Friday Facility No. 3 – Worthing Road Roundabout, Horsham

This week our winning facility is an off-road cycle track, designed to allow cyclists to negotiate a busy roundabout at the southern entrance to Horsham town centre.

The first section starts on the pavement to the left. The roundabout we want to avoid is in the distance.

It is a matter of a few yards in length. Note that the space marked to the left of the white line is a two-way path for cyclists.

Once you have crossed the road at the lights, you are then on the right side of the road. Notice how you are told to dismount here (and before crossing), despite the crossing being a ‘toucan’, and there being a path on both sides of the pavement. Still, ludicrously, a two-way path.

The path stops for no apparent reason as we reach the roundabout, even though it continues to the right in the photograph below (I can only think of potential conflict with crossing pedestrians, but I think all this amounts to is a shrug of apathy from the designer) –

Below, we see the classic yielding of priority, this time to a road coming off the roundabout, which in this case is not at all busy, leading only to a small staff car park. Quite why cyclists also have to dismount to cross a road is not explained.

And yet another ‘dismount’ sign, with added barriers, stopping you from easily accessing the path that runs around behind Sainsbury’s supermarket.

If you wish to continue northwards into the town centre, rather than being diverted eastwards around this supermarket, the path simply stops. You have to continue on foot around the perimeter of the roundabout, cross the road on the north side, and then remount.

The short, hundred-yard stretch featured in these photographs contains five separate instructions to dismount.

Friday Facility – no.2, North Street, Horsham

Never mind the quality, feel the width.

This excellent facility runs from a shared-use overbridge that connects directly into Horsham town centre, to… nowhere in particular. It runs alongside North Street in Horsham, towards the railway station, for about a hundred yards, and then dribbles to a stop.

The start. Behind me is the overbridge.

Notice that the path does not continue across the road I am standing on; it yields to this road entrance –

which as you can see is not in the greatest demand. Incidentally, the building in the background is the headquarters of West Sussex County Council. The next give way –

This time it is for the staff car park of a small Chinese restaurant – about four spaces in here.

Definitely the sort of thing cyclists should be yielding to. Another give way –

for this tiny road, that goes nowhere –

and has only three small parking spaces at the end –

The path then comes to an end, to be replaced by bushes.

The red brick building on the right is Horsham District Council’s headquarters. So this offensively poor crap lies right on the doorstep of both local and county councils.

Look how much space there is here to have done this properly – the view northwards, to the station –

and southbound, parallel to the existing path –

 

 

The Understanding Walking and Cycling report – an assessment

The full text of the Understanding Walking and Cycling report, produced by academics from the Universities of Lancaster and Oxford Brookes, has finally appeared, following an interim report that was summarized in the Guardian.

Despite the conclusions of this report being – to me, at least – screamingly obvious, it has, for some reason, proved a little controversial.

In what follows, I do quote a lot from the report itself, but that is quite deliberate, because I want to make plain what the report actually says. I will not go, particularly, into the details of what the report says about walking – but focus instead on its recommendations for cycling.

The Report’s aim is, explicitly, to examine the factors that influence everyday travel decisions, and thence to propose a series of policy measures designed to boost walking and cycling levels for short trips in urban areas. It notes that

 Despite recent policies to promote more sustainable travel (for example, Cycle Demonstration Towns, Smarter Choices and Travel Planning), British society remains heavily car dependent with many short urban trips being undertaken by car. (page 1)

 Implicitly – current policies are not working. Further

It is often assumed that short trips could easily be made by bicycle or on foot (e.g., DfT, 2011, pg 5), and the statistics suggest that there are many short trips that could be converted. According to the National Travel Survey (2010) 36.1% of trips under 2 miles and 53.0% of journeys under 5 miles undertaken by car, with walking accounting for 23.4% of all trips and cycling only 1.5% of all journeys. When compared to other European countries, whilst levels of walking are broadly similar, cycling in Britain is substantially less common than elsewhere. For instance in Sweden and Finland 9% of all trips are by bicycle, in Germany 10%, in Denmark 18% and in the Netherlands 26%. The research reported here suggests that assuming trips (in the UK) could be undertaken by bike or foot just because they are short is a rather simplistic approach that fails to fully understand the nature of the problem. A purely distance based understanding of the problem ignores difficulties caused by the physical environment, complex household interactions and a perception that walking and cycling are not normal. (Pages 1-2)

Indeed. The idea that people can simply be ‘encouraged’ to take short trips is the kind of evidence-free, wishful thinking that unfortunately predominates in much official cycle promotion, and local authority thinking. Like the report says, it fails to address the reasons why people don’t cycle for short trips, which it identifies as falling into these three categories –

• the environment
• complex household interactions
• a perception of ‘abnormality.’

The Report focused on four English towns, using questionnaires, interviews, and household enthnographies to probe the reasons influencing people’s travel decisions.

On attitudes towards cycling –

There were a number of negative associations with cycling, including the need to negotiate difficult road junctions, cycling being a bad experience using existing roads and desire for more cycle lanes to feel safer, which together indicate notable safety concerns. Indeed poor safety was one of the key reasons for not cycling expressed by approximately 80% of respondents…. Results were generally consistent across all four study areas. (pages 5-6)

This, of course, mirrors almost exactly the results of nearly every single survey taken to address why people don’t cycle – the Manchester Cycle survey being merely the most recent.

What I found particularly interesting is the data that emerges from the interviews conducted by the report. Using the responses, the authors were able to classify interviewees into a number of groups. 42% of respondents fell into three groups – ‘cycling sanctifiers’, ‘pedestrian prioritizers’ and ‘automobile adherents’. The ‘cycling sanctifiers’ (17% of the variance)

are confident cycling in traffic and are reluctant to see the implementation of segregated cycle infrastructure if this leads to the erosion of cyclists’ right to use the road. (page 7).

Motoring adherents – or what I would call the ‘Mr. Toad’ group –

This discourse is most satisfied with the present car system and is underpinned by the belief that people have a choice how to travel around and it is up to them to exercise it. Walking is regarded as a leisure activity and cycling practised by enthusiasts or by committed environmentalists. People who subscribe to this discourse are against any measures that infringe their liberty to drive such as traffic calming even if this could improve conditions for walking and cycling. Indeed, this discourse suggests that walkers and cyclists should take more responsibility for their own safety when moving around the city. (page 7)

In other words, classic Top Gear attitudes, that simultaneously suggest that other ways of getting around town are only ‘leisure’ activities, and that people who do choose to engage in these ‘leisure’ activities should quite rightly look out for their themselves in the face of people using ‘proper’ modes of transport – i.e. the car.

This kind of stuff would be quite depressing, except for the fact that only 9% of variance is made up by this particular ‘discourse’, and that a full 58% of the responses do not fall into any of these self-defined groups. That is – the majority of interviewees do not identify themselves as ‘motorists’, ‘pedestrians’ or ‘cyclists’. This rather flies in the face of the seemingly ubiquitous identification of ‘motorist’ with ‘everyone’, prevalent in the media and indeed in government attitudes to road policy. The report notes that we need to focus on this group, so as to

understand the factors that influence the travel decisions of people who are not currently committed to a particular form of travel, and who thus may be more open to changing their travel behaviour than those with a strong mobility identity. (Page 7)

How do we change this travel behaviour? The environment – of which the report notes two potential key aspects, connectivity and permeability, and safety, but emphasises that the latter appears to be far more important.

…the connectivity of the street network and the availability of everyday activities within walking and cycling distance of the home are insufficient on their own to encourage walking and (particularly) cycling. This is not to suggest that they are unimportant, but that others factors may militate against their use as we discuss below. There is clear evidence from the qualitative research that perceptions of risk were a major factor influencing everyday travel decisions… Cyclists were most concerned about dangers from motorised traffic. (Page 9)

And

It is clear that traffic is a major deterrent for all but the most committed of cyclists. Potential cyclists, recreational (off-road) cyclists and occasional cyclists are discouraged from using their bicycles for everyday urban journeys because of their fear of cars and heavy goods vehicles. (Page 10).

This is the first impediment that the report identifies – perceptions of safety.

The report also identifies ‘household and family factors’ that influence levels of walking and cycling. Notice, in the survey responses in Table 4, that 40% of respondents are often, or sometimes, unable to make a journey by bike because they need to give a lift to a child. Evidently they feel they cannot make that journey with a child by bike.

The third and final impediment to greater cycling numbers is the perception of abnormality.

In Britain, travelling by car is the default position for most people (over 60% of alltrips are by car) and car ownership and use is seen as normal… A few respondents expressed quite strong views that if you did not own and use a car you were not perceived to be ‘normal’, but more commonly the feelings expressed centred more on the fact that using a car for short everyday travel was what most people did, and to do anything different was, on most occasions, just too difficult. The combination of travelling in a way that was different from most people, of wearing what might be viewed as odd clothes, or of arriving slightly dishevelled from a walk or cycle ride were all too difficult to negotiate and deal with for many people. (page 16)

So there we have it. Three different reasons why only 1.5% of trips in the U.K. are made by bicycle.

But are they so separate? To me, the last two difficulties flow directly from the first. It is because it is perceived as hazardous to cycle around our towns by bicycle that families have become dependent upon using their cars to ferry their children around – they daren’t let their children cycle around by themselves. The ‘complex household interactions’ are at least partly a product of a street environment that is unsafe for children. Make it safe to cycle with your children, or for them to cycle alone, and this difficulty disappears. The report, in fact, draws the same conclusion –

Perceptions of risk, as outlined above, also interact with family and household factors as risk may be perceived to affect particular family members differentially. (Page 12).

Well quite.

In cities designed and built for cars much more than for cycling and walking, car use has for many households become both normal and easy, while walking and cycling are not… a simple journey with three small children can take a considerable amount of organization and negotiation. For many parents this is just too much trouble and putting the children in the car for even a very short journey becomes the easier option. (page 12).

This begs the question of why it is difficult to make short journeys by bicycle with children. It’s not a problem in the Netherlands. And again, we find the report drawing the right conclusions –

For [sustainable travel-minded] families, switching trips from cars to walking and cycling is less about changing attitudes and much more about making walking and cycling easier to accomplish in the context of busy everyday lives. (page 12).

A physical environment which might be quite acceptable to a single person without responsibility for others, may be perceived as unacceptably risky to a parent who may be concerned not only for the welfare of their child but also for their own safety and the impact of an accident on their dependents. Many respondents expressed concerns about the safety of children cycling… the testimony of Brian is particularly telling as although he is himself a keen cyclist he questions the value of the cycle training provided for children as he is not comfortable with them cycling in current road conditions. (page 15)

Much the same can be said for the problem of ‘abnormality’ – it is largely contingent upon the fact that it is unpleasant, and objectively unsafe, to cycle around our towns and cities. Because it is seen as unpleasant, only a small ‘abnormal’ minority of people cycle, and because being safe while cycling currently tends to involves cycling as fast as one can, ‘sportier’ clothing is often required, alongside safety equipment, both of which are conspicuous by their absence in countries with a genuine cycling culture. Make it safe and attractive to ride a bicycle, and the ‘abnormality’ problem will simply evaporate. Again, this is something the report recognizes directly –

There is clearly need to move towards a virtuous circle where the physical environment is made as welcoming as possible, and walking and cycling are made as easy as possible so that more people engage in sustainable travel, thus making walking and cycling seem normal. (page 17)

From all of this research, therefore, we have the ‘open goal’ conclusion about how to boost the number of trips made by bicycle –

First, it is essential that the urban environment is made safe for cyclists and pedestrians. This requires the provision of fully segregated routes on all arterial and other busy roads in urban areas. It is clear from the research that most non-cyclists and recreational cyclists will only consider cycling regularly if they are segregated from traffic, and that pedestrians are hostile to pavement cyclists.

This is not, of course, a catch-all solution, but one that goes hand-in-hand with recommendation three –

there need to be effective restrictions on traffic speeds, parking and access on all residential roads and other routes without segregated cycle and pedestrian paths so that both cyclists and pedestrians feel that they have a safe and convenient environment in which to travel. This could include 20mph speed limits and resident-only access by car in some areas. 

The report also recommends that ‘strict liability’ is adopted and that there are changes to the way in which our urban environments are organized – with more neighbourhood shopping centres easily accessible on bike and foot. It also asserts the need to change the perception of cycling as abnormal – but while pointing out that campaigns should not be dominated by super-fit or unusually committed specialists, recognizes that this will be consequential upon the other changes.

In summary, it really is a no-brainer – Go Dutch.

Unfortunately the bracing good sense of this report has rather been lost in some controversy stemming from unfortunate wording in the closing paragraphs, namely a passage that runs

do not base policies about walking and cycling on the views and experiences of existing committed cyclists and pedestrians. These are a minority who have, against all the odds, successfully negotiated a hostile urban environment to incorporate walking and cycling into their everyday routines. It is necessary to talk – as we have done – to non-walkers and non-cyclists, potential cyclists and walkers, former cyclists and walkers, recreational cyclists and occasional walkers to determine what would encourage them to make more use of these transport modes. (page 19)

Now, to me, it is rather obvious that if you want to boost cycling from its current rather low levels, you should ask the people who don’t currently cycle (yet have in the past, or don’t yet, but might want to) why they aren’t doing it, and base your strategy around their responses. If you have a policy that aims to increase cycling levels, these are the views that policy should be based on – not the views of the people who do currently cycle – because the former are the people you need to convince.

That is all this paragraph is saying.

Yet this report has now been interpreted, rather hysterically, as

Professor wants segregated routes for bikes and urges policy makers to ignore existing cyclists when designing bicycle infrastructure.

For a start, this report has no remit about the design of bicycle infrastructure. If there is any ‘ignoring’ of current cyclists being proposed – and I’m not sure there is – it certainly isn’t about the infrastructure design. Rather, it is about the broad policy strategy. As it happens, I can’t find anything in the report suggesting that any old crap should be put in, and the howls of protest from existing cyclists should be ignored. It only proposes that segregated tracks should be built alongside arterial urban roads – but this is a policy recommendation, and says nothing about their design. So this –

‘Cyclists dismount’ signs; narrow paths shared with pedestrians; bike tracks with priority given to motorists entering from side roads; short, pointless cycle lanes strewn with obstacles. This the sort of woeful cycle infrastructure put in place by local authorities who fail to consult with cyclists or who go ahead ignoring user advice.

is, in fact, a complete red herring, the only aim of which, as far as I can tell, is to subliminally associate the recommendations of the report with the kind of substandard infrastructure that existing cyclists get – quite rightly – angry about. The idea that the report is proposing that current cyclists should not be consulted about what kind of infrastructure gets built is now up and running, however, even though the report says absolutely nothing of the kind.

[In any case, the report is not even suggesting that current cyclists should be ignored when it comes to the overall policy of increasing cycling levels (which, to stress again, is the what the report is talking about). The words it uses – to reiterate – are ‘do not base policies on [their] views and experiences’. This is not the same as ‘ignoring’. I ‘do not base’ my cooking repertoire on chips, but this does not mean they are absent from my meals. ‘Basing’ a policy of increasing cycling levels on the views and experiences of those who are currently put off from cycling does not preclude the input of those who do cycle.]

We finally find the CTC’s Roger Geffen offering his opinion –

we believe it is extremely damaging to be advising policy makers to ignore the views of existing cyclists and pedestrians. Professor Pooley implies – without any research conclusions to support his claim – that the current ‘hostile urban environment’ is what those individuals have sought or campaigned for.

I’m not sure Professor Pooley implies any such thing, although I will be grateful if anyone can point me to his words that suggest otherwise. He then tells us what the ‘real debate’ should be –

The real debate we need to have is how to galvanise the political will to reduce traffic volumes and speeds, so as to create space for quality cycle provision, whether segregated or otherwise. That political support is what is so seriously lacking in the UK.

This is a new one to me. Why do traffic volumes and speeds need to be reduced, before we can consider putting in infrastructure? Can the two not go hand in hand? Geffen makes the argument again, in a later statement –

There’s a genuinely interesting debate to be had about segregation. Moreover, it’s not about the wonderfulness of Dutch and Danish cycle facilities – that bit is mostly pretty obvious. The real question is, what does it take to ensure that segregation is done really well in the UK context, where our traffic laws and driver behaviour are very different, and where our streets that are far more traffic-dominated than Holland and Denmark were back in the 1970s. In that respect, the recent experiences of New York and Seville are much more interesting. It seems that, for segregation to work well, there has to be a really strong political commitment to create space for quality cycling provision, by reducing traffic volumes and speeds, and reallocating roadspace and junction capacity. Otherwise, any attempt to introduce segregation will merely end up marginalising cyclists.

I think Roger Geffen is blurring together two entirely separate recommendations of the report. The ‘traffic volume’ and ‘speed reduction’ suggestions apply, quite specifically, to non-arterial roads, while the suggestion for separated paths and tracks is along those arterial routes.

It is not at all clear to me why a policy that aims to construct those paths along our arterial networks should have to wait for, in Geffen’s words, ‘space to be created’ by lowering traffic speeds and volumes. You simply take that space away by building the paths in the first place. I’m not saying this is easy to implement politically, but it is surely no easier to ‘reduce traffic volume.’  Indeed, without the construction of the paths, it is equally unclear to me how you reduce traffic volume on arterial roads – this is something that exponents of this ‘strategy’ simply talk about, and then wish away, in much the same way that traffic volume is ‘disappeared’ when it comes to discussions of motor traffic volume in ‘shared spaces‘.

(I find it rather amusing, in fact, that proponents of the construction of cycle tracks on arterial roads are often labelled as unrealistic dreamers by the very same people who think the best way forward is to simply get rid of traffic on urban arterial roads. If we are whistling in the wind, then they must be whispering into a hurricane).

If I were being cynical, I would note that reductions in traffic volume and speed are the policies that the CTC are most interested in, topping their hierarchy of provision, and the construction of segregated paths is a policy they historically show a complete lack of interest in, not to say hostility towards (try typing ‘the Netherlands’ into a search on the CTC website, and see how much information you can find about paths and tracks there).

It couldn’t possibly be that they’ve come up with a convenient new argument that the construction of decent, separated infrastructure is contingent upon their two favoured strategies being implemented first?

Always to blame

From the Shropshire Star –

A Shrewsbury father-of-three, who was killed in a freak accident as he trained for a charity cycle ride, could have been affected by a fly going into his eye, an inquest has heard. Gary Brierley, 44, of Pendle Way, Meole Brace, suffered major head injuries when he came off his bike at about 40mph near Dinas Mawddwy in Snowdonia in May. He had been training with friends at the time. Mr Brierley, who worked as an accountant for Shropshire Council, was aiming to take part in a charity ride for Cancer Research from John O’Groats to Land’s End in June. A coroner in Cardiff ruled yesterday that an insect going into his eye was a “plausible explanation” for the tragic accident. Mr Brierley had been wearing a helmet but not a protective glasses. [sic]

I note, first, that a thin piece of soft polystrene was in this case insufficient to counteract the effects of a crash at speed. This is unsurprising, given that these pieces of ‘safety equipment’ are only designed to protect at impact speeds resulting from a fall due to gravity through a vertical distance of 1.5 m – a speed of around 12 mph. They are thus nearly useless at any impact speed greater than this  – precisely the kind of high impact velocities that result from being struck by a car, for example.

I note secondly that, despite Mr Brierley wearing a helmet, he still somehow manages to be implicitly blamed for his accident, because he had failed to don ‘protective glasses.’ Presumably this is the next tier of equipment that people on bicycles have to shroud themselves in before venturing out in public.

It is deeply strange how cyclists must often, somehow, be found to be at fault in ways that motorists are not. For instance, it would be absurd to find, in an article about a fatal crash involving a motorist stung by a bee, the additional information that the driver was not wearing a piece of clothing sufficiently thick enough to prevent him from being stung. No. It’s just treated as an accident; an eventuality that could not reasonably have been mitigated against.

Yet when a cyclist dies after getting an insect in his eye, it is somehow relevant to mention the lack of a piece of equipment that may or may not have prevented his fatal injuries.

Double standards.

Acceptable and proportionate

The video below – taken from an episode of BBC’s Traffic Cops, aired on Thursday 14th July – shows the aftermath of a road traffic accident. On a 60 mph stretch of the A6 north of Bedford, a car turned right into a service station, straight across the path of an oncoming car. The driver of that car had no chance to avoid a head-on collision. His passenger – his girlfriend – was critically injured, and flown by air ambulance to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, with serious head injuries.

Several witnesses at the scene of the accident were adamant that the female driver of the car that had turned into the service station, and caused the crash, was using a mobile phone, both at the time of the collision, and prior to it. Police investigation of her phone did indeed prove this to be the case. Despite having maintained, at the scene, that she had no memory of the accident (and apparently attempting to delete the evidence of her phone use), the female driver subsequently pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, and was sentenced to a nine-month (suspended) prison sentence, 250 hours community service, and banned from driving for 18 months.

The injured passenger has, luckily, made a recovery, of sorts. According to her own account here, which I recommend you read, the car she was travelling in was hit

head on and our passenger side took the main impact. as a result of this the engine fell onto my foot trapping me in the car while my head was cut open 6inches as i must have hit it pretty hard, the skin from my left arm was torn open, my wrist fractured and a vertebrea in my back was displaced. i dont remember any of this as i hit my head so hard i was knocked out and concussed. my boyfriend tried to get me to come too and kept me with it until help arrived. i was cut out of the car and airlifted to cambridge hospital where i was kept in for 3 nights and given plastic surgery. i was extreamly lucky my brain was not damaged only injured and i am told i will recover fully apart from getting the feeling back in my head as the nerve endings are damaged. i lost my memory for 4 days and 6 weeks on i still have concussion. my boyfriend injured his knee and arm while our friend injured his ribs. we all suffered from whiplash and seatbelt bruising. we are all lucky to be alive

The penalty for being caught using a mobile phone while driving is still only £60, with an endorsement of 3 points on a driving licence (it is also worth noting that points have an expiry period, meaning one could, for instance, be caught by the police using a mobile five times over a four year period and not be banned, even without pleading exceptional hardship).

It is interesting – in the light of the kind of ‘accidents’ caused by mobile phone use like the example above – to see how this severity of fine compares with that levied on cyclists for various offences.

• The standard fixed penalty for cycling on the pavement is £30 (although it can be much higher – see the example below)
• Westminster City Council evidently did not think this was severe enough, proposing the introduction of a £100 fine for cycling on the pavement, or cycling the wrong way on a one-way street (although I am not sure whether this level of fine was ever implemented)
• Using the Olympic Zil Lanes next year will earn you a £200 fine.

Why is it that fines for cycling on the pavement can match – indeed outstrip – the fines for choosing to operate several tonnes of machinery while impaired, to such an extent that you can seriously injure or kill other human beings, even those protected by all the safety equipment of modern cars?

Perhaps part of the answer lies in Department of Transport policy. According to their May 2011 Strategic Framework on Road Safety –

We intend for the action we take to be seen as acceptable and proportionate to the majority of motorists.

It seems it is now official policy to set the remit of road safety according to the prejudices of a subset of road users. The result will undoubtedly be more exorbitant and disproportionate fines levied on ‘outgroup’ bicycle users, while normal, ‘everyday’ offences that can actually kill people continue to be addressed by small fines that have to be seen as ‘acceptable’ by the people whose behaviour is supposed to be deterred by these financial penalties.

Horsham Cycling Review – Route 2 (High Priority)

This post forms part of a series, documenting the recommendations of Cycling Review commissioned by Horsham District Council. The background is described here, and in the first post of the series here.

Route 2 runs from North Heath Road, at the northern border of Horsham, to Redford Way, in the west. It is the green route, marked with the number 2, on the map below.

The numbers in brackets, after each recommendation, represent the ‘practicality’ of each proposed measure, ranging from 1 (relatively inexpensive) to 4 (difficult to implement).

The first recommendation –

North Heath Rd/Giblets Way roundabout – Redesign roundabout to continental design (2). Reduce circulating space and entry/exit speeds by introducing hatching/overrun areas (1).

A roundabout of a hostile design for cycling, with wide radius bends on entry and exit, and nothing to limit vehicle speeds. You could drive across here at 50 mph, if you wanted to. Note also the (ridiculous) anti-pedestrian fences.

Next recommendation –

North Heath Lane (Giblets Way – Holbrook School Lane) – Reallocate roadspace and remove centre line to provide cycle lanes (min 1.25m) in both directions and 2-way central lane (min 4.8m) for motor vehicle flow (2). Introduce cycle-friendly traffic calming measures (3). 

North Heath Lane, looking southbound. The pinchpoint ahead presents a hazard for cycling, with potential close overtakes through it, or around it. Plenty of width here for properly conceived on-road or off-road cycle lanes. The junction to the right in the distance is the entrance to a primary school. Unfortunately this is not a friendly road for children to cycle on.

North Heath Rd/Holbrook School Lane roundabout – Redesign roundabout to continental design (3). Reduce circulating space and entry/exit speeds by introducing hatching/overrun areas (1). 

The roundabout at the junction with Holbrook School Lane. This should be designed for children to cycle on, but isn’t.

North Heath Lane (Holbrook School Lane – bridge over Chennells Brook – Reallocate roadspace and remove centre line to provide cycle lanes (min 1.25m) in both directions and 2-way central lane (min 4.8m) for motor vehicle flow (2). Introduce cycle-friendly traffic calming measures (Practicality – 3). 

An enormously wide road here – but the space has been used for needless hatching between the carriageways, and for a filtering box. A design for driving fast.

North Heath Lane, junction with Dutchells Copse – Remove central island at Dutchells Copse and narrow to single lane in each direction w. reduced radius corners (2)

Absurdly, for a residential road, there is a left-turning slip road coming out of Dutchells Copse, presumably to help drivers hit 30 mph as quickly as possible. This needs to be removed, and replaced by tighter radius corners. Note also the unnecessary right-turning slip lane on North Heath Lane which could also be removed, with space allocated to pedestrians or cyclists.

North Heath Lane (Chennells Brook – Amundsen Road) – Reallocate roadspace and remove centre line to provide cycle lanes (min 1.25m) in both directions and 2-way central lane (min 4.8m) for motor vehicle flow (2). Install Toucan crossing of North Heath Lane to provide link between Amundsen Close and path along n. side of Chennells Brook (3).

Children waiting to cross from Amundsen Road, onto the Chennells Brook path, running east. No improvements here.

North Heath Lane (Amundsen Rd – Parsonage Rd) – Introduce cycle-friendly traffic calming measures (3)

North Heath Lane, south of Amundsen Road. Not a nice road to cycle on. Pinch points like the one illustrated above.

North Heath Lane, j/w Heath Way – Replace existing Pelican crossing with Toucan, and linking cycle tracks between Heath Way and Coltsfoot Drive (2).

No Toucan crossing yet.

No cycle track linking to Coltsfoot Drive, the left turn behind the cycle stands. This would be handy, as it would allow cyclists to avoid the roundabout.

North Heath Rd/Parsonage Rd roundabout – Redesign roundabout to continental design (3). Reduce circulating space and entry/exit speeds by introducing hatching/overrun areas (1). Increase deflection northbound with cycle slip (2).

Another enormous roundabout, with little or no traffic calming effect. Again, you barely have to slow when driving across it. There is ample scope for a separated cycle lane running northbound here (alongside the pavement on the right in the photo), which would also serve to increase deflection on the roundabout itself.

Wimblehurst Rd (Parsonage Rd – Richmond Rd) – Reallocate roadspace and remove centre line to provide cycle lanes (min 1.25m) in both directions and 2-way central lane (min 4.8m) for motor vehicle flow (2). Introduce cycle-friendly traffic calming measures (3). 

A fast, straight road. Removing the centre line, and adding wide cycle lanes, would help a great deal here.

Wimblehurst Rd (North Heath Rd – North Parade) – Introduce cycle-friendly traffic calming measures (3). 

The road narrows further south. With a 30 mph speed limit, this is not very pleasant to cycle on.

Wimblehurst Rd (North Heath Rd – North Parade) – Introduce ASL with lead-in lane (2).

No ASL – I’m not 100% convinced about the effectiveness of Advance Stop Lines, but it is worth noting, in passing, that there is not a single one, anywhere, in Horsham.

West Parade (North Parade – Trafalgar Rd) – Make section east of Newlands Rd 2-way for all traffic (with signal phase at North Parade and install eastbound contraflow cycle lane west of Newlands Rd (3). Install eastbound contraflow cycle lane with signal phase at North Parade (3). 

Ample scope here for a contraflow cycle lane, with or without removal of the parking bays (most houses here have ample off-street parking, so the bays are probably not necessary, as you can see from their emptiness in this photo).

A little more difficult on this section, perhaps, for a dedicated contraflow. But two-way cycling should surely be permitted.

Kempshott Rd/Spencers Place – Sign as cycle route

No signage, as far as I can tell.

In summary, of the 29 recommendations for this route, none have been implemented.

I will be documenting the other routes in due course.

The Cycling Embassy is launched

The sun shone on Saturday for the official launch of the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain.

My short ride from Victoria station to Lambeth Bridge – the launch location – took me down Vauxhall Bridge Road, where I attempted to take a short-cut through Vincent Square, by turning left onto Hatherley Street.

While the street has been improved for pedestrians and local residents as a result of being closed to motor vehicles at this end, the needs of cyclists have been completely ignored. Just one example of the fundamental neglect of the bicycle as a means of transport in urban planning – something that, hopefully, the new Embassy will go some way towards addressing.

After a short, rousing speech by our chair (unfortunately he struggled to make himself heard above the roar of vehicles behind him)

we set off on our inaugural ride, across Lambeth Bridge. This was, until some swift overnight resurfacing work on Thursday (interesting timing, Transport for London?), the worst cycle lane in London – it has been wondrously transformed from appalling to simply poor –

A loop around the south-side roundabout

(where we encountered a red-light jumping lorry) was followed by a pootle across the bridge itself –

and then a civilised picnic in Victoria Tower Gardens.

After a chat and some grub – nice to put some faces to some blogs – it was time for our afternoon activity, a trip to Hyde Park, taking in the delights of Horse Guards Road –

A traffic-free Mall –

Constitution Hill –

And Hyde Park itself –

where, besides our party, there were plenty of people out on bikes, enjoying the sunshine, in relaxed fashion.

A final photo call at the Albert Memorial, and I was on my way home. Just for “shits and giggles”, I decided to take the direct route back to Victoria.

Vehicles blocking my progress on Kensington Road –

Knightsbridge (no space for decent width cycle paths here, I’m sure you’ll agree) –

The approach to Hyde Park Corner –

A cycling environment –

Trying to work out which of the six lanes I should be in for the fourth exit onto Grosvenor Place –

I settled on lane four of six –

As Mark Ames pointed out on our route across Hyde Park Corner, prior to 1999, this is what any person wishing to use a bicycle in this part of London had to contend with. And to get to Victoria from Knightsbridge, you still do.  

This downhill stretch was easy enough for me – I could, just about, keep pace with most of the traffic, which I find is the simplest way of ‘negotiating’ with motor vehicles –  but it is quite obvious to me how this gyratory could be deeply unnerving for anyone not all that keen about cycling on roads in London. And while you might, possibly, be able to convince me that this is a safe environment for cycling, you could not persuade me that it is a pleasant one.

Brompton rim tape – does it have to be this bad?

I picked up a Brompton on Thursday – an M3L. After whizzing around on it for a few miles on Friday, my initial verdict is that it is tremendous fun to ride, and the folding mechanism is a delight.

I had intended to ride it to the launch of the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain. However, I was woken in the middle of Friday night by a tremendous bang. Having established that someone wasn’t trying to break in, I quickly realized that the noise resulted from an exploded rear inner tube on the Brommie. Without any spare tubes, or the time to fix it, I had to switch to my Roadrat for the launch.

My initial assumption was that the problem was a pinch flat, perhaps caused by some injudicious pumping up at the bike shop. However, when I got home yesterday evening, I discovered the real cause –

Some inadequate rim tape. It’s either too narrow to cover the spoke nipples, or it’s just been put in really badly. Or both. Either way, the metal of the nipple has been rubbing the inner tube, which wasn’t a problem while the bike wasn’t being ridden. As soon as I leapt on it, however, it has gashed it, resulting in the blow-out you can see in the picture.

This isn’t really good enough for what is quite a pricey bike. Suffice to say, I have had to buy a new inner tube, and replace the rim tape on both rims (I didn’t trust the front rim tape – it wasn’t as bad, but certainly far from perfect). Couldn’t Brompton spend a little more on some proper tape? It’s not the most ideal introduction to the Brompton experience.

Friday Facility – No.1, Trent Close, Crawley

The first in a regular Friday feature, detailing pisspoor cycling infrastructure where I live. Hopefully it will be worth a good chuckle, if nothing else.

Here we see a half-decent shared use path – which provides a shortcut across a park -being abruptly terminated, just as it meets a quiet residential road. Just in case any person on a bicycle might actually want to continue cycling on to the road itself, the local council have helpfully decided to stop such nonsense by the quintuple-whammy of

• The ubiquitous ‘CYCLISTS DISMOUNT’ sign
• ‘END’ painted on the path
• Barriers contructed across the path
• No path leading directly on to the road
• Unrestricted car parking, where the path would naturally emerge

To me, this is clear evidence that West Sussex County Council do not have a clue. They do not know what it should be like to ride a bicycle as a means of urban transport. They think bicycles are just a ‘leisure’ activity, and that it therefore doesn’t matter when you put ill-thought-out impediments in their way, like in this example.

Well, crap like this has got to stop. Cycling will remain nothing more than a leisure activity if cycle infrastructure continues to be built like this.

This doesn’t have to be about whether you think cycle paths are generally a good idea or not – whatever your perspective, this one is actually rather useful, giving cyclists a quiet, shortcut route across a park. It’s about getting it done properly, rather than without any thought or consideration.

This is why I am attending the launch of the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain, tomorrow. I hope you can make it too.

‘Gridlock Nation’ – a review

Kwasi Kwarteng is one of the bright young things of the Conservative Party. Back in 1995, he managed to win University Challenge ‘supposedly singlehandedly’ (Private Eye 1282) while a King’s Scholar at Trinity College Cambridge. Armed with a double first, he then proceeded to Harvard for a year, before completing a PhD back at Cambridge. After ‘dabbling’ in the City, he is now the MP for Spelthorne.

He has recently had two books published. One of these – Ghosts Of Empire – is in his academic field, economic history. The other – Gridlock Nation – is not, and I have to say, it shows. Because Gridlock Nation is a decidedly silly book – certainly for someone of Kwarteng’s apparent intelligence.

As might be obvious from its title, Gridlock Nation is an assessment of Britain’s acknowledged transport problems, which Kwarteng (along with his coauthor, Jonathan Dupont) attempt to set in some kind of historical context, before proposing solutions. The main thesis – and one that informs the kinds of answers that Dupont and Kwarteng reach for – is that planning is bad for transport, and that, by contrast, the market is good. In the 19th century (so their argument runs), Britain had no central planning at all, and yet led the world in transport innovation. By contrast, since 1945, Britain’s transport provision has gone from bad to worse, a period that began with ‘the Planners’ rising to prominence. Kwarteng and Dupont conclude, therefore, that we need to ‘free transport from the dead hand of the Planners.’

The dream of planning was that it would create a more integrated, efficient system. The reality is that it has slowed innovation, increased waste and caused umpteen unintended consequences… despite starting from often good intentions, planning has either failed to deliver or ironically made things far worse. (Pages 61-62)

Kwarteng and Dupont do not dismiss planning entirely, but they argue that as the models employed by planners are a mere guide to what might happen, and that planners are not omniscient, it is unwise to place as much weight on planning as we currently do. Returning to the 19th century again, they point out that ‘no Victorian transport modeller could see how the rise of the steam engine would transform the landscape of the country’; we should rely more, in other words, on letting the market drive solutions, and provide the spur to innovation.

It is innovation that is the second (and sillier) major theme that runs through the book – specifically, technological innovation, as the answer to our gridlock problems. Kwarteng and Dupont get quite excited about potential, and fantastical, new ways of getting about, and of mitigating against congestion. In much the same way that (excess) planning is blamed for transport failure, they manage to tie technological innovation, or the lack of it, to state control –

ever since the government took control of transport, the great paradigm changes [the railways, jet engines, et cetera] seem to have disappeared altogether. Is it a coincidence that the rise of planning and the end of the transport revolution coincided? (Pages 40-41)

In a subsequent passage, Kwarteng and Dupont revealingly let slip precisely what genre of technological innovations they think might solve all our problems, and which are currently being held back by the nebulous forces of state control and planning –

it is often necessity that produces great advances in technology as progress in science. While we may not be in a position to build a flying car, there is a vast range of possibilities that remain both within the reach of today’s science and are completely untried… It is at least possible that one reason the rate of progress in our transport industries is closer to that in health and education than computing is that the former remains centrally controlled, while the latter enjoys the freedom and entrepreneurialism of the market. Our transport systems have been fossilised in rigid government plans, their future expansion decided on the predicted demand thirty years in the future. The natural correlative of Stalinist-style planning is Stalinist-style lack of innovation. (Pages 41-42)

If it is, indeed, ‘Stalinist-style planning’ that is holding back the flying car, then I think I might be slightly more amenable to it than I would have been before reading this book. But while flying cars may be out of reach for the moment, there are plenty of other ‘solutions’ for Kwarteng and Dupont to get excited about. There is a discussion about the future of space travel on pages 202-4, during which I  had to glance at the front cover to remind myself that this is a book that purports to address gridlock, before a lengthy description of what the authors call ‘the big two’ – ‘self driven cars’, and ‘personal rapid transport’, the latter being things like this.

It is not clear to me that either of these two modes of transport will do much to address gridlock. The most that can be said for self-driven cars is that they would eliminate the kind of tailgating-induced traffic jams that are currently prevalent on our motorways -congestion, of course, would still exist. And the problem with ‘personal rapid transport’ -besides it being costly to implement – is that the transport modes it largely seeks to replace are already very efficient at shunting people from A to B in an urban environment – namely the underground, buses and trams, and the bicycle.

And this brings to me what I found most remarkable about this book. Extraordinarily, the humble bicycle is mentioned only twice, and even then in a rather strange passage that is not really about the bicycle at all, but about how technology will allow us to switch modes easily.

Futurists predict that we’ll be far more prepared to rent vehicles for short periods. Using an app on our smart phone, we’ll choose the vehicle we want: a large car to transport the whole family, a small one person transporter or even a bicycle on a sunny day. This all might seem far fetched, but then again we are already beginning to see the start of such systems: Zipcars, rentable by the hour through an iPhone app, or even of course the new system of Boris bikes (Page 217)

‘Even a bicycle’, indeed – and not just any bike, but a good old-fashioned, Boris bike, apparently the only type of bike that exists for the authors, for whom the idea that someone might actually already own a bike of their own is seemingly inconceivable. The only time someone might use a bike is when they rent one, ‘on a sunny day’. The bicycle as a solution to the ‘gridlock’ that forms the title of their book is just not on the Kwarteng and Dupont radar.

But plenty of other things are.

Many futurists are now designing a variety of smaller, lightweight vehicles – bigger than a bicycle, but smaller than a car – that can effectively transport one or two people across urban areas. Aside from being more environmentally friendly, these vehicles allow a much greater number of people to fit on the roads.

More than, I don’t know, two bicycles?

But onwards we go, through a litany of absurd transport solutions. ‘The smart city’ that redirects ‘computer controlled cars’ (p.217); the ‘straddling double decker bus‘ being developed in Shanghai (Oh yes indeed. On page 218 –  ‘to make best use of road space, cars can actually continue to drive under the straddling bus as it moves’); the Schweeb (‘a pedal powered monorail in which riders cycle in small glass pods along an overhead track’ p.219 – which sounds suspiciously like another Boris Johnson scheme. Who would have thought it) and finally space travel –

Aviation and automobiles also began as the expensive playthings of the rich, before technology improved and costs dropped enough to make them a practical option for mass transport. While suborbital flight by itself will never allow you to reach the moon, it does allow the possibility of much faster flight across the Earth’s surface… Within your lifetime, you too will be able to travel to New Mexico, board a strange looking plane and blast off into the Earth’s atmosphere. You’ll float in zero gravity and stare down at the fragile, blue face of our planet. That really is the future. (p.223)

Yes, but as a solution to gridlock?

You will notice that none of these ‘alternatives’ does anything to impede the use of the private motor vehicle. When Kwarteng and Dupont have their feet back on planet Earth, they are firmly convinced of the needs for more roads. Their prejudice is betrayed when they write that

Britain’s roads remain congested, while huge sums of money are being poured into the railways to get them into a workable state. (Page 42)

I am quite sure that huge sums of money have been ‘poured into’ Britain’s roads, as well as into the railways, but it is only the latter that seems to exercise Kwarteng and Dupont. Although not explicitly stated, this is the tired old canard that railways are ‘subsidised’, while we ‘invest’ in our roads. And believe you me, Kwarteng and Dupont want investment.

China has already constructed a motorway network ten times the size of the UK’s, and the UK has a shorter road length per person than any other major country. Spain, France and Germany each have motorway networks more than twice the size of the UK’s. (Page 76)

To be fair, Kwarteng and Dupont don’t just want more roads. They want more… everything. To maintain an efficient and advanced economy will require longer journeys –

The benefits of a locally sourced economy are often overstated. Transport is usually only a minority contribution to the energy cost of producing any particular good. It is far more efficient to grow wine in naturally temperate climates and ship it across the world than to try and artificially replace an environment here. (Page 68)

This is all very well, but not everything that is transported vast distances makes economic, let alone environmental, sense. If you make it easier to transport wine, you also makes it easier and cheaper to transport mineral water from Evian. But Kwarteng and Dupont persist –

As many totalitarian states have discovered, an obsession with a local economy and self sufficiency is as often the route to poverty as wealth. In a recent experiment, Kelly Cobb of Drexel University found that trying to source a cheap suit from materials within a 100-mile radius multiplied its cost by a factor of a hundred. We will need more transport and trade to support our growing wealth, not less. (p.69)

I’m not convinced that totalitarian states do have an obsession with a ‘local economy’ – on the contrary, I would have thought that collectivisation, on vast scales, characterises these regimes. I’m equally unconvinced that the problems involved in getting hold of one suit can be used to imply that all our goods should, will or must be transported ever greater distances. Economies of scale do, of course, make sense, but that should not be generalized into an argument that products should be sourced from further and further away.

At the same time, as you might have guessed, the authors believe that we should not try to force people out of their cars –

What would life without a car really be like? We’d all find it much more difficult to get around, having to spend more time waiting for buses or rushing to make the right connection. Mothers bringing up small children would find it much more difficult to leave their home and go shopping. We’d all live in small cramped houses, crowded together nearest the railway station to make sure we could easily commute. (p.160)

(Note again the failure to recognize the bicycle as an alternative to a car for these kinds of journeys.) Kwarteng and Dupont appreciate that the car can be a problem, both with regards to the environment, and congestion, but see its use as unavoidable, and also think that the problems involved with car journeys – pollution and traffic jams – will be sufficiently mitigated against by technological fixes of the kind described above.

This reluctance to suppress or modify, even slightly, transport consumers’ ‘natural’ choices – which as things stand will tend inevitably towards the private car – coupled with Kwarteng and Dupont’s already described enthusiasm for greater transport distances and provision, will likewise tend inevitably towards a demand for more roads, which in their world would be privately financed. Kwarteng and Dupont are thus enthusiastic supporters of road pricing –

Opening up the roads to private investors and creating a road pricing system are two sides of the same coin. Both measures take a system that has for too long been controlled by static government plans, and convert the road network into a far more dynamic entity, responding to the changing needs and requirements of customers. Ultimately, until such a market exists we will always face the threat of gridlock. (p.172)

The idea that government plans on road-building have been ‘static’ is a little odd, because the entire post-war history of state road-building – at least until the 1990s, if not until the present day – involved building or expanding roads precisely where the demand existed, indeed even where it hadn’t fully emerged. The only reason road-building has ceased to become ‘dynamic’ was through a combination of the growing public apathy towards, and distaste for, ever more roads, and an appreciation of the problem of induced demand. The idea that somehow switching the construction of roads to private contractors, with much greater freedom to lay down tarmac wherever they feel like it, is the solution to our transport problems is thus rather absurd.

Kwarteng and Dupont do not adequately address the ‘induced demand’ problem. The best they can do is to point out that ‘demand for using roads clearly isn’t infinite everywhere’, which is nothing more than a truism, and does not confront the reality of ever greater traffic flow on widened or new roads where demand, while not infinite, keeps up with supply. It also rather fails to account for the areas of our towns and cities that have had roads stripped out with no apparent ill effects – the examples that instantly come to mind are the dual carriageway built across Queen Square in Bristol, now restored to a park, or the north side of Trafalgar Square, but I’m sure there are countless other roads that have been closed, or removed, and where the transport network has adapted seamlessly. Would these undeniable improvements to our urban areas have happened if private corporations were in control of our road network?

But then Kwarteng and his co-author appear to have been teleported back to the 1950s, a time when the notion that building roads would inevitably cause them to fill up would have appeared fantastical – stuck in a timewarp in which shiny, exciting new versions of the car will magically whisk us from A to B without causing any congestion or pollution; in which the bicycle – so old-fashioned, daddy-o! – is not even considered as a transport alternative, beyond being a leisure activity on a sunny day; and in which Jonny Jet Pack-style solutions to our transport problems are just around the corner. Relax!

Let’s hope he doesn’t get anywhere near the Department of Transport.