Thursday 23 May 2013

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!

Wednesday 15 May 2013

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.

Tuesday 7 May 2013

Desire...

"All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"*

London to Colchester was an important route for the Romans and
so they built the A12 and several retail parks along the way.
Let's cut straight to it, we know that the Romans were a dab hand at building roads in order to service, expand and control their Empire, and yes, they often built them straight (or straightish!). They were moving people and goods and saw the value of keeping it simple and serving the Empire's desire for efficient transport links. (warning, this post contains photos of shared-use cycle tracks which I know are not the best examples of infrastructure!)

The Romans didn't let hills and swamps get in their way, they pushed on through by digging or piling. Their main roads were paved; concrete was being used and they were built to last. Look across the UK, and their old routes remain on maps - "Roman Road".

So, what did the Romans do for us? They built their roads on the desire line, a concept which is very important when using leg power and is just as important today for those walking or cycling, but all too often ignored for the convenience of motor traffic.


Look at the packed down soil - people want to walk here.
This is a desire line in action and such a no brainer, you don't even
need to be an engineer to understand - hell, even a politician could

understand this one!!!
Put simply a desire line is where people want to go. It could be the line between home and work, or it could be very localised - you often see it in grass verges where pedestrians carve out a route in the mud showing where they want to walk. 

We engineers have made an industry of trying to stop people taking the direct route; OK, not all engineers, the politicians are also complicit and don't get me going on architects, planners and urban designers! It has taken decades to get here with guardrail, footbridges with switchback ramps, barriers on cycle routes, pedestrian crossings in strange places and dingy subways which nobody wants to use.

If you are walking and cycling, you are expending some effort to do so and being taken off the route you wish to follow is annoying for many, but it can be tiring for some users; and if it is that circuitous, then people will be put off from using the route completely (have you seen the dual carriageways in Birmingham?). Some will just find their own way through, even if it means taking a dangerous route (subjectively and actually in many cases).

Desire lines are not just about directness (although very important), they are also routes which people prefer to use even if the route is just a little longer that the direct desire line. Different users will have different needs and perceptions, but essentially, our aim should be to cater for direct desire lines and in doing so, they need to be safe (actually and subjectively), easy to use and intuitive.


The desire line for pedestrians is straight over to the street beyond,
but in the name of vehicle capacity pedestrians get half way across
this dual carriageway and are then sent to the right just beyond
where that chap is walking to cross the second half. You can often
see some people crossing to the left of the guard rail and dashing
right across on the desire line (on a Transport for London route).
Where busy road junctions are concerned, pedestrian and cycle facilities are almost add-ons. These junctions are designed to stuff as many motor vehicles through as possible and to hell with those not on four wheels.

This photo shows the classic "right handed stagger" at a large dual carriageway cross roads which is designed to maximise traffic capacity. Pedestrians cross the first half of the road and then have to turn right off the desire line to cross the second half. 

In the image, the crossing shown is at the stop line of the main road which means that the green man is displayed when the traffic stops. The traffic has to stop anyway because there are right turn filters and cross traffic flows running and provides no inconvenience to traffic. The second crossing is out of shot, but just to the right of the chap walking in the guard-railed central reservation (known as a sheep pen by engineers). 

This crossing is set well away from the junction so that when pedestrians get a green man, traffic coming out of the junction has stacking space away from the junction. The pedestrian phase would come in at the same time as the right turning filters (so no conflict) and then cross traffic which will be turning towards the crossing relatively slowly. Of course, pedestrians are kept waiting until the signals are ready for them and so often, they will just dash across in a gap in traffic flow, despite best efforts to guardrail the junction to within 25mm of its life.


This layout is a little more modern, but still prioritises traffic flow on 
the TfL trunk road over pedestrians and cyclists who want to cross
in one stage.
Here is another right hand stagger (Toucan this time), but in the side road. There is another one across the main road which is in the top right. 

Again, this is designed for traffic capacity as pedestrians/ cycles only get a green on each half at a time. The central reservation is quite narrow and so the stagger is meant to stop people going across in one go by mistake. There is no guardrail and so it has been accepted that some people won't bother with the formal crossing on the far side and will cross in traffic gaps on the desire line, although cycles will struggle with the kerbs! This is a very new layout for the junction and replaces a much worse layout (for pedestrians and cyclists) which was partially signalised meaning that many of the crossing points did not have green men/ cycles. 

The new layout also has the pedestrian/ cycle signals running on green when the right phase of traffic is held and so if you adjust you approach speed as a cycle user, you don't actually need to press the button. This layout would of course be better with a straight through single stage crossing, but being on a trunk road, TfL has decided to go with traffic capacity. This is a difficult one for me as I think it should be straight though, but I do understand the capacity argument - a classic decision and in this location, taking away traffic capacity would create a huge political and driver backlash - I think TfL has had to play the game here and has created a fair layout. Possibly in time, there might be another iteration where the balance goes more towards the non-motorised users.


It is not all about traffic signals. This photo shows a very simple change to meet the desire line. The red line shows where people were originally meant to walk - right into the access to the car park. Following conversion of the footway to a shared-use cycle track (which is not bad and much better than the 50mph dual carriageway!), this side of the crossing was widened so that people could cross on the yellow line.

This layout is better in a very subtle way. Previously, those crossing were hidden by the wall and advert sign (which is on private land). Drivers turning left off the trunk road could not see people crossing. This new layout allows people to see and be seen when crossing and puts them right on their desire line. Pedestrians and cycle users are not given priority because traffic turning left in would effectively have to stop on the edge of the high speed trunk road to give way which is very risky.


Actually, we could easily improve the layout further. When travelling in the opposite direction to the arrow, you need to check behind you for traffic turning left into the side road, which is not a perfect situation, especially when cycling. 

We could physically stop the left turns in, as the side road can be accessed from its other end with a little local diversion. We also need to allow people to leave the side road as deliveries and refuse vehicles cannot turn round in the side road and it is too far to reverse.

This alternative layout does not give 100% priority to pedestrians and cyclists, but in this case the side road is quiet and so the desire line is pretty much catered for. This example expands the idea of a desire line from being simply an issue of directness to an issue of priority, comfort and indeed subjective safety as well.


TfL needs to get it's tarmac lorry out!
In this photo we have a two-stage straight through Toucan crossing using near-sided signals - in other words, the red/ green man/ bike is on the yellow push button unit. 

This crossing is near a large roundabout with multiple dual carriageway approaches and with a fly-over for through traffic (TfL route again). It takes a shared-use cycle track over a pair of 2-lane slip roads and as the crossing isn't far off the desire line for the walking/ cycling route generally, people naturally use it. Cycling on the roundabout is the most direct and fun for nutters or at 6am on a Sunday, but these crossings cater for most people.

The central reservation is wide enough for people to intuitively realise that it is a two-stage crossing and the near sided signals mean that people are not being confused by seeing a green man in the distance intended for the other crossing (called "see through" and is an issue for far sided signals). 

Apart from having tatty surfaces, the one improvement I would make is to link the push buttons between both crossings so that you only need to push once. The traffic signal controller could take walking speed between the crossings into account and if all is well in terms of traffic approach speed/ flow (which is a safety consideration for all users), then the green signal could come in as someone arrives to cross the second side. Alternatively, detectors could "see" the demand and do the same - I have suggested this to TfL, but I think it has gone onto their "too hard" pile.


Pedestrians cross a convoluted network of dropped kerbs and
staggers and without green men to help them. Still, they can always
use the footbridge in the distance, so long as they can use stairs as
there are no ramps! Image from Google.
Here we have the junction of the A12 and Barley Lane which does very little for pedestrian desire lines and nothing at all for cycles. It is a fairly typical layout for a junction on an Outer-London TfL Trunk Road and similar layouts can be seen on the A10 and A205. The layout was designed at a time when throughput of traffic was the only consideration and so we have ended up severing communities in the process. We do sometimes provide subways on these main routes, but they can be quiet and lonely places, so people do not use them.


Oxford Circus. Image from Waterman Aspen. I am convinced that 
the buff anti-skid surfacing every where was only put in to make 
photos look good - it is not needed and is failing because of all the
vehicles turning on it in the junction!
This is Oxford Circus, which is the ultimate in traditional UK crossing facilities for pedestrians at junctions (other countries have had them for years and there were several in the UK before this one). Known as an 'X' crossing or a "Scramble" crossing, when the green man comes into play, pedestrians can cross in all directions and diagonally - you can see it in action here

The arrangement essentially got built because of domination of the space by pedestrians and so the footways were widened on the corners to give more waiting space and the diagonal crossings put in. This was to the detriment of traffic capacity, but tough - the pedestrians are most important mode here as it is the confluence of Oxford Street and Regent Street, both very important shopping streets in the West End. The area is also heavily used by buses and so some of the pedestrian green times are tight (assisted by pedestrian countdown) which helps mitigate traffic flows, although at Christmas, it is quicker to walk than ride on a bus in the area!


Oxford Street at Christmas - the buses are heading
towards Oxford Circus (very slowly!)
Back to desire lines! The green lines show the crossings roughly in line with the direction of the footways. They have the usual dropped kerbs, push buttons and tactile paving. The purple lines are also crossings with push buttons, but no dropped kerbs and therefore no tactile paving. 

The designers could not make the layout work with dropped kerbs on the diagonal crossings as blind/ partially-sighted people would be confused with complex tactile paving layouts. I understand that after extensive consultation with access groups, the now (fairly) famous layout was agreed.

So, how should we be designing for the desire lines of pedestrians and cycle users in the 21st Century? Well, for new street layouts, whether as part of a development or as part of a project to change existing streets, these desire lines need to be looked at first, with access or passage for traffic looked at second and then being designed around the pedestrians and cycle users.


Idea for a bus stop bypass on CS2 which maintains a desire line for
cycle users which is actually and subjectively safe. But, pedestrians
may be impacted when crossing the cycle track to get to and from
the bus stop.
Proposed schemes such as the extension to Cycle Superhighway 2 and the Mayor's Cycling Vision look to reallocate road space to protected cycle routes which follow desire lines for commuter routes.

We also have the Mayor's Quietways idea which seek to use quieter back streets for cycling which is fine to a point if the routes are direct and useful. Other bloggers such as Cyclists in the City have done a good job at debating the idea, but I think that the process should start with looking at the desire lines first.

This sign (and the 6 foot fence) is aimed at stopping pedestrians
from crossing the A127 
just outside Basildon. I wonder if the
question of why people want to cross there was ever thought about?
Image from Google.
It might be as simple as mapping existing walking and cycling routes, adding schools, shops and railway stations and then looking to join them up with direct routes where walking and cycling can be prioritised over traffic either completely or protected physically. It may mean engaging with existing and perhaps more importantly, potential users, to see what it would take for them to switch to walking and cycling. I think that care is needed to make sure that Quietways do not become a proxy for banishing cycle users to back streets so that main roads can be left (or even made more) unattractive for utility use so that traffic flow is prioritised - we need to watch out for this being sneaked in.


Here is a literal barrier on a cycle route. Take it out along with a
of sections of the fence and it is useable.
When planning routes, there will be barriers, but I think it is worth assuming they can be overcome in the first instance (i.e. stick to the desire line) and then spending more time looking at them in detail later. Barriers might be physical such as roads or rivers, may involve private land owners, acquiring land or political will where one might assume that a scheme will not get support. 

Local authorities can acquire land, build things, use legal powers, negotiate with land owners and use influence with planning applications. They also own parks and open spaces which can often provide more direct routes than the highway network. Organisations such as Sustrans are very experienced in helping to bring the right people together - their Connect 2 project has helped overcome many barriers on walking and cycling routes.


Sorry, had to put this image up again from the BBC News website.
This trial of a Dutch-style roundabout by TRL for TfL will allow
pedestrians and cyclists to negotiate roundabouts in a way which
may be off the absolute desire line, but will feel safe and therefore
acceptable to use, even if it takes a few seconds longer to cross.
No waiting for the green man/ cycle here!
I do think that things in this country have started to change as many people fall out of love with the car for various reasons. 

Harnessing the desire line and indeed the desire to move around in a safe and congestion-free environment must be part of the answer to civilising our urban spaces?

So, what did the Romans do for us? Well, perhaps they got the concept of constructing to desire lines into the brains of the ancient Britons, it is just that we have used it for traffic in the last 100 years rather than for people.

* From Monty Python's "The Life of Brian"