Crumbs

At the Leeds Cycle City Expo, the keynote speech was given by Robert Goodwill, the Under Secretary of State for Transport, with special responsibility for cycling.

It was full of pleasant soundbites and encouraging noises, but when he had to depart from his script – printed out on A4 pieces of paper that he was reading from – the detail was worryingly absent.

Goodwill seemed keen to boast about the record ‘£270 million’ the current government had spent on cycling – a figure that was questioned immediately by people on the stage next to him. But even if we take this figure at face value, it pales into insignificance compared to the sums being announced for road upbuilding and upgrading – tens of billions. It’s even dwarfed by the extra sums of money being employed to promote electric cars – the mode of transport nobody seems to want to buy.

How far does ‘£270 million’ – about £50 million a year – go towards actually addressing the significant barriers to the uptake of cycling in Britain a year? Even assuming, that is, that it is spent wisely – a very generous assumption, with hundreds of thousands of pounds currently being spent on schemes of dubious benefit.

By way of example, here is an issue in the town where I live, Horsham.

The railway line, in purple, cuts the town in half. I’ve marked five – the only five – crossing points between the east and west side of the town.

Let’s take a look at these in turn. Number 1 is a level crossing.

This is Parsonage Road, which has some truly dreadful cycle lanes that definitely should not exist.

Yes, that’s a cycle lane

There isn’t actually a shortage of space here, but sorting this road out will require serious investment, to adjust the kerb lines and put in cycle tracks. It’s entirely unsuitable for mass cycling as it stands.Your next option for crossing from one side of the town to the other is the North Street railway bridge – crossing point Number 2.

As you can see, it is very busy, narrow, and effectively unusable for all but a tiny minority of the population by bike. This bridge, and the embankment, will have to be adapted, or rebuilt, to make this crossing point suitable for cycling. Probably quite a lot of money.

The next crossing point – Number 3 – is a pedestrian-only underpass. You are not allowed to cycle through here, and there are barriers that attempt to stop you.

The sight lines are not good, it is narrow – and the ceiling is too low to safely cycle through, in any case. So as with the previous examples, for this railway underpass to be a crossing point for mass cycling, it will need to be widened and deepened. Another substantial project.

Crossing point Number 4 – the Queen Street bridge on the A281.Like the previous road crossings, this a busy road, carrying tens of thousands of vehicles a day, including buses and HGVs (it is not surprising these crossings are busy, as there is no discouragement to driving across Horsham, despite the presence of a bypass, and these crossings funnel motor traffic). The A281 itself is, in my opinion, the most hostile road to cycle on in Horsham, with a combination of pinch points, parked vehicles, side roads with limited visibility and a narrow carriageway all contributing to an unpleasant environment that requires constant vigilance. Totally unsuitable for most people to cycle on. It might be possible to create some form of protected space for cycling under this bridge without substantial re-engineering of the bridge itself, but again work will have to be put in adapting the carriageway.

The final crossing point, Number 5, is actually acceptable; a reasonably quiet residential street that does not carry much motor traffic, because it doesn’t really go anywhere. The low bridge also effectively acts as a form of ‘modal filter’, keeping out HGVs from this route, because they can’t pass under it.

The problem, however, is that this crossing, number 5, is (as you can see from the map) at the very southern edge of the town, and not at all useful for anyone who doesn’t live near it.

So. The main point here is that the town is severed for most ordinary people who might wish to travel by bike. There are no reasonable crossing points over or under the railway line that are in any way attractive to the general public. It is effectively impossible for them to cycle from one side of it to the other. And when you consider that the town centre lies on one side of the railway line while majority of the population lies on the other, that is a serious issue.

I haven’t even mentioned here the fact that every single one of the main roads in Horsham is totally unsuitable for inclusive cycling. They are not environments that most people would even dream of cycling in.

Cycling is designed out of Horsham. That is why – despite the town being essentially flat and only 3 miles from one extremity to the other – it is practically non-existent here, probably around 1% of all trips. The 2011 census revealed that even for trips to work (usually a higher mode share than trips for other purposes), just 1.6% are made by bike in Horsham, a decline (for what it’s worth, given these are very small numbers) on 2001.

As I understand it, the entire West Sussex budget spending on cycling in the last year was around £30,000. This for a total population of around 900,000 people. The only other funding stream is Local Sustainable Transport Fund (LSTF) money, which WSCC successfully bid for. About half a million pounds is being spent in Horsham, but – despite some good intentions – none of the systemic problems I mention here are being dealt with, and it will almost certainly be frittered away, in the most part, on ‘infrastructure’ that nobody wants to use, or signing circuitous routes on back street that people are using already.

To deal solely with the severance problems created by the railway line detailed here will require, at a low estimate, more than a million pounds, spent properly. This is just one issue, in one town, of 55,000 people. Scale this across England and Wales as a whole – villages, towns and cities with very similar problems to Horsham – and it is quite obvious that the current sums of money being ‘invested’ in cycling just aren’t going to cut it.

What is depressing is that congestion is primarily an urban problem, yet the huge sums of money the government is throwing at the road network are missing the target, going on large road schemes between urban areas, rather than addressing the prime issue of mobility within urban areas.

Towns like Horsham have a dysfunctional road network, clogged with single occupancy vehicles at peak times. The necessary conditions that will enable people to opt for sensible, painless alternatives – attractive, safe, direct cycle networks – are not being created, even though doing so would solve these congestion problems at a stroke.

The solutions to urban congestion are being ignored. So as far as I can tell the only purpose of the occasional announcements of tiny sums money ‘for cycling’ is to create the illusion that this government actually cares, rather than an actual serious engagement with the issues. They are crumbs, and not even comforting ones at that.

Do you hate humans? Take it out on them through design

Last week I was staying in Leeds for the Cycle City Expo, and the Space for Cycling campaigners conference. My hotel was quite convenient – only half a mile from Leeds Town Hall where the Expo was being held, and about the same distance from venue for the Space for Cycling Conference. (Indeed, it is formally described as the Leeds City Centre Premier Inn.)

Despite this proximity to the centre, the layout of the hotel, and the surrounding roads, is quite extraordinary if you are trying to get to it on foot.

The hotel entrance doesn’t face onto the street; you can only access it from the car park at the rear.

A hotel next to a road. But no entrance.

This meant that I cycled straight past it while I was trying to find it.

If you are attempting to walk to this hotel from the north, the direct route – of just a hundred metres or so – becomes an extraordinary meander, thanks to a combination of bizarre building design and enormous roads with limited crossing points, that force you take a hugely indirect path.

The blue arrow – the direct path. The red arrow – the actual walking route.

But this isn’t even the worst example of this kind of ‘design’ I’ve encountered. An even more preposterous example can be found in Crawley in West Sussex, right in the centre of the town.

Central Sussex College is adjacent to the main shopping centre of the town, separated from it only by College Road. You can see it, only a matter of tens of metres away, when you step out of the County Mall shopping centre.

There it is. So close. And yet (as we shall see) so far.

But just try to walk there.

Again, blue the direct route. Red, the designed route.

Six (yes SIX) separate crossings, followed by an infuriating diversion all the way around the building to enter it from the car park.

What is amazing is that this is (amongst other things) a college for 16-18 year olds – so a considerable proportion of the people attending it can’t even drive. Yet the obvious and easy way to access the building – on foot – has been simply been ignored, and made about as difficult and circuitous as possible.

Let’s take a closer look. The corner of the building that faces the town centre – where the entrance should be – isn’t even being used. It’s somewhere to stack chairs and tables.

Could this be the actual entrance?

There should be an entrance here, facing the town, but evidently that was just too obvious. Some opaque windows combined with dead space are plainly much more important.

Here’s another view of where that entrance should be, through a sea of pedestrian guardrailing.

Incredibly – once you manage to cross the road – you will find that the building is further protected against attack by pedestrians, with armco barriers. ARMCO BARRIERS. Presumably in case a ‘car loses control’.

This ring of crash protection extends right around the building, right around to the car park entrance to the north east (top right in the aerial view). Note where it lies in relation to the pavement – pedestrians are expendable.

They even had a spare bit left over – it’s been put to good use, protecting another bit of the building from speeding vehicles.

The final insult? There isn’t even a footway through the car park to the main entrance. You have to find your own way through the motor vehicles.

The rear. The entrance is in the corner.

Amazingly, this building was opened in 2006. 2006. Hang your heads in shame.

Plain evidence of design failure, right in front of those responsible.

 

The possible versus the acceptable

North Parade in Horsham is a fairly busy distributor road (running north – unsuprisingly) out of the town centre. It has a 30 mph limit, and very narrow cycle lanes, which give up at a couple of awful pinch points.

The local cycle forum are quite rightly pressing to have these sorted out – in fact the picture above shows us with a representative from West Sussex County Council. A good interim solution would be to have the pinch point removed, and replaced with a zebra (this is an important crossing for pedestrians, with access to the park on the left).

Long term, this road desperately needs cycle tracks. There is absolutely no shortage of space here, as you can see, but obviously their construction would involve investment – adjusting the kerb line and drainage, and so on.

The problem is that councils like pinch points. They make it relatively easy for pedestrians to cross roads, without them interfering with ‘traffic flow’ (i.e. motor traffic flow) in ways that zebra or toucan crossings would.
And it is on this kind of issue that Sustrans’ new guidance is really quite unhelpful, because it doesn’t challenge councils’ inclination to continue employing pinch points (or ‘central islands’) like this, at all.

The handbook simply says ‘avoid gaps of 3.1 – 3.9m’. Going by a standard bus width of 2.5m, the pinch point in Horsham probably falls outside this recommendation, and is therefore acceptable, by the terms Sustrans set out. Even if it didn’t, ‘avoid’ is hardly strong enough – likewise the suggestion that a cycle lane of 1.5m ‘should’ continue through the pinch point. [EDIT – I’ve now got around to measuring these pinch points, and they are exactly 3m wide.]

Councils will want to take the easy path, that of least resistance, and do as little as they can. They can paint a bicycle symbol in the middle of the pinch point, and by Sustrans’ terms, that’s acceptable – indeed, even recommended.

I think this is the issue that many people have with the Sustrans’ guidance. It’s not that it doesn’t contain good recommendations (there’s plenty of good stuff in there) – it’s just that it is far, far too weak in opposing the stuff that we all know councils will only be too happy to build, if it means they can get away with doing things on the cheap. This is a real problem if you are presenting your handbook as best practice.

This isn’t a matter of asking for the (currently) impossible, or for those aspects of Dutch or Danish design that would be difficult to implement in the UK, or that are alien to UK highway engineers. It’s about demanding quality where it would be easy and obvious to achieve it. I would like a Sustrans manual that says 3m wide pinch points on a road with a 30mph limit and about 10,000 vehicles a day are completely unacceptable, not one that says ‘consider’ painting a cycle symbol in the middle of the pinch point.

If councils come back and say we can’t build a cycle route to those standards? Nothing has been lost; the road will remain as crap as it was before. And no time and effort has been wasted in half-arsed efforts to present it as a ‘route’.

 

The benefits of keeping buses and bikes apart

Putting a cycle track alongside a bus lane is standard practice in the Netherlands. The principles of sustainable safety – specifically, homogeneity – mean you should not mix vehicles that differ greatly in mass. So unless it is completely unavoidable, the Dutch separate cycling from bus traffic, in urban areas.

Cycle and bus routes, in front of Nijmegen station

Cycle corridor, bus corridor, Utrecht city centre

This is completely alien in Britain, where bus lanes are usually presented as ‘cycling infrastructure’ – although this is starting to change, with schemes in Brighton and London (and proposed schemes in Manchester, Bristol and elsewhere) separating cycles from bus traffic on particular roads.

Of course, this does mean that bus stops have to be dealt with – cycle tracks will have to pass behind bus stops, as they are separate from the carriageway. Naturally this is less convenient for bus passengers; instead of stepping straight off onto a footway, they step onto a waiting island, before having to cross the cycle track.

It is easy to overstate this inconvenience. In Britain, “a cyclist” is typically conceived of as a fast, silent vehicle, whistling past in lycra. But in the Netherlands in particular, “a cyclist” is typically more like a wheeled pedestrian, wearing ordinary clothes, and travelling at 10-15mph. It is easy to negotiate your way across a cycle track on foot when people are essentially travelling like you.

Technically, a ‘bus stop bypass’. Very easy to cross this cycle track, to access the bus stop

But what I think is being overlooked in Britain at the moment is how poor a solution it is to place cycling in bus lanes, not just for people cycling, but for people on buses.

The average speed of people cycling, and a bus, is very similar, but the fluctuations in speed are very different. Someone cycling will be travelling at a constant 10 to 20mph, while a bus will be travelling from 0mph to 20-30mph, back down to 0mph again. In practice – as anyone who cycles regularly in bus lanes will tell you – a bus will constantly be overlapping you, while you constantly have to overtake the bus at each stop.

This is not attractive (or indeed safe) for cycling, and it’s not very good for bus passengers either, who will be held up by people cycling in the bus lane.

I’ve made a short video to demonstrate how smoothly cycling and bus traffic can co-exist if they are separated. It was filmed at about 8pm on a Thursday evening on Nachtegaalstraat in Utrecht. Not a particularly busy time, as you can tell from the video, but this is actually a very busy street, carrying well over 10,000 people cycling, and probably at least as many bus passengers, every day. It is one of the main routes from the city centre to the campus of Utrecht University.

As I hope is clear from the video, these arrangements benefit cycling and bus travel, by removing conflict, and preventing each mode from delaying the other.

Towns and cities that take cycling and public transport seriously should not push the two modes into the same space.

Priorities

We’re all familiar with those situations where cycling provision just gives up.

Places where the designer couldn’t be bothered; places where it was too expensive to do things properly; places where space was a bit tight; or a combination of the above.

‘END’

Direct, safe, and continuous

That’ll do

Abandon hope, all ye who enter here

But in all these cases, and in others like them, the difficulties are not insuperable. These awful outcomes are the result of political choices. For example, an insufficient allocation of funding means that cycle lanes painted on a road just give up at the places where physical changes to the road layout are necessary for continuity. Or the flow of motor traffic is prioritised over safe continuous provision for cycling.

I found an interesting counterpoint to these awful British examples in the town of Wageningen, in the Netherlands.

Churchwillweg is a distributor road, running north out of the town centre. What initially struck me about this street is just how narrow the carriageway is, for motor vehicles.

A van and a car squeak past each other

Closer to the centre of town, there is a difficulty – a building (oddly, quite a new building) juts out some distance, meaning that the available space between the buildings for footway, cycle track and road is lessened considerably.

In Britain, it’s most likely that whatever cycle provision there was here would just give up, but in Wageningen, the footway and cycle tracks continue at the same width, and it is the road that gets squeezed.

From Google Streetview

For about twenty metres, the road becomes single carriageway, meaning drivers have to negotiate with one another, while people cycling and walking pass by serenely.

Vehicles queuing, while people cycling have uninterrupted progress

Amazingly (to my British eyes) there aren’t any signs here at all, warning drivers that this is about to happen, or telling them who should give way to whom. The cycle track just juts out into the road, and drivers have to deal with it, as best they can.

Negotiation

More negotiation

I was fascinated by this design example, because it seems to encapsulate the Dutch approach. When things get difficult, or space gets tight, it is the cycling and walking infrastructure that is maintained, while space for driving is (momentarily) sacrificed.

In Britain the complete opposite is true. At difficult places, driving has continuity, and the cycle lanes are just painted between these pinch points, essentially reinforcing their uselessness, because they are not present at the places where they are most needed.

So it’s not really a question of whether space is available for cycling; it’s a question of priorities, and how that space gets allocated.

Independent mobility

One of the most striking things about cycling in the Netherlands is the difference in the demographics you encounter. On my usual cycling trips in Britain, the people cycling around me are typically aged between 20 and 50, and mostly male. Children and the elderly (especially children) are almost entirely absent.

By contrast, cycling in the Netherlands broadly reflects the population at large; it is available to all, to anyone who chooses to ride a bike.

Elderly people in particular formed a considerable proportion of the people I met while cycling on my recent trip. This is probably a function of the fact that, cycling from city to city in the middle of the day, I was more likely to meet people who weren’t working, or who were retired. But even at the weekends, the proportion of people cycling who were elderly was large, and the numbers, in general, of elderly people out and about was (to my eyes at least) truly remarkable – totally different to Britain.

Bikes with electric assistance are increasingly being used by this age group in the Netherlands. This couple passed me with ease near Gouda.

As did this couple in Nijmegen.

Close examination reveals the small battery parks on the top of their rear racks.

I think these electric bikes are truly wonderful – they give people the freedom to travel huge distances, partially or wholly under their own steam, without having to worry about getting tired or exhausted. And in hilly areas (like Nijmegen) they just make cycling more pleasant. This elderly couple in Wageningen (also hilly) had the added reassurance of power assistance.

Trikes – which offer a greater amount of stability – were also in evidence –

And of course a bicycle is a mobility aid in its own right, allowing people who would ordinarily be using crutches to travel with freedom.

The powered mobility scooter was also very much apparent, its users employing exactly the same infrastructure as cycles.

People whizzing about in powered wheelchairs were a common sight.

Most touching of all was the way in which friends or couples were still able to travel about together independently side by side, even though one could evidently no longer ride a bike.

So, really, I have to laugh when I hear people suggesting that cycling infrastructure creates problems or difficulties for those with mobility problems. Done properly, as it almost always is in the Netherlands, it’s the complete opposite – totally liberating. A good environment for cycling is a good environment for all.

Please also read Mark Wagenbuur’s excellent and detailed post on these issues, if you haven’t already!

Five minutes in Utrecht

On a sunny Wednesday afternoon, I was taking pictures outside a supermarket on Biltstraat in Utrecht – watching people coming and going by bike.

I’d estimate there are around forty to fifty bicycles parked outside the shop here; a steady turnover of people arriving and departing, mingling with those travelling past on the cycle track.

Then this pair appeared.

A dad, with his young daughter standing on the rear rack. Kids do this, rather than sitting down on the rack, because they can see where they’re going.

At the supermarket, they slowed, and stopped.

But just so the daughter could put some rubbish in the bin. They were quickly on their way again.

Looking down on some other children.

It’s a little hard to see, but I realised at this point that the Dad was now talking on his mobile phone (you can see his right elbow is bent, his hand off the handlebars).

This is all perfectly normal behaviour, if the environment is safe and attractive.

At the next side road, I spotted some children playing in the road, with water pistols.

It looked like they had just cycled home from sport, after school, and were now cooling off. They also cooled off the delivery driver who stopped to chat.

Back on the main road, a young boy is carrying a large box.

Followed by a lady in a wheelchair.A five minute window into street life in Utrecht.

 

Not everything the Dutch do is transferable

Way back in 2011, I cycled out of the city of Utrecht with my partner, who was riding a bike for the first time in well over a decade. The trip was almost entirely painless, with no interactions with motor traffic, except on short stretches. One of these stretches was Prins Hendriklaan, to the east of the city,  where she felt the most nervous.

At that time, that street looked like this.

Wide (by British standards) cycle lanes, combined with humps and no centre line markings. This is not an especially busy road for motor traffic, but it is one of the main routes in and out of the city for people cycling, with over 14,000 people cycling along here every day. For me – used to British conditions – it was absolutely fine, or even good. But not so good for the more nervous.

Over the last year this street (and Platolaan – the eastern end of this same street) have been redesigned. The cycle lanes have gone, replaced with a fietsstraat (bicycle street) arrangement.

Essentially, the whole street now forms a cycle route, upon which motor vehicles can be driven ‘as guests’, in theory (although not necessarily in practice).

One of the essential characteristics of a fietsstraat is the dominance of cycle traffic. Fietsstraats will form main cycle routes, and motor traffic should be relatively low. As the CROW manual states

An important condition for designating a road section as a cycle street is that the bicycle traffic really has to dominate the streetscape. Although little experience has been gained with cycle streets, the dominant position of bicycle traffic appears to be sufficiently evident when there are twice as many cyclists as motorists on a road section. If this requirement is not met… the road authorities may try to reduce the intensity of motorised traffic to ensure that the intensity ratio is achieved.

A large number of cyclists have to be present – not only relatively speaking but also in absolute terms – to qualify the road as a main cycle route. … In order for a road section to qualify as a cycle street, it must carry at least 1,000 cyclists a day.

With 14,000 cyclists per day, Prins Hendriklaan quite obviously passes this threshold with ease. I am not aware of the figures for motor traffic along here, but on my visits to the street, motor traffic was clearly greatly outnumbered by cycle traffic.

However, an important issue, I think, is whether motor traffic is low enough along this street. Even with sky-high cycling intensities like those found here, the CROW manual recommends an absolute upper limit of 2000 PCUs (Passenger Car Units) per day. I suspect this limit might be broken on Prins Hendriklaan. At times, there were plenty of motor vehicles on the street, amongst the people cycling. [Update – the PCU figure has kindly been supplied by Ria Glas – around 2,700-3,300 PCUs per day in 2011. This appears to correspond with the traffic figures supplied for 2012, via bz2 in the comments.

 This is because, unlike many other fietsstraats I have seen, Prins Hendriklaan does not have any measures to cut out motor traffic travelling along it. It appears to form an access road for quite a large area of side streets.

The length of the new fietsstraat, in context. It is possible to drive ‘through’ this fietsstraat.

The whole bicycle street is about 1km long, and has no closures at either end, or diversions for motor traffic. This is quite different from those fietsstraats which are access-only for only a relatively small amount of properties.

So this kind of treatment is almost certainly not transferrable to Britain. It only ‘works’ because it has an extraordinarily large number of people cycling along this street already – it relies on good conditions elsewhere on the rest of the network, to generate these numbers, and to drown out the motor traffic using the street.

Indeed, to that extent, it is disputable how much of an improvement for cycling in Utrecht this kind of arrangement actually amounts to. The new surface is nice and smooth, and the way motor traffic is forced to cycle ‘in’ the cycle lanes seemed to have a distinct calming effect on traffic speeds. But beyond that, the fundamental issue of interaction with a relatively significant volume of motor traffic (by Dutch standards) has not been addressed.

What is absolutely clear is that simply relaying a street in red tarmac, and putting up signs, on a route carrying thousands of motor vehicles a day will not make a jot of difference to the quality of the cycling environment, when cycling levels are low, as they are in most places in Britain. The street will remain hostile and unattractive to the vast majority of people. Prins Hendriklaan cannot simply be transferred to Britain.

 

The joy of cycling in the Netherlands

Last week I posted, quite deliberately, about the bad bits of my cycling experience around the Netherlands. The purpose there was to show that the Dutch still have difficulties to overcome, in particular locations, to make cycling attractive and safe, and also that many parts of the network simply haven’t been dealt with yet.

But those bad bits were, of course, the exception. In over 300 miles of cycling, those tens of examples are the only ones that stand out. 99% of my cycling experience was blissful – utterly stress-free. Everywhere I went, I was wafted along, on deliriously good infrastructure.

Across fields.
Through city centres.

Through towns.

Under motorways.


Across rivers.

Beside canals.

Under ring roads.

Through forests.

Alongside main roads.


Alongside country roads.

Under railways.


Through residential areas.

Through industrial areas.

Over bridges.

Around roundabouts.

Past junctions.

Past roundabouts (turbo ones).

Along main roads in cities.
Complete comfort, ease and safety, everywhere I went.

I didn’t seek this stuff out. This is simply what I saw as I cycled around, from city centre to city centre. To Dutch people, this is just background – utterly mundane. These photographs give a fair impression of my day-to-day experience.

This comfort and safety covers all routes; wherever you choose to cycle. In urban areas it can be created in different ways. Every single city and major town that I visited either excluded private motor traffic completely from its centre, or limited it to access only. Gouda –

Delft –

‘s-Hertogenbosch –

Nijmegen –

Wageningen –

Veenendaal –

And Utrecht.

Not one of these examples is ‘shared space’. They are all places where motor traffic is largely (or totally) excluded, with walking and cycling utterly dominant as a result. And that means the attractiveness of cycling on routes between towns and cities extends right to their very centres.

On a single day, travelling from one city centre to another city centre, I estimate that I had to deal with around 10-20 direct interactions with motor vehicles. That’s all. The quality of the Dutch cycling environment rests on this complete modal separation, wherever you cycle. It’s what makes it such a joyous experience.

Nothing useful to say

Some comment on a detail from the recent inquest into the death of Venera Minakhmetova at Bow roundabout last November.

Coroner Mary Hassell

said she had “nothing useful” to say to Transport for London as the roundabout had since “been altered to such an extent that it’s very significantly safer for cyclists”.

Do I need to point out here that ‘significantly safer’ is not the same as safe enough?

It is true that the approach to the roundabout where Venera died has ‘been altered’, but only because prior to the arrival of the Superhighway Extension there was nothing in the way of cycle infrastructure at this location.

Westbound at Bow roundabout, 2012. Courtesy of Google Streetview. It was on this layout that Lana Tereschenko died in 2011.

But the central issue shouldn’t be whether improvements have been made, or whether the junction is a bit safer than the death trap it was before. Rather than a relative standard of safety, surely we should be looking at whether Bow roundabout meets objective criteria, good enough to ensure that the risk of further deaths, or serious injuries, at this location is as low as possible. ‘A bit better’ isn’t good enough, if what was there before was lethal.

The reported comment from the coroner may, of course, have been stripped from context, but taking it at face value, it appears that this issue has been ducked. Because the new layout at Bow roundabout is not good enough. It is a bad bodge. Effectively it amounts to nothing more than an Advanced Stop Line, with a confusing array of signals that attempt to stop people from entering it at the wrong time.

This video from @sw19cam – shot just two weeks before Venera died – shows just how confusing it can be. Because people cycling have to deal with two sets of lights simply to enter the junction, this chap appears to have interpreted the green signal to enter the ASL as a green signal to progress through the entire junction, with nearly disastrous results, as two lorries bear down on him.

Now the inquest appears to have established that the lorry that killed Venera passed through two green signals before turning left, and on that basis the ‘most likely’ explanation for the collision was that she had passed a red light to enter the ASL. Even if we accept this explanation, questions need to be asked about how easy it is end up doing this, in innocence. This picture from Charlie Lloyd shows the problem.

Picture by Charlie Lloyd

The red signal to stop people from entering the ASL (to the left) is drowned out by a sea of green signals which, combined with motor vehicles flowing through the junction, could all contribute to this signal being jumped inadvertently. Low-level cycle-specific signals have subsequently been added here, but the overall arrangement is still extraordinarily ambiguous.

What is desperately, desperately needed is clarity. No multiple lights just to enter an ASL, before waiting again – the ‘always stop’ junction. Instead, just one signal for cycles; one signal for left turning motor traffic; and one signal for straight ahead motor traffic.

A standard junction arrangement in the Netherlands (flipped). Absolutely clear who can go, and should stop.

This kind of arrangement would also allow pedestrians to cross Bow roundabout, on a green signal, at the same time that cycles and straight ahead motor traffic have a green signal. There are still no pedestrian crossings at this roundabout.

All the fiddles and bodges that have been implemented at Bow are a flawed compromise, intended to fit cycling in around the margins of motor traffic flow, rather than coherent design. It’s a great pity the inquest seems to have ignored the issue of whether it could be substantially better – good enough to eliminate future tragedies.