I found the Channel 4 programme, The Tallest Tower – Building The Shard, which aired last week, grimly fascinating. Whether a slant had been put on the nature of the construction by the programme’s producers or not, I cannot say, but the overall impression I got of the development was one of unseemly, urgent haste. A particular example was the fact that windy days – on which construction on the upper levels had to cease – did not appear to be budgeted for. Days were ‘lost’ due to high wind, and construction had to ‘catch up’, despite the fact that wind is quite a common phenomenon in the British Isles (indeed the site manager at one point says ‘if the wind blows, we’re stuffed.’) There was no slack, apparently, in the construction schedule.
Another example comes during the building of the foundations of the Shard, about 18 minutes into the programme. We are informed that because construction is ‘at a standstill’, the builders have to ‘go for broke’ with a record-breaking concrete pour. This involved bringing ‘a vast amount of concrete in’; an amount that would normally be poured in a day was poured every hour, continuously, for 36 hours. In just this period, 700 concrete mixers arrived at the site.
This was, we are told, a ‘giant logistical operation, run with military precision’. Unfortunately this ‘precision’ did not seem to extend to an assessment of how realistic it would be to get this number of lorries to the site on time. Mark Devlin, the logistics manager of the site, says
London is a busy city, so let’s just say, six or seven out of ten [lorries] are on time.
That sounds impressive, but what it means in practice is that a third of the lorries arriving at the site were unable to meet the deadlines they had been set. I don’t think that’s because the lorries were pootling about, or their drivers were having cups of tea, or were waving ladies across the road in front of them. That’s not my experience of how lorries are driven in London, anyway.
What this titbit of information from Mark Devlin tells us is that the deadlines were not realistic, and drivers were presumably having to race to meet them. London is, and always has been, ‘a busy city’, and the way the deadlines were set should have taken account of that fact, and not left wafer-thin margins for delay.
David Vilaseca was killed on 9th February 2010, at the junction of Tower Bridge Road and Druid Street, Southwark by a Ron Smith Recycling lorry turning left. It is unclear whether this vehicle was involved in the Shard construction, but that is a plausible destination, given the left turn onto Druid Street.
Muhammed Haris Ahmed was killed in Weston Street on the 9th March 2010 by a Keltbay tipper truck, servicing the Shard.
David Poblet was killed at the junction of Tanner Street and Tooley Street in Bermondsey on 22nd March 2011 by a skip lorry – I should stress, however, there is no confirmation that this vehicle was heading to the Shard site.
Ellie Carey was killed at the junction of Abbey Street and Tower Bridge Road, Southwark on Friday 2nd December 2011, by an HGV turning left. At the time, I remember hearing this was a lorry delivering glass to the Shard, but as with the lorries that killed David Vilaseca and David Poblet, I cannot find confirmation. Again, the direction of the lorry suggests the Shard as a possible destination.
A left-turning Keltbray lorry servicing the Shard was also involved in this incident
at the junction of Borough High Street and Great Dover Street, in which a female cyclist suffered a broken ankle.
which drove over a cyclist at the junction of Joiner Street and London Bridge on 18th October 2011, is turning into the Shard site, carrying what appear to be steel girders for the upper section of the Shard.
These are just the incidents I can recall – doubtless there were more in the area.
Whether the deadlines set by the construction companies caused any of these drivers to hurry, and consequently to pay slightly less attention to the people around their vehicles than they might otherwise have done, is of course a matter for speculation. But a reasonable inference can be made.
This year’s Tour Of Britain will finish on Guildford High Street, in Surrey. It promises to be a fantastic spectacle, with the riders racing up the steep cobbled hill, surrounded on both sides by thousands of fans.
Throughout the rest of the year, you can cycle up and down the High Street, as it forms part of National Cycle Route 223.
Except… you can’t between the hours 11am and 4pm during weekdays, 9am and 6pm on a Saturday, and 12pm and 5pm on Sunday, because at these times, the High Street is fully pedestrianised.
The High Street is very wide, and there really shouldn’t be any cause for conflict between pedestrians and cyclists. Even at Christmas, when there are plenty of shoppers about, I cannot see any reason why this space shouldn’t be shared.
The only problems would come from anti-social cycling, but the proper response to that is to use the police, or street wardens, to fine and censure the wrongdoers, not a blanket ban on an activity that, in principle, should be harmless.
Worse, even when it is legal to cycle here – outside of the restricted hours – you can only cycle up the hill, because it remains a one-way street.
Both these restrictions mean that cycling around this part of Guildford is quite inconvenient.
How about providing some useful cycle lanes in Guildford? This might encourage cycle use. Anyone who wants to cycle is usually quite happy to provide their own bike, but might be put off by the fact that to cycle from the top of the High Street to the station, university, hospital or Research Park has to fight with one-way systems, 4 lanes of traffic and the bus station.
This 4 lane one-way system.
There are paths underneath this gyratory, but cycling is banned there too (in places with good reason, because the pedestrian underpasses are quite narrow. And there are lots of steps, in any case).
Thankfully it appears that the ludicrous situation of cycling being largely impossible on a major through-route in the town is coming onto the political radar, although a PCSO seems to have completely the wrong idea about what needs to be achieved.
The mention of Surrey County Council’s hope to improve cycle routes into and out of Guildford, making existing routes contiguous, excited a short exchange of views on cycling on the High Street and other one-way routes. One PCSO asked if the council’s plans would help reduce the amount of cycling, the wrong way, down the High St. A St Catherine’s resident, a regular cyclist, pointed out that there was little practical alternative for cyclists if the dangerous gyratory was to be avoided.
There is no need to stop cyclists going ‘the wrong way’ down the High Street, because there shouldn’t be any such thing as a ‘wrong way’ on a bicycle. It’s only an absurd traffic arrangement that has created this situation, and it needs to be remedied.
I haven’t really got much to add to the excellent commentary on yesterday’s mayoral cycling hustings from Cyclists in the City, I Bike London and Vole O’Speed, the latter in particular doing an especially good job in forensically analysing Boris’s skin-deep commitment to cycling in London.
Out of the five candidates appearing on the platform before us, Jenny Jones was, as always, uniformally impressive. I am by no means a natural green voter, but on the issue of cycling, she knows precisely what needs to be done to make it safer, more pleasant and more convenient – the three key ingredients for instilling a genuine cycling revolution. Brian Paddick also performed well – I thought, like David Arditti, that he grasped the central problem of cycling being subjectively unsafe for most ordinary people, and recognised that one of the main barriers to addressing that problem is Boris’s commitment to ‘smoothing traffic flow’.
Siobhan Benita, about whom I know very little, appeared to engage with the issues, and I think made one of the most telling contributions of the hustings when, in response to a question to the panel from the audience about what they would do to make cycling easier around the Hammersmith Flyover (a question which was met with waffle from Boris) pointed out that as the candidates had all signed up to London Cycling’s Go Dutch demands, this shouldn’t even be a matter for debate. Point 2 of those demands explicitly states
Ensure all future redevelopments of junctions and main roads are to ‘Go Dutch’ standards.
Boris – having signed this manifesto – had equivocated about whether he would devote space on and around the flyover to cycling; Benita was right to highlight that he seemed to have forgotten about this commitment already.
It’s also hard to disagree with David’s analysis of Ken, namely that
Ken Livingstone never appears all that comfortable talking about cycling, preferring to major on “getting people out of their cars” by whatever method, and talking a lot about long-term investment and long-term plans for transport in general, without giving too much detail on what he thinks a future, cycle-friendly London would actually look like.
Ken is very definitely in favour of a reduction in the number of motor vehicle journeys made in London, but as David says he’s I don’t think he is particularly clued up on what that might mean for cycling policy. Nevertheless he is willing to appoint Jenny Jones as his cycling supremo, and did make two commitments, setting a rather vague target of ’10 to 15%’ of all trips by bike by 2020 (this is more ambitious than Boris’s uninspiring target of 5% by 2026) and, more importantly, a firm statement that he would reintroduce the road user hierarchy, about which more below.
And this brings us to Boris. It’s hard to know where to begin, but I think I will make two broad general points about his approach to cycling, and about what that means, in practice, for his policies.
The first is that he evidently still thinks cycling is not universal; that is not something for everyone. He made remarks to this effect on several occasions, the wording of which I cannot precisely recall; one that particularly stuck in my mind has a statement to the effect many people will still need to use their cars.
This is evidence of Boris’s compartmentalised thinking about cycling – that ‘cyclists’ are somehow distinct from ‘motorists’ when in fact they are, or should be, the same people. People will still need to use their cars, but the whole point of these debates should be about encouraging cycling for shorter trips that shouldn’t really involve car use at all (a principal example being the school run). I have to say Boris simply doesn’t get this. Motorists and cyclists, for him, stand in opposition, distinct groups battling it out for control of London’s roads.
On one of the several occasions that he badly misjudged the temparent and leanings of his audience – made up, let’s not forget, of several Times journalists, all of whom cycle – he said that cyclists want to ‘ban cars’. This comment was met with loud grumblings of dissension from the audience, and Boris quickly retracted the comment, saying ‘oh, well not these cyclists, evidently’ (or words to that effect), still implying that cyclists are generally people who stand in opposition to motor traffic in principle. In a similar vein he said that cyclists want to ‘pastoralise’ the streets of London, which is partly true (we’d like to see streets that are calmer and more pleasant for walking and cycling), but was clearly meant to imply that we are unrealistic dreamers akin to the Paris Commune.
Boris seems to think that people who want the streets made safer for cycling are green-leaning revolutionaries, or freaks, or weirdos, a sentiment apparent from his much-reported remarks, in which he distinguished himself, as a cyclist, from those stereotypical ‘dreadlocked’ ‘whippet-thin’ cyclists who race through red lights. Again, a total misjudgment of the make-up of his audience, and the make-up of the vast majority of cycling advocacy groups, and people who cycle in London more generally. Without wishing to stereotype, like Boris himself, what do you suppose are the political leanings of this smartly dressed gentleman I saw emerging onto the Mall, shortly after the hustings? Or the tourist on the Boris bikes in the background?
I strongly suspect they don’t give a toss about ‘banning cars’ or being green, or taking over the streets, any of the other positions Boris seems so willing to attribute to ‘cyclists’.
The fact is that cycling shouldn’t be a party political issue; it just makes sense as a transport mode regardless of your political persuasion. Unfortunately we are in a situation, at present, where it is only the Green party, and to a lesser extent the Lib Dems and Labour, who really understand what needs to be done. I’m not coming at this from a party political angle – if Boris were, for instance, to ensure that one of London’s new major junctions or developments was designed to the highest Go Dutch standards, I would be praising him from the rooftops.
But Boris doesn’t seem to think like I do – he thinks that giving cyclists some space of their own on London’s more dangerous and intimidating roads amounts to preferential treatment, cyclists being privileged at the expense of motorists (again, the oppositional thinking). This is the second of the points I wish to make, about Boris’s apparent unwillingness to change the status quo.
For me, the standout quote from him on this subject during the hustings was
We’ve got to move away from the idea that cyclists are somehow morally superior to other road users
To be clear, this wasn’t some comment about cyclists being ‘smug’ or ‘self-righteous’; it was specifically made in the context of Ken’s commitment to reintroduce the road user hierarchy. What Boris meant by this statement was that all road users should be ‘equal’ in the eyes of transport planning; he was explicitly reaffirming his belief that no particular type of journey should be privileged over any other. In doing so, he is sticking with Conservative Assembly policy, which, without going over old ground, has this to say –
Roads should be thoroughfares which enable all users, whether they are cyclists, motorists, pedestrians, bus passengers, van drivers, taxi passengers or motorcyclists to get from A to B as swiftly and as safely as possible. Neither the Mayor nor the Government should impose an artificial road user hierarchy as this inevitably has the effect of deliberately slowing down some users. Further to this, the Mayor should encourage cycling by emphasising that it is cheap, healthy and quick, not by worsening conditions for other road users.
The problem, if you can’t spot it for yourself, is the word ‘artificial’, and it is central to Boris’s (and more broadly the Conservatives’) complete failure to grasp what needs to be done for cycling.
This is because it assumes that there is, somehow, a ‘natural’ order to London’s roads, the antithesis of an ‘artificial’ order imposed on it from on high. That somehow Boris and Transport for London have stood back from the network, and just let it settle into its own spontaneous organisation and arrangement.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Our roads, and how they work, are the direct result of how our planners, and their elected masters, have decided how they should work.
The current order (‘equality’ if you will) on London’s roads only appears to be ‘natural’ because it’s been like that for so long, and we don’t know any different. People make transport choices based around what the network suggests to them, and how easy and convenient it to make journeys by different modes. This isn’t ‘natural’; it’s a direct consequence of how the network has been arranged, and how various modes have been privileged or promoted or facilitated.
Now it is my firm contention that there is barely a single major road in London that is not designed to facilitate motor vehicle journeys at the expense of vulnerable users. You can see this in Parliament Square, a few paces away from where yesterday’s hustings took place, where people on bikes have to battle their way through five lanes of fast flowing motor traffic.
Where pedestrians – most of them tourists taking a look at the sights (or trying to) are herded into tiny pens when they have to cross the road.
Doubtless Boris would tell you that any moves to address these rather horrible conditions for cycling and walking would amount to an attempt to impose an ‘artificial’ hierarchy on London’s roads, that goes against his principled commitment to ‘equality’, justifying such a position by saying that pedestrians and cyclists are not ‘morally superior’ to people making journeys by car.
Indeed this is precisely what Boris has done – blocking moves to civilise this square, into which millions of people pour every year to see the sights flanking it, and are met with this insulting street arrangement.
It is only by pretending that what is currently in Parliament Square is ‘natural,’ and that any attempt to change it is ‘artificial’, that this state of affairs can continue to be justified. It is a very thin argument indeed.
A cold, objective look at nearly any street in London will tell you the reality – if any one mode user is privileged, or treated as ‘morally superior’, it is the motorist.
Boris thinks this current state of affairs is ‘natural’, and consequently will do next to nothing to address it. That is why he is, and would be, an absolute disaster for cycling in London.
My undoubted highlight of Saturday’s Big Ride in London was entering Piccadilly from Hyde Park Corner and seeing, for the first time, the full extent of the protest.
As one of the last to set off, and having been waiting for half an hour to cross Park Lane to join the tail end of the ride, I had already had some idea that this was going to be a big protest, but this was really quite incredible. From Hyde Park Corner, where I was standing when I took this photograph, the ride stretches off into the distance, actually out of sight – all the way to the Ritz Hotel, about half a mile away.
Given the wet, cold and windy conditions, this really was a fantastic turnout, one that I hope will send a clear message that the status quo is nowhere near good enough, not even for those who currently feel confident to cycle in London on a regular basis, let alone for those young children on the ride who were cycling around central London in complete safety, for once.
This particular stretch of road is, ordinarily, a race track. You can see what it normally looks like on the right hand side of this photograph, showing the west-bound carriageway.
I used to cycle along the eastern section of Piccadilly fairly regularly on my old commute, and I have to see I never saw a child cycling there. (I can say that with some confidence, because it would have been fairly startling, enough to stick in the memory.) Looking at the photograph above, it’s not very hard to see why, with lorries thundering along a dual carriageway, and cars jostling for position. No consideration has been given to cycling along this road, despite it running from Hyde Park right into the West End, an ideal route for families on a weekend trip.
We need to ask serious questions about why large swathes of society – the young, the elderly, females, the disabled, even just the less nimble – have effectively been excluded from cycling on our streets, despite their willingness to cycle under safe, pleasant conditions. I hope Saturday’s ride is just the start of that questioning process.
This one published in The Times, of all places, yesterday.
Sir, It is sad that it should take the serious injury of a Times staff member to trigger a nationwide safety campaign targeting roads, roundabouts and junctions. But cyclists themselves can do more.
Images in the paper this week show cyclists in drab clothing on wet dull days, and drivers in following traffic peering through rain-smeared, possibly misted-up windscreens. Yellow, hi-visibility fluorescent jackets are especially bright on dull days. Even gloves can be bought in vibrant yellow. Yet none of the cyclists shown were wearing this gear. Yesterday’s report had a photograph of another dimly-clad rider, with no eye protection.
Finally and most important, mirrors. No one in their right mind would drive a car or motorcycle without rear-view mirrors. To ride a bicycle in heavy traffic without a right-hand mirror borders on sheer stupidity: pulling out behind a parked car is the classic application — and accident — waiting to happen.
Tom Sheppard
Hitchin, Herts
The images the author refers to are, I believe, these ones, of which the ‘least visible’ cyclists are found in this one –
I’m left scratching my head here, wondering this letter was written in jest or seriousness. I don’t think people write joke letters to The Times, so on the balance of probability I’m assuming the latter.
The author evidently thinks that to compensate for drivers failing to be able to see where they are going because of their ‘rain-smeared’ and ‘misted-up’ windscreens, cyclists should clad themselves in ever more lurid outfits.
I have to agree. It is plainly only right and just that cyclists can and should do more, and more, to compensate for the basic inability of drivers to look where they are piloting their vehicles.
But why stop there, Mr Sheppard? Cyclists are not making themselves audible enough. They are silent, so silent they cannot be heard over the sound of one’s engine, or indeed when one is listening to Radio 3. I propose that all cyclists should be forced to carry a loud, continuous warning system, akin to a siren – although obviously distinct from the type used by the emergency services – that will alert drivers to their presence.
‘Vibrant yellow gloves’, mirrors and ‘eye protection’ are all very well, but what about when one is listening to a particularly rambunctious Beethoven Symphony behind the wheel of one’s vehicle, and simply cannot hear the approaching bicyclists?
I suggest cyclists act now, for their own safety, and ours.
To those who point to the provision of cycle paths alongside roads with high volumes of traffic, or with high speed limits, as one of the principle ingredients of Dutch cycle policy – an ingredient that serves, partly, to explain why the Dutch cycle in such large numbers – some UK cycle campaigners opposed to such paths have a ready retort.
‘They built it in Milton Keynes, and they didn’t come.’
segregated the roads and cycle paths into a system of Redways. These run through the grid-squares and were designed for leisure cycling.
Despite this comprehensive network of segregated cycle paths, Milton Keynes has a dismally low level of cycling. Hard data is a little hard to come by, but 2001 figures quoted here suggest that the trip share of cycling in Milton Keynes, at 3% of all trips, is barely better than the national average.
From these two facts – that Milton Keynes has a network of segregated cycle paths, and that it has no more cycling than any other typical town across the UK – some choose to draw the conclusion that there is no connection between the provision of cycle paths separated from motor traffic and the amount of cycling in a given place.
This is superficially persuasive. Milton Keynes, we are told, has fantastic cycle paths, of a similar standard to the Netherlands, and yet nobody cycles there – at least, not in any greater numbers than across the rest of the UK. So, apparently, we shouldn’t waste our time asking for cycle paths as part of a strategy to boost cycling levels, because they don’t appear to be a way of encouraging people to cycle – at least in Milton Keynes.
Unfortunately this argument – what I shall henceforth term, for brevity, the ‘Milton Keynes Argument’ – is entirely bogus; it rests on a misunderstanding of the use and purpose of cycle paths within a broader cycling strategy, and it also places far too much weight on an apparent correlation between cycle paths in Milton Keynes and the level of cycling there, while ignoring the several other variables in play.
One, initial, way of demonstrating the flawed reasoning behind the Milton Keynes Argument would be to consider whether there would be more, or less cycling in Milton Keynes if there weren’t any cycle paths at all. Are those who claim that cycle paths do not make cycling more likely really suggesting that if we were to strip out the cycle paths in Milton Keynes the amount of cycling there would stay the same, or even increase?
That seems fantastically unlikely to me, given that the cycle paths, in the main, run alongside dual carriageways, often those with 70 mph speed limits. To pretend that people are just as likely to cycle on these kinds of roads as they would be on the cycle paths that run alongside them – cycle paths that, let’s remember, are claimed to be as good as anything in the Netherlands – stretches credibility to breaking point.
Yet this is what we have to believe if we think that there is no connection between the provision of cycle paths and the willingness of people to cycle, as we do if subscribe to the Milton Keynes Argument; we would have to believe that people are just as keen to cycle on the fast dual carriageways of Milton Keynes as they are on the allegedly well-designed cycle paths that run alongside them, because we believe that cycling is just as likely (if not more so), without cycle paths, on the existing road network. This is the very argument that John Franklin makes.
From the traditional viewpoint, Milton Keynes has the ultimate ‘worst’ and ‘best’ for cyclists. On the one hand is a high-speed grid road network, designed solely around the needs of motor vehicles and with large roundabouts at all principal junctions. On the other an extensive, purpose-built cycle path network, segregated for the greater part from fast traffic and constructed with few limitations of space or finance. If this is not the most perfect scenario for demonstrating how cycle facilities can remove the deterrents to cycling and achieve big gains in safety then what is?
But the reality of Milton Keynes over two decades shows a different story, and one that could be no less valuable in achieving a better understanding of what really is needed to encourage cycling. Far from leading to a popularist renaissance for cycling, there is much to suggest that the Redway network has suppressed cycle use, and lowered the public’s expectations of cycling as a mode of transport.
I leave you to judge whether that is a sensible belief to hold. Needless to say, I think it would be more wise to suggest that without cycle paths in Milton Keynes, the levels of cycling there would be even lower than they are at present, because all journeys there by bike would then have to be made on fast, busy roads and across large multi-lane roundabouts, which would hardly be more appealing than cycle paths, however well- or poorly-designed (about which more below). Far from apparently suppressing Milton Keynes’ cycling levels below the levels seen in some other UK towns and cities without cycle paths, it could very well be the case that the cycle paths there are the only thing keeping its cycling levels above water.
Now you could reasonably say here that I am misinterpreting the Milton Keynes Argument. In more precise form, the Argument could be said to claim that cycle paths are unnecessary for increasing cycling levels. There is a reasonably large amount of cycling in Cambridge and Oxford, for instance; this has been achieved without cycle paths. Hence we only need to adopt the strategies seen in Oxford and Cambridge to achieve higher cycling levels elsewhere.
I don’t doubt that it is true that we can boost cycling levels without cycle paths; there are plenty of interventions that can be used to make cycling more likely, of which the most prominent are ‘filtered permeability’ – the blocking of cars from some routes, while still keeping them open for bicycles – and lower speed limits. I am not too familiar with Cambridge, but I do know that the very centre of Oxford has a good deal of filtered permeability that has served to create a reasonably subjectively safe environment for cycling. In a similar vein, it is claimed, with some justification, that the borough of Hackney in London has boosted cycling levels largely through a strategy of filtered permeability.
But the author of this recently-published, albeit recycled, piece about Hackney goes further than simply trumpeting the success of permeability, and proceeds to imply that segregated cycle paths are unnecessary.
Cycling is growing faster in the London Borough of Hackney than anywhere else in the UK, yet planners and transport professionals visiting this borough with a view to imitating its success on their own turf may be surprised to see little in the way of conspicuous cycle facilities. Danish style cycle tracks are nowhere to be found, and the 1000-strong local cyclists group, the London Cycling Campaign in Hackney, actively lobbies against the installation of cycle lanes….
Hackney has hardly any green painted cycle lanes and the few dedicated segregated cycle tracks that do exist tend to be there to facilitate cycle access where other motor traffic is not permitted, for example restoring permeability via a cycle contra-flow along a previously barred one-way street.
This is the message of the Milton Keynes Argument, albeit in reverse; here, Hackney, is somewhere that has achieved some success without cycle paths. Meanwhile Milton Keynes has failed to achieve success with them.
However, I am not sure, in either case, that we should conclude that cycle paths are unnecessary, because just while levels of cycling in Milton Keynes would probably be lower without cycle paths, levels of cycling in Hackney could be higher with them.
I am, lest it need saying, not making an argument for cycle paths everywhere. What I am suggesting is that cycle paths, contrary to those who subscribe to the Milton Keynes Argument, are indeed necessary along a certain category of road – one that still carries high volumes of motor traffic, and/or fast motor traffic. While filtered permeability is indeed a very important part of the Dutch strategy – especially in residential areas where it is used to keep the number of motor vehicle journeys to an absolute minimum, without the presence of cycle paths – nevertheless, on Dutch roads and streets that do have a significant number of car journeys, cycle paths are nearly ubiquitous.
To that extent, the proponents of the Milton Keynes Argument are making a category mistake. They are assuming that cycle paths and filtered permeability (or lower speed limits, or some such) are two different, interchangeable solutions to the same kind of problem, when in fact they are solutions to two different kinds of problem.
Now I am firmly of the opinion that far too many journeys in the UK are made by motor vehicle. However, I am not so naive as to believe that journeys by motor vehicle can be eliminated completely. We will still have roads and streets that will need to accommodate journeys by motor vehicles. To give a few examples, these might include the longer distance trips that would be impractical by bicycle; the necessary conveyance of things that cannot be delivered or picked up by bicycle; bus journeys. We might also include journeys made by people who just don’t want to use a bicycle, and would like to keep using a car; I don’t think it is reasonable to stop them from doing so. What is needed is a re-balancing so that the bicycle becomes a reasonable and convenient alternative to the car for those people who currently want to cycle, but don’t; the other side of the coin is that certain (short) car journeys become progressively more difficult, but not necessarily impossible.
What this means in practice is that we will still have roads that carry motor vehicles; not as many as at present, but still in significant numbers, and it is on these routes that cycle paths will be necessary, because they will serve to make bicycle trips on these roads more pleasant and safe than sharing the space with motor traffic. As Chester Cycling has written, against the background of claims about Peak Oil eventually rendering segregation unnecessary,
cycle infrastructure in the sort of places we need it now would still be needed because the entirety of our road network would never be given over almost exclusively for the use of cyclists.
Only by pretending that our entire road network will be given over for the exclusive use of cycling would one be able to state that cycle paths will be unnecessary, because there will always be some roads, carrying vehicles, which will be needlessly unpleasant to ride a bike on.
A typical Dutch residential street might look like something this.
No cycle paths, but with filtered permeability and a one-way system to keep motor vehicle journeys low.
From here we might move onto a distributor road.
Still no segregation; however there are still a limited number of motor vehicles using this road, only to gain access to residential streets.
Once we hit a through road, however, we do have a segregated cycle track.
This provides a subjective level of safety from the higher number of vehicle movements along this route. Naturally enough, out of town, on dual carriageways, where vehicle movements are even higher in number, we remain segregated.
It is only by imagining that
a) people are just as likely to cycle on the track on the left in this picture as they are on the road with the van and the lorry, or
b) in the future, there won’t be traffic – lorries and vans – like that seen in this picture
that we could believe that cycle paths are ‘unnecessary’.
The other problem with the Milton Keynes Argument, besides this specious way of attempting to demonstrate that cycle paths are unnecessary, is its apparent willingness to assume that cycle paths are the only type of method being presented to boost cycling levels. This is a particular favourite of the more than slightly absurd Amcambike website, which consistently presents advocates of Dutch-style cycle planning as claiming that
people cycle simply because there are cycle paths
and just as consistently fails to quote anyone claiming any such thing.
Conceive, if you will, of a straight, flat 10 mile strip of road with a 70 mph speed limit, with a well-designed and safe cycle path alongside it. Offer someone the choice of driving or cycling to the other end of that road, without any hindrance in either case, and it would come as no great surprise to me if the vast majority of people chose to drive.
So it would be facile to imagine that the presence of a cycle path, in and of itself, is sufficient to make people cycle, regardless of context; yet this is precisely the opinion the author of the Amcambike site chooses to attribute to his opponents – that they believe ‘cycle paths cause cycling’.
The purpose of cycle paths is being misunderstood (deliberately or accidentally, I cannot say). A cycle path alongside a fast and/or busy road is a way of making a cycle journey that happens to progress along that road for part of its length feel safe and pleasant; it is not, principally, a way of getting people to switch, in large numbers, to a bicycle from a car for a journey that runs purely along a fast and busy road, because that would be entirely unrealistic.
This is actually the lesson of Milton Keynes, because the cycle paths, and the way they fit into the geography of the town, mirror exactly this kind of hypothetical scenario I have presented. It is indeed unrealistic to have ever expected people to opt to use the cycle paths in Milton Keynes, instead of their cars, because no obstacle is put in the way of car use. Fast, flat and straight 70 mph dual carriageways whisk you in and out of the centre of town, where parking is plentiful.
The cycle paths which run alongside these roads – even if perfectly designed – would never be a particularly attractive alternative to using the car, for the obvious reason that cycling into town on them, on just as straight and flat a route, is going to take longer, much longer, than driving.
Naturally there has to be, along with cycle paths where they are necessary, some degree of competitive advantage to using a bicycle, of which the most obvious example would be a shorter route than an equivalent car journey.
Milton Keynes (designated 1967) was unusual in that it was designed on a grid-based road system typical of road planning in the New World. A system of shared paths for pedestrians and cyclists was grafted on to the Master Plan after the basic 1km grid road layout had been fixed and development had already started. The initial assumption was that cyclists would use quieter residential streets and pedestrian underpasses (which they were not legally permitted to traverse) to bypass main roads. However, it was later realized that it was unrealistic for cyclists to take less direct routes to reach their destination and the authorities decided to allow cyclists shared use of the pedestrian paths. Work was undertaken to upgrade them into what became known as the ‘Redways’ because of the red tarmac used for their demarcation. The aim was ‘to show for the first time, on a city-wide scale, how travel for pedestrians and cyclists can be made convenient, safe and pleasant. Above all, accidents involving pedestrians and cyclists – particularly children – should be greatly reduced’ (Milton Keynes Development Corporation, 1980).
The resulting cycle network inevitably meant that the design was compromised resulting in cyclists having to endure gradients that were actually greater than on the road network (unlike the Stevenage approach). This was coupled with criticism of inadequate lighting, signing and poor sight lines because of overgrown vegetation and the need to give way where cyclists met motor traffic at side junctions. Ironically, what became one of the most extensive planned cycle networks in Britain also became one of its most criticised
The cycle paths, or ‘Redways’, as they eventually turned out to be, are doubly compromised, not just because cycling and walking were afterthoughts to the central design of Milton Keynes – a network permitting fast and smooth motor vehicle journeys across the town – but also because they themselves are a poor adaption of routes which were initially designed solely for pedestrians.
We can see a typical example of how this turned out in the photograph below.
At right is a 70 mph dual carriageway; straight, and flat, it allows fast and easy access in and out of town. I am standing on the Redway, which as you can see is far from flat. As it runs parallel to the entire length of this road, at every such junction it dips up and down, making cycling a tiring and frustrating experience, especially given the fact that the land the town itself is built on is generally very flat indeed. And, perhaps because these routes were initially designed for pedestrians, the gradients on the Redways are steep. In the photograph above you can see that the path rises from well below road level, to well above it. Needless to say, this is not convenient for riding a bike.
The Redways hardly provide a straight route, either. A journey along them on this road, Grafton Street, will involve switching from the west side, to the east side.
And then from the east side, back to the west side.
And then from the west side, back to the east side.
Annoyingly, it’s not at all clear when the Redway switches sides as you cycle along it; at one of these roundabouts, I continued straight on, only to find myself at a bus stop with no continuing off-carriageway route.
Frustrated pedestrians have evidently decided to continue on foot here, despite the absence of a pavement or Redway, leaving a muddy track. I decided to retrace my steps, double back under the roundabout, and cycle back up onto the Redway on the other side.
Even if you know your route, with all these switches from side to side a short journey along the Redways besides a straight road is, absurdly, considerably longer than a journey by car on the road itself.
The at-grade junction treatments – those junctions where you are not pedalling up and down steep gradients to get under or over a flat road – are very poor. Naturally enough you have to yield to motor traffic, which is not necessarily a problem, but considerable danger is involved.
Here we have to cycle across a sliproad into a petrol station. This is a 70 mph dual carriageway. Traffic from the right approaches unnervingly fast, and there is nothing, at all, to slow it at this crossing point. The geometry of the corner is wrong, the positioning of the cycle path is wrong, and the sightlines are wrong.
Another example, this time an entry into a housing area.
Again, we have vehicles approaching at up to 70 mph around a wide radius bend. John Franklin may have abused some statistics to attempt to make a point about the safety of off-carriageway provision in Milton Keynes, but it is undeniable that a lot of these junction treatments are needlessly dangerous.
This example is even worse.We have to cross four lanes of traffic, each progressing in different directions, and coming from various points on the main road. A recipe for collisions. Although it looks like a pavement, it is in fact a shared use path, which starts here.
Note that you have to get up the steps with your bicycle – avoiding the shopping trolley – if you wish to use this ‘facility’ along the A421.
These junctions are needlessly dangerous.
However, unlike John Franklin, I’m not prepared to use them to condemn off-carriageway provision in general, because this is just poorly-designed rubbish that simply doesn’t merit comparison with junction treatments in the Netherlands, or infrastructure done properly. Not all cycle infrastructure is the same, nor is it designed to the same standard.
The centre of Milton Keynes, in addition, does not seem to have much off-carriageway provision, at all.
A dual carriageway.
Another dual carriageway. No off-carriageway provision here either.
Alongside most of these dual carriageways there are large car parks, through which you can cycle, although some are blocked off with barriers. At junctions with larger roads, you can progress through underpasses to the next car park, although frequently this will involve steps, and/or no path at all to get directly out of the car park. It is hardly a recipe for convenience, and does not send out a message that the bicycle is being particularly privileged compared to the fast straight routes that exist at surface level, or indeed compared to the vast expanses of tarmac being allocated to parking.
The video below gives a final illustration of the difficulties involved. Having just left the station, I am cycling along a road, and wish to turn left onto a ‘shared use’ path that runs underneath the road I start on.
I cannot do so initially because the access points are completely blocked by some thoughtlessly-placed fencing. My only way in is to double back, walk across a flower bed, and then cycle through a grotty area seemingly designed to look like a caricature of an urban dystopia.
You can also see the characteristic nature of many of these ‘paths’, which are simply underpasses designed to keep pedestrians out of the way of motor vehicles, onto which bicycles have subsequently been permitted.
It is quite clear, then, that Milton Keynes is by no means an exemplar of off-carriageway provision, either in convenience, joined-up networks, signage, or safety. Simply bolting on rubbish infrastructure to a town designed around motor vehicle journeys was never going to be a recipe for success.
I’ll stop short of calling this fundamentally dishonest, because Franklin is not explicit about what these ‘many other places’ are (although the inference is surely obvious). However, if these places are indeed worse than Milton Keynes – wherever they are – they must be truly, truly awful.
From today’s House of Commons Transport Committee on Cycling Safety. You can listen to this guff yourself, if you wish, at about the 11:56 mark.
Ellman [chair]– Can we learn anything on safe cycling from countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark?
Baker – Well, I’m always happy to look for lessons from elsewhere. I think we should be always open to that. And I’ve been over to look at cycling in Holland, in particular, which is very well known for that. I think that my colleague Mike referred earlier on to the rate per 100,000 of the population, in terms of cycle deaths, and we actually come above the Netherlands. We’ve got a better record on that. So what we can learn from the Netherlands, in my view, is probably not safety issues, particularly; what we can learn from the Netherlands is how to encourage people to cycle more, to improve the infrastructure, the public infrastructure, the public realm, to join up different modes of transport, like rail and cycle. That’s what we can learn from the Netherlands, rather than safety. I mean, I went to, I think it was Leiden station, and I think I’m right in saying that when I got to Leiden station – a medium-sized town – there’s something like 13,000 bicycles parked there every day. And no cars. Or hardly any cars. We’re never going to get to that situation, but we can make a lot more progress on that. So they’re the lessons we can learn, I think, rather than necessarily safety lessons.
Why stop there? If nobody cycled in Britain, we’d be infinitely safer for cycling than the Netherlands. A new policy strategy clearly beckons.
And then Penning’s response –
Penning – I think there’s a classic example, where as you massively increase the amount of people that cycle, your figures for deaths… [trails off, consults paperwork] For instance, on the European table I have here, the Netherlands is fourth from the bottom, with 0.84 [deaths] per 100,000 population. Where we are, I think, is seventh, with 0.71 [deaths per 100,000 population]. That is not because they don’t care about cycle safety, that is because there are so many people cycling in the Netherlands. So you will get those ratios going up. I think the Netherlands may want to come and see us, to see how we are making sure that so few people are killed cycling, in terms… as we increase the numbers of people cycling, because the figures would indicate we’re doing a bit better than they are [smug look, and smile]
So cycling gets safer the more people do it, except it doesn’t, because more people get killed in the Netherlands, because more people cycle there, except that we’re increasing our numbers here, so we’re safer. So we should stop people cycling. I think.
Or something.
I was going to attempt to pick the bones out of this, but as I’ve typed it up, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s self-contradictory gibberish that doesn’t really merit any response whatsoever.
It’s frankly insulting that transport ministers can turn up to a meeting about cycling safety and spout this kind of evasive, dishonest and misleading rubbish. They just don’t care.
UPDATE
As Jim points out in the comments below, per km travelled (a sensible measure, rather than the meaningless ‘absolute number’ measure Penning and Baker decided to use) Dutch cyclists are more than twice as safe as British ones, with 9 fatalities per billion km cycled in 2009, compared with 21 fatalities per billion km cycled over the same period in the UK. His full analysis is here.
I have long held the view that a cyclised city is a civilised city; but if we are to get more Londoners onto two wheels rather than four we need to provide the facilities to help them do so. I hope a central London cycle hire scheme will inspire Londoners as a whole, and not just the adventurous few, to get on their bikes and give cycling a go. I believe that the work we are carrying out can make the capital a city of cyclists, where to use two wheels is common not curious.
Shepherd’s Bush, outside the Westfield Shopping Centre, last Thursday.
Nationally over 20% of all journeys to work undertaken by men in the 1930s and 40s were by bike, and during these decades cycling was the single most important means of travelling to work for men. Women were less likely to cycle than men but even so approximately 10% of journeys to work by women were by bicycle in this period. Overall, in Manchester 16.3% of all journeys to work (by men and women) were by bike in the period 1920-39, and 18.6% in the period 1940-59 (Pooley and Turnbull 2000; Pooley et al 2005). There was considerable debate in the national press in the1930s about the regulation of cyclists, the excessive number of road accidents and the provision of dedicated road space for those travelling by bicycle.
These issues came to a head in December 1934 when the first dedicated cycle lane in Britain was opened by the Minister of Transport, Hore-Belisha. This was a 2.5 mile stretch of 8ft 6in wide concrete cycle path alongside a section of Western Avenue in Middlesex (now the A40), provided for the ‘greater convenience and safety of cyclists’ (The Times, December 15th 1934, p9). The Minister called the road a ‘perfect example of arterial road construction’ in which ‘The two cycling tracks which had been provided gave effect for the first time to the principle that classes of traffic should be segregated in accordance with the speed at which they travel. Such segregation assured the comfort and enhanced the safety of vehicles of every class’ (The Times, December 15th, 1934, p9).
Other similar schemes were also under consideration at this time – for instance on the new Coventry by-pass (The Times, December 12th 1934, p11) and also in initial plans for a new north-south route through Lancashire, though the road was never completed in this form (The Times, December 5th, 1934 p11; Pooley, 2010). However, cycling organizations saw the provision of segregated routes as an assault on the rights of cyclists to use the road and the National Cyclists’ Union in particular objected strongly to the cycle paths. Their fear was that the use of cycle paths would be made compulsory for cyclists and they expressed the view that ‘The only way to deal with road problems … was to remove the cause of the danger, namely excessive speed, having regard to prevailing conditions and inefficient driving, and not by depriving any class of road users of its rightful use of the highway’ (The Times, December 15th 1934, p9). The Minister responded that ‘He did not know why it should be considered less reasonable to provide cycle paths for cyclists than to make pavements for pedestrians’ (The Times, December 15th 1934, p9).
The safety of cyclists, and their potential conflict with motorists also arose in other ways, including concern about cyclists in the new Mersey Tunnel (opened 1934) where they were accused of poor lane discipline and of slowing the flow of traffic (The Times, December 24th 1934, p6) and with regard to their use of rear lights (rather than reflectors). There were regular press reports on road traffic accidents involving cyclists with cyclists accounting for 18.4% of fatalities in 1933 (1,324 deaths). Although at the time this was viewed as excessive (The Times, December 15th 1934, p9), it is almost exactly the same as the number of trips made by bicycle (reported above). For comparison in 2009 there were 104 cyclists killed in road traffic accidents on British roads, representing 4.7% of all road fatalities (DfT 2010). Given that only about two per cent of trips are made by bicycle today it could be argued that the 1930s were relatively safer for cyclists than 21st century roads.
These issues were debated throughout the 1930s and in 1938 the National Committee on Cycling in a memorandum on the Report of the Transport Advisory Council on Accidents to Cyclists stated that ‘it does not feel that any practicable scheme for segregating cycle traffic can materially affect the safety of cyclists. It is pointed out that almost half of the accidents to cyclists take place at cross-roads where cycle paths are impracticable, and that cycle paths are only possible where cycle traffic is comparatively light. All new and reconstructed roads of sufficient width, it is suggested, should have lanes marked off primarily for cycle traffic. Where a cycle path already exists, an experiment might be made of throwing the path into the present highway, while marking off a suitable strip as primarily for cycle traffic’ (The Times, November 21st 1938, p9). Thus in this period the merits of segregating (either completely or partially) cyclists from motor vehicles were hotly debated with the main cyclists’ organisations resolutely against segregation. These views have continued to inform thinking on cycle lanes to the present day with the CTC still arguing strongly for the right of cyclists to share safe road space rather than beings segregated into dedicated cycle lanes (www.ctc.org.uk).
I have tracked down the December 15th 1934 article from The Times, on the opening of the cycle tracks along Western Avenue and Hore-Belisha’s response to the National Cyclists’ Union’s protest about them, referenced in this passage. It really is quite remarkable.
The Minister of Transport replied yesterday to the objections of the National Cyclists’ Union to the provision of tracks for cycles on important roads.
Earlier in the day Mr. Hore-Belisha had performed three ceremonies in connexion with road schemes carried out by Middlesex County Council. The ceremonies… consisted of cutting ribbons to open new experimental tracks for cycles, a section of Western Avenue itself, and the institution of automatic traffic signals at a crossing nearby.
The cycle tacks are 8ft 6in wide, and extend for about two and a half miles from Hangar Lane to Greenford Road. They are made of concrete and cost approximately £7,000.
Later –
During the ceremonies a representative of the National Cyclists’ Union issued a statement outlining the union’s objections to cycle paths. Although it was not suggested in official quarters, the statement said, that the use of cycle paths should be made compulsory it was likely that attempts to do so would be made. No attempt should be made to take away the rights enjoyed by all vehicles using the highway.
The union then voices their opinion on the correct way to deal with problems faced by cyclists on the road, as quoted in Pooley’s paper – the familiar refrain of addressing poor driving.
The Times reports Hore-Belisha’s response as follows-
In some other countries cycle tracks were not only usual, but popular, and he had hoped that they would be given an unbiased and friendly trial here. But he had heard that their cycling guests had circulated a statement that they were at present holding a watching brief. It appeared that they had made up their minds, however, that the cycling tracks were an assault on their privileges and an attempt to deprive them of their rightful use of the highway.
Further
He did not know why it should be considered less reasonable to provide cycle paths for cyclists than to make pavements for pedestrians, and he had not yet heard any suggestion that the provision of pavements for pedestrians was a measure of the deprivation of the right of the pedestrian to use the King’s highway. He asked for a reasonable consideration of this matter. The evidence before him showed that accidents to cyclists were increasing, and confronted with such a problem the nation would applaud the enterprise of the Middlesex County Council. He hoped that the example would be followed by authorities in other parts of the country.
A PENSIONER was killed and another woman left seriously injured after a car hit two pedestrians. The crash happened in Rhos-on-Sea, when the car mounted the pavement and struck the two women outside shops on Rhos Road.
Fire crews had to help release the trapped casualties, while paramedics and two doctors battled to treat the women. Despite their desperate attempts a woman in her 70s was pronounced dead at the scene, soon after 3.30pm yesterday.
The other pedestrian was taken by ambulance to Ysbyty Glan Clwyd with serious injuries.
More detail
John Davies, 64, who runs Rhos Newsagents, fifty yards up Rhos Road from where the crash happened, said: “I heard a bang. I couldn’t see if anyone was injured. Then I heard someone shout ‘The driver’s hit the shop and one lady walking outside it is trapped’. Then the emergency services arrived and all hell let loose.”
One woman was standing near the scene. She said: “There was a woman under the car. My daughter in law ran over and was stroking her hair. There was a male driver in the car. He wasn’t moving. Whether he was in shock I don’t know.”
Emma Roberts, 30, works at The Corner Café 100 yards away. She said: “A lot of people use that junction and there’s a zebra crossing there too.”
This picture of the crash scene from the ITV News report is striking.
There is some pedestrian guardrail at this location. Surely this should have protected the two ladies from the errant car? Is this not what pedestrian guardrail is for?
Well, no.
At this location the guardrail has been used to stop people crossing the road in the ‘wrong place’.
It is not positioned to stop people on the pavement from being hit by cars.
This is the case with almost all ‘guardrail’, which is quite obviously fantastically misnamed, since it does no ‘guarding’ of pedestrians at all.
In reality it is pedestrian penning, anti-personnel fencing that is used to keep people out of the way of motor vehicles so their passage through villages, towns and cities is unhindered. Consequently it is located in places where pedestrians would naturally want to cross, and only coincidentally in places where pedestrians are at the greatest risk of being hit.
The BBC News report of this crash states that ‘two unnamed local women were involved in a collision with a blue Jaguar car in Rhos on Sea’, which is their usual extraordinary way of writing about these kinds of incident.
And, no doubt coincidentally, on the suburban street parallel to the one on which this fatal crash occurred, campaigners have recently managed to get traffic calming and a crossing installed, having previously measured motorists travelling at 50 and 60mph along the 30mph stretch, which serves as a shortcut to the road along the coast.
RT @OxonCyclingNet: No consultation and against national standard LTN 1/20, Oxford's only central traffic-free cycle lane (Parks Rd) has be… 3 days ago
