‘It could have been a pedestrian.’

If you haven’t done so already, I urge you to read Martin Porter’s cool and neutral summary of a case he was involved in – the inquest into the death of Michael Mason, hit by a car on Regent Street in London in February this year, dying a few weeks later.

The facts speak for themselves. Mr Mason was cycling north on Regent Street, and was hit from behind by a Nissan whose driver, by her own admission, completely failed to spot him ahead of her, despite him having a bright rear light, rear reflectors, and travelling on a road well lit by street lights (the collision occurred at 6:20pm). She did not brake before the impact, and was travelling at between 20 and 30 mph.

Regent Street is – as anyone who has walked or travelled along it will know – a busy shopping environment, with pedestrians thronging the pavements, and (frequently) crossing the road, informally. The point at which the collision occurred is maybe slightly less busy than the areas further south, but still a place that is dominated by pedestrians, especially at rush hour. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the driver made this remark at the inquest, about what she did after the collision occurred –

I stopped and ran back, it could have been a pedestrian.

Unaware of what, or who, she had hit – having failed to see it, or him, or her – quite rightly, she reasoned that it could have been a pedestrian. Someone innocently crossing the road. As it turns out, it was someone on a bike.

Why should that matter? What difference does it make, when you are hit by a motor vehicle whose driver has completely failed to see you in the road, whether you were on foot, or astride a bicycle?

Well, apparently it does – if you are on a bike, then you should come to expect comments about the kind of ‘safety equipment’ you should probably have been wearing. A hi-visibilty jacket, and a helmet.

The Court News UK report of the inquest is entitled (rather crassly, given the circumstances of the case)

MASON: BIKE SAFETY CAMPAIGNER WAS NOT WEARING A HELMET WHEN HE WAS KILLED

If Michael Mason – a safety campaigner – had been crossing the road on foot when he was killed, would such a headline have been employed?

Mr Mason, who was not wearing a helmet, was rushed to St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, immediately after the accident at about 6.25pm on 25 February, but slipped into a coma caused by catastrophic head trauma.

Again, would a pedestrian killed in an identical fashion on Regent Street be subject to this editorialising?

Martin Porter does point out that the Coroner – while commenting on the lack of hi-visibility clothing and helmet – did not go so far as to suggest that the wearing of a helmet, or a hi-viz jacket, would have made any difference whatsoever. However, he did have this to say –

Recording a verdict of accidental death, coroner Dr William Dolman said: ‘Mr Mason was clearly a very fit 70-year-old man who had been cycling for many years, cycling was his preferred mode of transport… Mr Mason was not wearing a helmet, and while this may not be a legal requirement his most severe injuries were head injuries both inside and outside the skull.’

Which does carry an implication that his injuries may have been lessened, or indeed that he may have survived, had he been wearing a helmet.

Again, it is worth observing here that comments of this ilk would not have been made had Mr Mason simply been crossing Regent Street on foot, rather than travelling along it by bike, when he was fatally struck.

There is a good reason for this.

We simply don’t expect the millions of people who use Regent Street and Oxford Street, on foot, to look like builders. We do not expect them to wear helmets and hi-visibility clothing; we do not expect them to don personal protective equipment to visit the shops, cafes and restaurants in this area, or to get to work. That would – rightly – be seen as a very silly proposition indeed.

By contrast, there is a subtle and insidious expectation that people using Regent Street and Oxford Street on a bike should be wearing this kind of equipment. This despite the fact that someone like Mr Mason was killed in a way that a pedestrian could very easily have been killed, by an inattentive driver. Indeed, it was nothing more than chance that meant that it was him in the way of that driver, at that moment, and not someone else, probably wearing darkish clothing, and almost certainly not wearing a helmet, crossing the road on foot.

If we were to be more consistent, as a society, we would acknowledge this similarity, and appreciate that people in the act of crossing urban roads and streets on foot are just as at risk (perhaps even at more risk, given that they are not accompanied by bikes with reflectors and lights) as people navigating those same roads and streets by bike. It seems to me that it is nothing more than prejudice about a minority mode of transport that is stopping us from doing so.

A ‘shared space’ vision

Last year I wrote about how Ben Hamilton-Baillie – one of the foremost proponents of the ‘shared space’ philosophy – does not appear to be all that concerned about addressing motor traffic in urban areas. His designs are mere rearrangements of the way motor traffic moves down a street. In his talks and presentations, his vision of ‘urban realm improvement’ tends to involve removal of the physical manifestations of our attempts to control motor traffic, without reducing or removing that motor traffic itself.

Yesterday Matt Turner spotted an interview with Hamilton-Baillie that provides a remarkable insight into the mindset of ‘leading international expert on the development of “Shared Space”’, as he is described.

It’s a relatively old interview – dating from 2010. However, it appears to confirm not only that Hamilton-Baillie doesn’t really care about motor traffic reduction in urban areas or (more specifically) prioritising more efficient and safer mode of transport within them, but, more than that, he actually seems to think existing levels of motor traffic in British towns and cities should be maintained.

It starts with some odd explanations from Hamilton-Baillie for the apparently rising popularity of ‘shared space’, and its philosophy of ‘integrating’ human beings and motor traffic in urban areas.

The Genome Project, understanding our DNA, and the remarkable intricacies of our interconnections, has allowed us to question many of the assumptions that gave rise to conventional traffic engineering and the principle of segregating traffic from other civic and social aspects of cities.

Because we’ve sequenced the base pairs in the human genome, we’ve understood that motor traffic shouldn’t be separated from civic life in cities? If you are not convinced by this ‘DNA’ explanation, maybe a change in the nature of political philosophy over the twentieth century could tempt you.

During the last century, governments of both the left and right tended to assume that the state should assume responsibility for resolving all potential conflicts and interaction through increasingly complex regulation and control. The evolution of the traffic signal illustrates this tendency perfectly, removing the need to think and respond from the driver, and attempting to control behaviour through technology and legislation. We now understand more about the downside of states over-regulating and over-planning.

Or maybe it’s just that traffic control is expensive, and shared space is cheap.

In addition, the fiscal realities of the European Union are having an effect. Even if they wished to, governments can now no longer afford the huge costs of regulating, controlling and enforcing every aspect of traffic behaviour. Traffic lights, signs, markings, barriers and bollards cost a fortune, and the recent public spending crises have highlighted the need to question the role of the state in many areas. The idea of streets and spaces being left to informal negotiation and local social protocols chimes with initiatives such as the new “Localism Agenda” in Britain, or what David Cameron refers to as “The Big Society”.

It’s worth reminding ourselves here that one of the most widely-known and prominent ‘shared space’ schemes in Britain, Exhibition Road (which is lauded in this interview) weighs in at a cost of around £35,000 per metre – £29m for 820m of road. But clearly it’s ‘conventional’ street engineering – tarmac, kerbs and so on – that is expensive. Or so we are led to believe.

We then move on to Hamilton-Baillie’s philosophy, which is quite explicitly argued.

I think shared space represents a fundamental rethink of the principles of segregation espoused by Colin Buchanan and his team when he wrote the influential “Traffic in Towns” in 1963. In contrast to Buchanan, I see no need to separate or segregate urban traffic from other aspects of civic space. [my emphasis]

Well, on the contrary, I see plenty of reasons to keep urban traffic (in this context, clearly motor traffic) away from civic space. Noise, pollution, danger, amenity, to name just a few. If you continue to allow motor traffic to flow, unrestrained, through urban areas, and the civic space within them, you will end up with a low quality environment.

This is pretty shit.

The same civic space, separated from motor traffic. Not shit.

This is what Colin Buchanan, and the ‘Traffic in Towns’ report, appreciated, even if the solution it prescribed was misguided. Streets full of motor traffic are fundamentally pretty awful. We don’t need to ‘rethink’ the principles of segregation – we just need to apply them in a more humane way, a way that puts people walking, cycling and using public transport first, and segregates the car away from them, rather than segregating human beings away from motor traffic. This is something I’ve argued at length before.

Curiously, however, Hamilton-Baillie doesn’t appear to believe in putting efficient, safe, urban-scale modes of transport like walking and cycling first, and prioritising those modes of motor traffic.

… Shared space is all about integration, and that means avoiding over-attention on any one factor or group… We are asked to support groups campaigning for motorists, and groups campaigning against the car – all sorts. But shared space is not about promoting the interests of one particular group or user over another, but merely about setting the stage for different activities to interact.

Shared space is ‘all about integration’, and when different modes are ‘integrated’, it is of course impossible to prioritise one over another, because such prioritisation requires separation.

All we are left with is some cod nonsense about a blank slate – a ‘stage’ on which ‘different activities’ can ‘interact’.

‘The stage for different activities to interact’. Enjoy!

Having already stated that

Traffic and movement is the life-blood of cities

(again, a reference to motor traffic), the interview concludes with a curious pean to the virtues of motor traffic in urban areas, juxtaposed against Jan Gehl’s philosophy of creating people-centred urban areas –

I am a great admirer of Jan Gehl and his colleagues, and they’ve done absolutely wonderful work. Copenhagen is a phenomenal success story. But I feel that that generation has run its course in the sense of that there’s only so far you can go with exclusion [of the car]. For them the removal of the car is an overriding theme. At times, of course, it’s appropriate. But reality is that the car is with us, for better or worse, for at least a couple of generations. It’s a wonderful liberating technology. For all its downside it has transformed most of our economic and social lives. And shared space offers the opportunity to welcome and exploit the good side of motor traffic, as it were. It needn’t be a destructive force for streets, for cities. [my emphasis]

It would be interesting to know what the ‘good side of motor traffic’ in urban areas actually involves. My personal opinion is that we should be doing everything we can to make the alternatives to travel by car in urban areas as attractive and as easy as possible, because doing so would make our towns and cities vastly safer and more pleasant. This isn’t about engaging in a ‘war’ on the car, but more about opening up choice, and prioritising the alternatives.

But it seems that Hamilton-Baillie doesn’t share this approach. The status quo – with a huge percentage of short urban trips made inefficiently, inconveniently and expensively by motor car – is something he apparently wants to preserve, albeit with that motor traffic travelling around on fancy paving, rather than conventional tarmac. No mode of transport should be prioritised; we should all be ‘equal’ on the stage of ‘shared space’.

It’s not a hugely enticing vision.

When will design guides start thinking about cycling as a mode of transport for all?

This week saw the launch of ‘Street Design for All’ [pdf], spotted by KatsDekker. It’s been produced by PRIAN (the Public Realm Information and Advice Network), with advice from the Charted Institute of Highways and Transportation, and carries the official DfT stamp of approval.

There it is.

The title is a curious one as far as cycling is concerned, because while the advice inside includes footways and carriageways that are undoubtedly suitable for all kinds of pedestrians and drivers (although with perhaps some question marks over the suitability for partially-sighted or blind pedestrians) it certainly does not include designs suitable for all potential users of bicycles. Quite the opposite – this guidance only appears to include designs that are suitable for existing cyclists, those people currently using the road network by bike. This isn’t ‘Design for All’, by any means, when it comes to this particular mode of transport.

The cover itself is startling.

Is this really an environment ‘for All’, when it comes to cycling?

As Kat herself said in relation to this picture, this is not an environment that many people would be happy to cycle in; nor is it even that attractive for people currently cycling.

Roundabouts can, of course, be genuinely inclusive when it comes to cycling.

Children cycling on a roundabout, with physical separation from HGVs, Wageningen, NL

The background issue here appears to be the now familiar confusion over ‘place’ and ‘movement’ function, whereby street designers, councils and highway engineers want to emphasise more of the ‘placiness’ (if that’s a word) of their roads and streets, while downplaying the movement function. Unfortunately this is accompanied by an unwillingness to do anything about the actual movement of motor vehicles through these environments.

The end result is the kind of placefaking I’ve talked about before; streets and roads that have been prettified, yet still have similar volumes of motor traffic flowing through them.  And cycle-specific design gets neglected, or ignored altogether, in these arrangements. As I wrote in that piece –

cycle-specific design tends to get squeezed out by placefaking. For instance, I am not aware of any new ‘placemaking’ scheme on a road in Britain that incorporates cycle tracks where they should reasonably be provided…

Presumably this is because they reinforce the impression of a ‘movement’ function, interrupting the ‘placeishness’ of the new design. But there’s a degree of sticking heads in the sand here; cycle tracks are required because of the volume of motor traffic, and if that volume is high enough to demand cycle tracks, then it is fanciful to imagine you are creating a place – there is still too much motor traffic thundering through.

And this new guidance – ‘Street Design for All’ – continues in this trend. Streets look nice and pretty, and the intention is to get drivers to play more nicely, but there is very little, or no, attention being paid to

• a) whether these streets should even be continuing to carry anything like the volume of motor traffic they are currently carrying
• b) whether cycling should be separated from motor traffic on streets that are being designed with high volumes of motor traffic in mind.

This is a huge oversight, not just in terms of opening up cycling as a potential mode of transport, but also on a broader level, about the actual purpose and function of our roads and streets in urban areas. Unlike the Netherlands, where there is clarity over what the role of a particular street or road is, with regard to access, or as a through-route, in Britain we seem to be converging on a muddled mess of place and movement simultaneously, accommodating motor traffic movement on all our streets, and attempting to make them places at the same time. (This dichotomy between place and movement also fails to take into account that some kinds of movement – walking and cycling – are considerably more benign than motor traffic movement, and actually contribute to place, as Rachel Aldred argues).

Typifying this approach are the opening paragraphs of ‘Street Design for All’ –

Most streets have been designed, or adapted, over the last fifty years or so primarily for the movement of motor traffic. This function continues to be important but it should no longer dominate in the way it used to – it needs to be balanced with the street’s place function.

Enhancing the sense of the place and maintaining efficient and safe movement of traffic can be achieved by careful design. [my emphasis]

Note here how it is assumed that streets will continue carry the movement of motor traffic; any ‘placemaking’ that will occur is in the context of that continuing motor traffic movement, attempting to reduce its dominance through design, rather than actually addressing the problem at source. This is the template, or the foundation, on which improvements must be made – accommodating motor traffic.

How many people would want to cycle in this kind of environment?

This same junction – complete with traffic signals – is, with the buildings added, and the motor traffic removed, labelled as ‘a place to meet friends’.

If it’s got buses and lorries thundering through it, you can meet your friends here – but would you want to stay here for any significant length of time?

It’s noteworthy here that the ‘movement’ elements of the street in the previous diagram include motor vehicles and people cycling – yet the ‘place’ elements just include people walking. Cycling is – unconsciously perhaps – lumped in with motor traffic, as associated with movement. Is this fair? As Rachel argues in the post I’ve just linked to –

Separating ‘movement’ from ‘place’ is inherently problematic. Different types of movement have different impacts on ‘place’. It depends on speed and mass. In city streets mass is critical: London’s slow-moving HGVs regularly cause catastrophic injury.

Non-motorised movement has relatively benign mass-speed combinations. Although cycling and walking can have negative impacts on others, they often instead enhance place. When I walk to the high street I chat to neighbours en route; cycling, I smile at strangers while letting them pass.

So active modes can positively contribute and form part of a place. The same can’t be said for rat-running through motor traffic. So again – in casting movement and place as opposed, or at least separate – the movement/place dichotomy implicitly casts movement as motorised.

A failure to address the real problem of movement on our town and city streets, and lumping in cycling together with that motor traffic movement, unfortunately means that the attitude to cycling – or ‘encouraging cycling’ – in this guidance is really very weak.

‘Encourage cycling through attractive, safe, direct routes’

If we really want to encourage cycling (or more properly, enable cycling) then we really need to stop pretending that narrow cycle lanes on roads shared with buses are going to cut it. The only people ‘encouraged’ onto roads like this are the people who are already cycling; making a genuine difference requires genuinely different design, not preaching about the cardiovascular benefits of cycling.

And yet the only tangible piece of advice this guidance has on cycling is the following –

STREETS FOR CYCLISTS

There are advantages for cyclists in areas where traffic speeds are 20 mph or lower. Low speed roads are more comfortable for cyclists and allow them more freedom to use the full width of the street.

This does not necessarily require a formal 20mph speed limit. Lower vehicle speed can be achieved by subtle traffic calming, see page 11.

Permitting cyclists to use streets and other places where motor vehicles are prohibited, allows them to take convenient short cuts. Providing convenient and secure cycle parking is also important.

Lower motor vehicle speeds, and cycling in pedestrianised areas. That’s it. No serious engagement with the actual policies we now know are required to get people cycling in serious numbers; principally, separating people from motor traffic through a variety of interventions. Indeed, the implicit attitude behind these paragraphs is making things better for existing ‘cyclists’, those people already out on the roads. Attention is not being paid to the vast majority of the population who don’t cycle on these kinds of roads, and the interventions that would allow them to do so.

The Cut in Lambeth is cited here as an example of good practice, yet as far as I know it is detested by people who are currently cycling on it, because it combines an intimidatingly narrow carriageway with relatively high volumes of motor traffic. Likewise Poynton is also referenced, which whatever the benefits in terms of public realm and safety specifically excludes cycling as a mode of transport. This isn’t ‘Design for All’; it’s only ‘Design for All’ with reference to particular modes of transport.

Unfortunately Sustrans – who really should know better – also appear to fall into this trap. The entire third chapter of their brand new (currently out to consultation!) Cycle-Friendly Design Manual is devoted to… Placemaking.

It begins –

Many urban streets are not wide enough to provide separate cycle facilities or have frontage activity that makes such provision impractical. Design for such environments needs to think beyond standard highway design, defining a slow speed highway environment where cycles, pedestrians and motorised traffic can safely integrate.

There is no reference here to whether motor traffic should properly continue to be accommodated in these volumes on these kinds of narrow streets. If they are genuinely too narrow, then rather than attempting to ‘safely integrate’ cycling with motor traffic, measures should surely be taken to reduce or remove that motor traffic, as a first priority, rather than delving straight into the ‘Placemaking’ toolbox.

This approach means that this chapter – which, remember, is from a cycling manual! – is littered with examples of roads and streets where cycling is ‘integrated’, falling far short of the conditions required to make cycling a viable mode of transport for everyone. Poynton, Kensington High Street, Oxford High Street, Ashford, and so on.

Pretty schemes, I’m sure, but how many of these are genuinely suitable for cycling, for all, rather than just placemaking bodges that attempt to ameliorate motor traffic-dominated environments?

Nice paving, removal of markings and attractive street features simply aren’t good enough; physical separation is required for motor traffic volumes above 2000 PCU. If that can’t be achieved then steps should be taken to remove that motor trafficc.

What’s required in these design manuals is some honesty about the attractiveness of ‘integrating’ cycling on roads and streets that retain a significant through-motor traffic function. It’s no longer acceptable to pretend that we are ‘Designing for All’ without addressing this fundamental issue.

What is most offensive about the Garden Bridge?

It looks like Westminster Council will today follow Lambeth Council in approving planning permission for the Garden Bridge.

I’ve been wondering what constitutes the most offensive thing about this project. Is it the way £30m of transport funding (and an additional £30m from the Treasury) is being used fund a scheme that quite explicitly has no transport function at all?

This isn’t just to do with cycling not being included – or even considered – as a mode of transport. Everything about this bridge suggests that it is a place to visit – a garden – and not something to move through. It’s not even a park. Westminster – tellingly – refer to it as ‘a popular visitor attraction’.

This huge amount of public funding comes despite claims last year that Transport for London’s contribution would be limited to £4m, with the Garden Bridge Trust itself raising the funding for construction.

From Transport for London’s 2013 consultation on the Garden Bridge

And to be clear this is a ‘bridge’ in name only. It will be closed to the public between 12am-6am every day, and closed once a month for ‘fundraising events’. Parties of eight people or more are ‘required to contact the Garden Bridge Trust to request a formal visit to the bridge’, in advance, apparently because groups of eight people or more constitute a ‘protest risk’.

You are, of course, free to use other London bridges 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and indeed to protest on them – because they are public space. This Garden Bridge is not really public space at all, but a privately-managed garden, a ‘visitor attraction’, to be built at vast expense, in the middle of a river.

And yet, ironically, it seems Westminster Council would refuse planning permission outright for this development if it was entirely private, due to the harm to views up and down the Thames.

It is also clear that if this proposal was for a private commercial development of this height and size, the harm to these views would be considered unacceptable and the application refused

The Garden Bridge manages to skip around these objections by teasingly positioning itself on the line between public and private space.

All this is bad enough, but I think the most offensive thing about the Garden Bridge is something else entirely. It lies in one of the main justifications for its construction; namely, that it will create a much-needed area of peace and calm in the centre of London.

Take this, for instance, from Transport for London –

Inspired by the actress Joanna Lumley, the proposed bridge would be covered with trees and plants, offering an oasis of calm in the heart of the capital.

Or in this video, where Joanna Lumley claims she ‘longs for a haven, away from the noise and rush’.

Now of course there is nothing wrong with peace and tranquility. But what is offensive about the Garden Bridge is the unspoken assumption that peace, calm and tranquility can only be created in London by building it at vast expense in the middle of the river. 

This isn’t true at all. We could create peace, calm and tranquility on the existing roads and streets of London, if we wanted to – and at a cost considerably lower than £180 million. For instance, we could pedestrianise and ‘green’ Soho, very easily. This is an area where people on foot vastly outnumber the numbers of people getting around by car, and yet for some perverse reason motor traffic continues to dominate.

Hi, @CityWestminster? THIS IS INSANITY. #PedestrianiseSoho pic.twitter.com/vlTycRRJVP — Nick Kocharhook (@k9) November 15, 2014

Want some peace, calm and tranquility here? Limit motor traffic to deliveries only, in the morning. We don’t need to look too hard for how to do this. Waltham Forest managed to create ‘an oasis of calm’ in October, through the simple expedient of… using a plastic barrier to close a road.

Orford Road, during the Mini Holland trial.

Picture courtesy of Waltham Forest Cycling Campaign

A huge number of streets in the boroughs surrounding the Garden Bridge – I’m thinking here particularly of Westminster and the City – could become calm and pleasant places, at very little cost, if a concerted effort was made to remove through-traffic from them.  Westminster seems to have a damaging policy of accommodating through-traffic on every single one of its roads and streets.

I think our streets, especially ones with a predominantly residential function, can and should function as calm and pleasant places, in their own right. We don’t need to build green space at huge expense in the river; we just need to reclaim it from the existing road network.

A street in Utrecht. Believe it or not this is only half a mile from the centre of a bustling city of 330,000 people.

Another Dutch city-centre street, this time in Gouda. A calm oasis for children to play in.

To me, the Garden Bridge project appears to completely overlook the enormous potential of our streets and roads to be different; to be safer, calmer and more pleasant places. It buys into the stale assumption that London is, by default, a noisy, dangerous and fume-filled place that can’t possibly be changed, and that can only be escaped by retreating onto an expensive vanity project in the middle of the river.

That’s what’s most offensive about it.

The DfT and their car traffic forecasts

This graph, from the Department for Transport’s 2013 Road Transport Forecasts (which summarises the results from their National Transport Model) has been doing the rounds on social media this week.

It shows that the amount of distance we are travelling by car, per capita, in Britain has fallen consistently since the early-2000s; and yet their model predicts that this decline will reverse, and car miles per person will increase by 15% by 2040.

What is just as remarkable, however, is the Department for Transport’s own analysis of this graph –

Figure 16 below shows that, according to our forecast, miles per person will increase by 15% percent by 2040 (9% above pre-recession levels) despite an increase in GDP per capita of 66% and fuel cost decreasing by 24%. [my emphasis]

The key word here being ‘despite’.

The DfT believe that increases in GDP per capita, and falling fuel costs, should really push car miles per person even higher than the projected 15% increase. Coupled with a projected 20% increase in English population by 2040, the DfT are forecasting that overall road traffic will be 46% higher in 2040 than 2010.

They acknowledge that the effect of their ‘key drivers’ on road traffic levels (GDP per capita, population, and fuel prices) is becoming less elastic, as the market becomes saturated –

As explained in section 2, the elasticity of miles per person to key drivers is falling over time, and will keep falling into the future as the market moves further towards saturation.

However, they still think that this 15% rise in car miles per person will happen, principally because of falling costs per mile, meaning people will be incentivised to travel further.

This increase in miles per person [15% on 2010], however smaller than it would have been in the past, reflects the fact that people will be able to travel longer distances with their cars, as the cost per mile will decline sharply compared to ability to pay.

Whether people will actually want to do this – to spend more time stuck in cars – appears to simply be assumed.

The other interesting detail from this report is… London. This document essentially acknowledges that the National Transport Model has failed to predict that the amount of car traffic in London would fall as much as it has –

… analysis of our forecast from 2003-2010 shows that although the NTM predicts a fall in London car traffic of 1.5%, this was not as great as the actual 7.8% fall in traffic count statistics.

What’s the explanation?

We believe that the reason for this short-term model error and long-run discrepancy with other forecasts is due to:

Car Ownership – the number of cars per person in London has been relatively flat over the last decade. While we have different car ownership saturation levels for different area types, including London, these may need to be re-estimated.

Public Transport – London has seen high levels of investment in public transport, capacity and quality improvement on buses and rail based public transport. London will continue to see high levels of investment in public transport with increase in capacity into the future, e.g. Cross Rail. We will need to revisit our modelling on the impact this may have on car travel.

Road capacity, car parking space cost and availability – There is evidence to suggest that In recent years London road capacity has been significantly reduced due to bus lanes, congestion charge and other road works. There is also a significant constraint and cost to parking in London which would reduce the demand to travel by car. We will need to revisit our modelling on the impact this may have on car travel.

On each of these three factors, the DfT are admitting that their model needs to be ‘revisited’ – their model simply hasn’t correctly taken into account the effect of public transport, and reallocation of road space, on the amount of car traffic that might be on the roads.

It’s also worth noting this ‘London’ example appears to show that levels of car ownership – which the DfT tie closely with GDP per capita – might be much more strongly affected by these other two factors assessed here, public transport and use of road space. Again, a challenge for the DfT modellers.

It seems that the DfT are admitting that their model doesn’t accurately take into account factors beyond income, population and fuel costs, their ‘key drivers’ – which is hugely significant if, as is likely to be the case, urban areas (in particular) in England continue to reallocate road space to other modes of transport, and prioritise these other modes, ahead of car travel.

Certainly, planning for future growth in car travel using a model that the DfT itself admits isn’t properly reflecting other factors on car demand looks increasingly silly.

Stopping the march of the Advanced Stop Line

It’s noteworthy that the North-South and East-West Superhighway schemes, which (while not perfect by any means) are the most ambitious and inclusive designs for cycling currently on the table in Britain, barely use any Advanced Stop Lines (ASLs) on the length of their route. The Superhighways are good because they do not use ASLs, among other reasons.

Indeed, more generally, good cycling schemes don’t involve ASLs.

That’s because ASLs are lipstick on a pig. They are a tokenistic attempt to provide something a bit ‘cycle-friendly’, a veneer of legitimacy, while doing next to nothing to address objective problems of safety (and, as we shall see, often creating problems of safety), or to create an environment that feels safe and comfortable to cycle in.

Good cycling schemes separate cycling, temporally and/or spatially, at major junctions, or they involve lowering motor traffic levels to a point at which ASLs are redundant. The reason why ASLs are disappearing from the Netherlands is that the maximum motor traffic threshold for their use is roughly equivalent to the point at which traffic signals can, and should, be removed. That is – Dutch guidance only recommends using ASLs at a level at which traffic signals shouldn’t even be being used.

Earlier this year, I cycled for about 300 miles across the Netherlands, and I only encountered three sets of ASLs. Two sets were at objectively bad junctions –

One of those sets, at a junction in Nijmegen. Good by British standards, but poor by Dutch standards (and quite unsettling to encounter)

The other set was at either end of a new Fietsstraat in Utrecht. It’s questionable whether they are even needed.

Does this ASL need to be here? And if it does need to be here, shouldn’t that suggest a wider problem with motor traffic levels?

Everywhere else, I was moving through junctions that had so little motor traffic, they didn’t need traffic signals at all –

Or through junctions where signals were required, and cycling was separated from motor traffic.

Advanced Stop Lines are almost entirely absent in the Netherlands because they are a deeply mediocre approach; an attempt to accommodate cycling in an existing motor-centric template.

Why are they so dire?

Even if Advanced Stop Lines do work, they only do so on a part-time basis. When traffic signals are green, they offer absolutely no benefit at all – they’re just a large painted area on the ground. There’s no point them even being there.

When traffic signals are red, anyone who doesn’t want to find themselves in a potentially dangerous situation has to run through a complex assessment process, adjudicating the risk of attempting to reach the ASL. This flowchart from Magnatom summarises this process brilliantly.

What could be easier than that?

The problem is that human beings are fallible, and they will make poor decisions and mistakes about whether to attempt to reach the ASL, or to wait safely. Impatience can’t be designed out of us; we will always want to make progress. ASLs represent a very poor way of attempting to deal with that human fallibility, especially as they may encourage poor decision-making, and do nothing to prevent dangerous outcomes.

The thunderous main roads in Horsham have recently received some tokenistic green paint at three major junctions. Many of these ASLs are often difficult (or even impossible) to access.

Even when these ASLs are apparently accessible, considerable danger is presented, as in this instance, from just the other day.

Note here that I have highlighted a young child on a bike, completely ignoring this new ‘infrastructure’, and cycling on the pavement – entirely sensibly. These ASLs have done nothing to ameliorate the hostility of these roads; even for those people who evidently want to cycle, like this young boy.

An HGV is waiting at a red light, and a nice tempting ASL is within easy reach. But (because I am reasonably clued up about these matters) I know of the lethal danger posed by this kind of situation; I don’t know where the truck is going (it isn’t signalling, at this point, and even that shouldn’t be relied upon) and I also don’t know how long the lights have been red, and thus how long that truck is going to remain stationary. So I hang back.

As it happens, only a matter of seconds later – barely enough time for me to get on the footway and photograph what happens – the truck sets off, turning left, the driver signalling now, as he turns.

This is precisely the kind of situation in which people can and do get seriously injured; attempting to reach an ASL, they find themselves on the inside of an HGV that starts to move, and get caught up under it. Indeed, UCL academics who undertook a rigorous study of the causes of cycling deaths in London came to the following conclusions –

‘Do not undertake large vehicles on the approach to a junction irrespective of ASL provision’

That is – if you want to stay alive, or avoid serious injury, do not do what the paint is telling you to do.

What kind of ‘cycle provision’ is that?

Unfortunately there isn’t a great deal else, beyond ASLs, in the toolkit for designing for cycling at junctions. Our current guidance is woefully short on genuinely safe infrastructure at major junctions, and steps are only just being made to address this serious oversight. So it’s partly understandable why ASLs are still being painted out.

But their continued presence in manuals, and in new schemes, affords highway engineers, planners and (in particular) politicians a degree of complacency; it allows them to to avoid thinking about the ways in which cycling should be designed for at junctions, and to continue ignoring the serious safety problems, both objective and subjective, that these junctions present.

This is just the latest egregious example –

TfL’s plans for Deptford Broadway

Not the least bit ‘cycle-friendly’, despite the copious amounts of green paint. ASLs are an easy and obvious option, when you want to pretend you’re doing something tangible.

So stripping out the ASL from the toolkit – halting the march of the Advanced Stop Line – might just force us to think a bit more carefully about how to design properly at the kinds of junction pictured above, rather than adding in those green boxes and hoping for the best. We need to be forced to think about alternatives.

How Britain solves a school run problem

‘Road safety week’ concluded last week; appropriately, I thought I’d share a small story of how boggling backward Britain is when it comes to prioritising walking and cycling in urban areas, and how we deal in such a peculiar way with issues of safety.

Arunside is a small cul-de-sac, close to the centre of Horsham.

Arunside

There are only 62 separate properties in this cul-de-sac; that means the number of movements in and out of this close is minimal (or at least should be).

Only a matter of a few yards from Arunside are two primary schools. St John’s Catholic Primary is on the east side of Blackbridge Lane, and Arunside Primary School on the west, adjoining Arunside itself.

Arunside Primary School, and St John’s Catholic Primary School, with Arunside in the centre of the picture

In the 2011 census, there were 165 pupils attending Arunside, and 190 at St John’s. Around three-quarters of Arunside pupils walk to school, with the remaining quarter driven. The picture is less rosy at St John’s, where 60% are driven to school, and the remaining 40% walk. (You can find the census data for these schools here; but see the ‘health warning’ here).

Taking these two schools together, it’s reasonable to assume that there are around 150 motor vehicles arriving in this area and leaving again, every school day, both in the morning, and again in the afternoon, to drop off and pick up children.

In Summer 2012 – after much lobbying – the schools gained a zebra across Blackbridge Lane, the road dividing them. (You can see this crossing on the aerial view, above). This crossing has been accompanied by a School Safety Zone (SSZ) which attempts to stop parents parking on the road right outside the schools, with gigantic zig-zag markings –

… And a 20mph limit that only comes in to force at school opening and closing times.

20mph ‘please’

These (minor) interventions are welcome, and probably go some way towards explaining why Arunside, at least, has a reasonably good walking to school rate. However, virtually no children are cycling to these schools; Blackbridge Lane remains a hostile road, with a 30mph limit outside of this tiny (temporary) 20mph zone, and with plenty of motor traffic using it as a rat-run to bypass the traffic signals and queues in the centre of the town.

That still leaves around 150 motor vehicles arriving and departing twice a day; this presents a problem for the surrounding streets and cul-de-sacs – in particular, Arunside, as we shall see.

I was recently told that a lollipop lady actually volunteers here to allow school children, and their families, to cross this cul-de-sac. Not the main road between the schools; only the entrance to this dead-end road.

Where the lollipop lady helps people cross. Not across the main road; across this dead end road

I couldn’t quite believe this, until I passed by and saw it happening for myself.

Blackbridge Lane, with Arunside on the left. The two schools are on the bend in the distance.

Reminder – this a very minor side street, containing only around 60 properties. Why is a lollipop lady needed to help children cross it?

The simple answer is – because of the large number of cars being driven in and out it, at school time, by parents using it as a car park to drop their children off. The two cars in the photograph above – one entering Arunside, one leaving – are, of course, parents on the school run.

So a problem is evidently being created by the amount of cars being driven into and out of Arunside, during the school run. But the solution isn’t to ban parking here, or to redesign the junction so that the children walking across this side street have priority.

How children negotiate side roads on the school run, in a civilised country

No, the solution is to get a volunteer to stand here in a hi-viz jacket, twice a day, in an attempt to alleviate a problem that shouldn’t even exist in the first place.

That’s how we do things in Britain!

A lack of Goodwill

Back in 2012, the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain received a letter from Patrick McLoughlin, the Secretary of State for Transport. It contained the following passages.

With reference to the Netherlands and Denmark, McLoughlin wrote

We do not place the same emphasis on segregation in the UK. Alongside high speed roads we encourage it but in urban environments space is often at a premium. Providing a broad, high quality cycle route segregated from motor traffic in these circumstances might be desirable but in many cases not always practicable. There are also concerns about the potential for conflict between cyclists and motor vehicles where these roads cross routes regardless of whether cyclists have priority.

In the UK, we tend not to encourage cycle priority in these situations because, given the relatively low current levels of cycling, there are concerns that motorists might fail to give way. That said, cycle priority crossings are not ruled out and local authorities are of course free to consider them if they might be suitable in a given situation.

If we begin to see increases in cycling in the UK that we all wish for, it is likely we would want to reconsider our guidance in general, and specifically our position on segregated cycle routes and priority at road crossings.

Many of you may have seen the letter Stuart Helmer received from Robert Goodwill MP, Under-Secretary of State for Transport, circulating today on Twitter. It is eerily familiar, not least because the passages quoted above, are repeated, word for word, in Goodwill’s letter, sent over two years later – with a handful of very minor changes, as highlighted below. Goodwill –

We do not place the same emphasis on segregation in the UK. Whilst alongside high speed roads we encourage it, in urban environments space is often at a premium. Providing a broad, high quality cycle route segregated from motor traffic in these circumstances might be desirable but in many cases it is not always practicable. There are also concerns about the potential for conflict between cyclists and motor vehicles where these routes cross roads, regardless of whether cyclists have priority.

In the UK, we tend not to encourage cycle priority in these situations because, given the relatively low current levels of cycling, there are concerns that motorists might fail to give way. That said, cycle priority crossings are not ruled out and local authorities are of course free to consider them if they think they might be suitable in a given situation.

If we begin to see the increases in cycling [in the UK] that we all wish for, it is likely we would want to reconsider our guidance in general, and specifically our position on segregated cycle routes and cycle priority at road crossings.

A few questions present themselves, perhaps the most important of which is – where is this text coming from?

The other question is – for how long can this text keep on being recycled, used again and again to justify inaction on the basis of low cycling levels? Will Ministers in 2025 be writing

If we begin to see increases in cycling in the UK that we all wish for, it is likely we would want to reconsider our guidance in general, and specifically our position on segregated cycle routes and priority at road crossings.

Or will they, by then, have begun to acknowledge that low cycling levels are their responsibility, flowing directly from their failure to champion safe, attractive and convenient cycling conditions in Britain?

Why don’t ‘urban realm improvements’ incorporate cycling?

This week Transport for London have been tweeting pictures of proposed station improvements, connected to Crossrail upgrades.

I’ve been struck – as have many others – by the way these designs appear to involve polishing a turd, and also by the way they completely ignore cycling as a mode of transport.

The West Drayton station visualisation includes a bridge that doesn’t include cycling.

The Ilford station visualisation has an expanse of fancy paving, combined with a fashionable narrow carriageway, with someone cycling right by the kerb. 

This is the A123, by the way – the traffic levels in this visualisation are a tad unrealistic.

Southall station gets fancy paving, and a nice coloured carriageway, with unrealistic traffic levels. No cycle provision.

Goodmayes gets a ridiculous ‘shared space’ treatment, miraculously free of motor traffic in this visualisation. No cycle provision.

Again, it’s fair to say this is a ‘charitable’ representation of motor traffic levels here.

Seven Kings actually looks like the best improvement out of a bad bunch; the road in front of the station is going to be closed off, and the existing ASL is going to be painted green. 

Not pictured – buses.

Another ‘fancy’ surface, serving no apparent purpose, outside Manor Park. Again, this is an A-road – the A117.

Forest Gate. Another A-road; another smear of expensive granite. 

Maryland station – three wide lanes of motor traffic replaced by… three narrow lanes of motor traffic. 

Acton station gets some lovely cycling-hostile carriageway-narrowing.

Fancy colouring for the car parking spaces outside Hanwell station (this is a dead-end, so they can’t really get this wrong).

And finally Chadwell Heath. It’s not really clear if there are any changes here at all.Crossrail’s own page on the ‘Urban Realm’ changes involved across London is here (thanks to Alex Ingram for spotting it).

A continuing difficulty in Britain appears to be an assumption that ‘cycling infrastructure’ is antithetical to ‘urban realm’. It’s seen as ugly, and associated with traffic engineering, and facilitating movement, which stands in contrast to what ‘urban realm’ designers think they are trying to create, a sense of place. White lines don’t fit in with the aesthetics of places like Poynton, or of Frideswide Square.

Of course, there’s no reason why cycling infrastructure can’t be blended into attractive urban realm – cycle tracks can be constructed from sympathetic materials for instance. The opposition seems to be based on what cycling infrastructure looks like now, rather than what it could look like, with a little thought and effort.

And the other problem here is a fundamental dishonesty about the function of the roads and streets that are being ‘prettified’ – this is the placefaking I’ve talked about before, or, more bluntly, polishing a turd. Rachel Aldred has also written about this issue at length. The assumption seems to be that cycling doesn’t fit in with these placemaking schemes, despite the fact that they still function as major traffic arteries. The paving might have been changed, trees might have been planted, the carriageway might be a different colour, but fundamentally it’s still a road with thousands of vehicles thundering along it every day.

Maybe having to include cycling infrastructure represents a tacit admission that the problem still remains. But it’s not particularly sensible to bury our heads in the sand, and to pretend that the barriers to cycling can be resolved with some planting and some surface treatments.

Bypassing the bypass

The reduction of motor traffic in British towns and villages is not a particularly alien concept. Throughout the latter part of the twentieth century, the bypass became an increasingly familiar, and often contested, way of reducing the effects motor vehicles were having on the centres of these settlements – namely, the problems of congestion and pollution resulting from an excess of motor traffic.

There is a rather fantastic ‘Look At Life’ film from 1962, showing how bypasses were built to deal with these problems.

Indeed, just as with the towns featured in that film, many of the towns and villages in my county, West Sussex, are now ringed by recently-constructed dual- or single-carriageway roads, designed to divert through-traffic away from the towns and villages themselves.

The villages of Ashington and Billingshurst both had bypasses constructed in the 1990s, taking the A24 and A29 trunk roads, respectively, away from the village centres.

The A24 now skirts Ashington, on a dual carriageway. You can see its old route, straight through the village itself

These were villages that were blighted by through-traffic, particularly Ashington, a small village that had a thunderous A-road running through the middle of it. The old route of the A24 is now considerably more peaceful.

This used to be a trunk road. Still motor traffic here, but nowhere near as much.

DfT traffic counts show that the A24 bypassing Ashington carries around 30-35,000 vehicles per day; it’s obviously completely inappropriate for that amount of traffic to be passing through the centre of a village. Bypasses are often necessary.

The town where I live, Horsham, also has a bypass. The original northern section (built in the late 1960s) was extended in the 1980s to incorporate a western diversion, keeping the main trunk roads, the A24 (running north-south) and the A264 (running approximately SW-NE) away from the town centre. In theory, this should mean that the town itself should have very little motor traffic passing through it; what motor traffic there is should only be accessing the town.

Bypasses are just as common in the Netherlands, and serve much the same purpose. A big difference, however, is that the Dutch are far more assiduous about ensuring that bypasses serve their original purpose – taking out the through-traffic from urban areas.

By contrast, in Britain, bypasses are often presented as ‘relief roads’, aimed at easing the congestion that through traffic might otherwise cause. You will still find little impediment to direct journeys by car through Horsham, Billingshurst or Ashington – the roads have remained largely unchanged subsequent to the construction of their bypasses, which are in effect an ‘additional’ measure to accommodate motor traffic. The roads are much quieter than they would be without bypasses, but they are still unpleasantly busy, and needlessly so.

In the Netherlands, by contrast, bypasses form part of a package of measures aimed at reducing motor vehicle use within town centres; they are, explicitly, a way of keeping the traffic out.

The Dutch city of Assen does, of course, have a ring road, the single-carriageway Europaweg. It is also flanked by a motorway, the A28.

Something of a resemblance to Horsham.

But what makes Assen different from a typical British town with a bypass, however, is a centre that is difficult to drive through (although it is still easy to access by car).

Some of the town centre streets are access-only, or allow only pedestrians and cyclists to use them.

Others form part of a network of one-way streets, arranged in such a way that their use, by car, makes no sense as a through-route, although they remain useful and convenient two-way routes for bicycles.

Other streets that used to be through-routes are now blocked off completely – although still permeable for bicycles.

Routes for motor vehicles into and out of the city centre still exist, of course – they haven’t been excluded from the city completely. To take just one example, deliveries to shops, restaurants and offices remain essential, and these will have to be made by lorries and vans.

It’s not just the city centre that has been carefully planned to favour bicycle use; residential streets in the suburbs are typically designed in such a way that the only people driving on them will be those seeking to gain access to a house or property on it, achieved through a combination of selective road closures, and/or one-way arrangements. Likewise, driving from a place of residence in a suburban street will often involve a circuitous route out onto a distributor road, while making that journey by bicycle will be continuous and direct. The street below, which heads into the city under the ring road from the new settlement of Kloosterveen, is a direct route for bicycles only, along the canal.

To make the same trip into the centre by car involves diverting onto the ring road itself. The route for cycling and walking is the shortest, and straightest.

Radial routes that still exist for motor vehicles will have bicycle paths running alongside them, making cycling into the city a safe and pleasant option for people of all ages.

Busy junctions are also easy to use by bike; there is no mixing with motor vehicles, achieved by means of a separated network of paths, or, more commonly in Assen, a dedicated green stage for bicycles –

It wouldn’t make sense to make the use of cars difficult in the city centre without providing a feasible alternative. A pleasant and attractive city centre has been achieved through facilitating, and prioritising, bicycle use both in that city centre and across the city as a whole.

The equivalent UK town or city has very little (and often none) of these advantageous measures put in place to enable sustainable modes of transport. Journeys by car are often just as short and direct as they would be on foot or by bicycle. Similarly, the major routes which a UK cyclist will have to use to get into and of town centres are typically unpleasant and hostile for cycling, being shared with high volumes of motor vehicles.

While Horsham has a bypass, it also has an inner ring road, constructed after the bypass was completed.

This means it’s still very easy to drive through the town. There is, undoubtedly, a large amount of motor traffic here that should be using the bypass instead. And without any attractive conditions to cycle in, many short trips within the town – to work, to school, to leisure facilities, to shops – will continue to be driven.

The safe, high-quality segregated cycle facilities common in Assen, which protect cycling on arterial routes, are non-existent in the UK. It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that the car continues to be used for such a high proportion of short journeys in this country when the alternatives are not being prioritised, or made attractive. 56% of all British journeys under 2 miles are made by car. If we are really going to make a dent in that figure, the sound policy of bypasses needs to be accompanied by the measures the Dutch have put in place.