Exceptional hardship

A hat tip is due to cyclegaz, who runs the blog Don’t Phone and Drive, for bringing this to my attention. He writes that

Reuben Hazell, who plays for Shrewsbury Town FC, was caught driving whilst using his mobile phone. Mr Hazell already had 9 points on his license so was sent to court to determine the outcome. Mr Hazell pleaded guilt but told the court that if he lost his license he would have no way to get to his training sessions.  He stated that public transport did not go near his destination and that friends or family couldn’t give him a lift. The courts gave Mr Hazell 3 points, a £150 fine, charged him £35 costs and imposed a £15 victims’ surcharge.

And no driving ban. According to the Manchester Evening News,

Oldham magistrates spared Mr Hazell, of Farcroft Grove, Handsworth, Birmingham, a driving ban because he said he had no other way of making the 110-mile daily round trip to training at Shrewsbury’s ground, New Meadow. The footballer, who has two young children, claimed special hardship, saying no family member or colleague could give him a lift. He added that his partner worked full-time for the Crown Prosecution Service so could not drive him, that no train went near the club’s ground and that he could not afford to take a taxi every day.

Is it really true that Mr Hazell ‘had no other way’ of making the journey to Shrewsbury Town FC’s training ground, other than by using his car?

As it turns out, his home address, Farcroft Grove, is a very short distance from The Hawthorns Rail station.

Mr Hazell could walk this distance quite easily. Or jog it. He is, after all, a professional athlete, and could treat it as some extra training. (Or use a bike. This is, after all, ostensibly a bicycle blog).

From this station, Mr Hazell could then get a train to Shrewsbury train station.

It would take him an hour, and cost him, as you can see, the princely sum of £11.90.

From right outside the station in Shrewsbury, he could get the Park & Ride bus, which runs to Meole Brace. It takes eleven minutes, and runs every ten minutes in the morning. It costs £1.60.

Meole Brace is only a short walk – around 500m – from the Shrewsbury Town training ground, marked on the map below. If Mr Hazell was feeling exceptionally lazy, a colleague would no doubt be helpful enough to pick him up.

So is it really so impossible for Mr Hazell to get to work without his car? Absolutely not. It is mildly more inconvenient, certainly – but that is what punishments are supposed to involve. Inconvenience.

We should also bear in mind that Mr Hazell already had nine points on his licence when he was caught driving while using his mobile phone, so no doubt he has had plenty of warnings – all the more reason, then for some inconvenience to actually be imposed, rather than for him to be exempted from punishment.

Hazell claims he could not afford a driver to take him all the way from his front door to the training ground, but I’m sure he could stump up the small amount of cash for a train fare and a park and ride bus ticket, especially as he would be saving the money he would otherwise be spending on fuel for his car. I further note that it seems that Mr Hazell is now playing for Shrewsbury Town largely because his previous club would not stump up what he himself considers the small change of a £200 a week pay rise – “I wasn’t asking for much, a couple of hundred quid a week extra and a two-year contract” – demands which Shrewsbury Town have presumably met.

But despite the obvious ease with which Mr Hazell could actually get to work, both financially and logistically, his excuses have, pathetically, been accepted at face value by the magistrate, apparently without any investigation. (It is mildly interesting, but no doubt purely an accidental detail, that Mr Hazell’s partner works for the Crown Prosecution Service).

To me, this is symptomatic of a wider, creeping car-sickness in society, in which the very idea of being without a car, even temporarily, is seen as as an incredible hardship, despite the existence of real – yet slightly more inconvenient – alternatives. We are not dependent on cars – not yet, at least – but evidently the idea of making journeys from one town to another without one is beyond the imagination of some of our magistrates.

The chairman of magistrates, Mrs Chetana Bhatt-Shah, said: “We find exceptional hardship and we will not disqualify you. You will also have 12 points on your licence, they are still there and you cannot use exceptional hardship again.”

Now to me, ‘exceptional hardship’ should mean exactly that, and should not be conditional on whether someone has used ‘exceptional hardship’ in mitigation before. But apparently that’s how this works, which obviously suggests that magistrates are openly accepting that it is, precisely, an excuse that will be accepted once, and then not subsequently. Bizarrely, we have a conflicting report of the judgement, which if correct only serves to show how farcical these ‘hardship’ judgements are –

Mrs Bhatt-Shah added that Mr Hazell was unable to plead special hardship again for three years.

What? Why? Either he would suffer hardship, or he wouldn’t. The idea that his ‘hardship’ should be specifically framed by a three year period is absurd.

The fact that ‘exceptional hardship’ is seen as nothing more than a ‘one-off’ mitigating tactic by magistrates is also apparent from the case of another footballer, Wayne Thomas, who has likewise escaped a ban, despite totting up 12 points.

Magistrate Keith Dawe told Thomas: “We accept that your son would be affected and that on that reasoning we accept there is exceptional hardship.”But Mr Dawe added: “You cannot use that excuse again. This is your third speeding offence and you also have one of using your mobile phone. By now you ought to be learning your lesson. You should be giving a better example for other people.”

So despite the fact that Mr Thomas should quite plainly ‘be learning his lesson’, the magistrate is explicitly allowing the use of what he himself terms ‘an excuse’, which for some reason Mr Thomas will not be allowed to use again, despite his circumstances presumably remaining unchanged.

If both these footballers are not going to be allowed to use ‘exceptional hardship’ in the future, why should they be allowed to use it now? The answer is that it is quite obviously nothing more than an extra layer of leniency that has been smeared on top of the already grossly lenient ‘points’ system.

(Thanks also to Downfader for the link to the Wayne Thomas story)

UPDATE – Gaz points out in the comments that the Shrewsbury Town FC training ground is actually out to the north east of the city, at SY4 4RR, rather than at the club ground itself. This is a little more difficult to get to, but needless to say, there is a bus that will take Mr Hazell close to the ground – the 519 (pdf), which stops at the Uffington Turn (pdf), again, only a few hundred metres from his destination. The bus is less frequent (every two hours), but still only appears to take ten minutes. A lift from the town centre, of course, remains a possibility. And we should remember that a driving ban is supposed to be a punishment.

LCC’s curious image choice

The London Cycling Campaign members have voted to ‘Go Dutch‘ as their campaigning strategy for the London 2012 Mayoral elections, this option winning an outright majority of the votes.

What I find rather interesting, in retrospect, are the images that the LCC used to illustrate the four campaigning strategy options on their website. Here is the image for Option 1 – Cycling to School –

Plenty of excitable kids on bikes. No surprises there.

Option 2 – Neigbourhoods –

A quiet street with two cyclists on it. Good idea.

Option 3 – Gyratories –

A rather scary-looking roundabout, with a female cyclist trying to get around it.

Finally, Option 4 – Go Dutch –

Err… no cyclists at all – in fact the only image, of the four, that doesn’t show any. And top top it off, a pedestrian walking in the cycle path.

Is this really the best image LCC could come up with to represent ‘Going Dutch?’ Here’s an alternative photo I took, that they could have used, free of charge.

Some actual ‘Going Dutch.’

I’m not the only one who has noticed how tepid LCC have been on this issue, both before and after the vote. David Arditti has observed how the wording – extremely vague from the outset – has been changed, after the vote, from clear space for cycling to just space for cycling, also pointing out that Tom Bogdanowicz

notably both fails to clarify the obtuse “clear spaces” message, and dilutes or further obfuscates it by mentioning a number of other unrelated campaign objectives in the same paragraph – almost as if he were wishing he did not now have to campaign on “clear space for cycling on main roads in every borough”, but could go back to the easier stuff about cycle parking.

The ‘Going Dutch’ option was listed at the bottom of the four, and illustrated with a photograph that doesn’t exactly sell it as attractive. In fact, quite the opposite.

It couldn’t be that the LCC leadership aren’t really that interested, despite what their members voted?

“Where will your bike take you?”

It’s nearly time for the “Mayor of London’s Sky Ride.”

Which also means it is, habitually, time for Boris to cavort around with Kelly Brook on a nice safe patch of grass just outside the London Assembly.

Nice horn, Boris.

Personally I would quite like to have seen these two attempting to cycle across Blackfriars Bridge, or the Vauxhall gyratory, or around Parliament Square – but to be fair, it seems that Miss Brook had forgotten to bring to the photo shoot the appropriate safety equipment for using a bicycle in a ‘cycling event’  –

When Sky hired the lovely Kelly Brook to promote its Sky Ride we have a hunch that the flunky tasked with the job forgot to mention to her agent that it was a cycling event. That’s the only explanation we can think of for Kels turning up in a rather small dress and killer heels. But, ever the pro, the 31-year-old model and TV personality gamely took a shiny red shopper bike for a spin around Potters Field Park next to the Thames in London – and managed not to come a cropper. Shame she wasn’t wearing a helmet though!

And

Now, we’re not entirely sure that a miniscule dress and platform sandals make for the most appropriate bike riding attire, but she looks happy, and we’re not convinced she actually intended to go for a cycle, so we’ll leave her be. Besides, a helmet would just play havoc with that blow dry.

Indeed. It was the lack of helmet, flourescent vest and sensible ‘cycling clothes’ that prevented her from attempting to cycle on actual London roads. A wise choice.

Returning to the subject of the Sky Ride, Mr Johnson said

London’s fantastic Sky Ride is going from strength to strength, helping people of all ages and experience to enjoy the capital’s most iconic sights on two wheels. I urge people to dust off their saddles for this free and family-friendly event to enjoy whizzing through the city on traffic free roads. This is a key part of my cycling revolution which aims to make London a cycle-friendly city, encouraging more and more people that pedal power is the way forward.

Now I think that if you are aiming to make London a “cycle-friendly city”, one of the first things you should be asking yourself is why the bicycles of participants in the Sky Ride are gathering dust. The answer is obvious, and implicit in the very nature of the Sky Ride itself, which aims to create a ‘traffic-free’ environment.

It is precisely because London is cycle-unfriendly, all the time there aren’t Sky Rides. Make the streets cycle-friendly – in the case of Sky Rides, by closing them completely to traffic – and people will use them, and in great numbers. Last year’s 15 km route was so congested – over 85,000 people turned out to cycle around – that it actually ground to a halt. Unfortunately it appears that the route this year is even shorter, at only 7.2 miles, so I expect bicycle gridlock will be the order of the day.

Remove those cycle-friendly conditions, and these thousands of potential bicycle users – precisely the people who would ordinarily never, ever ride a bicycle in London, under current conditions – will evaporate. They’ve had their experience of safe streets for cycling, and enjoyed it. But that won’t translate to a desire to mix it with HGVs, lorries, vans and taxi-drivers. The Sky Ride – contrary to Boris’ empty guff – does nothing to make London a ‘cycle-friendly city’, except for the few hours that it is in operation. As Freewheeler puts it

The message of Sky Ride is that if you provide a safe, traffic-free environment people will come in droves. Unfortunately this is not the conclusion which will be applied by Transport for London, Boris Johnson or the London Cycling Campaign. Their message is to enjoy Sky Ride, get some cycle training, and then plunge into the world of vehicular cycling in London. Sky Ride is ultimately nothing more than a gimmick. Even its route takes place on roads which are regularly closed off to traffic for parades and demonstrations. London as a city remains car-centric to the core and Sky Ride does nothing to address this. Boris Johnson and Transport for London are far more interested in prioritising motoring than they are cycling, and this transport culture simply isn’t prepared to re-allocate road space for cycling.

Children like the ones shown in the picture below, advertising the Sky Ride, just do not use London’s roads. I have never seen a child this young cycling in London, except on the pavement (it is, of course, commonplace to see young children cycling in Dutch city centres).

It is delusional to imagine that a Sky Ride going to do anything to encourage children like these, and their mothers, to cycle on London’s roads under ordinary conditions.

The Sky Ride website poses the question “where will your bike take you?”

 The answer is almost certainly “straight back into the garage at home, where it will collect dust until next year’s Sky Ride play an active part in London’s Cycling Revolution.”

How to access an eco-development

Intrigued by this comment

What I want to know is why cycle lanes are not being designed into every new development? We have a massive “Eco” development near us – Upton, Northampton – and there is not one cycle lane designed into the road layout.

below a post from the Lo-Fidelity Bicycle Club, I felt compelled to investigate.

It seems a new town/village, Upton, is being built to the west of Northampton, to the south of the Weedon Road, which connects Northampton to the M1. According to the Design Code documents for the development, available from Northampton Borough Council here,

This Design Code and the Urban Framework for Upton, as illustrated on Figure 2.1, are based upon key development principles promoting sustainable urban growth and creation of a distinctive, enduring environment. In line with the ODPM’s ‘Sustainable Communities Plan’, established in 2003, the Upton project seeks to address the issues of sustainability at a number of different levels. 

And also

To reduce reliance on cars and encourage a walkable environment, public transport facilities will be in place at the early stages of implementation.

Sounds good. A new eco-town, designed around ‘sustainable growth’ principles, that reduces reliance on cars, and encourages walking. This is the kind of thing we need!

How do you get in and out of this development? Well, it seems that in 2009, a major access road was opened.

New road to open the way for 12,000 homes

A new £17 million road linking an industrial estate with a main dual carriageway in Northampton has been officially opened to drivers. The one-mile stretch, named Upton Valley Way North, links the A45 Weedon Road with the new Swan Valley development, and has been built to open up land for 12,000 homes in the Upton area. Mayor of Northampton Brian Markham cut the ribbon to declare it open and led a procession of the first cars to test the award-winning road at its opening yesterday.

Steve Collins, senior regeneration manager for the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), which incorporates English Partnership, said the project showed planners were keen to put in infrastructure before going ahead with any house-building projects. Mr Collins, who addressed villagers from nearby Kislingbury, dignitaries and guests at the Weedon Road junction of Upton Valley Way North, said: “A lot of objections to housing growth has been the ability to provide infrastructure. I think the Government has listened hard to that message. This is an excellent example of the Government investing a lot of time in delivering infrastructure before growth. What that does is open land for growth in a plan that has been allocated for a long time.”

I’m getting the distinct impression from this news story that this road is for ‘cars’ and ‘drivers’. But surely this can’t be the case? Not in a new development designed to ‘reduce reliance on cars’?

Well,  here’s what the ‘infrastructure’ of Upton Valley Way North looks like, at the junction with Weedon Road, courtesy of Google Streetview –

I can’t think of a better way to reduce reliance on cars and encourage a walkable environment than by inserting a stupid number of filter lanes, large radius bends, pedestrian holding pens, and further anti-personnel fences that ring the corners of this junction. Can you? Presumably that’s a crappy shared-use pavement on the left. Or not. Not that it really matters. Sod off, cyclists. What do you think this is? An eco-town?

If we turn to the left, we see that Weedon Road itself looks even easier to cross on foot.

Again, count the pedestrian sheep-pens.

Further into town, we have the spot where the Upton development fronts onto Weedon Road, which apparently is going to be a ‘boulevard.’

Crossing Weedon Road here – from the right of  this picture – to the eco-town on the left will require four separate light signals.

This same scene, from the plan of Upton. The new eco-buildings are marked in red, to the south. Weedon Road runs east-west. The pink strips mark out the crossings. I notice that to traverse on the east of the junction seems to involve five separate crossings.

A ‘walkable environment’?

Nice trees though.

An artist’s impression of the ‘Weedon boulevard’. Notice the ‘provision’ for cyclists – the pavement.

The extraordinary claims of an anti-infrastructuralist

The homepage of an organization that apparently considers cycle lanes and tracks to be ‘irrelevant.’

Last week, on the website Cyclechat, a contributor by name of Tommi posted a large list of academic papers that showed – or purported to show – that the construction of cycling infrastructure either increases cyclists’ safety, or encourages greater numbers of cyclists.

I do not intend to investigate the claims of these papers in detail here – that would be quite an exhaustive task.  (What I think it is uncontroversial to say, however, is that there is a burgeoning amount of literature out there of this kind, that suggests cycling infrastructure can increase cycling levels – and may be necessary to achieve truly significant increases in cycling – and also that it can increase cyclists’ safety.) My purpose here is to examine the extraordinary claims of one Cyclechat contributor, made in response to Tommi’s posts.

After a bizarre initial post that accused Tommi of ‘trolling’ – apparently for simply having the temerity to present opinions that differed from his own – we had this contribution from MartinC –

The OP [Tommi] makes a fundamental assumption that all cycling facilities are the same – as all as well designed, executed, regulated and maintained as each other world wide. This assumption is clearly false – the most superficial comparison of, say the UK and the Netherlands will show this. Therefore the conclusion that any cycling infrastructure of any standard anywhere must be good is totally specious. Also, I’m not aware of anyhere in the world where there is total segregation of cyclists.

Since all of this must have been obvious to the poster the natural conclusion is that the post is just to generate a useless argument.

Tommi was not making the claim that ‘any cycling infrastructure of any standard anywhere must be good’, or indeed arguing for ‘total segregation’ – but he had the good grace to ignore this mistaken criticism, and responded

Yes, some infrastructure designs can be bad, but Denmark and Netherlands have been improving the designs for years. How about we concentrate at the current designs rather than be obsessed with the ones that were already on the way becoming obsolete ten years ago when certain studies were published?

The contributor ‘Red Light’ then makes an appearance. After a couple of posts quibbling about the accuracy of Tommi’s reporting of the academic papers, he then addresses this point of Tommi’s, about concentrating on Dutch ‘current designs’, rather than outdated, perhaps poorly designed, infrastructure. In a comment apparently designed to imply that the Dutch no longer consider cycling infrastructure – tracks and paths – to be important, Red Light says –

How about we use the Dutch Cycle Balance audit methodology to assess provision. Quick ruffle through for cycle facilities…..ah here they are……cycle parking. No mention of anything else. Probably because the person that oversees it says “How many cycle paths or lanes a town has in not important.”

Red Light is referring to the Fietsbalans, a document produced by the Fietsersbond, the Dutch Cyclists Union. It is an audit methodology used to assess the quality of conditions for cycling in Dutch municipalities.

On reading this claim, I was immediately quite sceptical. Could the Dutch really not be assessing the quality of their cycle paths? Does their ‘provision’ not even include bicycle tracks and paths? Perhaps the overseer of the Fietsbalans might claim that the number of cycle paths or lanes in a town is unimportant – because the audit is a neutral examination of the quality of the cycling experience – but would the only ‘facilities’ the Fietsbalans examines be… cycle parking?

Another Cyclechat contributor, Richard Mann, seemed as unconvinced by Red Light’s comment as I was, and wrote –

I found an English language description of the Bicycle Balance. Seems to be measuring all sorts of stuff that are properties of cycle facilities (smoothness, lack of obstruction etc), and the proportion of short trips (try achieving that with vehicular cycling), and the proportion dissatisfied with road safety (ditto). So it doesn’t measure the km of paths directly, but I’d doubt a road-based approach would score very highly at all.

In other words, the Fietsbalans does seem to measure the quality of cycle facilities, including paths and tracks.

But Red Light was having none of this, and quickly set Richard straight.

I’ve spoken to Frank and asked him why it doesn’t include cycle lanes and tracks in the audit. His answer was they are irrelevant. 

So there it is. Red Light has spoken to the overseer of the Fietsbalans (Frank Borgman, its project manager), who has told him that cycle lanes and tracks are not considered in the audit – and, indeed, that they are ‘irrelevant’.

Red Light is apparently referring to this conversation because Frank Borgman is the author of that ‘English language description’ of the Fietsbalans that Richard Mann discovered. Originally written for inclusion as a chapter in an English book, edited by Rodney Tolley –Sustainable Transport: Planning for Walking and Cycling in Urban Environments, it is entitled ‘The Cycle Balance: benchmarking local cycling conditions’. You can read it here, on the Fietsersbond website.

The trouble is, I’m not sure that Red Light has actually read what Borgman wrote in this piece, because, in the introduction, we find this passage –

As a result of the high bicycle-use, Dutch government, private organisations and companies invest a lot of time and money in support of cycling. There are for example over 20 000 km of bicycle lane and bicycle path along Dutch roads and the capacity of bicycle parking facilities at railway stations alone is almost 300 000. Strangely enough the effectiveness and efficiency of all these efforts have never been assessed. In order to fill this void the Fietsersbond developed the Cycle Balance (Fietsbalans). [my emphasis]

Hmm. So, in Borgman’s own words, the Fietsbalans does indeed asssess the ‘effectiveness and efficiency’ of ’20 000 km bicycle lane and bicycle path’. More than that, it seems the Fietsbalans was explicitly developed by the Fietsersbond for the purpose of assessing paths and tracks, as well as cycling parking.

Did Red Light notice that Borgman’s words, in this Fietsersbond article, directly contradict his reporting of Borgman’s opinion, and his own description of the Fietsbalans?

I must admit, I hadn’t.

So instead of pointing this out, and after consulting a Dutch acquaintance about whether Borgman would genuinely believe what Red Light attributed to him (response – he wouldn’t be in his job if he thought that), I decided to press Red Light about whether the Fietsbalans genuinely didn’t include tracks and paths within its audit. I thought it ‘rather odd‘ that Frank Borgman would hold such an opinion,

because the Bicycle Balance audit is an evaluation of all Dutch cycle facilities – the network of paths, tracks, lanes, and so on, as well as bicycle parking.

In response, Red Light stuck firmly to his guns

No, its an audit of Dutch cycling provision which is not the same as facilities. The only facilities in there are cycle parking. [my emphasis]

As it happens, Frank Borgman is currently away on leave. It will be interesting to get his opinions on his return. There are two possibilities. Either he has lost his mind, or Red Light has entirely misrepresented his opinion. Which is more likely?

I note, finally, that the claim that the only facilities considered in the ‘Dutch Cycle Balance’ are ‘cycle parking’ – that all other facilities for cyclists are ignored – has quite a rich history. You can find the claim being made here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, in virtually identical format. Where did it originate? And, indeed, how, and why?

It’s a claim that can’t even pass a basic smell test.

A screenshot of the Fietsbalans homepage. An interesting illustrative photo choice, given that the Fietsbalans ‘doesn’t include cycle lanes and tracks’, and considers them ‘irrelevant.’

A tale of two bridges, and two cities

London is allegedly undergoing a cycling revolution – an apparent sea-change which has seen a proliferation of pointless paint across the capital, the emergence of a bike hire scheme, the occasional mass cycling event when roads are closed to traffic, and… that’s about it.

If you were in any doubt that this ‘revolution’ consists entirely of hype rather than substance, you only need to look at Transport for London’s plans for the remodelling of Blackfriars Bridge, where to the increasing fury of cyclists and pedestrians, they seem determined to force through a road layout straight out of the 1960s, which gives no thought or consideration to vulnerable road users, and appears to be focused around ‘smoothing traffic flow’ – in other words, pumping the maximum number of motor vehicles through the junction.

There are unpleasant bridges for cycling elsewhere in the world, of course. Here’s one of them – the Pont du Mont Blanc, in Geneva.

As you can see, it carries six lanes of motor traffic. This is unsurprising, given its location, because it lies at the western end of a very large lake. It’s the shortest route around Lake Geneva for a great deal of traffic that is heading south, or south-east, into France – or, conversely, traffic heading north into Switzerland and on into France and Germany. Coupled with all the motor traffic heading into and out of Geneva, this makes for a very busy bridge indeed.

This article, from the local Geneva press, notes that

you have to be suicidal to cycle on the Mont Blanc Bridge.

It certainly doesn’t seem very friendly. The lanes are not wide, and in the time I stood at the junction, I didn’t see any cyclists travelling across it on the road – although a number did use the pavement to the left.

To their credit, the Swiss are actually doing something about it. They are going to construct something like this –

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A separate cycle track, built on to the side of the existing bridge. Apparently, according to the article, the tendering process for the design will open next year, so that construction can begin by 2014, to take advantage of potential allocated federal funding. There is even talk, in the meantime, of allocating space on the bridge itself for cyclists, as an interim solution.

Fantastic.

What’s remarkable is that the conditions for cycling in this area of Geneva, as things stand, are not all that bad. Yes, the Mont Blanc bridge is unfriendly, but only a hundred metres or so to the west, you can cross the Rhone (which bisects Geneva, as it empties the lake) on the Pont des Bergues, which looks like this –

A bridge entirely for pedestrians and cyclists, with a wide track for cyclists in the middle. And further to the west, we have the Pont de la Machine –

A bridge for pedestrians. I’m not sure whether you are allowed to cycle on this bridge, but it would not surprise me if you could.

So there are already two bridges in close proximity that are closed to motor vehicles, and are enjoyable to use on foot or by bike. Despite this, the Geneva municipal council, and the Swiss federation, are spending money to make the Mont Blanc bridge pleasant and subjectively safe to cycle across. You can see the location of these bridges on this map –

You don’t need me to tell you that the economy of Geneva has not ground to a halt, despite these bridges being closed to motor traffic (it’s doing rather well, thanks!) which puts into context the rather strange opinion of Andrew Boff about Blackfriars –

we’ve got to look at [motor – this is what Boff meant] traffic flow as well, because, you know, the reason we’re able to pay for things like the Blackfriars development and improvements is because we are in an extremely wealthy country, in the wealthiest part of that wealthy country, and the reason we’re wealthy is because of the economy, and if we start taking steps that damage the economy of London then we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. There will be no more future improvements if we make this place poorer as a result of decisions about traffic.’

Boff thinks impeding motor vehicles on the bridge will harm London’s economy. The example of Geneva, and other European cities,  suggests otherwise.

Interestingly, while I was in Geneva, I didn’t see any glossy posters exhorting people to embrace cycling. I didn’t read any talk of a ‘cycling revolution’. They just seem to be getting on with it – using infrastructure to create the conditions in which people will feel naturally inclined to use a bicycle.

And there were plenty of them about.

This is the Quai des Bergues, which runs alongside the Rhone between the Mont Blanc bridge and the Pont des Bergues. The sign tells you that this street is for pedestrians and cyclists only – there is an exception for taxis serving the hotels here.

Further along, the junction with the Pont des Bergues –

You can see that this is also a good environment for walking. There are pedestrian crossings that lie on ‘desire’ lines, at each of the corners of the roads. This is the general model for Geneva, and Switzerland as a whole. Below, we see three pedestrian crossings in close proximity along one street. If you step onto any of these, traffic has to give way to you.

And again, here – pedestrian crossings where people want to cross –

This kind of priority is unimaginable in London, where what few pedestrian crossings that do exist are being removed, and time is being insidiously taken away from pedestrians at those that remain thanks to ‘signal retimings‘ and pedestrian countdown. Motor traffic comes first.

I also noticed that, just like in many areas of Paris, there is a presumption that cyclists should be allowed to cycle up one-way streets. There are contraflows on pretty much every one-way street.

These photos also show many streets are 30 kph zones – around 18-19 mph. The Swiss, as I understand it, are quite keen on enforcement. (And in a post to come, I will show you some 20 kph zones in Swiss towns – only 12 mph).

Geneva is not even particularly brilliant for cycling – it’s nowhere near as good as Utrecht, for instance, which I visited recently. But what’s revealing is that it is streets ahead of London (which, remember, is undergoing a ‘cycling revolution’). There is no comparison between Geneva and London when it comes to the friendliness of cycling. I’m starting to see this –

Well-built, separated cycle tracks. This one lies in the University Hospital district.

A quick perusal of Streetview shows other locations in Geneva where these kinds of paths have been constructed.

It seems to me that Geneva, like most other continental cities, has the right idea – it’s taking steps to encourage cycling and walking, by reallocating road space, and creating a subjectively safe environment. Meanwhile, in London, we are having a desperate battle to even get Transport for London to listen to concerns about Blackfriars, a bridge where cyclists are actually already the majority user at peak hours. Nothing is being done to actually encourage cycling in London, beyond glossy promotion. If Transport for London get their way, Blackfriars Bridge will be a horrible place to attempt to cycle and walk, which is desperately sad.

Let’s start learning lessons from Europe.

How to “tame the traffic” on a shared space street

In a post on shared space back in July, I noted how the high-minded concepts of these kinds of schemes are eroded by a failure to address the vexed issue of motor traffic flow. The streets can’t truly be ‘shared’ if motor vehicles come to dominate the road space.

Well, an unexpected solution has presented itself on East Street in Horsham. Simply park two cars side-by-side across the street, preventing any motor vehicles from travelling down it, but still helpfully allowing pedestrians and cyclists to pass through.

This is the kind of thing we like to see on this allegedly pedestrianized street.

Unfortunately, shortly after I took this picture, the blockage was ‘resolved’ by a motorist who simply honked his horn repeatedly and somewhat impotently until the owner of the car on the left emerged from the restaurant she had parked directly outside of.

Neither driver should have been on the street in the first place.

Children using bikes in Horsham

Why cycling in Horsham is going nowhere, in a single picture.

Helmets? Check.

Flourescent bibs? Check.

Going nowhere near the road? Check.

These children quite plainly like riding their bikes. They are, unfortunately, examples of the very small minority of British children who have not been deterred from doing so by the obstacles and impediments that have needlessly been put in their way – the spurious need to be ‘safe’ on a bicycle, the unpleasant and subjectively dangerous roads that you are supposed to cycle on, the pavements you have to stay off.

Most other British children – the great majority – are unsurprisingly staying away from their bikes. They don’t want to wear helmets or flourescent bibs, they don’t like cycling on the roads, and when they do cycle on the pavement, they are treated like hooligans. They have to rely on their parents to ferry them around by motor vehicle, or on buses which are rapidly disappearing, or wait until they are 17 and they can acquire their precious driving licence.

Meanwhile, in the centre of a Dutch city –

You will see plenty of young children cycling, free from safety equipment, on roads that feel subjectively safe. All these pictures taken while I was enjoying a brief espresso.

A week of carnage on local Sussex roads

Some recent road safety news from around Horsham.

On Friday 5th August –

Man arrested following RTC in Ringmer

A 56-year-old man from West Sussex has been arrested on suspicion of dangerous driving following a two vehicle collision on the A26, Ringmer, Lewes this afternoon (August 5). Emergency services attended the scene at around 2pm near the Cock Inn where a silver Ford Fiesta collided head on with a black Suzuki Ignis driven by a man from Kent. The driver of the Suzuki Ignis, has been taken to the Royal Sussex County Hospital. The extent of his injuries are not known at this stage. The road remains closed between Ham Lane and Earwig Corner, whilst road policing officers investigate.

On the same day, Friday 5th August –

A woman was airlifted to Kings College Hospital, London, after a collision on the Guildford Road, Clemsfold.

Firefighters freed the 52-year-old from a white Peugeot Cabriolet after the crash, which happened at about 10am today. Her injuries were serious but not life-threatening. The road was still closed at midday near the Roman Gate roundabout.

The next day, Saturday 6th August –

Two injured in Cranleigh as car hits bus queue

Two men have been injured as a car hit a queue of people waiting for a late-night bus in Surrey. Police said the green 4×4 ploughed into the queue in Cranleigh’s High Street just before 01:00 BST on Saturday and the driver failed to stop at the scene. The car was then thought to have gone in the direction of Horsham Road. One of the injured men has been described by officers as having “life-changing injuries”. It is not yet clear how badly injured the other man is. Surrey Police have urged anyone with information to contact them.

The day after that, Sunday 7th August –

Police appeal after serious Steyning crash

Two drivers were seriously injured in a two-car crash at Steyning on Sunday morning. The collision happened on the A283 Steyning-by-pass near the roundabout outside Bramber Castle just before 10.45am. A Vauxhall Astra estate driven by a 55-year old Shoreham-by-sea man and a Skoda Fabia hatchback driven by a 38-year old Brighton woman collided head-on. The Astra caught fire. The woman was airlifted to Kings College Hospital in South London with serious head and internal injuries and the man was treated at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton for slight injuries.

And on the next day, Monday 8th August –

RTC on London Road, Arundel 

Police were called to a collision involving a silver Ford Fiesta van and a Honda CBR motorcycle on the A29 London Road at Whiteways roundabout, Houghton this afternoon (Monday 8 August). Emergency services, including the police helicopter (Hotel 900) attended the scene of the collision at around 12.50pm. A 56-year-old man from Yapton has been taken to the Royal Sussex County Hospital with serious injuries. The 54-year-old van driver from Haywards Heath was uninjured.

On Thursday 11th August, another crash on the A283 –

Collision on A283 between Washington and Steyning

Police are investigating a collision between two cars on the A283 between Steyning and Washington on a bend on the Pike at around 11.20am today (Thursday 11 August). A 73-year-old woman from Gomeldon, Salisbury, driving a Peugeot 306 collided with a Nissan Almera driven by a 66-year-old woman from West Chiltington. The driver of the Nissan was taken to Worthing hospital with minor injuries. The 60-year-old woman passenger in the Nissan and the 71-year-old woman passenger in the Peugeot were both uninjured.

And again, on the same day,  Thursday 11th August –

Amberley road crash kills woman and injures four

A woman has died and four people have been taken to hospital after a two-car crash near Arundel. Emergency teams were called to the scene of the crash in Amberley which involved a Saab and a Ford Fiesta on Thursday evening, Sussex Police said. A woman driving the Ford Fiesta was pronounced dead at the scene and her passenger was airlifted to the Royal Sussex County Hospital, officers said. Three people who were in the Saab were taken to Worthing Hospital. The B2139 was closed for several hours while road traffic officers investigated the incident.

Twelve people injured – most of them seriously – and one killed, in the space of six days, all within a radius of fifteen miles of where I live.

This comes on the back of 13 deaths on Sussex’s roads in June alone.

Somehow this is seen as normal.

Stone Age Steyning

You may or may not be aware of a piece I wrote in June about the possibility of 20 mph speed limits coming to Horsham. Vainly googling today to see whether this had progressed from a councillor idly mooting the idea, to something slightly more concrete, I chanced upon this frankly incredible story from two years ago.

It relates to proposals, now shelved, to introduce a 20 mph limit on the High Street of Steyning, a small, attractive town to the south of Horsham.

The High Street itself is narrow, and in my experience rather congested. It would be unwise to attempt to travel at anything like the current 30 mph along it, because vehicles are frequently making turns into and out of the even narrower side streets, or are parked and loading. Here is a typical scene, captured by Google Streetview –
Needless to say, people on foot are also regularly crossing the street, either directly, or at the several pedestrian crossings. In my opinion it is deeply unreasonable, not to say unwise, to drive at 30 mph through this environment. And yet –

MORE than 40 traders have signed a petition opposing a 20mph speed limit in Steyning High Street. Steyning Parish Council has been looking into the possibility of a lower speed limit for the High Street, which is currently 30mph. But at their last meeting councillors were told that a 20mph restriction could be devastating to Steyning’s traders. Alan Marsh, speaking on behalf of the town’s Chamber of Trade, told them: “I would say to councillors, on behalf of all the traders, wake up and see what’s going on in the town.” He made reference to Ken Johnstone’s, the High Street electrical shop which closed earlier this year and remains empty. Mr Marsh said: “There are a lot of traders in trouble and this could drop them over the edge. There are 240 locally-employed people in the town. Do you want to risk all of their jobs on this sort of plan? Because that’s what will happen. On the strength of responses from every single business, why is this still proceeding?”

Mr Marsh evidently believes that cars travelling at 20 mph, rather than 30 mph, along the High Street in Steyning will magically force the shops along it out of business. He is plainly a rather strange man.

The Council responded to Mr Marsh.

 [Parish council chairman Sue Rogers] assured Mr Marsh no decision would be made about a change to the speed limit, originally suggested by the Steyning Society, without extensive research. “When we have got all the research and all the information to hand the committee will discuss it,” she said. “It’s not just about businesses – we’ve had a lot of petitions and support for the plan from residents and other groups, including the Steyning Society. There are certain parts of the town where it’s difficult to cross and it could make Steyning safer.” Councillors also questioned whether there was any link between a 20mph speed limit and fewer people visiting the town.

A good question. Does Mr Marsh actually have any evidence that a marginally lower speed limit will drive people away, and result in the mass closure of shops?

Mr Marsh replied: “The town will gradually disappear – the 20mph limit is a barrier to customers coming into the town. If they’re worried about getting a ticket from a speed camera, they might go elsewhere.”

I think the answer is no. The only straw Mr Marsh can grasp at – and note, this is not evidence, by the conventional understanding of the word – is that “customers” worried about “getting a ticket” will stay away. This doesn’t, of course, explain why “customers” who presently visit Steyning aren’t scared away by their inability to stay under the current 30 mph limit – unless these customers have a rather selective ability to drive at slightly different speeds.

I am also intrigued by Mr Marsh’s idea that the town will ‘disappear’ if the speed limit gets lowered. Edinburgh, Oxford and Portsmouth are no doubt vanishing before our very eyes now that they have succumbed to the idiocy of a 20 mph limit.

Mr Marsh – and the other traders on Steyning High Street – provide a textbook example of how shopkeepers overestimate the importance of the motor vehicle to their business, and grossly underestimate the importance of a pleasant shopping environment for people on foot.