Utter bollocks on local radio

If you tuned into BBC Radio Gloucestershire early on Thursday morning, you might have heard the presenter discussing cycling safety.

Here’s a thought, and a suggestion, we haven’t heard before.

Something we haven’t heard before? What’s that then? Surely something fresh, thoughtful and considered on the subject of cycling as a mode of transport?

Cyclists – should you be forced to use the network of cycle paths and lanes in Gloucestershire?

Oh. Right. Not a new suggestion at all – just the same old rubbish that appears with tiresome regularity on local radio.

Eight deaths of cyclists recently, six in London, two in Bristol – a guy called Robin Carey has this thought. He’s campaigned for their use for years. He’s now challenging both his MP, Martin Horwood, and Gloucestershire Highways, to improve safety, and make the use of cycle lanes compulsory.

Wow. That’s respectful. Using deaths – deaths! – of people as a superficial basis for dragging up some local bloke’s pet peeve.

None of these recent deaths had anything to do with a failure to use cycle paths, so this is a bit like using a series of recent rapes as a trigger for asking a local man his opinions about what women are wearing, and how they should keep safe. But on we go.

[Robin Carey] says too many riders are ignoring the signs and the dedicated cycle routes, making the current system a complete waste of taxpayers’ money.

There are, of course, no signs mandating use of off-carriageway routes in the UK. As for ‘dedicated cycle routes’… well, we’re about to see the example in question. Here’s Robin Carey himself –

Landsdown Road [in Cheltenham] is very narrow there, there’s just enough space for two cars, let alone a cyclist. And then you’ve got the junction with Shelburne Road, and there’s a conflict between car and cyclist there.

One time I was coming out of Shelburne Road, turning left towards Gloucester, and nearly had a collision with a car coming the other way, because he was overtaking a cyclist.

Mr Carey turned left out of a side road, apparently without checking to see if it was appropriate to do so, and that the road was clear, without a vehicle on the side of the road he was entering. Somehow, this is the person on the bike’s fault (the overtaking driver also appears to have violated Highway Code rule 167).

This is the location.

Mr Carey pulled out of the side road, coming into conflict with an overtaking car coming towards us

The DJ addresses the audience.

Let me know as a motorist what you’ve seen, what you’ve observed. Do you agree? Should a cyclist stay in the lane, and actually be penalised if they come out of it? Robin says unless matters are improved, more people will be seriously hurt or killed. He’s now hoping by really getting this on the agenda, things can be improved.

Notice here that people will be ‘seriously hurt or killed’ by their temerity to come out of a cycle ‘lane’ (a generous term for what is clearly a pavement with a stripe on it) not ‘seriously hurt or killed’ by inattentive drivers. Robin Carey again –

I would like Martin Horwood to discuss with the Department for Transport the changing of the law so that the use of cycle paths where provided are compulsory. It seems to make sense, both from the taxpayers’ money point of view, and from cyclists’ point of view, and from the motorists’ point of view. I got angry because it’s not just the cyclists that get hurt, the driver… If I was involved in an accident with a cyclist who was very badly injured or killed, I get traumatised as well. I would have to live that for the rest of my life.

Yes, he really did say that.

There are clues already, but if we scoot up the road a little, we can see why the cyclist in question in this incident might not have chosen to use the ‘dedicated cycle path’, built at taxpayers’ expense.

Looking in the same direction the cyclist was travelling, before meeting Mr Carey

Yes, that’s three separate signalised crossings, just to get across the junction.

Is it really any wonder he chose to use the road, even if it meant running the risk of traumatising poor Mr Carey by getting himself killed? The use of this rubbish ‘path’ ‘makes sense’ to Robin Carey, presumably only the grounds that the person on the bike would  be out of his way. Sod his comfort and convenience.

From above. You can smell the convenience of waiting three times, while motor vehicles progress straight through.

This is, of course, local radio, the home of the ill-informed opinion, but BBC Radio Gloucestershire actually used this as a feature item. Mr Carey didn’t ring up spontaneously – his drivel was pre-recorded, and then used as the basis for a supposedly sensible discussion about cycling safety. It’s utter bollocks. Just a moment’s thought or reflection would establish why anyone would choose not to use a ‘dedicated cycle path’. People aren’t wilfully choosing to put themselves in harm’s way; they are making a rational choice on the basis of the relative inconvenience of using awful pedestrian-specific multiple crossings that make crossing a simple junction take several minutes. If it was good enough, they would use it automatically. People do not cycle in the road in the Netherlands where cycle facilities are provided, because those facilities are good. It’s that simple.

What is most troubling is that this is probably about par for the course for a good deal of the British media, who in the wake of a tragic series of deaths (repeat – deaths) have chosen not to inform themselves about the issues, about the causes of death and serious injury, and about how they can be prevented, but instead to carry on churning out the same  patronising and hostile rubbish on the subject, and chosen to do so at a greater volume. Here’s just one other example – also on BBC local radio – documented by Kats Dekker.

Indeed, this same story in Cheltenham was also covered by the local paper, where the journalist responsible for writing it described it as a ‘hot topic’. No, I’m sorry, the ‘hot topic’ is people being seriously injured or killed, not because they refuse to cycle on pavements like a pedestrian, but because of seriously flawed road design, lax safety standards, and putting people into conflict with large and heavy vehicles. Stop crowbarring in your petty ill-informed vendettas into what should be a real debate about how to make cycling a safe and viable mode of transport for all. It’s grossly offensive.

Thanks to @beztweets for spotting this

Hogan-Howe’s comments, and social attitudes to cycling

The comments made on BBC 94.9 by the Met’s Commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, prompted a bit of controversy over the last few days. I’ve transcribed the exchange that provoked the debate.

Nestor [presenter]: Would you ride a bike in London?

Hogan-Howe: No, I don’t think I would. I’ve never been a big bike rider anyway. But it seems to me that if you get it wrong, or the driver gets it wrong, the person who is going to pay is the cyclist. It seems to me there’s a lot of traffic, and personally I wouldn’t.

N: Do you have a view on the people who do?

H-H: Well, I think they’re brave, but of course some people don’t have the choice, economically. It’s not easy. If you’ve got someone who can’t afford to take a car into a congestion zone – and if they did, they can’t park it anyway – some people have got limited money, and they can’t pay on public transport, so I understand why take the choice, but it wouldn’t be mine.

N: Is there something that you would do? If you had your way, is there something that you would do, that you are convinced would reduce the number of incidents?

H-H: It seems to me that the strategy that is being employed is a good one, which is to try to provide a separate area for the cyclists to be in. Eventually to try and provide a physical separation. But of course London is such a big place, where cyclists have arrived all at once, you can’t expect all that to be separated… [interrupted]

N: Yes, it’s almost as though it’s all happened too quickly, and everything is reactive, and we’re trying to catch up with the huge increase…

H-H: I’m not sure that’s fair. I think what we’ve seen is that petrol’s gone through the roof in terms of cost, we’re in a recession so people’s money has gone down, people have moved towards cycles, with the Boris scheme you’ve got more cycles available…

N: That’s where people are dying, Sir Bernhard. [appears to be confusing reference to Boris Bikes with Superhighways]

H-H: Well I’m not sure that’s entirely fair.

N: On the Bow Superhighway 2, in or round it, four people have died.

H-H: Right, but all I’m saying is that I can understand why there are more cyclists, and they’ve arrived very quickly in a recession. It’s a natural thing.

N: But it’s not great if the very thing that’s put in to protect and allow cyclists has seen four of them die.

H-H: Well, of course, that’s where most of the cyclists are, so that’s where we’re getting the highest numbers of cyclists. And I’m not sure that anybody’s proved the Highways have caused it. I think…

N: But your officers have said… your very officer has said it gives people a false sense of security.

H-H: But Eddie, you asked me ‘would I cycle’, and then you asked me ‘how do I feel about other people who cycle’, and I’m trying to answer that question. So all I’m saying is I do understand why people cycle. I understand as well why there are risks in cycling.  That’s the question I’m trying to answer. And at the end of the day, people do what they like – it’s a free country, it’s a free society. I’m just saying I wouldn’t. But that’s my choice, and I can afford not to.

From the comment that appeared in newspaper articles yesterday, Hogan-Howe refers only to ‘some people’ who don’t have a great deal of choice, and who cycle as a result of economic circumstances. This is in the second response, quoted above.

But having listened to the whole interview (and from the whole passage above), it’s pretty clear that economics is the only reason Hogan-Howe seems to be able to give for people riding a bike, as people pointed out to me yesterday. Whether this is just because he was put on the spot, or because he hadn’t really thought things through, I don’t know, but it’s fairly clear that there are plenty of people in London who ride despite the fact they could afford to travel to work in different ways. Hogan-Howe has now clarified his comments, and conceded this point.

But it’s quite interesting to examine why Hogan-Howe might have made the assumption he did, and why he could only think of people cycling because, essentially, they had been forced into doing so.

I think the answer lies in his other comments. He doesn’t want to ride a bike in London because he doesn’t feel safe. He is worried about the consequences of inattention, and mistakes, which will have serious consequences for the person on the bike.

Now of course we can say that it is Hogan-Howe’s responsibility to make London’s roads safer, but there are many things beyond his control, particularly the layout of the roads. Even with much greater enforcement and stiffer penalties for driving, people will still make mistakes on London’s roads, and as they are currently configured, that will have serious detrimental consequences for the most vulnerable parties. On this particular point, Hogan-Howe is right, and I don’t think it makes sense to criticise him on it. He just doesn’t feel subjectively safe. Nor is it right to criticise him for choosing not cycle.

Hogan-Howe’s feelings about cycling on London’s roads probably go a long way towards explaining why he made the assumption about people cycling through economic necessity. Cycling in London does not look attractive to him; consequently it is easy for him to assume that people cycle because they are forced too. (This is not to deny that cycling in London can usually be pleasant for many people).

Indeed, this points at an explanation for the wider cultural assumption that cycling is ‘for poor people’. Most people in Britain are put off by the thought of cycling on roads full of busy traffic. It is something they wouldn’t dream of doing. So when they see someone  on a bike, it is a quite natural assumption (if usually an incorrect one) on their part that the person cycling has somehow been forced into doing so; that there are negative factors pulling them into cycling, rather than positive factors attracting them to it. That they can’t afford a car, for instance, or because they can’t afford petrol.

Perhaps Hogan-Howe’s comments are most interesting for what they suggest about wider British attitudes to cycling as a mode of transport.

A sign of trouble

A good indication that a design for cycle traffic is compromised is if there have to be signs attempting to tell you how to use it.

This example – where the Superhighway 2 Extension meets the Stratford Gyratory – fits the bill perfectly, with a curious squiggly route, directly you up onto the pavement, then across two signal-controlled crossings.

Picture by Diamond Geezer

The sign below is on the approach to the Vauxhall Cross gyratory, on Harleyford Road. If you want to cycle to Westminster, well, it’s quite straightforward, you just go right (somehow finding your way across three lanes of fast traffic going the same way as you), back the way you were coming from, right again, then left. What could be simpler?

And a final example is these proposed signs for a junction in Manchester, spotted during a presentation at the Birmingham Cycle City Expo earlier this year.
The junction has trams passing through it, and so the idea is to get people to cycle on the pavements away from the left arm of the junction entirely (hence the red crosses running through a bike symbol on the signs). That makes turning right coming from the arm at the top of the picture ridiculously long-winded.

The engineers giving this presentation were, I think, a bit embarrassed about the signs they were asking us to consider. The basic problem seems to be that cycling wasn’t considered as a mode of transport at the time the plans for this junction were being drawn up, and consequently any routes through the junction were inevitably going to be an afterthought, fitted in around the margins, with confusing signs attempting to limit the damage. Amsterdam has plenty of trams, and manages to avoid having to put up silly signs like this for people cycling, because the routes you take through junctions while cycling are obvious and intuitive. Tram and cycle conflicts are avoided through proper design, not by attempting to persuade people to take circuitous and illogical routes, through signage.

This is much the same story behind the ‘right turn guidance’ issued by Transport for London on Superhighway 2, covered here. Here’s how to do a right turn, as suggested by the TfL explanatory video –

Straightforward.

Who on earth expects to make a right turn by cycling beyond the junction, and then looping around through 270 degrees, before rejoining the carriageway? These signs are symptomatic of a failure to take cycling seriously. They should not be necessary if the designs are right.

Better cycling through design – how to really ‘Go Dutch’

On Friday evening Newsnight carried a very good report on the issues of cycling, and cycling safety, in London. It’s worth watching in full, if you haven’t seen it already – it’s a sensible, measured analysis of the issues, featuring contributions from Rachel Aldred, among others.

In the discussion in the studio afterwards – well done that man Mark Ames – there was a slightly curious focus on the types of bikes people are riding in London. The co-owner of Velorution, Jonathan Cole, made some noises about a shift towards continental bikes resulting in more safety –

We see a very big shift into what we call ‘sit up and beg bikes’, where you can look around, you’re not moving as fast, and you have more awareness. I think the Mayor’s office is doing a fantastic job on the infrastructure in London, but it’s never going to happen overnight. One death is too many.

Pressed on why these types of bikes might be safer, he says

You’re not down [mimics riding with head down], powering along, there’s not so much adrenalin.

Well, I’m not sure this makes much sense. On the few occasions I’ve ridden my Dutch bike in London, I am certainly full of adrenalin. I am trying to ride it as fast as I can, and trying to apply as much power as I can. Riding slowly on the roads of London rarely feels like an option; it makes sense to try and keep pace with the flow of motor traffic, as much as is possible. The same goes for riding on my ‘sit up and beg’ Brompton. Even if I set out with the intention of riding sedately, I will inevitably arrive at my destination fairly hot and sweaty. London streets make you ride fast (or at least try to), regardless of the bike you are using. You cannot relax and travel at a pace you are comfortable with.

So why should the type of bikes being ridden make any significant difference to the overall nature of cycling in London? It surely makes much more sense to see the bikes being ridden – and the style of riding – as a symptom of the physical environment, rather than as a contributing factor in their own right.

It so happens that when Amsterdamize escorted a group of us around his city earlier this year, he was riding what might be described as a ‘fast’ bike, with drop handlebars. But he was riding it in just as relaxed and carefree a way as the rest of us (on ‘sit up and beg’ bikes) – because the environment allowed him to.

A ‘fast’ bike doesn’t have to mean fast riding

This is just one anecdote, of course, but there are many people riding faster, drop handlebar bikes in Dutch cities, amongst the great majority on upright bikes, and I cannot honestly say that the way they were riding stood out as being markedly different.

So it does not make sense to attempt to change cycling in London simply through marketing different bikes, or ‘importing’ Dutch cycle ‘culture’ (whatever that means). The conditions have to be changed first; the type of cycling, and the types of bikes being ridden, will then naturally adapt to that changed environment. Most people do not want to exert themselves all the time while riding, and so if they can ride at a relaxed pace, free from fear of motor traffic, they will do so.

This is a mistake that Boris Johnson is also prone to making. There was a telling passage in another Newsnight piece, aired earlier this year –

Anna Holligan (voiceover) – London’s self-styled Cycling Superhero [Boris] sees the Dutch bicycle culture as part of the solution for reducing congestion.

Boris – ‘They really have a totally different culture of cycling, and we’ve got to get that. When you cycle in Amsterdam, or Copehagen, or Berlin, you’re not in a great fleet of people with their heads down, wearing lycra, who feel that they’ve got to get from A to B as quickly as possible, as fast as possible. Everyone’s on big ‘sit up and beg’ bikes, they’re weaving around,  there’s a much more relaxed feel to the way the cyclists occupy the streets. And we need to get that culture going.’

To hear this, you would think that the reason people cycle differently in Amsterdam or Copenhagen is simply due to the clothes they are wearing, the bikes they are riding, and some vague notion of Amsterdammers being more ‘relaxed’ about getting from A to B more slowly (certainly not true), rather than it being a direct result of a physical environment that insulates you from motor traffic, where you are allowed to be relaxed. By contrast, in Boris World, all that really needs to be done is to transfer that kind of ‘culture’ here – to ‘get it’ – and hey presto, we’ve ‘Gone Dutch’. It’s the worst kind of lazy thinking.

So I couldn’t really agree more with this passage from a Guardian article written last week by Charles Montgomery –

Responding to this week’s deaths, the mayor issued a call for more personal responsibility on the road. But this ignores the truth I explore in my book, Happy City, which is that our road behaviour is generally determined by design. Through their form, roads send us unconscious messages about how to move. Wide roads with gentle curves induces faster driving regardless of posted speed limits.

… I believe Johnson made his plan for London cycling with the very best of intentions, but it did not account for the psychological effects of infrastructure. We are just beginning to understand the flawed ways that all of us make decisions about risk in cities. The solution is to take a more behavioural approach, which is less about telling people how they should behave and instead building with the knowledge that infrastructure designs action.

I’m not sure this is a message Boris Johnson wants to hear, because it conflicts both with the simplistic notion of people ‘Going Dutch’ all by themselves, and with the politically easy message of preaching personal responsibility. (It’s no surprise either that Boris – according to a high-up TfL cycling representative – remains most keen on ‘promotion’ as a cycling strategy).

As I argued back in October, before this awful spate of deaths,

both Boris and Transport for London are keen to focus on mistakes by either drivers or cyclists as the reasons for deaths and injuries on the roads, and this latest response [to the inquest into Brian Dorling’s death] falls into this same pattern. Blaming people is convenient, because it means that little has to change. The roads can stay the same; no space has to be reallocated for cycling; no cycle- and pedestrian-specific crossing phases have to be added. The emphasis instead is on education and training – trading places events, posters, and more ‘awareness’ are relatively cheap and easy ways to respond, and don’t involve disruption to the road network.

That is, as it turns out, exactly the strategy that Boris came out with after the fourth and fifth deaths last week. To make noises about people not obeying the rules, and about ‘very risky’ behaviour – noises designed to shift the focus away from the cruddy way London’s roads are laid out both for people cycling, and for the people who have to drive around them (because, at least for the great majority of HGV drivers, it must be hugely stressful negotiating roads where people are all around you, and moving in unpredictable ways).

Without speculating about the causes of the recent deaths, it is a given that if you introduce lots of people on bikes onto roads carrying tens of thousands of motor vehicles a day, and expect them to share the space, and make conflicting movements, serious injury and death is inevitable. Humans are fallible, and they will make errors of judgement. And that means the focus on bad behaviour is not just unsavoury, it completely misses the point. What mistakes that are being made should not be lethal.

This is a lesson the Dutch learned a long time ago. They deliberately design forgiving environments, with the aim that inattention, hastiness and just plain dicking about should not result in serious injury or death. It’s a principle called Sustainable Safety.

Pratting about on a street in Amsterdam – possible because of Sustainable Safety principles, which have created a safe environment through the removal of through motor traffic

We’ve arrived in a strange position in Britain where the slightest error of judgement on the part of the people who are vulnerable is legitimate reason for excusing their death. If you don’t have reflective bits on your pedals and you get crashed into by a driver, resulting in your death – well, that’s probably your fault. If you are alleged to be a novice cyclist, and a driver on the wrong side of the road crashes into you, killing you, as you wobble and fall as a result of her driving – that’s your fault too. Try to imagine the media and public reaction if you get killed on a main road in London while someone is sitting on your handlebars, like in the picture above.

So Boris’s tactic of making noises about ‘responsibility’ is actually very clever, because it buys into this background cultural acceptance that roads are places that are innately dangerous, places you shouldn’t venture onto on a bike (and to a lesser extent on foot) unless you are properly trained, clothed appropriately, fully obedient with all laws – even if doing so might actually put you at greater risk – and completely alert to all the dangers being posed to you, all the time, with ‘your wits about you’.

Activities that pose little or no danger to other people – at least by comparison with the danger posed by motor vehicles – are bizarrely framed as inherently ‘dangerous’. (Witness the BBC fixation on the red light jumping incident captured at Aldgate in the video on Magnatom’s blog here – in and of itself, virtually harmless, in static traffic, yet presented as being equivalent to the bad driving that can result in death.)

But – to take just one example – it’s almost impossible to imagine how the notion of children cycling in significant numbers would fit into this ‘safety’ discourse. Children are especially poor at judging speeds, they are easily distracted, and, frankly, cannot be relied upon to be sensible.

And the really inconsistent detail here is that when it comes to driving, we take precisely the kind of behavioural approach that seems so anathema with regard to cycling. We design out the consequences of mistakes that are made by drivers. Where there are plenty of crashes at a particular location, we describe that road as ‘dangerous’, and we take measures to reduce risk of injury or death to drivers – smoothing out a bend, or adding a crash barrier, or improving lighting. We don’t preach personal responsibility; we accept that mistakes are made, and attempt to reduce or eliminate the consequences of those mistakes, even if in almost every instance a driver was going to fast for the conditions, or made an error.

We should apply these principles consistently, even if the consequences are dire for motor traffic flow in towns and cities. The simple truth is we shouldn’t tolerate streets where errors result in death or serious injury. At root, this is a problem of environment, not of behaviour. That is the Mayor’s responsibility, and he should not duck it.

Does size matter?

One of the interesting points that is often raised with regard to the potential of cycling in London is that it is a big city – at least, substantially bigger than continental cities where cycling forms a large proportion of journeys.

Take this example from the Mayor’s Cycling Commissioner, Andrew Gilligan, interviewed by Portland to Portland earlier this year.

We have to learn some of the lessons from Amsterdam about how it is possible to have a city where there are enormous levels of bike usage. We’re never going to be quite as good as that, I don’t think – 30%, 35% of all journeys in Amsterdam are made by bike. London’s a lot bigger, a lot busier. But we can get up towards their kind of levels, by doing some of the same things they’ve been doing.

That is, the very size of London – ‘a lot bigger’ – is a reason why we can’t get near the cycling levels of a city like Amsterdam. The same claim – or variants thereof – can be found in forums –

 London is a city of nine million people. Copenhagen is half the size of Birmingham. London’s CBD stretches from Paddington Basin to Westfield.- getting on for nine miles. Copenhagen is endless suburb. (And, frankly I’d rather live in Beirut than Copenhagen.)

These assertions of unsuitability seem to hinge on an assumption that in larger cities, people make longer trips, that their journeys get ‘stretched’, by comparison with smaller cities. These longer trips are less suited to cycling. But how much truth is there in these kinds of claims? How long are trips in London?

Joe Dunckley has put the journey lengths from the National Travel Survey into graphical form, including a bar for London.

70% of trips in London are under 5 miles; 42% are under 2 miles. So clearly, a large majority of trips in London are – in principle – cycleable. Indeed, around 50% of all London trips are between 1 and 5 miles long, the kind of trip length ideally suited to the bike, rather than walking or driving.

We also know – from Transport for London’s own data – that a huge proportion of car trips in London are exceptionally short.

London residents make 7.8 million car trips a day (out of a total of 9.4 million daily London car trips), and 67% of all these car journeys by Londoners are under 5km (3 miles). This is a distance that could be cycled in under 19 minutes, at a sedate pace of 16km/h (11mph). 49% of these car trips are under 3km, which could be cycled in under 11 minutes at the same pace. 36% are under 2km.

Despite London’s size, then, car trips remain very short, for the most part. Again, these are trips of a length that can – and undoubtedly should – be cycled, or walked, if conditions are attractive.

So it seems fairly clear that the barriers to mass cycling in London are not related to its overall size, which does not seem to have a bearing on the length of trips made within it. The majority of trips in London are short, especially those made by private car.

A big city, full of short trips.

I wasn’t able to find information on trip lengths in Copenhagen, or in Dutch cities. If anyone has any links, please supply them, and I can include the figures in this post.

The headlines from Safetytown

From the Safetytown News –

A police chief has gone head-to-head with an MP after calling for compulsory pedestrian helmets.

Sir Graham Dense, Safetyshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner, wants a change in the law to force pedestrians to wear helmets. But Liberal Democrat Julian Evidence, Safetytown’s MP, a keen pedestrian who does not wear a helmet while walking in the city, says any law would backfire.

Conservative Sir Graham says the injuries caused by pedestrian accident head wounds seen by his doctor son helped convince him helmets should be compulsory. Sir Graham said: “I do think that wearing a pedestrian helmet should be compulsory. The damage that can be done if a pedestrian hits their head on a kerb can be terrible.

“My son has worked as an accident and emergency doctor and has seen the consequences of head injuries. When you think about it in those terms it seems obvious that a helmet should be worn. I certainly wear one when I am walking. It should be safety first all the time.”

Sir Graham’s commonsense-led policy-making is unequivocally backed up by several anecdotes about pedestrians getting hurt in the head. And it’s just obvious that the way to stop pedestrians damaging their heads is to fit them with pedestrian helmets, and to make them wear them all the time. Take these cases, from just the last few days.

In Crawley –

A 59-year-old man suffered serious head injuries after he was in collision with a car while crossing College Road, Crawley, shortly after 11.30am on Saturday (9 November). The Kent, Surrey and Sussex air ambulance was called in and the road was closed while emergency services dealt with the incident.

In Hawkinge –

A man in his 60s has suffered serious head injuries after being hit by a car in Hawkinge. Police were called just before 6.15pm on Friday to reports of a crash in Page Road. It is believed a green Toyota Yaris was negotiating a junction on a housing estate when it hit the pedestrian who was crossing the road. The man suffered serious head injuries and was taken to William Harvey Hospital in Ashford.

In West Knighton –

Leicestershire Police are appealing for witnesses to an accident which has left a 29-year-old man with serious head injuries. The incident happened just before 2.30am on Sunday near the Aberdale Inn pub in Shackerdale Road, West Knighton, which is just off the A563 Asquith Way. It involved a man and a woman who were on foot and a black London-style taxi cab. The 29-year-old male pedestrian was taken to the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham with serious head injuries. He was in a critical but stable condition.

In Matlock –

A 34–year–old woman is in hospital being treated for serious injuries after being hit by a vehicle in Matlock last night. The accident happened at 5.15pm yesterday at the junction of Church Street and the A615 at Matlock Green. The woman, of Matlock, sustained head injuries after being hit by a blue Range Rover. She is being treated at Queen’s Medical Centre, in Nottingham.

Do we not care about our pedestrians’ fragile skulls? Obviously too many pedestrians think it’s just not ‘cool’ to wear pedestrian helmets, or that it might mess up their hair. It’s time for a law.

Have you seen pedestrians walking about without helmets on? What do you think? Tell us now – vote in our poll.

Look Out!

This week Lancashire Police have started running a campaign, ‘Let’s Look Out for Each Other’, which amounts to the usual strange attempt to make drivers and people cycling ‘more aware of each other’, as if anyone riding a bike isn’t fully aware of the presence of motor vehicles, often travelling at speed and in close proximity.

The press release contains a quote from Chief Inspector Debbie Howard –

Figures show there is a 50/50 split in who is responsible for collisions and we want to highlight the common ground between cyclists and drivers, recognising that 80% of cyclists also hold a driving licence.

A Freedom of Information request has been made by StevenInLeyland, asking for this ’50/50′ claim to be substantiated. As the FoI request states, it flies in the face of other figures from the Transport Research Laboratory, which show motorists are solely at fault in bicycle/motor vehicle collisions in 60-75% of all cases. Thus far Lancashire Police have responded by claiming that their figures relate only to Lancashire, but no references have been produced.

This idea of ‘equal responsibility’ permeates the campaign; indeed, if anything, it seems that responsibility for ‘looking out’ is being placed firmly and squarely on the person riding a bike. This ‘Let’s Look Out for Each Other’ item focuses entirely on people cycling, with some strange tips. How is wearing a helmet going to help the process of ‘looking out for each other’, beyond mitigating the consequences of inattention?

The Lancashire Police Facebook page shows a similarly odd desire to focus on the behaviour of one party. Over the last three days, they’ve been posting these pictures. See if you can spot a pattern.

Only one of these – the last – is focused on drivers. The rest are aimed at people cycling, urging them to wear a helmet, get out of the way of people driving, or to make themselves increasingly visible. Indeed, the net effect of these exhortations is actually the opposite of ‘looking out’ – cladding people in reflective clothing is actually aimed at making it easier for motorists to be less attentive.

Yet more victim-blaming.

 

Superhighway 5 on diversion

Late last year, the initial plans for Cycle Superhighway 5 were released by Transport for London. The Superhighway was routed over Vauxhall Bridge, and straight up Vauxhall Bridge Road, to Victoria station, where it ended as it met the current gyratory.

The initial planned route of Superhighway 5

Unsurprisingly for a main road in London, Vauxhall Bridge Road is quite wide.

Clearly there’s Space for Cycling here

As it approaches Victoria, it does narrow slightly, although remains at least four lanes wide, with reasonably generous pavements on either side.

Still not a problem to accommodate cycling here, if London has genuine aspirations to become a cycling city

The initial TfL plans were not particularly ambitious, at least as far as cycling comfort was concerned. The route southbound was to be a combination of widened bus lane, and mandatory 2m cycle lane, and the northbound route would have been a 2m mandatory cycle lane, similar to that currently on Millbank. An important detail is that these arrangments would have seen the stripping out of the (intermittent) vehicle lanes on each side, leaving just a single lane for private motor traffic in either direction.

Part of the original CS5 plans for Vauxhall Bridge Road

It now appears that these plans have been abandoned, and the Superhighway will be diverted away from Vauxhall Bridge Road, onto the adjacent Belgrave Road.

The new proposed CS5 route, diverting onto Belgrave Road

Now this wouldn’t necessarily be too much of a problem – Belgrave Road is only marginally less direct than Vauxhall Bridge Road.

But there are two troubling aspects here. The first is that a Superhighway on a main road in London has simply been abandoned because of the concerns of Westminster Council about ‘traffic capacity’, and residents’ concern about rat-running. In the words of Boris’s Cycling Commissioner, Andrew Gilligan,

… cycle superhighway 5 was planned to come from New Cross and Peckham, over Vauxhall Bridge and up Vauxhall Bridge Road, ending at Victoria.

Nobody liked that idea much, frankly. We would have had to remove some general traffic space on Vauxhall Bridge Road. Both Westminster City Council and local residents feared that that would cause extra congestion on the road itself, and lead to rat-running through Pimlico’s residential streets.

I didn’t much like the prospect of cyclists using Vauxhall Bridge Road, which is extremely busy and in the northbound direction requires you to cycle into the middle of the road, often in heavy traffic, to avoid being taken left into Drummond Gate. There’s also the Victoria end itself, which requires cyclists to navigate one of central London’s worst gyratories, especially chaotic at the moment (and for years to come) with the station rebuilding works.

So it seems that Westminster Council simply didn’t want motor traffic lanes to disappear on Vauxhall Bridge Road. Gilligan’s comments about Vauxhall Bridge Road being ‘extremely busy’ and having to ‘cycle into the middle of the road’ are, I think, just window dressing in an attempt to back up Westminster’s position, because a properly designed Superhighway should insulate anyone cycling from that busy traffic, and not require them to cycle on a blue stripe in the middle of the road, as originally designed. It should be possible to design a junction where cyclists can progress straight ahead in safety – if we can’t do this, we might as well just give up now.

The TfL design for the junction with Drummond Gate, as referred to by Gilligan. Everton Smith died here in 2010.

 

The second issue of concern is that the route the Superhighway is being shunted onto is not going to be adjusted in any way to make it attractive for cycling. All that will happen here is the painting of the now familiar blue squares, intermittently on the road, which serve only for ‘wayfinding’. In Gilligan’s words –

Because Belgrave Road is fairly quiet, we wouldn’t need to make any changes to the road, apart from intermittent markings – square symbols every so often on the road surface to reassure cyclists that they were on the right route. There wouldn’t be any continuous lines of blue paint. There wouldn’t be any physical change to the vast majority of the road. There wouldn’t be any changes to the bus stops. And there wouldn’t be any loss of parking.

Well, frankly, this is ridiculous. Belgrave Road is only ‘fairly quiet’ by comparison with Vauxhall Bridge Road. It still carries over 8000 vehicles a day, which is about half the amount of motor traffic on Vauxhall Bridge Road. (Figures from the London Cycling Census Map show that Vauxhall Bridge Road carries around 17,500 motor vehicles per day.) So Belgrave Road is not a quiet road, at least by standards that would make it appropriate for cycling for all – and nowhere near the 2,000 PCUs per day recommended by new LCC guidance as appropriate for a road without physical segregation. (Another detail – will it even have a 20mph limit?)

Gilligan writes

I would expect that a substantial proportion, but not all, of the cyclists currently using Vauxhall Bridge Road will switch to the new route. So adding the switchers to the existing users, Belgrave Road might see perhaps 1600 a day.

But this doesn’t make much sense – given that nothing is fundamentally changing on Belgrave Road, it begs the question why people cycling on Vauxhall Bridge Road haven’t switched to Belgrave Road already. Some blue squares painted on the road aren’t going to make a jot of difference to the attractiveness of the route.

So something needs to give here – if the Vauxhall Bridge Road route is being abandoned, then Belgrave Road needs to be properly adapted, to make it suitable. There are simple ways to achieve this. The road could be made fully one-way for motor vehicles, to allow space for protected cycle tracks behind the existing parking (which wouldn’t need to be removed).

Belgrave Road, courtesy of Google Streetview

The road is already one-way only at the northern end, and residents would still be able to access their properties, albeit via a slightly more circuitous route.

Alternatively – as the residents claim to be concerned about ‘rat-running’ (remember, this is the reason given for not removing capacity on Vauxhall Bridge Road) – the road could be bollarded at intervals to cut out through traffic, while still allowing the Superhighway to pass through. This would improve the quality and safety of the street for local residents, while making it appropriate for a Superhighway.

It is not acceptable to shunt a Superhighway onto another street, and to assume that street, without any adjustment, is acceptable simply because it carries less motor traffic than the thunderous Vauxhall Bridge Road. The rhetoric contained in the Mayor’s Vision for Cycling is not being matched  by policies on the ground. Some quotes from that document –

Timid, half-hearted improvements are out – we will do things at least adequately, or not at all.

And

Our policies will help all Londoners, whether or not they have any intention of getting on a bicycle. Our new bike routes are a step towards the Mayor’s vision of a ‘village in the city’, creating green corridors, even linear parks, with more tree-planting, more space for pedestrians and less traffic.

And

The next all-new Barclays Superhighway, the route currently named CS5 from Victoria to New Cross, is being further improved from the already-announced plans. Details of this and other improvements and reroutings will be announced soon.

This is a test of commitment. Will this stretch of Superhighway 5 be designed appropriately, or will it be yet another timid and half-hearted compromise of the kind we are so familiar with?

How to stop people cycling on the pavement

With the opening of the Superhighway 2 Extension yesterday, I found myself looking through some photographs of Stratford High Street, before the new cycle tracks appeared. This one in particular caught my attention –

Some young kids being ‘antisocial’, and cycling on the pavement.

Now that cycle tracks have been built on this road (in place of one of the vehicle lanes) this kind of behaviour will almost certainly disappear – there will be no need to cycle on the pavement, now that attractive conditions for cycling exist away from it.

Pavement cycling in the Netherlands is, to all practical purposes, non-existent, for precisely this reason. There is no need to cycle on a pavement because there will be a much more suitable alternative beside it, both in terms of comfort and attractiveness.

Why would you cycle on the pavement here?

Or here?

Or here?

These are all busy roads with – in particular – a high volume of bus traffic. Without cycle tracks a significant proportion of these people would either be cycling on the pavement, or would not be cycling at all. The presence of cycle tracks creates pedestrian environments that are free from uncertain interactions with people cycling.

By contrast, when the pavement is the most attractive place for cycling on a given road or street, we should not be surprised when people choose to cycle on it, regardless of potential fines or penalties.

Indeed, if there is a problem with pavement cycling in a given area, it is an almost certain sign that conditions for cycling there are far from attractive for the vast majority of people. The proper response in these kinds of situations should not be to clamp down, or to increase patrols and fining operations – not least because this would be a disproportionate use of police resources. (Although of course I am not arguing that genuinely anti-social and dangerous cycling on the pavement should not be dealt with).

Instead it should be to create a safe and inviting environment for cycling, for anyone who wishes to ride. As Dave Horton has argued

Pavement cyclists aren’t seen as heroes, but perhaps they should be… in Britain we are taught that pavement cycling is a problem and that it’s wrong; though in truth it is neither. Today, Bradley Wiggins is the great hero of British cycling, and I hope he enjoys all the adulation he richly deserves. But in the meantime, the great unsung heroes of British cycling –  pavement cyclists – bravely pedal on, or try to any which way they can. They are not celebrated; they are seen as deviant, and are demonised.

Because the vast majority of people feel there is nowhere safe to ride, everyday cycling across the UK is being very effectively and very systematically blocked. Much premature talk of ‘a cycling revolution’ conveniently ignores the fact that a big majority of people are afraid to cycle, and will not start anytime soon unless something fundamentally changes. In the meantime, in most places most of the people who do ride a bicycle do so (either always or mainly) on the pavements. They ride either because they have no alternative – for example, needing to get to shift work (rendering public transport infeasible) at a location beyond walking distance – or because they actually like cycling but they just don’t like cycling in roads full of cars, trucks and buses.

The people in the pictures above are cycling despite the conditions, not because of them. Their journeys – and the trips of the people on foot that they are cycling around – should be made easier and more pleasant. Separating cycling from motor traffic benefits pedestrians, as well as those on bikes. An ideal way to make common cause with pedestrian groups?

 

 

 

 

Lord Wolfson’s flyovers

In September last year, the chief executive of Next, Lord Wolfson – also a Conservative Party donor and former advisor, who happens to be married to an aide to George Osborne – wrote an opinion column in the Times (£), calling for growth (or rather, particular policies to create growth). He wrote

The central problem is that many are blind to the wealth that could be created by better infrastructure and housing. Ask any Londoner: what would happen to the capital’s economy if the North Circular Road, Westway flyover, Dartford Tunnel and M25 were all permanently closed? They would instantly comprehend the permanent damage to businesses, jobs and wealth, not to mention the misery it would impose on those living in the city. Yet we find it hard to imagine the vast amount of wealth that could be created by building new roads, flyovers and tunnels.

The Westway is, funnily enough, one of the few bits of the inner London ‘Motorway Box’ that actually got built. (If you haven’t seen this excellent film about the extraordinary, aborted, Ringway project, then it’s well worth a watch). By Wolfson’s logic, the failure to flatten vast swathes of London to create ‘proper’ roads back in the 1960s and 1970s has somehow inhibited the economic growth of London.

But the Westway is only superficially ‘integral’ to London’s transport because… it’s there. If you build a nice big flyover that allows you to speed in to central London by car from west London (and indeed from out of London) then obviously people are going to start using it. And using it. And using it. Until it fills up with the people making these kinds of trips.

The lack of ‘Westways’ in the rest of central London hasn’t inhibited growth, because people have found other ways to get into the city, and to move about it. Trains. The underground. Buses. Dare I say it – bikes. And of course on foot. Modes of transport that are just as effective at getting you from A to B, without the horrendous visual intrusion, noise and blight that accompanies the Westway. They’re just more efficient, and more appropriate to a city. They also leave space on the road network for essential trips – deliveries, and so on, as well as for the kind of people who are just going to go on driving anyway.

So the lesson of the Westway is actually the opposite of what Wolfson thinks it is. He thinks taking it away would cause catastrophic economic collapse, when in fact it’s a relic, a tiny fraction of a system that didn’t get built, while London carried on functioning without it. Rather than building more Westways, we should stop and look at how London  functions without them. And indeed how other cities function without flyovers within them, while cities like Los Angeles remain clogged, despite vast road-building programmes (this was something Jane Jacobs appreciated even back in the 1960s).

But this isn’t the lesson Wolfson wants to learn. In the same Times article, he goes on to write –

There is an intellectual battle that must be fought and won before any real progress can be made. Until the country comes to truly accept that building faster roads and new family homes creates wealth, it will always be an uphill battle for governments to develop them.

If we can win this argument, the potential for wealth-creating development is vast. We could build a series of flyovers into central London, allowing the wealth of the capital to spread outwards. For example a “Southway” could allow people to drive from Croydon to Westminster in just 12 minutes.

Yes, he really wants to build a flyover from Croydon to Westminster, so people can drive into central London in 12 minutes. Where would all these motor vehicles go once they had arrived there? What would be destroyed to construct these roads?

The problem is that Wolfson only sees the ‘whizzy fast car trips!’ and ‘investment!’ side of the equation, not the ‘are you sure that’s really a good idea?’ side. There’s nothing wrong with investment; you just have to make sure you’re investing in projects that aren’t idiotic.

Fast forward a year, and it seems Wolfson is still peddling the same message – Turn Your City into a Carscape for Economic Success! He was recently the guest speaker at the Sheffield Chamber Commerce of Industry’s Presidents Dinner. You can watch his speech here.  Talking about economic growth in Sheffield, he argues

The potential’s there, but it’s got to be done right. And doing things right means giving people what they want. And there is an extraordinary appetite across the whole country for planners to give people things that they don’t quite want. So let’s just some up exactly what they want.

They want access. They want to be able to drive quickly to and from the city centre. They want plenty of parking. They’d preferably want a covered area. People don’t like being in the rain. So cover an area, as they have done in Leeds….

… They want it to be safe. They’d prefer not to be run over. They’d like to be able to push their buggies without the risk of a lorry mounting the kerb and mowing down their young family.

It’s easy to come up with designs that allow people to drive quickly into a town or city centre, with plentiful parking, and without too much damage to the quality of life, if you are starting from scratch with a new town. Houten is a good example of how a town can be simultaneously easy to drive into and out of, and yet retain the essential features that make it a pleasant place to live. Milton Keynes is a good example of how to do it badly.

But Wolfson is talking about established cities, where people live already, and where the road network is simply not set up to deal with a vast amount of motor traffic – the kind of motor traffic that would be generated if you ‘give people what they want’, in his words (and are we sure people do want huge roads going straight into the centre of Westminster, or Sheffield, with accompanying plentiful car parks?). This would require destruction on a vast scale – something he is at least honest about – and also would result in another kind of destruction, the destruction of the attractiveness and amenity of the places that Wolfson thinks should accommodate unlimited motor traffic.

It’s the transport version of killing the goose. We need investment in infrastructure that improves the quality of urban life, not reduces it.

UPDATE 25/2/14

The record hasn’t changed. In an interview with the Evening Standard, Wolfson had this to say –

“The new fly-under project in Hammersmith is hugely encouraging. It begs the question as to why we aren’t planning similar schemes to deal with the rest of London’s chronic congestion. Goodness knows we need them. There are always traffic jams in Baker Street so why not build a few bridges over Marylebone Road or another flyover? Why not build 30 or 40? Build more and better roads, put up sound barriers, build underpasses, overpasses, separate cycle lanes. No one would propose taking down the Westway, so why not build a Northway, Eastway and Southway? Imagine a flyover that went all the way from the middle of London to Croydon? The solution is so mind-blowingly simple.”

Simple!