Monthly Archives: July 2014

The going rate

I’ve just spotted that Transport for London’s new Draft Cycle Safety Action Plan attempts to pull the same trick that Norman Baker and Mike Penning tried to pull back in 2012. That is, it makes a comparison between cycle safety in London and … Continue reading

Posted in Safety, The Netherlands, Transport for London | 27 Comments

Sustainable safety – the British way

One of the principles of the Dutch approach to road safety – sustainable safety, or duurzaam veiling – is homogeneity. Homogeneity of mass, speed and direction. Roads should be designed to eliminate, as much as possible, mixing road users with large … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Turbogate gets weirder

From the press release, the ‘turbo’ roundabout in Bedford will now be under construction – building was scheduled to start yesterday, Monday the 21st of July. Pretty much everything you need to know about this strange scheme and its convoluted … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

Why model, when you can experiment?

The junction outside the Bank of England is truly awful; a vast open space of tarmac, motor traffic thundering through in five directions, and pedestrians accommodated on tiny pavements. What should be a beautiful civic space is devoted to motor … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 14 Comments

Chipping away

The summer is the season when West Sussex County Council – and presumably many other British councils – decide to start spreading gravel on their country lanes, sticking it down with tar and hoping that motor vehicles will ‘bed it … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 34 Comments

Asking people to behave, instead of making them

A post by Joe Dunckley yesterday – about how we keep expecting education and awareness to change driver behaviour, ahead of physical engineering – reminded me of something I’d been meaning to write about for a while. It was provoked … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 31 Comments

DB32 and ‘sufficient cycling demand’

I recently acquired a copy of Residential Roads and Footpaths: Layout Considerations. Exciting. It’s a 1977 Department for Transport publication, perhaps more commonly referred to as ‘DB32’ (Design Bulletin 32). It has (in theory) been superseded by the Manual for … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Do Dutch pedestrians get a raw deal?

My post last week – about vehicular cycling being enabled by Dutch infrastructure – prompted a tweet from Jon Usher, wondering where the pedestrian infrastructure was in the Netherlands. @steinsky @lofidelityjim Where’s the pedestrian infrastructure in the Netherlands? Honest question … Continue reading

Posted in Infrastructure, Subjective safety, Sustainable Safety, The Netherlands, Uncategorized | 25 Comments

Placefaking

There’s a section early in the newly-released London Cycle Design Standards about ‘responding to context’ – the types of cycle infrastructure that should be expected on a variety of streets and roads, according to the movement or place (or both) … Continue reading

Posted in Infrastructure, placemaking, Shared Space, The Netherlands, Town planning | 31 Comments

Let’s get vehicular

The new edition of Cyclecraft was published last week. I haven’t had a chance to give it a good read yet, but at first glance it appears to contain much of the same dogma previous editions contained. For instance, the … Continue reading

Posted in Cyclecraft, Infrastructure, John Franklin, Subjective safety, The Netherlands | 26 Comments