car-dominated neighbourhoods and realise that something needs to change and this is where the debate headed. I am not anti-car, they are a great tool, but I want to see things reworked to put walking, cycling and indeed public transport on a more equitable footing.

The question developed into a debate about my suggestion that we didn't need to build a site access like a road junction, it could be a simple dropped kerb to send a message to drivers that they were crossing the pedestrian's domain. 

I went on to show some colleagues images on Google Streetview of how other countries had taken the simple concept much further and applied it to junctions serving much larger areas.

A random example of a junction treatment, Amsterdam.
Image from Google Streetview.

It doesn't take long to find what I mean on the outskirts of Amsterdam where the footway and indeed cycle track continues with priority and those driving into and out of an access serving a residential area are expected to give way to them.

One of my colleagues wondered why we would want layouts like this. I said that they would civilise our residential areas and make drivers feel like visitors which can help with reducing speeds, and improving subjective safety. I then explained that if the estates were self-contained instead of having roads through to other places, then the only traffic in each little area would be either those who live there, those who are visiting and of course deliveries - we would get rid of rat running.

Church Langley Way, Harlow. It could have been built a different
way to create an access to residential road - the distributor road
had plenty of verge to have a protected cycle track.
Image from Google Streetview.

My colleague was concerned about the cost of making these changes - "but it's going to cost a fortune". Well, retrofitting existing road layouts will need funding, but building civilised layouts for new build should not cost more than the "traditional" approach. Of course, building densities are high in new builds and developers do not want to build any more road than they need to. 

It means that if we introduce protected facilities for cycling, then in many cases an access road may need to be one way. The immediate roads serving a group of dwellings probably don't need any protected infrastructure for cycling and so long as the estate is permeable for walking and cycling, we have a ready made low-speed civilised neighbourhood and the construction work will be the same as for the traditional approach.

To build a new estate road, one can work on a cost of around £210 to £250 per square metre depending on ground conditions; (the poorer the ground, the thicker the road, the higher the cost) and this makes an allowance for drainage and street lighting. This rate also assumes that some of the area will be carriageway and some footway. If an access road is made a one way loop, then the cost of a reduced width of carriageway can be used for cycle tracks. 

High Road, Seven Kings. LCN Route 12 and just paint with a bit of
green surfacing here and there. Image based on Google Streetview.

For a retrofit scheme, the costs can vary wildly, especially when utilities are encountered and need diverting. Converting carriageway to footway or cycle track will cost in the region of £150 per square metre for a tarmac or block paved finish. Add £10 per square metre for a coloured surface and £50 or higher for natural stone.

Where we are looking at schemes such as the London Cycle Network (LCN), it is no wonder that lots of it is just white paint and logos when we are looking at around £1 per metre of cycle lane, £20 per cycle logo and the £10 per square metre for a bit of green surface. The routes were developed and installed on the cheap with nowhere near the amount of money required to provide facilities for all. The engineers who installed the LCN were set up to fail by those making the decisions on where money should be spent.

Take the example of High Street, Seven Kings which I have mocked up as having the Copenhagen treatment. This is LCN Route 12 which runs from (nearly) the M25 to Stratford before becoming Cycle Superhighway CS2 between Stratford and the City (well it fizzles out just after Aldgate East). The pair of routes together are some 16 miles (25km) in length and apart from the odd section of cycle track and a bit of mandatory cycle lane/ bus lane (part time) it is all paint and logos. 

Trixi Mirrors are not decent protected cycle infrastructure no matter

how much the Mayor of London bullied the DfT to agree to them.

If we were to upgrade this route to a protected cycle track in each direction, 2 metres in width and at £150 per square metre, we are looking at £15 million and that doesn't even cover the junctions - perhaps a budget of £30 million might be more reasonable. So, "it's going to cost a fortune" isn't it? Well, no, I don't think so. It is all about priorities. LCN 12 and CS2 run parallel to the Shenfield to Liverpool Street railway line (which will also be part of Crossrail) and while I am not suggesting that those on the eastern end of the route would cycle to the City, those closer could easily do it and decent provision would help with local utility trips or commuting between the various town centres along the route (Romford, Ilford and Stratford) and it might take pressure off a very crowded railway corridor.

Compare my off-the-cuff £30m with the New Bus for London which will cost £200m for 600 buses, the Government's £170m "Pinch Point" fund, £1.2bn to £3.04bn for a Lower Thames Crossing (see 9.2 on this link) or £32bn for HS2. I think that investing in retrofitting for cycling (and walking) represents excellent value for money on the engineering alone and then we have the other benefits in terms of health, social exclusion, personal mobility and a reduction in pressure on other modes of public transport. Oh, and it will create construction jobs.

One of the things I like about my job is the debate it often generates, but it is a pity that these sorts of debates don't play out in the popular press, TV or with our elected representatives at all levels. If all new developments were designed for walking and cycling from the start, we would lock in civilised neighbourhoods and never need to spend money reworking them. If we spent our limited funds of measures which would make a difference to people at a very local level, then we could avoid spending money on huge political vanity projects. Perhaps that is the problem - a cycle by-pass at a traffic signalled junction is never going to be a newsworthy or political photo-opportunity - a new railway is.

Cycle Superhighway 2 - Stratford Extension Planned to Start This Month!

Well, it is going ahead! TfL has published the outcome of the public consultation on the extension of Cycle Superhighway 2 from Bow to Stratford Town Centre and announced that work starts at the end of June.

You can download a full copy of the consultation outcome report here, but the headlines are that 19 stakeholders and 600 individuals responded; 83% of respondents supported the scheme outright; access & disability groups raised concerns about shared-use areas and the bus stop bus passes (conflicts with pedestrians essentially); Living Streets, like the access groups, had concerns where pedestrians here impacted on.

The current "quality" of CS2 on Mile End Road. CS2X needs to carry
on to the City. Image from Google Streetview.

The Licenced Taxi Drivers Association and London TravelWatch were concerned about the loss of the bus lane (LTDA members lose their priority, LTW from a loss of priority for bus passengers, plus other things); the Motorcycle Action Group didn't like the mandatory cycle lanes as their users would have to use normal traffic lanes (what, they admit to using advisory cycle lanes to filter?).

The Road Haulage Association was concerned about loading and cyclists undertaking lorries and the Brewery Logistics Association were concerned about reduction in road capacity and impact on deliveries to pubs and hotels.

I covered the scheme consultation in January where I raised three concerns;

(i) This scheme is actually on Newham's highway network and so will their politicians have the proverbials to see it through?

(ii) When this is shown to be a success, will TfL and the boroughs roll it out?

(iii) If the organised cycle lobby in-fights, then it might be another excuse not to do a proper job.

Well, the second will obviously have to wait, but TfL really must apply the concept of CS2X (yes, that's the shorthand) to the rest of CS2 all the way to the city because it is mostly awful. It is one thing reprioritising cycling space on Newham's road network, but what about on TfL's?

West Ham Lane - No contraflow here. Image from Google Streetview.

On the first issue, Newham has essentially required that the cycle contraflow on West Ham Lane is deleted as there are other aspirations in the area. Beyond that, Newham support he scheme and indeed TfL are going to work with them on what could be done on the Bow Flyover and on removal of the Stratford Gyratory.

My third point didn't come to fruition, cycling groups lined up their ducks giving support for the scheme - London Cycling Campaign, Newham Cyclists, Tower Hamlets Wheelers and Stop Murder of Cyclists Southwark (!) all agreed, but wanted even more. 

Sustrans supported the scheme, but had some concern about pedestrians in shared areas. Our friends at the Cycling Embassy for Great Britain supported the scheme, but recommended some design changes to the bus stop bypasses, use of two-stage right turns and concerns about shared-use areas and the positions of some of the ASLs.

This left me with just one question - where was the response from CTC on a scheme which is such a fundamental shift in cycle infrastructure design in London - perhaps they were too busy taking up the primary position somewhere else!

TfL has made a number of design modifications resulting from the consultation which are reproduced from the report as follows;

Bye bye horrible Stratford High Street (or Stratford Motorway!)
Image from Google Streetview.

Kerbs
As requested, we will be providing kerbs to create segregated cycle lanes separated from general traffic. We received a number of requests for angled kerbs to reduce risks of punctured tyres. However we feel 2m wide cycle lane should provide sufficient space so cyclists don’t hit the kerb. We will monitor the performance of the kerb once the facility is opened.

Enforcement of motorist offences including speeding
Replacing a general traffic lane with a cycle lane in each direction should reduce motor traffic speeds on Stratford High Street. When CS2 extension opens, the Metropolitan Police’s Cycle Task Force will be present to help educate users, and if necessary tackle both motorist and cyclist enforcement issues. If required, the Police and the highway authority, Newham Council, will identify any additional measures post implementation.

Improving local cycle feeder routes
We will support Newham Council with proposals to improve local cycle routes.

Concern about impact on general traffic
Our traffic modelling currently indicates journeys from Stratford Town Centre to Bow could take up to 90 seconds longer in morning peak times. We are working with Newham Council and other delivery partners to mitigate any impacts on general traffic. We will closely monitor any impacts when the extension opens.

Hello cycle-friendly infrastructure (well for part of the A11 anyway).

Cycle parking suggestions
We are working with Newham Council to deliver 400 additional cycle parking spaces.

Of course, the notorious Bow Interchange and the less notorious, but pretty horrible Stratford Gyratory came up, TfL commented as follows;

Bow roundabout
We will continue to discuss wider improvements in the Bow roundabout area including considering how pedestrian facilities can be improved with key stakeholder groups.

We will be installing a cycle bus stop bypass and early start traffic lights at Bow roundabout westbound by Summer 2013. For more information on proposals and the consultation, visit our website. We will support Newham Council with developing plans for cycle facilities on Bow flyover.

Stratford gyratory
We received a number of requests to improve this area, including removing the gyratory.
Following this feedback, we‘ve made a number of changes such as a tighter turn into Tramway Avenue to help slow traffic down. We will be erecting a cycle route sign post at Cam Road to Channelsea Path and the Three Mills. We will continue to work with Newham Council on their plans to remove Stratford gyratory.

I think the decision on the kerb will niggle quite a few people, it was a sensible suggestion and if it turns out to be a problem, I cannot see TfL ripping out the normal kerbs to replace them with angled ones. But, I think there is an awful lot we should congratulate TfL and Newham on (as this is on Newham's network) and I for one cannot wait to give it a go later this year. 

I am confident that as well as this scheme being a massive success, we will all learn how the continental approach will Anglicise, how traffic will cope with losing lanes to cycling (it will) and it should whet the appetite to push TfL and the boroughs to start using these design layouts across the Capital. Forget 2012 being the Summer of Cycling in London, it will be 2013!

What Shall We Do With Markham's Chase?

One of my favourite blogs is "angry people in local newspapers" which takes an irreverant look at the photos staged to accompany local newspaper articles. One item caught my eye "Death trap road anger" and I thought it might be interesting to look a little deeper.

The story is taken up in full by the Echo - "School Road a 'Death Trap' for Angry Parents" and goes on to state the problems of parent traffic outside Janet Duke Primary School, Markham's Chase in Basildon, Essex. You may want to fire up Google Maps to keep track of the various locations I refer to in the post.

Here is the western half of Basildon. The area of interest is in
the red square. Note the yellow/ orange distributor roads which
encircle what is a large residential area in which Janet Duke
Primary School sits. Image based on Google Maps.

Now, some health warnings. Although I know Basildon quite well (having worked in the area years ago), I haven't visited the site and so do not have the necessary knowledge I would need if doing a "proper job" on a possible solution to the street's problems - the idea was to look at some of the issues behind the headlines. 

I will also be using casualty data from the excellent Crashmap website, but it will be basic, as access to full details costs money, plus the latest data is 2011.  I will therefore make some suggestions of how some of the actual casualties in this street may have been caused.

So, Basildon. Home of Mondeo Man and typical of urban development of the last several decades. The town was one of the many 'New Towns' created after the Second World War and has been expanding and redeveloping ever since. The town is bounded by the A127, A13 and A130 (of sub-regional importance), contains many commercial and industrial areas, retail parks, a large town centre and many local shopping centres. It is criss-crossed with wide distributor type roads and car is very much king here. There are some good cycling routes around the town, but the quality is hit and miss and priority is always with traffic.

High Road? More like Urban Motorway! Image from Google Streetview.

Markham's Chase is in the Laindon part of town which is characterised by housing of various ages and tenure tending to reflect the early development and subsequent redevelopment of towns like these. This residential area has the A176 to its east and Laindon High Road to its west - both are community severing dual carriageways.

The street is largely residential, but also has the school. Google Streetview has images of the area dated July and October 2012 and it seems that a sports centre and open land is currently being redeveloped for housing. There may be have been a bus route on the road, but it is not clear - I shall assume there isn't for the purposes of this post.

Massive wide road, perhaps the residents all drive Argos lorries?
Image from Google Streetview, showing the junction with
Leinster Road.

The street is very wide with huge open junctions, plenty of off street parking and reasonably generous footways. Some smaller closes spur from the road and there are walkways to some of the older housing stock, some of which have no road access. My assumption is that speed will be a problem on this road and where junctions are concerned, there will likely be failure to give way type collisions.

Image from Google Streetview.

The school is at the southern end of the street, covering a large site. It has multiple vehicle and pedestrian accesses from Markham's Chase. There are School Keep Clear restrictions everywhere which to me hints that the area is decended upon by cars twice a day. There is also extensive residential development going on opposite the school. I would say that you could find this kind of road layout all over the country, but the width of the roads is notable along with the dual carriageways around and through the residential areas as characterised by the other New Towns.

Markham's Chase highlighted red, the school boxed
in blue and two junctions I will come back to circled
in purple. Image based on Google Maps.

The map to the left is a little difficult to read, but essentially, the red line is Markham's Chase and the area in the blue square is the school site.

So, what of the "death trap" the Echo quotes parents as being concerned about? Well in the five years to 2011 (the most up to date data on Crashmap) there were a total 6 casualties recorded in the street. Of these, 5 involved slight injury and 1 involved a serious injury. None of the collisions involved child casualties. None involved pedal cycles, 1 involved a pedestrian and 2 involved motorcycles (including the serious casualty). The rest were all car-related. Search the street in Crashmap for yourself and use the filters - aside from the fact that this is data where people actually got hurt, it is an interesting exercise.

As I stated earlier, Crashmap gives basic data and so I would need to make assumptions about the causes, but it does not appear that the street is in fact a 'death trap' and so this is a typical overreaction of parents concerned about conditions outside a school; but it is a symptom of subjective safety issues which puts people off from walking or cycling. 

The serious injury involving a motorcycle was a single vehicle crash (nobody else involved) and so my assumption is that the rider lost control. To lose control in a residential area, I would suggest that speed is the issue and the serious injury is likely to have been caused (in my opinion) by the rider parting company with the machine and bouncing off a parked car or getting wrapped around a lamp column. There is a lamp column right at the recorded crash location and such a collision could include broken or fractured limbs, injuries to ribs, internal organs, back or neck or even severe grazing and lacerations if the rider was not wearing leathers - casualty investigation is not for the squeamish I'm afraid and can affect the engineer investigating a site, even if they are just looking at data trying to work out what happened.

The pedestrian casualty (slight) was close to the junction with Leinster Road which is in the photo above. Actually, the location is just in Leinster Road and it may be an issue of someone trying to cross a wide junction with traffic turning in at speed (all assumption). For a description of what 'slight' and 'serious' injuries mean, you can download a fact sheet from the DfT. This is all cold definition and so remember we are dealing with people here.

Parking near schools creates uncomfortable and subjectively
unsafe conditions for those who want to walk or cycle with their kids
to school. Pelican crossings can help pedestrians get priority over
traffic in busy locations, but only when the green man gives
permission!

In the wider context of funding being provided for a casualty-reduction scheme, it is very unlikely that Markham's Chase with a casualty rate of just over 1 per year would ever be funded - there will be areas in Basildon with a more serious casualty problem to be addressed. 

This is the traditional approach to engineering interventions where funding is always very constrained - in other words, with little cash available, we go after the locations where we judge we can make the greatest impact. The problem with this approach is that the "easy" sites have been treated over the last 20 years in terms of issues on a "traditional" road layout (like Basildon).

The challenge for the future, if policy moves towards supporting active travel as I hope it will, is making sure that changes to the network themselves do not create safety risks and where numbers of people walking and cycling increase, that that casualties do not increase as well (the subject of a future post which I am thinking about).

Back to the angry parents in the article. They are calling for two new pelican crossings in Markham's Chase - "installed the length of the school". (I assume they mean one at each end of the school frontage). Failing that, they want a pelican crossing at one end of the road and the (existing) school crossing patrol at the other.

Eric Street, Bow, East London - a good example of a cheap road
closure with cycle bypass to create filtered permeability and to
prevent through traffic using a residential area.

A new pelican crossing will cost in the region of £40-50k to design and construct and so for two, the parents need a working budget of about £90k as a first stab. Assuming a pair of pelican crossings are built - one at each end of the school, then there will still be chaos twice a day outside the school with parents driving and there will be complaints about some parents choosing to cross their children on a red man and children crossing in other parts of the street. More seriously, for the rest of the day, nobody will be using the crossings and local drivers and regular rat-runners will get very used to them showing green - this is a safety issue off peak when drivers do not expect to have to stop. Statistically, the crossings will generate annual pedestrian casualties over time (less then one a year would be my estimation, but casualties nonetheless).

Markham's Chase closed half way with Eric Street style closure.
Image based on Google Streetview.

The solution here is not expensive crossings, it is removing the through traffic from Markham's Chase. The road can be accessed from three other streets and essentially means people can drive through the whole area and out the other end, rather than use the major roads bounding this residential area. These major roads are wide and fast and so why shouldn't non-local traffic be forced to stick to them? I would close Markham's Chase in two key places which would mean that the only traffic to use the street would have business there. Without knowing local traffic patterns in detail, I would close the road at the southern end by the school (at Great Knightleys) and just north of Leinster Road which creates the opportunity for a pair of turning areas for each half of Markham's Chase - it also means that Leinster Road cannot be used as a rat run any more.

Road closed at Great Knightleys.
Image based on Google Streetview.

These two closures would cost in the region of £10k - perhaps using the layout above from Eric Street which maintains cycle bypasses. My scheme costs significantly less than that the parents' pelican crossings and when it comes to lobbying Essex County Council, I reckon more likely to be funded.

My scheme will not stop the parking by parents, but it will deal with traffic speed outside the school and it may put off some parents from driving to the school, it would also remove general through traffic and so start to make it feel safer to cross the road outside the school. There might be displacement of traffic and parking to other areas and so road closures should not be looked at in isolation. The road to the south of Markham's Close (Great Knightleys) is undoubtedly a busy and fast road because of its layout. If I had the money for a pelican crossing, it would be for here.

Returning to the article in the Echo and the Angry People in Local Newspapers post. "Dangerous" roads are a mainstay of local papers and it is always easy to stage a photo of "angry residents" (which is the point of the blog) and get quotes from them. In fact, the story writes itself and the journalist doesn't need to do an awful lot of work and more's the pity. In this story, I wonder why the journalist didn't undertake some basic research into the actual casualty record and why he didn't examine whether or not the pair of pelican crossings was a sensible idea?

The rest of the article explains that a meeting on site has been held between parents, Police Community Safety Officers (whatever that means), the local MP's secretary (!), a local councillor and the head teacher of the school. The head teacher explained that she has written to parents asking them to take more responsibility for their parking, but I wonder if she has written to find out why they drive their kids to school and what it would take to get them out of their cars?

The solution to improving walking is rarely a crossing outside a school (unless the school is on a major road) - the real barriers will be the busy main roads away from the school gate. But where schools are not on main roads, it should be possible in many cases to change the balance away from catering for the rat running traffic so that at school times, pedestrian activity dominates. With £10k, we could make a difference to Janet Duke Primary School, what could we do with the £90k the parents want spent on two pelican crossings which will probably end up creating pedestrian injuries?

We Need To Rethink The Hierarchy

Engineers like to cling to guidance, campaigners have their dogma, politicians like to please voters and most people have no interest until it affects them. Throw in the engineering consultants, perhaps a "showman consultant" and we have unleashed an unholy recipe for schemes which will not work.

Welcome to the wonderful world of local authority highway engineering. This is the background within which I attempt to operate, which means I have to try and keep various people happy, I have to try and second guess what issues will come up when I propose a scheme and I need to try and get somebody who has been elected to represent their community to allow me to build my scheme (i.e. local councillors).

Before I go on, my thanks to ibikelondon for the inspiration for this blog which was prompted by his blog on road narrowing schemes which recounts a discussion with a highway engineer on why road narrowing was something that "local cycling campaigners" wanted, but now the scheme was built, cyclists had moved away.

Oooh, a pile of guidance. Suits you Sir! Do you thumb
through it Sir? Do you follow it to the letter Sir?

I will come back to the other players shortly, but lets start with the highway engineer. In my post Risk, Liability and Designers, I explored the relationship between legislation and guidance, plus how it would impact on innovation. I concluded that so long as engineers follow a logical framework to achieve a reasonable aim, there is pretty much no risk to being sued or summoned for a "bad" design. But, engineers do cling to their blessed design guidance, even if they (hand on heart) know it to be crap.

Local authority engineers also need to have an awareness of the political dimension which is essentially like herding cats (who have often not read the committee report). In the past, we (at work) used to worry quite a bit about what the decision-making politicians will think about the scheme, often tailoring it for what we thought would get through committee. This has proved variable at best and so our approach now is to propose what we judge to be the correct solution, even if the politicians throw the scheme out rather than to settle for something they will agree, but which is not the right scheme.

Campaigners are often the last people designers should listen to as they often do not represent a huge body of users and they will often project their own personal views. I am not going to pick on any group here, but we know that there are some who campaign on the basis that they want to stay cycling on the carriageway. Campaigners are the converted, we don't need to convince them. I am not just thinking about cycling, how about the loons at the Association of British Drivers - I drive and they certainly don't represent me!

Politicians can be random and they also have their eye on the voters. I have sat in committee with a scheme being thrown out because of a few noisy objectors to whom the politicians have given far too much weight in the debate. Some politicians see through this, many don't. Politicians rarely write policy, they sign off what staff write for them (they may want some changes, but they don't physically write it themselves). Some will give strong views such as Eric Pickles MP and his free parking, but coherent and structured arguments are not often articulated.

Elwick Road, Ashford. Fancy cycling round this "roundabout"?
Would that be in the road with traffic following or on the footway?
Fancy crossing on this zebra crossing looks like a crossing, but
it isn't really? Image from Google Streetview.

Engineering consultants are often employed by Councils and organisations such as TfL. On the whole, they will do the job they are asked to and are being paid for. Unless they are asked to be radical or prioritise one mode over another, they will give a reasoned and logical scheme in accordance with the brief. They won't suggest something completely different unless they have been asked or paid to do so.

The small "showman" consultant is a strange beast. Often made up of a tiny number of staff, these consultants often get to lead big commissions. Just look at schemes like Ashford, Exhibition Road and Poynton. I get the impression that things which look nice take precedence over the people who have to use these spaces. Yes, cycle tracks may not be the most pretty things, but Exhibition Road would a better place with them. Actually, I have a soft spot for a few of these guys as they do shake things up a bit!

So, drifting back to the point of hierarchy. All of these players will have a different idea on how our streets should function which, will not often accord with other people's ideas. It is therefore important to have defined objectives for a scheme and then follow them through, testing how the design meets those objectives as things proceed. If there are competing objectives or priorities, they need to be resolved. Proper zebra crossings in Ashford may have been offensive to the urban designer's eye, but they would have let pedestrians get actual priority to cross the road and so I wonder if the needs of the user were put first.

For cycling, there are out of date hierarchies being used by engineers and waved around by campaigners. Politicians don't really understand them and consultants do as they are told. The showmen may use them if it suits the design.

Local Transport Note 2/08 "Cycle Infrastructure Design" (Department for Transport) is a hierarchy often used and quoted and is meant to be the best design advice for engineers. It is not. Although there is some good stuff in there, the hierarchy proposals simply do not work and being 5 years old and given how things have moved on even in the last year, it is due for a massive overhaul.

Table 1.1 gives some suggestions on the kind of facility which could be chosen given various conditions. So, high traffic volume/ speed routes suggest off road (carriageway) provision, but then the next issue of a large number of side roads then contradicts and suggests that this is not a good option because of the increase in conflict crossing side roads creates. Actually, the answer to the issues on the left do rather suggest the solution of protected cycle tracks full stop.

Then Table 1.2 provides the Hierarchy Of Provision. So, when read with Table 1.1, I am looking at a busy single carriageway A-road which runs between a couple of local town centres in a London borough. It has lots of side roads, HGVs/ Buses and as there are schools nearby, quite a few pedestrians at commuting times. 

Here we go, a bit of "Hazard Site Treatment".
A bit of green paint AND a cycle logo. A typical main
road treatment on the LCN. 
(it was one of my schemes in work - this is a warts
and all blog after all - not to mention the railings!)

So, what would Table 1.2 have us do and what should be consider? Can we reduce traffic volumes on the main road? I doubt it. What about speed? Well being a main A-road, we cannot put in heavy traffic calming as the emergency services and London Buses will not be too happy. 

What about junction treatment, hazard site treatment, traffic management? Well, we could put some green paint down at side roads or stick a few ASLs in couldn't we? What about reallocation of road space? Well, we are on a busy route into town, but it is single carriageway, so I guess we could nick some carriageway and put in some cycle lanes? Advisory or mandatory? Advisory, less grief with needing to stop parking. What about cycle tracks away from roads? What through the park - doesn't get cyclists into town does it? I know, let's paint a line down the footway and let cyclists and pedestrians deal with it.

The biggest problem with this hierarchy is that it is very easy to slip into the "it's too hard" mentality and end up with an easy job using paint and some signs but which does not really change anything - this brought us a fair bit of the London Cycle Network which has some on-carriageway cycle lanes and some back streets with confusing direction signs where the main roads were really difficult to deal with.

We also now have Local Transport Note 1/12 "Shared Use Routes For Pedestrians & Cyclists (DfT) which does start to try and make things better in terms of guidance and it points out the pit-falls of shared-use designs. Almost weirdly it comes up with 5 "design cyclists" and tries to look at different solutions for different kinds of cyclist - fast commuter, utility cyclist, inexperienced or leisure cyclist, children and specialist equipment users (tricycles, hand cyclists, those with trailers). Well, I qualify for the first three depending on what I am doing at the time, so what would someone design for me! Shared-use provision is a whole other blog, perhaps next time!

Shared-use unsegregated cycle track. Who was it built for? Perhaps
the drivers on the busy multi-lane roundabout it skirts around.

LTN 1/12 does soon slip back into "Hierarchy Of Provision" and refers to pretty much the same table as in LTN 2/08 and so I guess you pick up LTN 1/12 when you have exhausted LTN 2/08. Now, there are some good things in both and they should be pulled out into one document, but for my mind, we are just designing for one group and that is people using cycles. I do not know what a fast commuter is, but part of my journey to work is on the carriageway and I (try) to move along as quickly as my hybrid allows me in order to mix it with the traffic. I would rather go a little slower on a protected cycle track - I might even dump the orange lycra! 

So, the current hierarchy has given us on-carriageway cycle lanes, a few back streets, a bit of shared cycle track and the odd Toucan crossing where our routes run across roads into parks. It has taken our cycling infrastructure as far as possible and carrying on like this will not significantly increase cycling. Higher fuel costs might push a few more people (onto the footways), but those scared of traffic (i.e. most people) will not take up cycling because it feels dangerous.

So, how do we rethink the hierarchy? Actually, we should be looking to rearrange it around the user. A high-quality, protected cycle track would suit all of the DfT cyclists no matter where it is put, but to be any use it has to be where people want to go and that means tackling main roads. From a user (any user) point of view, hierarchy for me essentially means;

"those cycling routes serving the journeys I wish to make, which are direct, well designed, well built and which feel safe"

That is to say, the best routes will be highest in the hierarchy.

Therefore, hierarchy actually applies to the individual and their needs. My table above reworks DfT's Table 1.2. and I hope it shows the relationship between the quality of infrastructure provision and volume of use one could expect from that infrastructure. The inescapable fact arising from this is that in order to get to the top of the arrow, we need to spend really serious money - a few tens of thousands for a London borough to review cycle routes will not cut it - tens of millions is what we are really needing to invest even in a single borough. 

A shared, but segregated cycle track on CS2 west of Stratford.
If there was a kerb upstand between the footway and the cycle track,
cycle-signal priority at junctions and a consistent treatment all of
the way into the City, we would be pretty high up the arrow!
Image from Google Streetview.

It is all relative, but one can apply this hierarchy to schemes and routes. Take CS2 in Bow. It is pretty much blue paint and signs, but it also has some protected tracks, mandatory lanes, signs which are actually pretty good and useful (they show journey times) and some integration with cycle hire. So, the infrastructure provision has moved up the arrow a bit and I don't think anyone would disagree, volume of use is greater than when it was just old LCN layouts. When CS2 is extended into Stratford with protected tracks, surely the volume of use must grow.

Now, I have an idea we are starting to play around with in work. We have (like many parts of London) a fairly well-developed LCN network, but it is mainly paint and signs. We have some really good direct routes through parks, even though they are unsegregated shared use and quite a few direct routes through quiet streets. We are looking at one route this year, though, which is classic LCN advisory cycle lanes developed I guess at least 15 years ago (well before my time). We don't have a lot of money to play with (a tiny budget), but I am determined to not just play with paint and signs.

What we are going to do is to produce a drawing of a big section of the route between to local town centres. We are going to show all of the on-street stuff like cycle lanes, pedestrian refuges, ASLs and so on. We are going to take the old design and start adding to it with 4 or 5 different evolutions. 

This is an unsegregated shared-use cycle track. Some people do
not like these, but if you look carefully at the other side of the road,
you will see what this side used to look like - a narrow hard strip
on a bridge with a crash barrier in the middle. Cycle? you could
barely walk along it. Some of the carriageway has been taken away
and the crash barrier removed with the parapet (big crash barrier
that looks like a fence) being upgraded to compensate.
The politicians had a mutter, but as traffic hasn't really been
affected, it went through. This is a fairly rural leisure route,
but it would not have existed unless a fair chunk of money was
invested in reworking the bridge. Even kids can use this route and
the fact the road has a 40mph speed limit isn't a particular problem.

The first thing we are going to do it to look at little things to to make conditions a little better for existing users - it may be converting a Puffin crossing to a Toucan so that cyclists can leave the carriageway, use the crossing and get direct access to a cycle parking area outside a station rather than having to swing across the road. This small tweak might just help a few more people get confidence to cycle to the station, rather than get dropped off by car.

We will be looking at some short separated cycle track links between the LCN route into some side roads and service roads which do not have direct vehicle connections to the main road, but the tracks will open up wider residential areas to the route and actually enable some easy bypassing of awkward junctions (easy and quicker to cycle than is current).

I think you get the drift. The idea will be to gently and gradually lift the route up the arrow in my table. We should be able to take each stage to the politicians without scaring them and if we can grow numbers a bit each time, we create demand to take things to the next stage. The higher we go, the more money we will need and the more difficult the solutions and decisions will be. But we are starting from a very low base and I am not sure we can do much worse than the old layout we have now.

Oh, and don't forget the little things like filtered permeability. This is
Eric Street in Bow which runs parallel to Burdett Road. This is a
much quieter route than Burdett Road, but it is just as direct. Good
solutions are not always expensive.

I need to come full circle and touch on road narrowing schemes. Many of these have been pushed from a streetscene or urban landscape or some other designer-speak for repaving vast areas in expensive stone paving and sticking trees in. I am happy we are trying to give pedestrians more space, but there are many schemes which have been at the expense of the existing cyclists and so these very expensive schemes, actually drop us back down the arrow. If a decision has been made to take away traffic lanes, why couldn't have the designers provided cycle tracks in each direction. They could be paved expensively so the look is there and line of trees between the footways and cycle tracks actually creates soft separation, plus a "clutter line" in which to place lamp columns, benches and cycle parking. It would have cost pretty much the same.

So, let's rethink the hierarchy and wrap it around the user. The more we invest in protecting the user, the more existing people will be happier to use the route, the more they will tell others and the more users will appear - the volume of use hierarchy follows the arrow in the right direction!

Holding Response to "Get Britain Cycling" Petition - Cobblers!

I had an email from Government's e-petition website in the early hours of Tuesday morning which contained a response to the petition in support of the "Get Britain Cycling" report, as it had had received over 10,000 signatures.

The petition, started by Kaya Burgess of The Times, can still be signed here. It states:

We the undersigned call on the Prime Minister to pledge that the Government will implement the recommendations in the 'Get Britain Cycling' parliamentary report.

The inquiry, chaired by a cross-party panel of MPs and peers, heard that promoting cycling as a healthy and affordable way to travel can tackle Britain's obesity crisis, save millions from NHS budgets, boost the economy and reduce congestion on our roads and trains.

The inquiry’s 18 recommendations focus on reallocating investment, safer road design, lower speed limits, better training and strong political leadership.

This will require cross-departmental consensus led from the Cabinet Office and Downing Street, not just from the Department for Transport.

In the Commons on February 22, 2012, the Prime Minister said of The Times's ‘Cities Fit for Cycling’ campaign: “If we want to encourage the growth in cycling we’ve seen in recent years, we need to get behind campaigns like this.”

Now is the time to act on those words.

The rules of the Government's e-petition schemes essentially means that any which get 100,000 signatures will be "considered" for debate in Parliament. Possibly the politicians have run out of ideas and are now looking at the public for populist things, but there you go. Life in the digital age.

I have signed quite a few e-petitions and this is the first time I have seen a response provided at this stage and it makes me wonder why.

Read the summary and recommendations here.

The response is:

As this e-petition has received more than 10,000 signatures, the relevant Government department have provided the following response:

The Government welcomes the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group (APPCG) inquiry and report. We will look at the recommendations carefully and respond in due course. The Coalition Government takes cycling very seriously and is committed to leading the country in getting more people cycling, more safely, more often.

Many of the recommendations in the report mirror those shared with Government by the Cycling Stakeholder Forum members. In the last 12 months we have allocated £107m of new money to support safety and community links that encourage more cycling. This is over and above the £600m Local Sustainable Transport Fund where 94 out of the 96 projects contain a cycling element. We have also introduced measures to make cycling safer, including flexibility for Local Authorities to introduce 20mph speed limits in residential areas and a process for applications for further rural 40mph zones. Furthermore, we have made it easier to install Trixi mirrors to improve the visibility of cyclists at junctions.

The Department for Transport has been co-ordinating a cross-departmental effort to promote cycling, in particular with Defra and the Department of Health. For example Transport and Health Ministers shared a platform at the Leicester Active Travel Conference in November to promote better working between public health and transport planners. We now plan to take this further by establishing a project team involving more departments and stakeholders.

We are working on making our towns and cities more cycle friendly. In January we announced the Cycle City Ambition Grants and have invited cities outside London to bid for a share of a £42m grant. The guidance requires cities to demonstrate local leadership and set out a 10 year ambition for more cycling. Successful bids will receive a cycling budget equivalent to £10 per head, which is the level of support the APPCG inquiry report recommends. The £42m grant will also benefit National Parks who have been asked to develop schemes to improve cycling facilities to help support cycling as a fun leisure activity as well as a healthy way of getting around. We will announce the successful bids in the summer.

This e-petition remains open to signatures and will be considered for debate by the Backbench Business Committee should it pass the 100 000 signature threshold.

Trixi mirror at Southwark Bridge Road - cutting edge stuff.
Image based on Google Streetview.

So, what we have is clearly a politically-arrange statement to explain just how much work the Government has been putting in which is essentially sodding around a bit with speed limit guidance, inadvertently demonstrating how poor funding actually is for cycling infrastructure and mentioning a forum who very few people have ever heard of (the did come up with a reasonable strategy, but it doesn't seem to have been publicised by the Government - perhaps would mean take leadership and funding things). Oh, and I mustn't forget Trixi mirrors which will remove all left turning conflicts and traffic signals (clue - they are not very good!)

No, what we have here seems to be typical political spin going on about a few "big" projects and some tweaks to guidance. Nothing about what they are going to, nothing about the rumoured Office for Active Travel.

Perhaps the idea is to fool us into thinking that they have considered the petition so it doesn't reach 100,000 signatures, so they don't need to debate it and so we all need to sign it here.

This all looks like business as usual to me from the damned politicians and their blasted constant spin.