Westminster’s cycling strategy – how bad is it?

There was a flutter of excitement at the Cycle City Expo in Birmingham last Friday when Andrew Gilligan mentioned that the important (in many senses) London borough of Westminster would shortly publish a very ambitious cycling strategy, and not just any kind of ‘ambitious’ –

Gilligan said the soon-to-launch Westminster cycle strategy was *more* ambitious than the Boris one.

A draft of that Westminster cycling strategy was duly released this week [pdf], and, frankly, it simply can’t have been the same strategy that Andrew Gilligan was looking at, unless he was being exceptionally charitable. Because it’s miserable. It bears no comparison at all with the Mayor’s Vision.

It should be conceded that this is, of course, a draft of the strategy, and not a final version, but what is presented in the document as it currently stands is deeply uninspiring and half-hearted. In fact it’s not even half-hearted, it’s barely ‘hearted’ at all. I started reviewing it in a generous and open-minded way, but it’s so bleakly awful that I couldn’t help but end up trashing it. In places, it made me genuinely angry.

The introduction starts out promisingly enough, noting that

cycling is something that should be encouraged due to the returns that it delivers to the wider community through reduced congestion on the roads and public transport system, better local air quality [note – Westminster has some of the worst air quality in the country, with limits set by European legislation regularly exceeded] and improved health for residents and visitors. 

and admitting that while, some measures have been taken in Westminster to make cycling more viable,

there is still far more that can be done to make cycling safer and more attractive, particularly with the enthusiasm generated through Britain’s recent Olympic and Tour de France successes. This means further investment and improvements are needed to overcome barriers to cycling and to encourage more people to take it up safely.

Here are the first worrying signs – why on earth should the Tour de France have anything to do with making cycling as a mode of transport safer and more attractive in Westminster? And instead of referring to making the act of cycling safer, it is ‘people’ that are being encouraged to ‘take it up safely’ – the burden of responsibility being shifted to the individual. Indeed, this actually forms the main basis of the ‘safety’ strategy outlined later in the Draft; cyclists being encouraged to look out for themselves (and, worse, the way individual cyclists are treated being framed as a consequence of the behaviour of ‘cyclists’ in general).

76% of Westminster residents never cycle. Beyond that statistic, there is huge potential for shifting hundreds of thousands of trips in the borough made by ‘mechanised modes’ (car/motorcycle/bus) onto the bicycle, particularly those up to 5 km. Even using Transport for London’s highly conservative estimate of Cycling Potential [pdf], 230,000 daily trips into the borough could be made by bike instead (around a quarter of all trips in, on a given workday). This would obviously reduce congestion on the road network considerably, as well reducing demand on public transport.

As always, the main barriers to cycling uptake are perceptions of safety, concern over motor traffic, and a lack of confidence. This is acknowledged by the Draft, albeit in a slightly mealy-mouthed way –

… there is a school of thought that suggests that safety fears in particular are sometimes over exaggerated as they are perceived as more of a valid reason to give for not cycling, particularly if the real reason is more to do with lethargy. Nonetheless, this tells us that for new cyclists, we must place greater emphasis on making cyclists feel safer on London’s roads, and reducing accident casualties. There is also much to be done to build confidence amongst a broader cross section of society that almost anyone can become a competent and regular cyclist, through training, education and regular engagement activities.

A not-so-subtle hint that those who don’t cycle for reasons of safety in Westminster might be lazy slobs rather than people who are genuinely scared of venturing anywhere near the roads, coupled with an emphasis on ‘building confidence’ as a substitute for actually making the roads subjectively safer. Hardly inspiring.

The Draft Strategy then moves on to ‘challenges’. Having already acknowledged that more cycling would reduce congestion and ‘pressure on the street’, paradoxically the Strategy then suggests it is ‘pressure on the street’ that will make it difficult to encourage more cycling.

[There is] significant pressure on our streets from people arriving and leaving by different modes, all competing with one another and with other modes for limited space on the footways, at the kerbside and in the carriageway – more so than any other borough.

This is ducking the issue, because high demand for limited space suggests an even greater need to shift trips in the borough of Westminster to efficient modes like walking and cycling than would be the case in ‘any other borough’. However Westminster are apparently too short-sighted to realise this, or to even acknowledge what their own Strategy has just stated. Later we have the sentence

Westminster’s roads serve a vital function and it is imperative that congestion is minimised

Again, deliciously oblivious to how more cycling in the borough would actually serve to reduce congestion, not cause it. To repeat, the Draft has already stated this in the introduction.

There follow more unserious attempts to suggest that cycling cannot be provided for –

The narrow, historic nature of many of Westminster’s streets means that providing separate space for each road user on every street is simply not feasible and a balance needs to be struck.

The word ‘historic’ is redundant, because the age of the streets in the borough is obviously irrelevant; nobody is going to be knocking down buildings of any age to build cycle routes. But ‘narrow’? Really?

Hideously narrow roads, as I’m sure you’ll agree. Yes, unlike the wide open expanses  available in central Amsterdam, poor Westminster is desperately short of space.

Joking aside, the main streets in Westminster – the places where cycling infrastructure is most needed – are plainly enormously wide. There is no shortage of space, and to talk of ‘balance’ while the width of these streets is used almost entirely for the purpose of funneling motor traffic around the borough is preposterous.

Later in the document we have the priceless

limited road space and competing demands… mean that the ability to physically segregate cyclists on the majority of Westminster’s roads is likely to be limited.

Amsterdammers would wet themselves laughing at ‘limited road space’, but in any case this is disingenuous, as there is no need to segregate cyclists on the majority of Westminster’s streets; they can be separated from motor traffic by means of its reduction and/or removal from side streets, using measures that reduce these streets to access only for motor traffic.

The main roads in Westminster, however, are a completely different story. Included in the Draft Strategy is a map that marks out these roads –

A map that could, theoretically, form the basis for a cycling strategy in a borough that had any serious intent. The red, green and blue roads are almost without exception of ample width, carrying high volumes of motor traffic on multiple lanes (sometimes as many as five or six lanes, as can be seen in the photographs above). Naturally the ‘local access roads’ (in white) should be precisely that – local access only, not shortcuts to somewhere else, and without any need for segregation as a consequence. You wouldn’t even need to tackle parking on these streets.

Segregation from motor traffic on the coloured roads is eminently achieveable (again, just look at the pictures above!) were it not for those ‘competing demands’, which in Westminster language should be read as nothing more than a desire to maintain the current flows of motor traffic, at all costs.

Indeed, the overwhelming impression from this Draft is that nothing will be done that might inconvenience the act of motoring – any act of motoring – in the borough. The cycling ‘objectives’ are vague and guarded, and hedged with exceptions and conditions. For instance –

The Council will… aim to deliver a range of improved routes for cyclists of different abilities, whilst recognising the needs of other road users and avoiding changes that place unacceptable additional pressure on the road network and kerbside.

That is – not interfering with motoring. Westminster therefore seem keen to ignore completely the main intervention that will enable the uptake of cycling in the borough – separation from motor traffic – and instead employ the spurious, unproven strategy of ‘integration’ with that motor traffic –

There is a need to encourage all road users to show greater consideration for one another and share space in a safe and responsible manner, enabling safer integration and shared routes rather than a presumption for segregation

How will this ‘consideration’ be achieved?

through training programmes, enforcement, education and campaigns targeted at both cyclists and non-cyclists, whilst recognising that many people are now becoming more ‘multi modal’ in their travel characteristics and should [my emphasis] therefore start to demonstrate a greater appreciation of one another’s needs.

Wow. A truly inviting vision of cycling for all – a hopeful reliance on the consideration of drivers as they whizz around you in all directions (and ‘whizz’ they will, because 20mph limits are out of the question, as we will see below).

This reluctance to consider the separation of cyclists from motor traffic on main roads appears to threaten the proposed central London ‘Bike Grid’ outlined in the Mayor’s Vision for Cycling.

Given that Westminster will be at the heart of the proposed Bike Grid, the Council’s participation will be key to the success of the Mayor’s Vision. For Westminster, an important element of this vision is the recognition that physical segregation or the provision of cycle lanes will not always be feasible or expected, particularly where there is significant pressure on footway, carriageway and kerbside space from competing demand.

In other words, Westminster think the flow of motor traffic should trump the comfort and convenience of cycling, even when this directly interferes with proposals contained within the Mayor’s Vision. Westminster can’t even bring themselves to fully endorse pitiful interventions, like feeder lanes and ASLs, that have relatively little or no effect on motor traffic flow –

The needs of cyclists continue to be taken into account in the design of all transport and public realm schemes. Features that benefit cyclists, such as Advanced Stop Lines and feeder lanes, will be integrated where feasible.

And even cheap, easy and painless interventions like a 20mph limit in the borough are rejected by this Draft, on utterly ludicrous grounds –

Whilst the implementation of 20 mph zones falls within the remit of the City Council, this is not something the Council is currently seeking to implement. In terms of cycle safety it is considered that a 20 mph limit could have minimal benefit as traffic speeds in the City of Westminster are often below 20 mph already, with the average speed being just 10mph.

‘We don’t think a 20 mph limit is a good idea, because the motor traffic speeding around our borough occasionally travels at below that speed.’ Hopeless.

With regards to safety, the strategy seems to be ‘encouragement’, training, and expecting road users to ‘look out for each other’ in a way that suggests different mode users bear equal responsibility for danger. The document even suggests ‘cyclists’, as an undifferentiated, monolithic bloc, need to start behaving in order to encourage ‘mutual respect’.

Whilst some accidents may be prevented through improved junction and road design, it must be recognised that accidents are primarily caused by the way that cyclists and other road users interact, and many could be avoided by improved road user conduct and caution…

If cyclists are encouraged to adhere to the rules of the road, hopefully [again, my emphasis] this will also help them to be perceived more positively by other road users and to encourage mutual respect and courtesy.

As someone who is considerate and abides by the rules while cycling on the roads of Westminster, I find it quite offensive that the borough could even imagine that ‘courtesy’ and ‘respect’ towards me is in any way conditional on the behaviour of other people who might be using the same mode of transport. My safety while cycling should be a given, not attenuated because of moronic prejudice. Shame on you Westminster.

Cyclists also need to be aware that pedestrians and motorists will not always be aware of or anticipating their presence, and that they need to play their part in ensuring that they are well seen and heard (for instance through maintaining a prominent position in the road and using a bell to warn pedestrians of their presence.

Miserable, miserable stuff, and needless to say there are no strategies outlined in the document aimed at improving the attitudes and behaviour of private motorists around cyclists, only a ‘hope’ that as more people might cycle, so outright, naked hostility will diminish each group will ‘have a greater appreciation of each other’s behaviour and frustrations’. Bless.

A big long list of piecemeal measures follows (including a passage that makes an erroneous connection between red light jumping and deaths as a result of poor visibility from HGV cabs), concluding with

The Council will also run a campaign called ‘Westminster chimes’ giving out free bells to cyclists, encouraging them to make use of their bell to warn pedestrians of their presence. The Council will also consider a campaign highlighting the dangers of the use of headphones whilst cycling.

Free bells! Such ambition!

It’s a stone-age document. What’s amazing is that some attempts have clearly been made to update it in the light of the publication of the Mayor’s Vision, which suggests it must have been even worse at some point before. There is absolutely no conception of what is required to make cycling an inviting and civilised mode of transport in the borough, even for those who currently cycle through it like me (albeit with some trepidation), let alone the vast majority of people who would not even dare to place their foot on a pedal on Westminster’s roads.

A re-write, please.

We don’t need ‘innovative’ solutions – just copy what works

We saw yesterday what Transport for London have been asking the Transport Research Laboratory to test for them.

It is an almost exact copy of a conventional Dutch roundabout with perimeter cycle tracks. They have even copied across the Dutch road markings, which I suspect may have created some uncertainty amongst the test drivers, as the ‘sharks teeth’ give way markings are quite different to the British version. The roundabout, we are told, will subsequently be tested with standard UK road markings. The only addition appears to be a forest of Belisha beacons marking out the zebra crossings (and some luminous jackets and helmets).

Andrew Gilligan made a publicity visit to the site, testing it out for himself, before giving interviews with both BBC and ITV News. I think he did an excellent job in presenting the case for this design, pointing out that (most importantly) it will make what are currently big, scary roundabouts places that anyone on a bike will feel happy negotiating. He also argued, persuasively, that this design will yield instant safety benefits, even taking into account the immediate unfamiliarity of users. It forces drivers to take the roundabout slowly, and cyclists crossing exits and entry points are always directly in a driver’s eye-line, and will cross paths at right angles. If you compare this design with the current nightmare roundabout at the northern end of Lambeth Bridge (covered here and here, the video amply demonstrating what Gilligan calls a ‘Darwinian’ approach to road interaction), there is no contest in terms of safety and amenity.

It’s very pleasing to see Transport for London engaging with designs that have been proven to work, and the City Cyclists blog is correct to say that this is a huge step forward. The Netherlands has history and expertise in making the street and road environment safe and pleasant for cycling. They’ve made mistakes that we don’t have to, because we can simply copy their superior end product. So we don’t need ‘innovative’ solutions, when there are proven and established solutions already available.

That brings me to a flyer that was distributed on every seat at the recent Cycle City Expo in Birmingham, which suggested it was time to ‘put cyclists in the middle of the road’. The link on the flyer takes you here, to TTC transport planning. The website states

As a profession we are getting better at providing safe and well designed cycle provision, however cars are still viewed as ruling the road and current design guides and standards for on-road cycle facilities more often than not place cyclists on the nearside lane where they are required to deal with surface hazards and drainage services. In order to ensure that people have priority and feel comfortable when they are cycling we need to be more innovative and adventurous in our approach to providing for cyclists.

Just what kind of ‘adventurous’ provision for cycling is being proposed quickly becomes clear –

One particular exciting, innovative and possibly controversial way of putting cyclists first is by designating a central lane for bicycle traffic, which involves:

• Central cycle lane;
• Cars using narrow lateral lanes, but can straddle the central cycle lane;
• Overtaking of cycle prohibited; and
• Speed limit reduced to 20 mph.

A ‘central lane for bicycle traffic’.

The reason these kind of designs are ‘adventurous’ and ‘innovative’ is because they are bad. They are ‘adventurous’ only because countries with proven experience of designing for cycling would not even contemplate employing them.

Further detail on this scheme is provided by a set of presentation slides, available here. The idea seems to be based around the assumption that putting cyclists at the side of the road is bad, because it means that ‘cars rule the road’.

Well, those are all plainly awful solutions (the last isn’t even a solution at all). But that doesn’t mean that ‘putting cyclists in the middle of the road’ is automatically better; for a start, we can put cyclists at the side in well-designed ways. Pointless, or intermittent, paint, that puts cyclists in dangerous positions, is not the only way of doing things.

But the presentation suggests that ‘putting cyclists in the middle of the road’ already exists in Europe as a strategy, even in the Netherlands.

The picture on the left looks to be from France; the picture on the right is of a fietsstraat in the Netherlands.

It appears, however, that the concept of the fietsstraat has been fatally misunderstood. The fietsstraat does not place cyclists ‘in the middle of the road’, ahead of motor traffic. A fietsstraat is, conceptually, a bicycle track on which motor vehicles are permitted to drive. Crucially, the only motor vehicles doing so will be those gaining access to properties along the fietsstraat; a fietsstraat is never a through route (the concept is illustrated well in this Bicycle Dutch post).

So the reason cyclists are in the middle of the road in that slide is principally because they know they will not have any motor traffic behind them, beyond the occasional resident. Being in the middle of the road flows naturally from the relaxed environment. How relaxed will the TTC scheme be?

‘Street open to all modes of transport’.

That is, the complete opposite of the fietsstraat, which makes sure the street is not open to all modes of transport.

The scheme smacks of ‘assertive cycling’ being forced upon cyclists who don’t want to be assertive in the first place; it puts markings on the road to position cyclists slap bang in the middle of the road, while motor traffic is tempted to undertake in lanes that are just wide enough for doing so (why would you even need signs telling motorists not to do this?)

Using cyclists as mobile traffic calming is a bad idea; it’s not good for motorists, and it’s not good for cyclists. To expect cyclists – even those who currently cycle, let alone those who are too nervous to ride at present – to hold a position in the centre of the road with a queue of traffic behind them is deeply unrealistic, as well as a suboptimal solution for making cycling attractive. You make cycling a mode of transport that people might want to use by increasing its comfort, not by forcing those on bikes into ‘dominating’ the road when they almost certainly don’t want to.

The ‘scheme’ even seems to accommodate on-street parking –

Which may, paradoxically, make it slightly safer by discouraging dangerous undertaking. The end result, however, is something rather similar, if not identical, to existing residential streets with parking on both sides, something the final slide (unintentionally?) acknowledges –

A central area to cycle, by default. Not exactly a great leap forward.

Employing a central cycle lane on streets without any car parking is not a ‘continental’ solution. The Dutch fietsstraat, so badly misinterpreted here, relies upon the removal of motor traffic, not the positioning of cyclists in front of motor traffic still free to use the street as a through route.

We don’t need ‘adventurous’ new designs, we need ones that work already, and that make cycling a pleasant experience. If you are deliberately choosing to force cyclists to cycle in front of motor traffic, you’ve already failed before you’ve even started.

Why do the Dutch cycle more than the British?

A series of recent posts on the Dutch blog Magic Bullet argues that the high levels of cycling in the Netherlands are predominantly explained by geography, both physical, and social. [An earlier post, suggesting that an explanation lies with power in the Netherlands being held by ‘wealthy, white, highly-educated middle class, working as decision makers’, who cycle a lot themselves, alongside a concentration of cycling students, is probably not worth bothering with here, largely because it is question-begging – why are these groups cycling far more than their equivalents in for instance, the UK, in the first place?].

The posts are more general than a specific UK-NL comparison, arguing about the transferability of the Dutch cycling experience worldwide. Nevertheless, a comparison between these two countries is instructive, because it can serve to isolate reasons for high Dutch cycling levels.

As regards physical geography, he suggests that the Netherlands demonstrates that both flatness and mildness of climate are required. He writes

Physical geography is one of the most decisive factors determining the success of cycling as day-to-day transportation… The breeding ground has to be flat [and] the climate should be acceptable to get outside 7/7 days of the week, 12/12 months of the year.

Of course if the climate of a particular country is excessively hot or cold, that will have a discouraging effect on ‘ordinary’ cycling; it just becomes too unpleasant. But most of Western Europe does not generally fall into this category, except for small periods of the year. And, specifically, while the Dutch climate is conducive to cycling – it is mild – the author himself describes how the UK climate is ‘even milder’. Climate cannot be a reason why cycling levels are so low in Britain, if a country with a less conducive climate – the Netherlands – has considerably more cycling.

Flatness is, again, initially convincing as an ‘essential’ condition for high cycling levels; hills are a deterrent, and should be acknowledged as such. Research does suggest that cycling levels do decline with increasing hilliness. But the author takes this argument too far, and writes that

Dutch-type cycling infrastructure in [hilly] areas would be a complete waste of money

People will certainly be less inclined to cycle in hilly areas than they may be in flat areas, but this is not an argument for simply failing to make conditions for cycling better in these hilly areas. Quite the opposite, in fact; the harder cycling becomes, the more effort should be made to make it as comfortable and as pleasant as possible. Hilly towns and cities are places where good cycling infrastructure is just as important as it would be anywhere else (Dave Horton has written convincingly on this subject). Flatness is not ‘essential’ for mass cycling (by which I mean cycling being available as a transport option for a significant majority of the population); we can and should enable cycling in hilly towns and cities, and not give up. More cycling is worth it, even if the levels of cycling achieved are not as high as in flat areas.

So, I don’t think that flatness and a good climate are ‘decisive factors determining the success of cycling as day-to-day transportation’. My own town of Horsham is virtually flat, and has a very pleasant climate. There is not a hill to speak of within it, beyond an incline here or there, and it rarely gets exceptionally hot or cold. Yet cycling levels here are miserable, as they are in countless similar market towns in Britain. The same is true for major cities like London, Manchester and Birmingham; the ‘decisive factors’ of flatness and reasonable climate have only succeeded in making cycling an attractive prospect for a tiny percentage of all trips.

Plainly there is a much more ‘decisive factor’ at play here in these UK towns and cities, although I should make clear that the author of Magic Bullet is more concerned with identifying the conditions that are required for high levels of cycling; he is not specifically arguing that these conditions, once identified, will automatically result in high cycling levels.

His more recent post then turns to ‘social geography’ as an explanation for high Dutch cycling levels, or, specifically, as an ‘essential condition’ for the high cycling rate.

after you’ve climatized your country and moved all mountains, one has to put the country into a shrinking machine to make it truly ideal for cycling. As a result of the shrinking, all distances become within lilliput range of a lilliput vehicle: the bicycle. Upon shrinking, absolute speed is less important, because everything is nearby anyway.

That is, high cycling levels in the Netherlands are dependent not just on a good climate and flatness, but also on the country being ‘shrunk’; it has a high population density, and (separately) its towns and cities are small and compact.

David Hembrow has, of course, pointed out that England has a very similar population density to the Netherlands, yet very different cycling levels. This is critiqued by Magic Bullet as a sleight of hand, because England (unlike the Netherlands) is not a sovereign state, only a ‘constituting country’, part of the United Kingdom.

My response to this is essentially ‘so what?’ 

I see no reason to believe that cycling levels in England would be significantly different if it were to become a sovereign state, independent of the other members of the United Kingdom. It would have the same population density it has now, the same climate, the same geography, and the same low cycling levels. It’s perfectly acceptable to compare England with the Netherlands, even if they are not the same constitutional entities; the objection is as silly as saying a large town can’t be compared with a city of the same population because one is a city, and one is a town. If the population density of an area is important for cycling, it is surely important irrespective of whether the area under consideration is a constituting country or a sovereign country.

[EDIT – Paul M, in the comments below, has got me thinking about whether the population density, of a country as a whole, is even worth bothering with as a reliable indicator of cycling levels. Sweden, for instance, has a very low population density of only around 20 people per square kilometre, but that is no reason to suppose cycling will never form a significant proportion of all trips made in the country. At least a third of Sweden’s population is concentrated in the metropolitan areas of the three biggest cities, where cycling can form a serious mode of transport. Sweden already has a 9% modal share for cycling, for all trips in the country.]

The argument then switches from apparent low density in the UK explaining low cycling rates, to high density explaining low cycling rates; specifically

Typical population densities of Metropoles e.g., London (5206/km2), Paris (21423/km2), New York (10.606/km2) are much higher than anywhere in The Netherlands (e.g., Amsterdam 3645/km2, Rotterdam 2850/km2).

How can this be? High densities should surely result in high cycling rates; yet the rate of cycling in London, as a whole, is barely better than the rest of the UK, and much lower than anywhere in the Netherlands. The explanation –

In true metropoles, subways, trams, buses and walking are completely taking over the role of the bicycle. Distances between one side of the metropole and the other are much too long to cover with a bicycle: London has a surface of 1577km2, Amsterdam is only 219km2(=11x20km). Amsterdam can be cycled through from one end to the other in an hour or so. London would take you half a day or more.

So it’s the size of London that is responsible; the assumption being that in bigger cities, trip lengths get longer. That’s why London has an extensive public transport system; because trips within it are long and consequently not attractive by bike.

I don’t have any information on typical trip lengths in Dutch cities (perhaps someone can supply them) but it is certainly not true that trips in London are mostly so long they are not cycleable. Joe Dunckley has helpfully put this information in graphical form (taken from the National Travel Survey), so I can borrow it shamelessly –

The relevant column for London shows us that 42% of all journeys in London are under 2 miles; 70% are under 5 miles; and 86% are under 10 miles. A large majority of trips in London, therefore, are of an eminently cycleable distance; they are under 5 miles long. We can also see that around 50% of all London trips are between 1 and 5 miles long; the ‘sweet spot’ for cycling distance.

The size of London has not resulted in a large proportion of trips being made all the way across the city; the majority of trips are composed of short distances within it. It’s entirely reasonable to expect the relative proportion of trip lengths made in Dutch cities – despite them being smaller – to be broadly similar.

The argument then finally moves to a discussion of the geography of the Netherlands as a whole; it is claimed that the Netherlands’ arrangement of small towns and cities, at close relative proximity to each other, is a critical factor in explaining why cycling levels are so high. Commenting on this pattern of small cities, positioned closed to one another, he writes

What a difference with the UK, where [the] entire top 20 [by city size] is larger than Eindhoven. Or Germany, where the entire top 30 is larger than Eindhoven. But the overall population density of these countries is still lower… that’s due to the horrific emptiness and long distances in between those big cities. These distances will kill all attempts to promote relaxed cycling from one city to the other.

Well, a sound basis for high cycling levels in a country is not the amount of cycling from one city to another, or even from one town to another; it’s cycling within towns and cities, so I have to say distance between large towns and cities is rather irrelevant. These longer trips, upwards of 10 miles, will not be as attractive for cycling, and will always remain a small minority of the total number of trips made by bike. Bicycle trips between towns and cities in the Netherlands will pale into insignificance compared to the number of trips made within them; so the proximity of their towns and cities to each other doesn’t strike me as a particularly determining factor. (You could even argue that large cities like London, Birmingham and Manchester represent an amalgamation of outlying towns and villages within the urban area, and in that sense are not all that different from the Dutch arrangement, albeit with the rural bits in between having disappeared).

And despite the apparent ‘horrific emptiness’ of Britain, we can borrow one of Joe’s graphs again to demonstrate that trip lengths in Great Britain are, for the most part, rather short –

 66% of all trips in Great Britain are under 5 miles, and 83% are under 10 miles. The arrangement and spacing of our towns and cities is probably not all that important; trips are generally short.

These distances correspond closely with the distances cycled by bicycle in the Netherlands. 58% of all bike trips here are between 1 and 5 km long (a further 18% of all trips made by bike are between 5 and 10km long), and only 19% of all bike trips made are shorter than 1km. So there is huge potential for converting a significant proportion of those 66% of all British trips to being cycled.

And here we come to what I consider to be the most pressing ‘essential condition’ for high cycling levels. It isn’t flatness, or climate, or social geography (although these things can be important), because a high proportion of trips in Britain (and in London specifically) are short, the climate is mild, and large parts of the country are generally flat.

The reason why these conditions have not resulted in high cycling levels is due to the environment for cycling itself; how pleasant and attractive cycling trips actually are. This isn’t mentioned at all by Magic Bullet, and yet the evidence would suggest it is the most pressing ‘essential condition’. ‘Main roads’ in Britain typically look like this –

While ‘main roads’ in the Netherlands typically look this –

Big junctions in Britain frequently look like this –

While big junctions in the Netherlands look like this –

It is the environment for cycling that explains why short trips in Britain, despite a mild climate and general flatness, are cycled in only a tiny minority of cases. Dutch cyclists are insulated from road danger, while British cyclists are continually exposed to it. I suspect this is why Dutch people fail to identify – or downplay – subjective safety as a significant reason why people don’t cycle. They don’t know any different.

Bollards

After writing recently about gryatories and one-way systems – and how they can actually be beneficial for cycling, if applied judiciously – I thought I’d turn my attention to another piece of much-maligned urban infrastructure, the humble bollard.

Frequently impugned as an ugly feature of the urban environment – ‘bollardism’ – bollards, applied properly, are a cheap and easy way of civilising streets; indeed a simple way to turn a ‘road’ in to a ‘street’.

There are several new examples in London. Stonecutter Street has recently been closed off to motor vehicles (but remains permeable to bicycles and pedestrians) at the junction with Blackfriars Road.

Likewise Earlham Street has been closed off at the junction with Shaftesbury Avenue, turning a nasty rat-run into a civilised street with people happy to mingle in the road (no particular need for any re-paving here).

 And (in Camden again) Warren Street has been closed off halfway down.

In all of these cases, the intention is to force motor vehicles to use the appropriate adjacent road, instead of cutting through. Motor traffic should be using Euston Road, instead of Warren Street, for instance.

And it should be progressing down Shaftesbury Avenue, instead of Earlham Street.

Likewise, Stonecutter Street  is designated as a ‘Local Access Road’ in City of London documents, and it is now being treated appropriately by being closed off; it is now genuinely only an ‘access road’, rather than a shortcut to somewhere else.

Of course, a legitimate concern that is expressed is that these kind of arrangements simply displace motor traffic onto other roads and streets; that a problem is simply pushed elsewhere.

There are two ways of responding to this; the first is to point out that some roads are much more suitable for carrying motor traffic than others. Euston Road is the right place for motor traffic, and it doesn’t make any sense to dilute the amount of motor traffic on it by allowing some of it to progress down Warren Street.

Secondly, in closing out motor traffic from these ‘side’ streets, we shouldn’t abandon the main roads, and simply allow them to become dominated by motor traffic. Main roads should also be civilised places. Applying filtered permeability to side streets should only be a part of a comprehensive network strategy, one that sees main roads with appropriate treatments for walking, cycling and public transport. If main roads are comfortable and attractive places to cycle, for instance – with the addition of cycle tracks – then that ‘displaced’ motor traffic can and should evaporate entirely.

By way of example, it’s worth pointing out that ‘main roads’ in Dutch towns carry considerably less motor traffic than the equivalent urban roads in Britain, despite a policy of making side streets virtually impossible to use by motor traffic attempting to pass through. There is no ‘displacement’, because the entire urban environment is conducive to cycling, and so any excess motor traffic that might have been forced onto main roads simply doesn’t exist. That ‘traffic’ is on bicycles instead.

Indeed, when I present pictures of ‘main roads’ in Dutch towns and cities with cycle tracks, I am often met with comments that suggest the road is ‘quiet enough’ not to justify cycle tracks at all. There are many examples in the city of Assen, where ‘main roads’, with cycle tracks, appeared (to me at least) to carry far less motor traffic than an equivalent UK road, despite the side roads being closed off. And this is because people are travelling on bikes instead, to a large degree. This picture of a main road was taken at about 5pm –

The road here (a main route into the centre of town) was significantly less busy with motor traffic than a similar road in the UK.

Here are some more ‘main roads’, this time in Amsterdam. These are the only available routes to motor traffic, but are nowhere near as congested or dangerous as urban main roads in Britain, despite the smaller network available to that motor traffic.

The point is that motor traffic won’t be pushed onto these roads if you have a coherent policy of making cycling an attractive alternative to driving in urban areas; much of the motor traffic will cease to exist.

In Utrecht ‘main roads’ are even being removed completely, despite limited permeability elsewhere on the network for motor vehicles, because they’re not needed anymore.

An urban motorway in Utrecht in 2011, which is currently being removed and replaced by the canal that originally existed here, a bus route, and cycle tracks

A policy of ‘bollarding’ won’t necessarily result in displacement of motor traffic if a sensible strategy of enabling that traffic to shift to other modes is in place.

More bollards please!

Who is dying while riding a bike?

Some interesting statistics have just been released by the Dutch statistics bureau – their road deaths for 2012 [Translated here – thanks to Mark Wagenbuur].

I’ve presented here in chart form the age range of those dying while riding a bike in the Netherlands.

And for comparison, the age range of those dying while riding a bike in Britain (taken from the Times’ compilation of news reports) –

The difference is really quite remarkable. Dutch cycling deaths are skewed very heavily to the elderly; 71% of all cycling deaths are over the age of 60, and nearly 25% are over the age of 80. This is quite significant, because these are people who are the people who are more likely to die, either of natural causes while cycling, or as the result of any incident that may occur while cycling. By contrast the ‘death distribution’ in the UK is much more heavily weighted to middle age.

Of course these statistics don’t tell us a great deal in the absence of the relative amount of cycling being carried out by these age groups; but it is telling that just 9% of Dutch cycling deaths are in the age group 15-40, while in Britain 26% of all deaths are in this age group (indeed, the absolute numbers are rather similar, despite the huge difference in the amount of cycling between the two countries).

Part of the explanation must lie in the fact that the elderly cycle far more in the Netherlands than they do in the UK; they will inevitably form a higher proportion of deaths in the Netherlands on this statistical basis alone. But the graphs suggest that death while cycling in the Netherlands is much more attributable to the frailty of the population doing the cycling compared to the UK, where the age distribution of death seems to correspond more closely to the amount of cycling each age group carries out. Food for thought.

Conflict between lorries and bicycles

To add to the distressing news of the death of the climatologist Kat Giles on Victoria Street two weeks ago, a young man on a Boris Bike was seriously injured in London last Friday in what seem to be very similar circumstances – crushed by a left-turning lorry, on Grays Inn Road. Both of these incidents are close to home for me – I frequently cycle down Victoria Street, and last Friday’s incident occurred directly opposite the Yorkshire Grey, the venue for Street Talks.

It wouldn’t be appropriate to speculate on the causes of these most recent incidents – just the latest in a very long line of deaths and serious injuries resulting from turning lorry conflicts. However, it is safe to say that human error is one of the most likely contributory factors; a failure of observation, too much haste, a lack of concentration, and so on.

While it is right that much more can and should be done to make lorries safer – better mirrors and warning devices, cabs with better visibility, higher industry standards – the fact remains that human beings are not infallible. They will make mistakes. And that does include cyclists, who will naturally incline to staying close to kerbs, and will consequently find themselves in dangerous positions at junctions (please do read Mark Ames’ excellent guide on this topic).

So for that reason I agree with Danny Williams, that the simplest and ultimately most effective solution is

to keep tipper trucks and people on bikes apart from each other.

One way of achieving this would be a lorry ban at peak hours, which has been mooted, but this doesn’t seem to me to be particularly likely, or workable. Even if it does come into force, there will (or at least should be) plenty of other cyclists about in London at other times of the day. Cycling should not just be about commuting; it should be about going to the shops, or visiting friends, or going out for the evening, or cycling to school – basic, everyday trips that will occur at all times of the day. We should try to protect all cyclists from interactions with lorries at all times, not just commuters. So a peak time ban would only amount to a stopgap intervention.

Danny quotes a Dutch Road Safety fact sheet, which states that

Truck drivers do not make the best possible use of the different mirrors [and] cyclists insufficiently take account of the fact that trucks have a limited visual field. The ultimate solution for the blind spot problem is a structural separation of trucks and cyclists.

The sad thing is that we should already know how to do this; we have examples of how to keep lorries and cyclists apart. The Netherlands has perfected road design that remove interactions between heavy goods vehicles and cyclists to an enormous extent.

Here’s an example, a busy junction in Amsterdam.

I’m cycling past a tipper truck, the type of vehicle involved in the latest collisions in London. But I will not interact with it at all.

If I’m turning right, I won’t need to go anywhere near the road; the cycle track merely continues around the corner, uninterrupted, and fully protected from the road. If I wish to go straight on, the truck will be held at a red signal while I have a separate green signal. Conversely, when the truck starts to move, I would then be held at a red signal.

Here’s another example of what this looks like, again from Amsterdam.

Here cyclists are progressing straight ahead across the junction (alongside pedestrians, who also have a green signal on their crossing). But note, crucially, that motor vehicles wishing to turn right are held at a red signal. 

So there is no turning conflict here, of the kind that has resulted in dozens of deaths and countless more serious injuries in London in just the last few years alone. Cyclists are separated in time and space from the movements of motor vehicles, just like pedestrians are.

What I find almost incredible is that we can potentially implement a very good approximation of this kind of Dutch design, right now. The elements are already in place.

We can put motor vehicles on different light signals for different turning movements. We already do this.

Different signals for motor traffic turning in different directions.

Likewise, we can put cycle tracks, separate from the road, around corners. They’re often called ‘shared use pavements’ (our disastrously bad version of off-carriageway provision) or they are poorly-implemented cycle tracks, with confused or dubious priority and separation. We can already do this; we just need to do it much better, with wider, better designed provision for cycling, and with clear priority for pedestrians, where appropriate.

A cycle track around the corner of a junction

And we can let cyclists and pedestrians cross the road simultaneously on green signals; we have toucan crossings. We even attempt to separate the movements of pedestrians and cyclists when they cross, although, again, we do it quite badly.

A toucan crossing at Hyde Park Corner. Technically cyclists should cross to the left, and pedestrians on the right, but the design is unclear and confusing.

My point is that there is really nothing to stop us building a high-quality Dutch-style junction tomorrow. We don’t need to experiment; we know what works, because the Dutch have already done it. We just need to copy it, and do it well. Even better than that, take the things we can already do, and just implement them as well as the Dutch implement them.

When cycle tracks go round corners, make it clear that it is not a pavement, but also provide clear crossing points for pedestrians, where they have priority.

Continuous protected cycle track, with zebra priority for pedestrians

And where cyclists cross junctions with pedestrians, greater clarity is required.

Clear and distinct crossing routes for pedestrians and cyclists; not just a fudge that treats the two as equivalent users

In principle, there’s absolutely nothing stopping us from doing this right.

So it is more than a little disconcerting to read that Transport for London are

[hoping] to be able to test what interventions work

as the Alternative Department for Transport blog reports. He writes – and I’m inclined to agree –

TfL would rather figure it all out for themselves from scratch. This is madness – all the research is available from the Netherlands, which went through the learning process 35 years ago (and is still improving its cycling facilities). They made the mistakes so we don’t have to.

Yet TfL will “test what interventions work”? We already know what interventions work! They’re going to play around with our money, making it up as they go along because they can’t be arsed to go see what makes roads in the Netherlands work so well.

In a similar development, Transport Extra magazine reveals that

Transport for London is refining its traffic modelling to improve the representation of cycling and pedestrian behaviour. “Until recently, relatively little research had been undertaken worldwide to understand the behaviour of vulnerable road users at traffic signals and therefore be able to accurately represent them in traffic models,” TfL has told the London Assembly’s transport committee.

“We are leading on a world-first piece of research to understand cyclist behaviour as they discharge from signals and travel between signals. The research will also look at the impact cyclists have on general traffic discharge where they comprise a high proportion of road users.”

TfL says the work is being complemented by TRL research on pedestrian behaviour at traffic signals. “Once findings from the research are received [later this year], the new algorithms for cyclists and pedestrians will be available to update the capabilities of the modelling tools,” TfL explains.

Well, there are already  countries with high volumes of pedestrian and cycle flow at junctions, countries very near to us, so it’s hard to understand why Transport for London are spending time and effort coming up with fancy models when we have real world examples of large numbers of cyclists flowing through busy junctions. The impression being given is that TfL have no idea how cycling works in countries like the Netherlands and Denmark, and that cyclists ‘comprising a high proportion of road users’ is a unique, new problem, requiring new, unique modelling.

What we need to see is an end to bodging, and in its place, bold plans that would privilege cycling as a mode of transport, not just by making it convenient and comfortable, but most importantly of all by making it safe. We cannot go on with road designs which expect cyclists to fight for position with road vehicles turning across their path. We don’t send pedestrians across the road at the exact same time when motor vehicles will be bearing down on them; we shouldn’t do it with people on bikes either.

It is no exaggeration to say that people are dying because we are failing to take action.

A bicycle lost control

A selection of recent news items in 2013, concerning bicycles losing control.

In Hull –

Police said the bicycle lost control, span round and hit the lamppost opposite the Holiday Inn.

In Croydon –

The London Fire Brigade told the Advertiser the bicycle lost control, flipped over and hit the two pedestrians

In Nantwich –

Father-of-three Rob was killed after his bicycle lost control and hit a tree at 55mph on Marsh Lane, Nantwich.

In North Wales –

Eyewitnesses told how the bicycle lost control on the A548, struck a kerb before careering through the air, across the central reservation and smashed into the AdHoc building. On the way it also destroyed a tree, sign, fence and lamppost.

In Bromsgrove –

A bicycle towing a catering unit on the A448 near Dodford crashed into a road bridge over a stream and a second bicycle lost control, left the road and went into the stream below.

In John O’Groats –

A bicycle lost control on the A836 Thurso to Castletown road at Murkle when it landed into the garden of a property at 11.55am

In Davistow –

The porch of a house in North Cornwall was completely destroyed at the weekend after a bicycle lost control on the A39 and careered into the building.

In Callington –

A woman had a lucky escape after her bicycle lost control, hit a hedge and flipped near to Callington today.

In West Sussex –

She and her friend had watched in horror as a bicycle lost control on a bend and slid down a hill on its side, crashing into two cars in its path

In Rugby –

Oliver, 17, died during the crash when a bicycle lost control and collided with a lamppost just after 4.30pm.

In Greater Manchester –

A spokesperson for Greater Manchester Police told Saddleworth News: “At approximately 3.30pm this afternoon, a bicycle lost control and crashed into a ditch on the A635 Road above Greenfield, it ended up shedding its load of scrap metal. Thankfully no one has been injured.”

In Southend –

A WOMAN had to be cut free from her bicycle after a collision in Southend. The crash happened at 8.40pm on Monday in Eastern Avenue. Firefighters worked to cut her free after another bicycle lost control and ended up on the wrong side of the carriageway.

In Kent –

Dale West was riding a silver Batavus when his bicycle lost control and was involved in a collision with a lorry parked in a layby on the opposite carriageway.

In Bromsgrove (again) –

A bicycle lost control and smashed into a tree during an early morning Bromsgrove Highway crash.

In Tyrone –

One man remains seriously injured in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast after a bicycle lost control on the A5 Omagh to Newtownstewart Road on Sunday.

By now you’ll have probably guessed that a bicycle was not involved in any of these incidents.

As we all know, bicycles do not ‘lose control’. They are controlled by human beings. 

All I have done, in each of these news items, is to exchange the word ‘car’, ‘van’ or ‘lorry’ for ‘bicycle’, to demonstrate the absurdity of the conventional phrasing, so commonly used in news items – impersonal language that denies agency. Motor vehicles do not lose control. People lose control of them, with disastrous, and often fatal, consequences.

What’s also interesting about these stories is how the carnage, injury and death seem quite farcical when the mode of transport involved is the humble bicycle. Bicycles do not career through the air, smash into buildings, or crush pedestrians. They’re really quite safe, and when people do lose control of them, the consequences are quite mundane when compared to the consequences detailed in these news items.

A failure at Aldgate

I recently attended the first seminar in a new LCC Policy series, at which the Cycling Commissioner Andrew Gilligan addressed an audience of about a hundred people, discussing in detail the future plans for cycling in London.

Gilligan made it quite clear that he wanted to be informed of new developments being proposed in London that were not up to scratch, as far as cycling was concerned. He gave the example of the Heygate development in Southwark, which would have compromised cycling if the original plans had been left unaddressed. He also wanted criticism of TfL plans to continue; a message he repeated at a meeting with Camden Cyclists on Monday –

Gilligan encouraging campaigners to keep pressure up on TfL on delivery. Reception of Cycling Vision from activists was “almost too good”.

Well, from what has been posted on the City Cyclists blog this morning (please do read this important post in full), there is an issue – a big issue – at Aldgate. The plans to remove the gyratory and replace it with a two-way road look absolutely miserable.

The roads in the area are enormously wide. The space between buildings is vast.

A little further onwards, to the west from this point, we enter the Aldgate gyratory itself. This two-way road becomes a four lane, one-way road, in front of Aldgate tube station.

Courtesy of Google Streetview

The plan is to remove this gyratory, and restore the roads here (including the similar eastbound section just to the north) to two-way running.

But there is nothing for cycling. Here’s what the plans for this particular bit of road look like –

The tube station entrance – visible in the photograph above – is the hexagonal shape, between the two green ASLs.

Amazingly, it’s being converted into a two-way road, with just one lane in each direction, but with no infrastructure for cycling at all, bar a couple of ASLs with hopeless lead-in lanes. 

The westbound capacity of this road has been reduced from four lanes to one, and yet somehow no space has been reallocated for cycling. Even the bus lane has disappeared. Given the amount of space between the buildings you can see in the photographs above, this is an extraordinary oversight.

A huge opportunity is being missed here. Gyratory removal is seemingly taking place in a complete vacuum; motor vehicle capacity is being reduced, without considering how the space could be used for cycling, and for public transport. This is something I wrote about, at length, recently – it seems that trend is continuing.

We desperately need to start using the enormous amount of road space available in London in a more constructive way.

Pointless infighting

I spent an interesting hour or so yesterday discussing cycling in London, and the potential implications of the new strategy appearing from Transport for London, with Jack Thurston of the Bike Show, Bill Chidley, and Trevor Parsons of Hackney Cycling Campaign. You can listen to what we had to say this evening on Resonance FM, although be warned, it does get a bit nerdy.

It turns out that Bill has recently written an interesting critical piece which addresses, in part, my recent blog article about the legacy of historical attitudes in cycling campaigning, ‘No Surrender’. I started forming a comment response, but it soon morphed out into a larger piece that I thought would be better served here (that’s me being wordy again!).

The general thrust of Bill’s piece is a critique of infighting amongst cycling groups and individuals – ‘two bald men fighting over a comb’, as the article is titled. The strongest criticism is reserved for Freewheeler of Crap Waltham Forest, about which I don’t have a lot to say, for the main reason that it doesn’t really concern me. Bill quotes Freewheeler as arguing that

I am not suggesting arson as the route to mass cycling but I do think that cyclists need to consider challenging the status quo in other ways than tea and biscuits at the Town Hall…  Non-violent direct action stunts are long overdue in British cycle campaigning.

We chatted about this a little before we went on air yesterday; I’m of the opinion that taking to the streets can be very useful indeed, as long as it does not appear to be confrontational and deliberately difficult. I think critical mass rides in London – which I have occasionally attended – fall into this trap. Whatever message there is gets lost in the aggro. By contrast, I went on the Blackfriars ‘Flashrides’ in 2011, and on the LCC’s Big Ride, precisely because they had a clear message, and were more consensual.

Much of the rest of Bill’s article is fair, and indeed by the sounds of it (and from our discussion yesterday, both in the studio, and later in the pub) there’s probably not much disagreement between us. However he attributes some opinions to me that I don’t really hold; perhaps that’s my fault for a lack of clarity in my original article.

Bill takes me to task for stating that Hackney’s modal share is not all that significant, pointing out that it is the highest in London. That’s true, of course, but I suppose I was pointing out that Hackney’s modal share is not all that significant in a European context. A modal share of 8% is just miserable by Dutch standards. So the idea that Hackney represents the way to a cycle track-free future strikes me as a bit overblown.

Granted, it is much better to cycle in Hackney than in most other London boroughs – something I am always happy to acknowledge – but it is perverse to insist that, because Hackney is the best place to cycle in one of the worst cities in western Europe for cycling, it should be some kind of template. Hackney does many good things, particularly filtered permeability, which makes residential streets pleasant to cycle on, but the main roads in the borough are intimidating, even for a fairly hardened cyclist like me, and the insistence on keeping cycle tracks out of the borough is unreasonable.

Beyond Hackney, I also think Bill slightly misinterprets the point of my ‘No Surrender’ piece. He writes

It is a several thousand word treatise on what is wrong with the CTC, and how the CTC’s tactics, historically and currently, are undermining the efforts to get more people cycling.

The proposition that because the CTC once espoused ‘bad’ policies, that the CTC is irrecoverably ‘broken’ as an organisation long after the main characters responsible for the policy (or policies) are dead is not really sustainable.

The first paragraph is broadly correct, with the exception that I wasn’t writing exclusively about the CTC, or focusing on them, as much as that might have appeared to be the case. My intention was specifically to write about an attitude that the CTC leadership demonstrated in the past, and might, arguably, still hold today. Namely, that the roads are for bicycles, and any attempts to separate modes, or to put bicycles ‘out of the way’ of cars, giving cars free reign on the roads, is unacceptable. Closely connected to this belief is the attitude that cycle tracks, particularly in urban areas, represent an abandonment of roads and streets motor vehicles.

Naturally enough, I think these attitudes are wrong, for reasons I won’t go into here, mainly because I’ve done so at length many times before (as have others). But these beliefs weren’t, and still aren’t, the exclusive preserve of one organisation. I wasn’t out to ‘get’ the CTC; I was critiquing this particular philosophy, not an organisation.

So for that reason I don’t think the second paragraph – which suggests I believe that the CTC is ‘irrecoverably broken’ because of what happened in the 1930s – is fair. It’s perfectly possible for organisations to change; they aren’t necessarily stuck for life to any one particular idea. The LCC – of which I am a member – is a good example. It’s changed beyond measure over the last two to three years.

Instead of suggesting that this is the way to redesign our streets –

Picture courtesy of LCC

They’ve come up with a bold, inclusive vision of cycling for all, which draws heavily on best continental practice.

Even as recently 2010, Mark Ames was having to ask whether the LCC

are really pushing for cycle lanes and segregation on the busy main roads or not?

So the LCC have changed strategy considerably. But what about the CTC?

In 2009, they were arguing that

Cycle tracks away from roads fine if direct and/or attractive for leisure cycling. But alongside urban streets they are rarely suitable. Traffic restraint is best: capacity, parking, pricing.

Cycle tracks are apparently only suitable as connecting routes away from streets; all urban streets should remain the preserve of cyclists mixing with motor traffic.

I can’t think of any other explanation for this kind of attitude beyond the historically-influenced reluctance to ‘surrender’ roads, which my original piece talked about. Of course, it is now absurdly out of step with the emerging consensus, particularly in London, that cycle tracks are an essential and necessary intervention to civilise urban streets, and for making cycling an option for all.

The CTC are adapting, slowly, to this consensus – indeed they are being forced to. So to that extent they are not ‘irrecoverably broken’.

However, I think they are considerably hampered by the attitudes of much of their membership, and by the inertia of decades of this form of campaigning, which dismissed continental approaches as unworkable in the UK.

The reason I and many others have criticised the CTC is not just for the fun of it; it’s specifically because they have had – and still have – bad policies. The Hierarchy of Provision is flawed. Dual networks are flawed. Attempting to get most people to ‘share the road’ is flawed.

Pointing this out does not imply that I think that the CTC are solely responsible for the current state of affairs, with desperately low modal share and rubbish infrastructure. Of course it doesn’t. But their policies certainly don’t help, and those policies needed to be criticised, so that better policy gets implemented. Whether you characterise this as pointless infighting, or a constructive way of moving things forward, is up to you.

Compare and contrast

Exhibition Road –

Exhibition Road –

The top picture is taken from this flyer, advertising a talk given by Ben Hamilton-Baillie, entitled New Directions in Street Design, Safety and Movement. It was taken in early August last year, when the street was closed to motor vehicles for the Exhibition Road Show (more pictures here).

The bottom picture was taken by me at the same location, just over a month later, in September 2012, when the road was open to motor traffic, as it usually is.

It nearly always looks like this, particularly during the day.

I don’t know who was responsible for choosing that picture on the flyer. Nevertheless it is surely more than a little misleading to select an image taken when there were no motor vehicles present at all to illustrate how shared space street design can ‘reconcile traffic movement with the quality of public space’ – because, quite obviously, there was no motor ‘traffic movement’ on the days in question.

From the description of the talk –

Ben Hamilton-Baillie, one of the UK’s leading practitioners in street design and placemaking is coming to Leeds Met to deliver a lecture on current thinking, practice and issues surrounding traffic movement and the concept of shared space.

The need to reconcile traffic movement with the quality of public space in cities, towns and villages is widely recognised.  We all use public or pivate transport to move around and we all want beautiful and safe places to live and work in.  Shared space is one approach to resolving this issue, with a number of high profile schemes (eg Exhibition Road, Kensington and Ashford Ring Road in Kent) being delivered over the past decade where principles have been put into practice and from which experience has been gained.

What Exhibition Road actually demonstrates is that ‘traffic movement’ cannot genuinely be reconciled with ‘quality of public space’ without a considerable reduction in the amount of that traffic composed of motor vehicles.

The use of that picture on the flyer amounts to an implicit admission of the very same thing. 

Lengthier analysis of Exhibition Road from me here