A crash on a safe road

Early in the evening of Sunday 6th May, a car careered off the road on the North Street railway bridge in Horsham, striking the railings beside the pavement.

Judging by the location of the impact, I would guess that the driver ‘lost control’ coming around the dog leg bend as the bridge goes over the railway, and ploughed straight on.

However, this is only a guess, because I have no idea what happened. The incident was not reported in the press. It won’t feature in any accident statistics, because no-one was hurt. Presumably there will be an insurance claim for repair to the damaged vehicle, but that’s about it.

The only reason I even know why the railings are all bent out of shape is because I happened to be passing this way shortly after the incident occurred, and asked a police officer why the road was closed (answer; they were clearing glass and debris out of the carriageway).

So this section of road will continue to be seen as statistically ‘safe’. In the last ten years, there has only been one serious injury on it –

Data from the ITO UK road casualties map

The failure to record incidents like this means that we do not have a true picture of the danger on our roads, particularly for vulnerable parties like pedestrians and cyclists. Drivers are increasingly insulated from the danger they themselves pose, and are increasingly less likely to be injured in collisions like this one. That shouldn’t tell us that our roads are becoming safer. The actual risk posed is being hidden.

In reality, it was only sheer chance that prevented a pedestrian from being seriously injured, or even killed, in this incident.

The bridge is a busy walking route, at all times of day, as it is the only direct route over the railway into most of north Horsham (there is another route, by underpasses, but it is quite circuitous if you want to avoid the bridge). In all probability, there would have been people – someone – walking on the bridge on that Sunday evening when the car went straight on into the railings.

Luckily they weren’t in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Signs of the times

A couple of signs spotted on the Cycling Embassy AGM and field trip in Bristol.

This one, on Gloucester Road, is particularly wonderful, warning, as it does, of a barely visible tree. Watch out!

And one in South Gloucestershire –

Note the conjunction of the sign and the painted bicycle symbol on the road. There is, it appears, a construction site at the end of this road, but it’s not at all clear why cyclists should dismount.

These two signs stirred me into digging through my collection of the weird, wonderful and downright impenetrable uses of signage.

In case you were thinking about attempting to drive to the left of this parked van, the sign reminds you to use the road instead. Pedestrians are advised to use the pavement, rather than stepping off the pavement, walking around the van, and returning to it. Clear?

Pedestrians – walk around the barrier, rather than climbing over it.

Pedestrians – walk around the giant metal thing, instead of into it.

Technically correct, but a failure of common sense for an obstruction only a few yards long, on a wide promenade where cyclists and pedestrians are mingling anyway. Note also, in the background, another sign warning pedestrians to walk around an obstruction, rather than into it.

A short section of pavement under repair in Horsham. Could pedestrians perhaps use the road to walk past it, rather than walking all the way across to the other pavement for a few yards, and then returning? No. The road is for cars, even quiet dead-end roads like this one.

‘Crossing not in use’. I’ll admit I crossed the road anyway, particularly as it was closed to through traffic.

Cyclists and pedestrians – keep left, rather than swerving off into the bushes. Good idea.

Watch out pedestrians! There’s a barely visible lorry doing some roadworks in a pedestrian area.

The absurdity of most of these signs stems from the logic of roads and driving – namely that drivers find it very hard to see anything in their path, and need as much visible warning as possible to alert them to potential ‘hazards’ – being applied to walking and cycling. Pedestrians can quite obviously see things in their way, and move around them, as can cyclists. However, drivers aren’t expected to see things, or to drive appropriately, or to think for themselves. When roadworkers mending pavements stick rigidly to those rules they have been told to use when making repairs on the road, the disparity is evident.

The ‘future’ is here, yet again

New urban transport ‘solutions’ continue to appear thick and fast. Supposedly revolutionary, all of them are strangely familiar to that failed mode of urban transport, the private motor vehicle; or at least some kind of ugly hybrid between it and a personal mobility scooter.

I wrote last year about the Toyota ‘i-Unit’ and GM’s ‘EN-V’, both very silly forms of transport. The latest arrivals – which unlike Toyota and GM’s creations are more explicitly car-like – include the $12,5000 ‘Hiriko’ –

and Renault’s ‘Twizy’ –

What these vehicles have in common is an assertion that they are ‘green’ – because they are electric – and that they will make congestion, and the hassle of driving in city centres, a thing of the past. Renault say –

Ideal for around the city, Renault Twizy always finds a way through the traffic!

And the Hiriko is

designed to give city dwellers the freedom of individual transport, without the stress of tailbacks and endless searches for parking spaces.

It’s not clear to me how these vehicles, which essentially amount to cars – albeit small ones – can avoid tailbacks, or find a way through them. I have yet to see a Smart car managing to extricate itself from a queue of motor vehicles – at least, not legally. These vehicles will be stuck in queues, just like every other car, despite being snazzy, small and electric.

The Hiriko does have the minor advantage of folding up slightly so you can just about squeeze three of them into one parking space, but this is hardly a ‘revolution’. The sad truth is that we shouldn’t be endlessly re-hashing and re-branding a mode of transport that has had, and will continue to have, extraordinarily deleterious effects upon the urban realm, and should concentrate instead on proven modes of urban transport that, while not as technologically exciting, are proven to work. Namely, walking, cycling, trams and buses.

As I wrote last year, we already have a ‘vehicle’ that allows face-to-face interaction, can travel at speeds of up to 20 mph, is compact, energy-efficient, allows your children to go to school independently, can negotiate with pedestrians, and is a fraction of the cost of these stupendously over-engineered and technology-crammed devices. The bicycle.

It’s fun too.

Picture by Amsterdamize

Brighton, weather and parking charges

A lot of noise has been generated recently in Brighton by traders upset by an increase in parking charges, implemented on April 1st – they are firm in the belief that the increases have driven away their customers.

Seafront businesses are demanding an emergency meeting with council transport chiefs to discuss the “unmitigated disaster” of increased parking charges. Twenty businesses have come together for the first time and are calling on Brighton and Hove City Council to ditch the increase and reinstate parking charges from last year.

Businesses in Madeira Drive, including the Sea Life Centre, the Brighton Wheel and Waves Café, say the decision by the council to increase parking charges in April has severely damaged trade. The changes saw tariffs in some parts of the city more than double overnight. Following protests from traders, the council announced it would introduce a new eight-hour tariff costing £15 in the seafront high zone, including Madeira Drive, while keeping the all-day charge of £20. Madeira Drive businesses say that even the weekend’s warm weather had failed to boost visitor numbers.

It is of course very likely that the cold, wet and miserable weather over much of the period since the increase in parking charges has had a more serious role to play in keeping people away from the seafront – either those people who have parked there, or who arrived by public transport, on foot, or on bike.

The businesses evidently don’t agree, arguing that the warm weather of last weekend (it wasn’t that warm) has ‘failed to boost visitor numbers’. Indeed

Annette Kettle, the co-owner of Waves café in Madeira Drive, said: “We have had warm weather in the past week and there is still no one parking down here because of the increased parking charges. Whether that will change if there is a heat wave I don’t know but I seriously doubt it.”

I was down in Brighton on Tuesday, and visited the seafront at about 11 o’clock in the morning. Probably not the busiest time; a weekday, rather than the weekend, and also at a time of day when children are still in school. Was there ‘no one parking down there’, despite the warm weather?

Every space full, as far as the eye can see.

All the spaces adjacent to the seafront itself – right in front of Annette Kettle’s establishment – were taken too. Note that the seafront itself is not exactly heaving; even at this less busy time, all the parking bays are full.

This suggests to me it is quite obviously weather that has been affecting the numbers of people choosing to visit Brighton seafront, not parking charges; the traders are misdiagnosing what is influencing visitor numbers, and probably also overestimating the numbers of people who arrive at Brighton seafront, and visit their businesses, by car.

I wonder if that ’emergency meeting’ the traders are demanding will still go ahead.

Pinch points

Habitual cyclists are no doubt all too familiar with pinch points, those narrowings of the carriageways where it would be impossible, or unsafe, for a bicycle and a vehicle to pass side by side. They necessitate assertive road positioning to discourage unwise overtaking- or, failing that, sensible driving.

In many cases, these pinch points are of the form shown in the picture above – a pedestrian ‘refuge’, created in the middle of the carriageway, either fenced or unfenced.

A better solution, both for pedestrians and for cyclists, would be to replace these ‘refuges’ with zebra crossings, which would eliminate the narrowing conflicts that cyclists have to endure, and make crossing the road much easier for pedestrians – they would have immediate priority over vehicles, without having to wait to cross the road in two stages.

Pinch points of this form represent a half-hearted attempt to make things a bit easier for pedestrians; their half-heartedness stemming from a reluctance to impede the flow of ‘traffic’, something that a zebra crossing would do. They are a particularly thoughtless intervention when it comes to the safe passage of bicycles, however.

In towns and cities, zebras only realistically delay the arrival time of a vehicle at the next queue. I am therefore unconvinced that zebras, in much greater preponderance, would do anything to increase journey times for motor vehicles. Given this lack of extra overall delay, the large numbers of people making journeys on foot in towns and cities – the forgotten mode of transport – surely makes the case for the replacement of these ugly islands with a design that favours both cyclists and pedestrians unanswerable.

In the Netherlands, zebra crossings across the carriageway often resemble pinch points –

but this doesn’t really matter when cyclists aren’t in a position to be ‘pinched’, travelling as they are on the wide adjacent cycle track. In this particular example, a two-way street for vehicles is deliberately narrowed, at the zebra crossing, to calm vehicles. This also makes the street easier to cross.

Unlike in the UK, this doesn’t represent a ‘negotiation’ problem for cyclists.

Zebra crossings can also extend across the cycle track to give pedestrians explicit priority.

Where on-carriageway cycle lanes run past islands, again we see that there is no such thing as a pinch point. Widths are carefully maintained.

These basic design principles – eliminating conflict between bicycles and vehicles – have, shamefully, been completely ignored in the UK, meaning that an average urban trip by bicycle here requires constant vigilance and alertness to hazards needlessly posed by the environment.

Mixing with lorries, Dutch-style

In the wake of Mike Penning and Norman Baker’s bizarre and misleading comments about the respective safety of Dutch and British cyclists to the House of Commons Transport Committee on cycling safety in April, Jim Gleeson took a close look at how wrong those ministerial claims were, and also at the nature of the hazards posed to Dutch and British cyclists.

This latter post showed that while the fatality rate for cycling deaths not involving motor vehicles was approximately similar in both countries (i.e. single person accidents, or involving pedestrians), the rate of fatal collisions for cyclists with motor vehicles, per billion km cycled, is over eight times higher in the UK than in the Netherlands.

Lorries account, disproportionately, for a good number of those UK deaths – while forming only 5% of road traffic, they are involved in 16% of cycling deaths (source – The Times). This was a point raised on the 17th January this year by Roger Geffen of CTC, when he appeared before another House of Commons Transport Committee, which was discussing road safety. This was before the Times’ Cities Fit For Cycling Campaign had emerged, so lacked some of the attention later House of Commons debates on cycling achieved, particularly that involving the ministers.

In giving evidence, Geffen rightly pointed out the particular danger posed to UK cyclists by HGVs, noting that

Lorries are involved in around 20% of cyclist fatalities and over 50% of cyclist fatalists in London and probably also in other large cities.

Before going on to observe that

We should be looking at lorry routeing and how we can simply reduce the number of lorries on the roads in our major towns and cities. We should be looking at the monitoring of drivers. The driver who was goodness knows how far over the limit and talking on his mobile phone had a whole history that should have taken him off the road. How come he wasn’t? There is a whole load of health and safety management.

We have to look at what continental Europe does. What do cities with far higher levels of cycle use do? In Holland, a lorry driver would be surrounded by a lot more cyclists. What are the solutions that are working and still mean that their cyclists are safer? The Government have many roles to play in investigating a lot of different, possible solutions to lorry safety and monitoring their effectiveness. That is important too. All of these things need to be monitored because we do not really know what works.

Unfortunately the Dutch SWOV road safety data does not appear to give a breakdown for the involvement of lorries in cycling fatalities, so I cannot find a direct comparison for the UK figures. It is a reasonable presumption, however, that the rate of fatal collisions for Dutch cyclists involving HGVs is as proportionately low, compared to the UK, as the fatality rate for collisions involving motor vehicles as a whole – that is, eight times lower than in the UK. (There are good grounds, as we shall see in this post, for assuming it might be even lower).

Roger Geffen rightly points out the routing of lorries is a major issue – keep the lorries out of some areas of cities and towns, at certain times, and you immediately minimise the risk posed to cyclists by cutting down on the exposure.

However, the section of his comments I have highlighted is particularly interesting; Geffen claims that in the Netherlands, a lorry driver would be ‘surrounded’ by many more cyclists, presumably as a function of there being many more cyclists on Dutch roads. And yet Dutch cyclists are much safer than their UK counterparts – the implication seemingly being that Dutch lorry drivers are much better trained, or better behaved, despite being ‘surrounded’ by cyclists, or even that that ‘surrounding’ itself has some safety implication.

The comment is curious, because in my admittedly limited experience of cycling in the Netherlands – a few weeks, in total, and around two to three hundred miles – I don’t remember ever seeing a lorry ‘surrounded’ by cyclists, or indeed ever really mixing myself with lorries.

To see if this was just a trick my memory had played on me, or whether my impressions were correct, I decided, in an idle moment last week, to scour the hours and hours of footage, and hundred of photographs, I took on the Cycling Embassy three-day study trip to Assen and Groningen last year, to see just how and when we mixed – or didn’t mix – with lorries.

It was quite hard work, principally because there were very few lorries encountered during the trip, and also because they were quite often at some distance. My memory of not really interacting with lorries at all was a sound one.

The results are below, both stills from video, and some photographs. I have circled the HGVs because in some cases they are hard to spot.

In nearly every single instance of a lorry being spotted, I was cycling on separated infrastructure. This is not a coincidence; separated infrastructure is almost always provided on roads that lorries use regularly. The only example of a more ‘direct’ interaction with a lorry is in the third photograph, where the lorry was travelling along this road –

while I waited to cross from the left, by the building with the scaffolding – emerging from a ‘bicycle road’ to head across into a vehicle-restricted area.

To be clear, we did not spend our entire trip cycling on cycle paths – we used all kinds of streets and roads, visiting city centres, hospitals, industrial estates, schools, housing estates, woonerfs, and shopping centres. We did not manage to avoid lorries by sticking completely to cycle paths.

Crucially, those streets we used that did not have separated infrastructure, like these –

are unattractive or impossible to use as through-routes (except on foot, or bike, of course). If we had encountered a lorry in these places, it would only be because it was accessing a property on one of these streets, not because it was on its way to somewhere else.

On those routes that lorries do use – and where we did encounter them – cyclists are separated, either spatially or temporally. You can see the evidence of this in my photographs.

Cyclists do not ‘surround’ lorries in the Netherlands – quite the opposite. They are kept almost entirely apart. That might explain why Dutch cycling casualties are so low.

Love London, Go Danish? Or even Go Bow?

This is the final post in a series on LCC’s Love London, Go Dutch campaign – the previous three are here, here and here

I am not especially precious about the form of infrastructure that might be put in place on London’s streets to make them more inviting for cycling, as long as it works, makes cycling feel subjectively safe for people of all ages, is fast, smooth and continuous, and privileges the bicycle as a mode of transport over the motor vehicle. Good design is good design, whichever nation it comes from.

That said, given that the London Cycling Campaign’s Go Dutch Campaign does, self-evidently, title itself after a particular country, I would expect that country’s infrastructure and practice to be used as a reference point (although obviously not one that has to be rigidly and inflexibly adhered to).

But unfortunately, in suggesting that on-carriageway provision should be maintained on busier roads, or that ‘safety in numbers’ or ‘shared space’ could be an alternative to providing infrastructure where it is required, the LCC seem to be losing sight not just of Dutch practice, but European practice in general. The Danes, like the Dutch, do not rely on ‘safety in numbers’ instead of changes to the environment, nor do they use on-carriageway provision alongside off-carriageway provision to signal that cyclists can use road, if they so wish. Nor do they try to keep cyclists in the carriageway as a way of calming vehicle traffic. To this extent, these features of the LCC designs are not Dutch, or even Danish, but a curious melange that tends to resemble the type of provision that already exists in the UK, at least in outlook, if not in quality.

On top of this we have some misunderstandings about Dutch practice itself. Much weight is often put upon the Dutch ‘strict liability’ laws in explaining why it is so much more pleasant to cycle in the Netherlands, and indeed why cycle paths work safely there (and why they might not work so well here). This tends to ignore the fact that strict liability

 is only concerned with material damage and financial responsibility… this law is not concerned with allocating blame, or with imprisoning bad drivers.

Dutch drivers can, and do, drive badly. (A recent example is found in this Mark Wagenbuur video). It is unconvincing to suggest that being presumed automatically liable for the costs of a collision – and only in the absence of evidence – is sufficient to generate a far higher standard of driver behaviour than that seen in the UK. The reason passing through a junction on a segregated path in the Netherlands is safer than doing so in the UK is not because of strict liability, but because of better design. David Hembrow again –

There is no short snappy phrase for [strict liability] in Dutch because this is no more than an obscure part of the law which most people take little interest in. People don’t talk about this on a regular basis, any more than they do about other obscure parts of the law. Most people are not aware that the law here is different from elsewhere. Strict Liability has, at best, a very small role to play in keeping cyclists in the Netherlands safe.

So while Richard Lewis was correct to emphasise, in his talk for the Movement for Liveable London, the excellent way in which segregated paths are designed around and across junctions in the Netherlands, I think he was wrong to say, in this context, that

part of the problem we have in the UK is that we don’t have the same legal structure as they do on the continent, whereby drivers have more responsibility for the safety of vulnerable street users.

Keeping cyclists safe on segregated paths is dependent upon the quality of the design, not upon strict liability, which plays only a very marginal (yet overstated) role in the safety of Dutch cyclists. Tackling danger is achieved through the design of the environment, not through attempts to modify, in isolation, driver behaviour.

Richard also made a slight mistake in diagnosing how Dutch junctions work. The label on this slide

informs us that the kerb on the corner of junctions – marked in red – is designed to steer cyclists into a visible position, so that vehicles turning left will not miss cyclists as they cross the junction. Richard said that the kerb means

cyclists are taken around the corner so that drivers going around the corner see them, and they’ve got no choice but to see them.

This is true, but the main purpose of that kerb is to protect cyclists who are turning left from motor vehicles which are turning left at the same time. It is very important to emphasise that cyclists going straight on across the junction (from left to right across the image) will very rarely come into conflict with left-turning vehicles, because in the great majority of cases those left-turning vehicles will be held at a red light while cyclists progress in that direction. Turning conflicts like this are very carefully eliminated under Dutch practice. The lights will either be configured to ensure that cyclists are not crossing at all while vehicles will be turning left, or will given them a head start in those rare cases where the movements are simultaneous (see this Mark Wagenbuur video for a full explanation).

It is the ‘head start’ model that seems to be favoured by Richard Lewis, rather than the total separation of turning movements of Dutch practice. This is why the LCC model of Parliament Square –

does not have those protective kerbs seen in the Dutch design. ‘Head starts’ are, I think, the only way to keep cyclists safe under a design physically identical to this – it would certainly be quite dangerous to expect left-turning cyclists to move forward, from the cycle tracks, at the same time as (potentially large) left-turning vehicles, given the lack of protection seen at the junctions in this design.

But two questions immediately present themselves – how long would this head start have to be, and secondly, what happens when cyclists arrive at the junction, in the tracks, while vehicles are already moving through the junction? These are obviously pertinent questions now that Transport for London are implementing a design quite similar to this LCC one at Bow Roundabout.

The answer to how long the head start might be, is, for TfL at least, not very long at all. Their video of how the junction phasings will work suggests that the green light for vehicles will change about a second after that for bicycles. Indeed, the amber light for vehicles comes on at the same time as the green light for bicycles, which suggests that law-abiding cyclists would be moving off at the same time as more impatient motorists. Even allowing for a deeper ASL, I suspect this is not a sufficient amount of time to prevent ‘left-hook’ conflicts of the kind that claimed two lives last year – especially if the cyclists are slower off the mark.

Just as seriously, there is the second problem of what happens when cyclists arrive at junctions like Bow, or Parliament Square, when vehicles are already turning left on a green light. There is nothing I can find in the LCC material to suggest that cyclists will be held at a red light, so I can only assume that cyclists will be moving up the inside of vehicles approaching the junction, and executing simultaneous left-turns with them. This is not a move that is conducive to safety.

By contrast, the TfL ‘answer’ at Bow is to hold cyclists at a red light for the entire duration of the green phase for motorists.

This is a very blunt and inconvenient instrument indeed. Oddly, however, it’s a safer option than that suggested in the LCC mock-up for Parliament Square, which appears to allow simultaneous unprotected left turns. The TfL ‘Bow’ option would naturally eliminate these left hooks by stopping cyclists completely, assuming perfect compliance – but unfortunately it is very hard to imagine all cyclists choosing to obey what would at first glance appear to be a pointless red light. I suspect plenty would jump that light, and the problems that the junction design attempts to solve would simply reappear in exactly the same form.

Richard Lewis stated that the TfL design for Bow is ‘on its way to really good’, presumably on the basis that it superficially resembles his designs for other junctions.

I’m not so sure. I think it could be on its teetering on its way to quite bad. TfL has purchased some safety for cyclists at the cost of great inconvenience for them. You will always arrive at a red light here on a bicycle, if you use the segregated route. To put this in perspective, if you arrive at the junction just as the vehicles are setting off on their green light, you will have to wait until that lengthy green phase comes to an end before you are even allowed to enter the ASL, where you will have to wait again, your only reward being a one second head-start over the vehicles waiting behind you. The extent of the wait, while people in cars are free to move across the junction in the direction you want to go, will probably be sufficient to tempt cyclists into jumping the lights, creating exactly the same dangerous situations that prompted this remedial work in the first place.

Now that Boris has (in principle, at least) signed up to Go Dutch, it’s vitally important that these kinds of turning conflicts – and methods that attempt to solve them which involve great inconvenience – aren’t suggested or allowed by London Cycling Campaign’s own designs and guidance.

Love London, Go Dutch – Cycle tracks and civility

This is the third in a series of posts on LCC’s Love London, Go Dutch campaign – the first two are here and here

A surprisingly common response to the idea of creating Dutch-style cycle tracks on some of London’s roads is that the construction of those cycle tracks stands, somehow, in conflict with the goal of civilizing our city streets.

This view is characterized in a variety of ways, all of which have something in common.

The first notion is that cycle tracks represent a ‘surrender’ to motorized traffic; they are apparently designed to keep cyclists out of the way of vehicles, which can then continue to speed dangerously through our cities. They do nothing to address road danger; indeed Richard Lewis, although an adherent of the provision of cycle tracks, has recently made a comment to this effect on my first piece about Go Dutch –

Give drivers their own segregated space “unpolluted” by cyclists, then they will drive faster and with less due care and attention. Putting in cycle tracks and then banning cyclists from the carriageway is like putting in guard railing.

Another view is that cycle tracks represent a ‘carving up’ of public space; the creation of yet another stream of traffic, taking up yet more room in areas of our city that could and should become ‘places’ instead of straightforward transport routes. At best, this space is taken from the private motor vehicle; at worst, it is taken from pedestrians.

And a final argument maintains, broadly, that cycle tracks miss the point; what we should really be aiming for is a civility of environment. We should be ‘taming the traffic’ by removing gyratories and flyovers, and creating spaces that can be shared safely by everyone, without having to segregate vulnerable users away. The creation of cycle tracks alongside roads, or around these gyratories, is, in the long view, a pointless distraction from this fundamental goal of motor traffic reduction.

The broader thrust of all these arguments seems to be –

1.  that cycle tracks won’t be necessary if we calm the environment and reduce motor traffic, and
2. that civilized environments in our cities – places, instead of traffic routes – are incompatible with the construction of cycle tracks, which simultaneously create routes for lycra-clad warriors to bomb down, and do nothing to tame or calm the flow of traffic on the road itself.

Of course, in a London stripped entirely of motor vehicles, cycle tracks would not be necessary. The space on our streets could be shared equitably between cyclists and pedestrians. Indeed, putting in fast cycle tracks on some of these pedestrianised streets would doubtless encourage some rapid, anti-social cycling incompatible with a civilised street environment.

But this is, to put it bluntly, fantasy land. London is a thriving city, and large vehicles, however much we can dream about their removal, will still need to move around in it. Buses are perhaps the most obvious example. Likewise, deliveries will still need to be made, and the size of those delivery vehicles can only be reduced so far before it becomes uneconomic. Nor do I think it is feasible to ban the private car from London – some (note, some) car journeys are essential, and will remain so.

We can, of course – over the long-term – unwind the transport mistakes of the last half-century; for instance, removing flyovers when they start to crumble, instead of rebuilding them. We can also turn many of our streets that are currently horrible routes for vehicles into civilised places, by closing them off to through traffic.

But although they may, ideally, be greatly reduced in number, routes for vehicles around London will continue to exist; indeed they will have to, if people are still going to get around by bus, and shops, factories and offices are still going to need to be supplied. To take one example, the route of the LCC’s Big Ride on Saturday 28th April ran along Piccadilly.

It is not conceivable – to me at least – that this road could ever become motor traffic-free. Buses will run continue to run along it, into and out of the West End. Likewise lorries and vans will continue to use it, in order to access buildings in central London. This is not a road that could, realistically, be civilised by the simple expedient of removing the traffic.

Cycle tracks will be necessary along this road for subjectively safe cycling. If you want to argue that, with traffic continuing to run along this street, then the Mall (for instance) could be closed to vehicles, I wouldn’t try and stop you, and nor would I argue against you when you suggest that cycle tracks would not be necessary there. But streets like Piccadilly – those streets which will have to continue to carry vehicles, unless we are proposing some kind of utopia – will need cycle tracks.

There is plainly plenty of space here. It just needs to be reallocated, away from vehicles, and given to pedestrians and cyclists. Doubtless, with fewer private motor vehicles making journeys into central London the capacity of the road could be reduced, down to a single carriageway in either direction. The civility of the road would be increased, with wider pavements and a smaller road.

If you make the bicycle a pleasant and safe alternative to the private car, doubtless this reduction in road capacity would barely be noticed, because more people would be riding bikes, in addition to those using the tube and buses.

And of course putting in cycle tracks does not mean that the road space itself has to be ‘surrendered’; there are plenty of measures that can be put in place to calm motor traffic, without necessarily having to keep cyclists in the same space. Putting in zebra crossings, creating narrower traffic lanes and removing the central reservation are all potential measures, among many others, for keeping traffic speeds and behaviour under control.

On other streets – those streets that may not be necessary as routes – it is of course possible to tame vehicle traffic in other ways, principally by street engineering, or by making them difficult to use as through routes, or by banning their use by certain categories of vehicle, or indeed removing vehicles completely. This has already happened on many streets in London, and in other British towns and cities.

One suitable treatment for these kind of vehicle-reduced streets is ‘shared space’, broadly defined as the removal of delineation between carriageway and footway, and of ‘standard’ street furniture such as signs, with the aim of mitigating the sense of ownership felt by any particular road user, and consequently creating a greater civility of behaviour. Naturally enough, shared space would no longer place cyclists out of the motorists’ way; drivers would have to interact with cyclists, and with pedestrians. Likewise, it is quite the opposite of the ‘carving up’ of public space represented by cycle tracks. All road users share (or are supposed to share) the same space, on an equal footing; there would be none of the compartmentalization of ‘pavements’, ‘cycle tracks’ and ‘road’. The message that should be sent out by these kind of designs is that the street is no longer a route, but a place.

I have written quite extensively about shared space before, principally making the point that it is only an appropriate solution on a particular category of street, one where motor vehicle traffic is sufficiently low. We should not become confused into thinking that shared space, simply because it works in some low traffic environments, can be transferred and applied to any street in London. This is the mistake that has been made in Byng Place in Bloomsbury, and on (the northern section of) Exhibition Road in Kensington, where the extent of genuine sharing is minimal, principally because the volume and speed of motor traffic is still high, and there is very little in the open space that necessitates restraint in the way that vehicles are driven.

Daniel Moylan, the now outgoing Deputy of Transport for London, apparently believed that shared space was applicable as a treatment on nearly every single road in London as a ‘civilising’ force, an opinion which flies in the face of how the current shared spaces in London work. But unfortunately, because shared space is a Dutch concept in origin, it might prove remarkably easy to crowbar it in as a Go Dutch ‘solution’ on streets that remain busy with vehicles, and not just on those quieter streets where genuine sharing is much more likely to work. In other words, applying the ‘Moylan’ solution to civilising streets, instead of taking a genuinely Dutch approach.

This is not an idle concern. I note that Forster Communcations – who have worked on promoting the Go Dutch campaign for LCC, have got completely the wrong end of the stick –

It’s all about encouraging respect and shared use. For the London Cycling Campaign, we’ve promoted ‘Go Dutch’ –  again focusing on shared space. The idea is that all road users have equal priority. The goal is not just the improvement of road safety, but greater thoughtfulness, inclusivity.

Similarly, some prominent London cyclists have been presenting shared space as an alternative to segregation –

I think [segregation] misses the huge amount of work they can do in shared spaces… I like the idea of just having shared space corridors maybe connecting different squares in the centre of London

Shared space is actually rather rare in the Netherlands, and where it is found on slightly busier streets it is deeply unpopular with Dutch cyclists. This is not to say the shared space cannot be a part of ‘Going Dutch’, merely that it should not be seen as a ‘solution’ on the main roads that were the focus of the LCC’s campaign.

The LCC have broadly got it right in their own principles –

The principles that must be adhered to involve segregated bike tracks where motor traffic is heaviest, and in other areas removing through-traffic and creating shared-space.

and in this article by the LCC’s Mike Cavenett. Shared space also featured in Richard Lewis’s Street Talk, where he showed us this slide –

And said

Of course we don’t always need dedicated infrastructure… Shared space is all the rage at the moment, or shared surfaces, or naked streets, or all of those things, are all the rage at the moment, and actually, looking at that picture, I can see why.

The picture is quite obviously a very low traffic environment, somewhere where shared space can, and should, work. But I don’t think Richard made sufficiently clear that this is a very different class of street to that which would require infrastructure. Shared space is not a substitute for cycle paths.

Those busier streets that will still carry buses and commercial vehicles are not an appropriate environment for ‘sharing’, and the LCC should hold firm to the principles they have outlined of segregating bicycles on these main routes. As I have argued, such a policy can go hand in hand with civilising these environments, and does not stand in conflict with the goal of motor traffic reduction, or removal, on those quieter streets that can be turned into ‘places’ where cycle tracks will not be necessary.

Love London, Go Dutch – Safety In Numbers?

Yesterday I wrote about a potential area of weakness in London Cycling Campaign’s Go Dutch strategy; the principal objection was that in maintaining that cyclists should still be able to choose whether or not they use the road, or cycle tracks, compromise on the quality of those cycle tracks becomes harder to resist, especially as the Mayor seems to view off-carriageway provision as some kind of ‘training’ facility for nervous cyclists, before they venture onto the road.

Unfortunately this isn’t the only area in which LCC’s admirable Go Dutch principles could be co-opted and watered down by a Boris Johnson administration. In his presentation of the design principles of Love London Go Dutch at last month’s Street Talks, Richard Lewis said

I’d like to put a question to you – is this street out here [Theobald’s Road] an appropriate location for that type of [segregated] infrastructure presumably segregation?. Or is it kind of a bit ‘I’m not sure?’ Is the volume of cyclists using this street enough to calm the motor traffic down, so that actually it becomes safe and inviting for cycling? Or do you think there should be dedicated infrastructure?’

(Picture by Joe Dunckley)

In other words, some streets could become ‘safe’ in virtue of the number of cyclists using them, rendering infrastructure unnecessary.

Now, there may be some truth in the ‘safety in numbers’ effect; it certainly seems to apply in nature, where the members of flocks or shoals tend to be statistically less likely to fall victim to a predator than if they were travelling alone. This ‘shoaling’ effect, however, may not be quite so helpful in discussing cycling, because cyclists only travel intermittently, and by chance, in shoals. Quite often they will be travelling alone.

The other interpretation of safety in numbers is that drivers are more likely to spot cyclists if they are more used to their presence; they are more likely to expect and react to them. This assertion is a little shakier; indeed a case could be made that it is what is unusual that would prompt more care from drivers.

The standard graphical demonstration of a correlation between numbers and safety (originating with Jacobsen) is not as helpful or instructive as it is often made out to be, because, as we all know, correlation is not causation. The greater rate of cycling in some European countries could be a result of more safety, rather than their greater safety arising from their greater numbers. In addition, and even more problematically, the graph simply fails to take account of a wide range of variables that might also have an effect on cyclists’ safety, of which, perhaps in order of importance, we could name physical infrastructure, policing, speed limits, even (if we are looking at a rate of cycling fatalities) quality of emergency medical treatment.

Even if we do accept the potentially flawed logic that safety can simply arise from numbers, it is problematic to adopt it as a guiding principle in determining whether or not a street needs infrastructure, for several reasons.

Firstly, it ignores the fact, apparently appreciated by LCC, that infrastructure is needed primarily for reasons of subjective safety – to make the experience of cycling seem safer and more pleasant. ‘Safety in numbers’ does little or nothing to achieve that effect, although it may, arguably, have some effect on objective safety.

There was a clear demonstration of this when I left the Yorkshire Grey, after this very talk. Heading towards Farringdon, I was in the company of several cyclists, but that did not prevent me from being subjected to some honking and a close pass from a lady in a Mercedes as I passed another cyclist down the hill. It wasn’t very nice. The road was no more pleasant for a novice to cycle on than if he or she had been completely on their own, and for that reason alone ‘safety in numbers’ shouldn’t be a reason for deciding not to change the environment. A requirement of infrastructure is to make the cycling environment more pleasant; this cannot be guaranteed by ‘safety in numbers’.

Indeed, if you listen to the audio of the talk, it is punctuated by the roaring of engines, and honking – despite there being plenty of cyclists passing through at that time of the evening. The environment remained deeply uncivilised for cycling, and hostile to any nervous person; cycling on a road busy with motor traffic is usually just as unnerving whether you are on your own, or with a handful of other cyclists. ‘Safety in numbers’ is not a way of making an environment subjectively safe in a way that cycle paths can, and it should not be proposed as a substitute for them.

The other problem, as alluded to earlier, is that the ‘numbers’ that are proposed to guarantee the safety of cyclists, by the ‘shoaling’ effect, are never uniform, peaking only for a few hours at the start and end of the working day. There will be no ‘safety in numbers’ later in the evening, or during the day, when cyclists will quite often be travelling completely by themselves.

The Dutch would never use ‘safety in numbers’ as a substitute for civilising an environment for cycling. Indeed Fred Wegman, the managing director of SWOV (the Dutch Institute for Road Safety Research) is dismissive about its effects [pdf] –

I do not expect that just a greater number of cyclists will on its own result in a risk reduction for the cyclist. On the other hand, I do expect that more cycling facilities will lead to lower risks. Policy that only focuses on an increase in cycling and at the same time ignores the construction of more cycling facilities, will not have a positive effect on road safety.

So it was a little worrying to see an LCC presentation discussing, even casually, whether it was viable as an alternative safety measure to cycling facilities, not just because of the reluctance of the Dutch themselves to rely on it, but especially because it seems to be a particular favourite ‘safety’ strategy of both our current Mayor and TfL. The latter have claimed that the ‘Boris Bike’ scheme will [pdf]

 Improve safety by increasing the number of cyclists on London’s roads

Likewise, in response to this question from Assembly Member James Cleverley –

Mr Mayor…. would you concede that a significant but often undervalued element of cycle safety is the herd immunity: the idea that, as increasing numbers of people cycle, the other road users become more used to cyclists, become aware of cyclists in their day-to-day driving habits and adapt their driving styles to accommodate cyclists?

Boris had this to say –

we need to hear some voices also making the key point that… that cycling is a good thing to do and it is becoming safer. The idea that there is safety in numbers and that you can create a culture of cycling is certainly right.

Relying on ‘safety in numbers’ is a particularly appealing strategy if you don’t really plan to do much for cycling, and cycling safety, beyond ‘encouraging’ people to take up riding a bike. It’s also a good way of being able to dismiss the claims of those who say that cycling is subjectively dangerous; the idea being that if you talk about how unsafe cycling feels, you discourage people from cycling, and hence make it ‘more dangerous’ by suppressing the numbers (this is the logic of this piece by Andrew Gilligan, and many others that have appeared in a similar vein).

It’s consequently a bit disappointing to see LCC potentially presenting it as a viable alternative to actually making streets subjectively safe for cycling. They have a great campaign, and some form of commitment from London’s politicians to start implementing it. For that reason I think they should be very wary of talking about ‘safety in numbers’ and its potential positive effects, because Boris is more than willing to ‘rely’ on it, instead of making changes where they are necessary.

Love London, Go Dutch – should this be about ‘choice’?

Now that the excitement of the London elections is starting to die down, and we know Boris will be ensconced in City Hall for another four years (or maybe three), I think it’s time to take stock of where things stand, particularly with Boris’s apparent commitment to the London Cycling Campaign’s Love London, Go Dutch tests, namely

1. Implement three flagship Love London, Go Dutch developments on major streets and/or locations. 
2. Make sure all planned developments on the main roads that they controls are completed to Go Dutch standards, especially junctions. 
3. Make sure the Cycle Superhighways programme is completed to Love London, Go Dutch standards 

As David Arditti has written, this commitment

leads to a bit of puzzle. In fact, to a whole lot of enormous puzzles. Because he could have been doing any of these things for the last four years, but has most strikingly not been doing them. The “flagship developments” that LCC have suggested include Blackfriars, where he insisted on a design that had cyclists up in arms, protesting, for most of last year, and where he refused even to impose a 20mph limit, to do the bare minimum he could have done to make it more cycle-friendly. The suggested Go Dutch developments also include the Olympic Park, which would have been, to a considerable extent, within Boris’s powers to make genuinely cycle-friendly, but in which he seems to have taken not a jot of interest, leaving it to a clueless (on the subject of cycling) Olympic Development Authority, recalcitrant boroughs, and irresponsible developers, to make a general hash of cycle provision in the area. And the suggested developments include Parliament Square, which Boris has made clear he sees continuing as the ugly and polluted traffic maelstrom that it has long been, with poor concessions to pedestrians, and none to cyclists.

That is to say, if Boris is indeed sincere in his commitment to these principles, it will prove to be a remarkable and sudden turnaround, compared to the policies he has implemented, or failed to implement, in his previous four-year term. Three years ago, Boris apparently informed one of my correspondents that segregated provision for bicycles would be “the worst thing that could happen in London”.

The signs of a sudden change in heart are not good. Only last week, at a hustings specifically on cycling only a few days after he signed up to Go Dutch, when Boris had an opportunity to make even the right-sounding noises, let alone any firm commitments, he managed to alienate his audience with comments that did not suggest anything in his attitude towards cycle promotion in London was going to change. He seemed to find a specific question about dedicated space for cycling in Hammersmith amusing, and was vague, even dismissive, about making safer routes through the area – it was left to Siobhan Benita to point out that as he’d signed up to the Go Dutch tests, this shouldn’t really be a matter for debate or discussion. Space for cycling should now happen in new development or rebuilds. Boris had forgotten that already, or chosen to.

I shall, of course, keep an open mind about what may happen, and what Boris will do. If he does start to implement quality designs that prioritise cycling, and make it a safe and inviting option for potential cyclists of all ages, then I will be more than happy, and will write enthusiastically about them. At present, however, I think the correct attitude is healthy scepticism.

In that context, I think it is vitally important that the London Cycling Campaign are absolutely clear about what Go Dutch should really mean, and not give Boris the wriggle room to claim that what he may implement in the future actually meets their standards. If there is any vagueness, or rowing back from the best Dutch principles, Boris can quite easily exploit that, and continue to produce street designs similar to the ones that have arrived over the past four years, while claiming they meet LCC standards.

While I think it is indisputable LCC have done a fantastic job in opening up the choice of campaign to the membership, and enthusing people about Go Dutch and pushing it up the agenda, there are some grounds for concern here. The principles, as set out in detail, are decent enough, but I am troubled by some misintepretations that appear to be creeping in, and that could potentially open up the door for either half-hearted provision that really isn’t up to scratch, or for Boris to claim that he might choose to do for cyclists is ‘Dutch’, in some way, shape or form. With that in mind, I plan, this week, to set out some of the reservations I have with what I have seen of Go Dutch.

The first problem I have diagnosed, and which I will discuss in this initial post, is perhaps the most serious. It’s an incipient (or perhaps innate) notion that there are two distinct categories of cyclist; those that are happy cycling on the road, and who would continue to cycle on the road once ‘provision’ has been put in, and another category of cyclist, made up of those who are more nervous, or who don’t currently cycle but who would like to, for whom the infrastructure is being provided. Further, and problematically, this categorisation extends to the notion that these two distinct types of cyclist will require two different approaches to their cycling needs.

This attitude has manifested itself in the appearance of Advanced Stop Lines (ASLs) in the carriageway, alongside segregated provision for the ‘other type’ of cyclist, in LCC’s illustrations of their schemes for both Blackfriars and Parliament Square.

In my opinion, these ASLs are indicative of a troubling outlook; it suggests that the LCC have already assumed that their cycle tracks are going to be inadequate; so inadequate, that a large number of cyclists are not going to want to use them.

Of course, this position is framed as ‘choice’. That, as the LCC is a democratic organisation, they should not rule segregation either in or out, and cyclists in London should be free to use either the carriageway or the new provision. It was this argument that was employed by Richard Lewis, the designer of these schemes,  in his presentation of Go Dutch at the Movement for Liveable London’s Street Talks in April.

The word ‘choice’ is the first one that appears on this slide of his, about the ‘principles’ of infrastructure. Richard had this to say –

I’ve put ‘choice’ up there because LCC is a democratic organisation… Some people like the segregated tracks, some people like to use the streets. I like to allow people to use both, if they want to. But for those people using tracks, in circumstances where they’re provided, they need to be good enough for people, whoever they are, to use them, and choose to use them. If they’re not good enough, people will choose not to use them. They’ll vote with their wheels. And I think we need to give them that opportunity, as a kind of test to see what kind of quality we’ve achieved.

This is more than a little uninspiring. The LCC are effectively starting from a blank slate – they can design and present the quality of infrastructure they think is desirable. Yet within their very own designs, they are putting in features that imply their own designs will not be good enough.

Indeed it begs the question of why people would not like to use the segregated tracks. Put bluntly, if cyclists, of any stripe, are wanting to continue using the carriageway, then the design must be a failure. It implies that the design is too narrow (you can’t easily get past other cyclists, for instance). Or that the corners are too sharp. Or that you are being held at traffic lights, while motor traffic is privileged. Or any of the above. In short, your journey on the infrastructure will be slower and more arduous than it would be on the carriageway.

This is what those ASLs represent – an admission that the infrastructure the LCC is designing is not up to standard. In other words, the LCC have tacitly made an admission of failure, before they have even started.

Now I’m not quite sure how the LCC arrived at this ‘choice’ interpretation of Go Dutch, because it certainly isn’t a Dutch principle – Dutch infrastructure is designed to a standard suitable for all cyclists – nor does it appear in LCC’s own Principles in Detail.

To speculate, I think the most probable reason is that the LCC don’t want to alienate or upset those of their members who have a strong attachment to ‘vehicular’ cycling. Without wishing to pick out any blog or writer in particular, this recent piece by Patrick Field is indicative of the LCC attitude more generally. Entitled ‘free to choose’, Patrick asks us if

There’s no practical problem with a full-hearted endorsement of the important principle that the choice between riding on the highway, and using any parallel cycle-infrastructure, is best left with the individual?

Patrick shows us this picture of Argall Way in East London –

and claims that what it represents is

theoretically perfect because it has cycle-tracks on either side offering respite from any status problems people on bikes might feel about taking space on the carriageway while at the junctions there are – now somewhat faded – advance stop boxes, which signal clearly that cycle traffic is also welcome on the highway.

This is muddle-headed, for reasons that I will detail below. An immediate and obvious objection is that the off-carriageway provision shown here is just about the opposite of ‘perfect’, in that while it does allow people to cycle away from motor traffic, it is of a desperately poor standard, and deeply inconvenient (indeed, like most UK off-carriageway provision). What Patrick has written is pervaded by an attitude that off-carriageway provision, of a very low standard, is fine for slower, nervous plodders; an attitude that contains within it an assumption that the road itself should still carry markings to ‘signal’ to drivers that cyclists not willing to use that very same crap can still use the road.

Why I say this is a muddle-headed attitude is because I don’t think it would be unfair to say that this group of cyclists – ‘faster’ cyclists, people like Patrick and indeed me – are objectively all that concerned about how, precisely, they might make their journeys across London, as long as those journeys remain as fast and as convenient. For instance, I’m not sure many London cyclists would choose to cycle amongst HGVs and taxis if an off-carriageway track or path was just as useful, and safe, to them as the road shared with those lorries and taxis.

But unfortunately we are in a position where plenty of cyclists in London – those like Patrick – have got it into their heads that off-carriageway infrastructure is for ‘slow’ cyclists, and will always be like that, and consequently the road should remain the place for ‘fast’ cyclists.

You can hardly blame them for this, of course, given that the mostly crappy off-carriageway provision in London, just like that seen on Argall Way, forces people to go slow, and that most London cyclists have little experience of how fast you can go on Dutch infrastructure.

These attitudes were sadly mirrored by Richard Lewis himself, who said, while comparing Danish and Dutch infrastructure during his presentation, that

You are a lot more like a vehicular cyclist in Denmark than you are in the Netherlands, where you are much more of a pootling cyclist. The Dutch stuff encourages slower cycling – which some people say is more civilised, and perhaps under certain circumstances it is.

That is, Going Dutch is taken to mean putting in some infrastructure that will allow nervous people to ‘pootle about’, while the carriageway itself remains the place for cyclists to ‘make progress’. This interpretation of Dutch infrastructure, I think, goes some way towards explaining why the designs that the LCC have come up with are so keen to continue providing a place for cyclists ‘on the road’; because they think Dutch provision is for a slower category of cyclist. (Perhaps that attitude has also been coloured by how we are forced to cycle on current off-carriageway provision in the UK).

This is simply wrong, of course; you can cycle very fast on nearly every single Dutch cycle path. They are nearly always smooth and wide. In Groningen –

In Rotterdam –

In Amsterdam –

In Assen –

And in Utrecht.

You may indeed encounter ‘slow cycling’ on Dutch cycle paths, but this never a function of the design – it is a function of the fact that some of the people on those cycle paths will not be able to cycle fast – namely young children and the elderly. But it seems that faster cyclists in the LCC have a fear of being trapped behind a load of ‘pootlers’ on narrow tracks. The ASLs are their metaphorical, and literal, escape route.

The correct approach should, of course, be to make the cycle tracks wide enough to prevent any such conflicts, to create ‘roads for bikes’, that will be pleasant for all to use, regardless of speed or ability or confidence. This should be the starting position of the LCC; not one that apparently assumes that conflicts and poor design will be inevitable from the get-go.

Of course the LCC’s ‘dual track’ approach – seeking to keep cyclists on the carriageway, while also providing off-carriageway tracks – may not be problematic, in and of itself; it should be theoretically possible to build decent infrastructure while still allowing cyclists to use the road itself, and putting ‘signals’ on it to that effect.

But unfortunately there will almost certainly be implications for the quality of off-carriageway provision if you insist that large numbers of cyclists will still want to use the main carriageway. Imagine a conversation like this, between LCC and TfL, as they consider some of LCC’s plans –

TfL – What are those ASLs on the road for?

LCC – They’re for cyclists who want to continue riding on the road.

TfL – Why would they want to do that, when we’re putting in these fantastic wide, smooth cycle paths?

LCC – It’s because some cyclists want to continue to ride fast. We can’t do that on cycle paths. 

TfL – Oh right. I see. So the cycle paths are for people who don’t mind cycling slowly. [With that in mind, goes away and designs compromised facility that is narrow and suitable for ‘pootling’, in other words very similar to the compromised awfulness that has been put in for decades]

If your starting position is that cycle paths and tracks are for people who want to cycle slowly, and don’t mind doing so, you are storing up trouble by maintaining, or even creating, attitudes about how that infrastructure should be designed. You are effectively opening the door to the provision of rubbish infrastructure, and, just as bad, you are undermining any objections you might have as to its quality. Say you want to complain about the fact it currently takes 4 minutes to get across Henlys Corner, using off-carriageway ‘provision’? That’s going to become a lot more difficult if you think off-carriageway infrastructure is for ‘pootling’ and for people who don’t mind going slowly, and that the road is the best place for going fast.

Indeed, the LCC position on who infrastructure is actually for is startlingly close to that of Boris Johnson.

There will be different strokes for different folks.  Some cyclists will want to use… I mean, for instance, last night I was going along the Euston Road, and you get to that bit where you come to the underpass, and then the cycle route takes you on a sort of fiddly thing, where you go over… there’s a path, and you’ve got lots of oncoming pedestrians, and then you’re invited to cross at a traffic light, and so on and so forth. Or you can just scoot down the underpass.

Of course the LCC don’t want cycle paths that are as awful as the ‘fiddly thing’ that Boris refers to, but it is hard to see how the designs they are proposing will not become compromised, in some way, shape or form, by their very own implicit admission that cycle paths are for ‘slower’ and more nervous cyclists, and that faster cyclists won’t want to use them.

A major reason for the poor quality of the off-carriageway provision we currently see across Britain – and the consequent reluctance of basically everyone to use that provision – is this very same starting assumption, embodied in Government literature, that it is for a ‘different type’ of cyclist. As Joe Dunckley wrote back in February (while also presciently noting the increasing attachment of LCC to ‘dual networks’) –

[A] fundamental problem is that LTN 2/08 endorses “dual networks”. It correctly identifies that different cyclists have different needs and abilities, but from this fact it draws some very wrong and damaging conclusions. “Some cyclists are more able and willing to mix with motor traffic than others. In order to accommodate the sometimes conflicting needs of various user types and functions, it may be necessary to create dual networks offering different levels of provision, with one network offering greater segregation from motor traffic at the expense of directness and/or priority.” That is, new, nervous and child cyclists will be grateful for a crap facility that gives way to every side road, or a winding backstreet route, while confident cyclists will want to be in their natural place — on the road, with the traffic, riding in the vehicular style. Indeed, the former category are expected to eventually cast off their training wheels and graduate into the latter category.

I sincerely hope that the LCC pay heed to this lesson from history, and don’t give Boris and TfL an opportunity to downgrade the quality of their designs on the assumption that most current cyclists won’t want to use them anyway. That is, unfortunately, the message that their ASLs – a design feature almost entirely absent in the Netherlands, and certainly never present alongside segregated provision – are sending out, and it’s a message that Boris will surely exploit if he can.

Let’s ensure that our cycle paths are roads for bikes that are designed to the highest standards, and suitable for everyone, and not give anyone a chance to imply that they are merely ‘fiddly things’ for nervous plodders, because if we do, that’s probably what we’ll end up with.