In June, following the conviction of a driver who killed a cyclist by ploughing into him while rummaging in his footwell for a dropped satnav, I noted how the BBC chose to report the death, at the time.
A charity cyclist has died in road accident [sic] while on a trip from John O’ Groats to Land’s End. Arthur Platt, 37, from Lyndhurst, Hampshire, died in hospital on Tuesday after his bicycle crashed into a car on the A442 in Telford, Shropshire.
An interesting choice of words.
Over the weekend, another cyclist was killed, this time on Holloway Road in London, after he was struck by a bus. Initial reports suggest the cyclist was ‘doored’; diverted into the path of the bus by the driver of parked car, who evidently failed to check whether it was safe to open his or her car door. The driver has been arrested, and bailed.
A cyclist killed in north London may have hit an open car door immediately before he was knocked down by a bus, the Metropolitan Police has said.
I wonder if the BBC would describe a situation in which a car was deflected into the path of another vehicle by a lorry that failed to stop at a give-way line from a side road as ‘a car hitting the lorry.’ It would be entirely absurd. We would say that the lorry hit the car, not the other way around.
Yet when a cyclist is struck by a car door that was opened with insufficient time for him to avoid it, the rules are reversed. The cyclist apparently hit the car door, rather than the car door propelling him into the path of the bus.
Cyclists. If they aren’t crashing themselves into the cars of motorists rummaging around by their feet, they’re fatally deflecting themselves off car doors. There are plenty of other examples of logic-defying BBC scenarios.
UPDATE – the cyclist has been named. Sam Harding. The Islington Gazette also notes that
Mr Harding is the third cyclist who has died on Islington’s roads this year. Dr Colin Hawkes, 64, a leading child protection expert, was killed in a collision in Carleton Road, Holloway, in January, while painter and decorator Gavin Taylor, 40, died in Wolsey Road, Newington Green, in April.
Inspired by Freewheeler’s recent experience of Transport for London cycling propaganda, I decided to take a closer look at one of their adverts, one featuring Edith Bowman.
This advert dates from last year, and is designed to promote the Cycle Hire scheme. Curiously, despite this intent, Ms Bowman – who I am not having a pop at, because she does appear to be someone who genuinely cycles around London on her own bike – does not use a hire bike in the video, apparently preferring her own steed. (And why not?)
The video starts with her cycling in the Inner Cycle of Regent’s Park.
Conveniently, the directors have managed to find a location where the parking bays are completely empty, allowing Ms Bowman to cycle in what – superficially – appears to be a cycle lane.
Streetview provides a more accurate picture.
Not quite as pleasant for cycling, as I’m sure you’ll agree, given the need to stay out of the door zone.
Her journey, she tells us, started in Primrose Hill, before continuing through Regent’s Park. I’m not quite sure why, therefore, she finds herself on the Inner Circle. It’s rather difficult to get to, given that cycling in Regent’s Park is banned – as you can see in this image of the entrance to the Park from Primrose Hill.
The sensible route would be to use the Outer Circle (going nowhere near the Inner Circle), but I suppose that wouldn’t have allowed the directors to include fluffy images of the zoo. Maybe Edith ignored the ‘No Cycling’ signs, which in a sane world she should be entitled to do, as long as she watches out for pedestrians.
What happens next? After Edith has bid goodbye to the giraffes, she tells us that you
hit that crazy bustle of Soho and central London.
And it certainly looks crazy – we see images of taxis, and large lorries and buses.
Evidently this ‘bustle’ is something that should self-evidently be rather entertaining to navigate, but Edith helpfully reinforces the message for those who might be inhibited, telling us that
it’s doable on your bike.
It certainly is ‘doable’, but whether the reality is captured in a glossy film like this, I am not quite so sure.
We next see Edith navigating Upper James Street in Soho.
How she got here from Regent’s Park is not revealed. The only sensible route – avoiding the hellish and confusing system of one-way streets to the north – would have been to progress down Portland Place, and Regent Street. But I suspect it would have been hard to capture Ms Bowman making serene progress along these roads, given they are afflicted by multiple lanes of heavy, fast traffic.
Upper James Street is, of course, a one-way street, like most of this area.
So it’s fortunate that Ms Bowman happened to be travelling in this direction. It’s also worth noting that Beak Street – from where she must have entered Upper James Street – and Golden Square, which she is entering, are also one-way streets – not very convenient for cyclists.
Our next location is Leicester Square.
We are looking back towards Piccadilly Circus, which Ms Bowman would surely have crossed to come here, but again that, unsurprisingly, was not shown in this video. Note again that Coventry Street – the street in the background – is another one-way street, with no exemptions for cyclists.
Having achieved whatever it was she wanted to, we find ourselves heading back north, this time on Wardour Street, past the Moving Picture Company.
Looks civilized, doesn’t it? Here’s what this one-way street actually looks like at this location, courtesy, again, of Streetview –
Not quite so civilized.
Our final stop-off is at Old Compton Street.
Here Edith is not the only cyclist – a gentleman is cycling in a care-free manner behind her. However, the directors appear to have carefully positioned their cameras to hide the “NO ENTRY” markings that lie just before the give way line in the foreground –
The cyclist is quite rightly ignoring a pointless restriction on his movement.
Not many other cyclists appear in the advert – although one gentleman does strangely manage to make an appear twice, at two different locations.
Either Edith has a stalker, or the director decided that actual cyclists were a bit thin on the ground, and instructed a member of the film crew to hop on a Boris Bike and tactfully appear in the background. I’ll let you decide which is more plausible.
Is the kind of deception embodied in this video is really justified? Or – more pragmatically – is it even sensible? I can understand the need to for Transport for London to present cycling in the best possible light, but I can’t really see how this kind of video is going to fool anyone who has the use of their eyes, and has experienced central London. Presenting Soho as some kind of cycling nirvana – albeit one that is euphemistically described as ‘bustling’ – is just going to fall flat for anyone who has already been there, either on foot, or by bus, or by taxi.
They’ll either think cycling is possible, or they won’t. These adverts will fail to persuade those who don’t already think it is possible, because it does not correspond with their reality. No one is going to jump on a bike just because Edith Bowman does so. The conditions need to change, not the presentation of those conditions.
I think Transport for London need to ask themselves whether a policy of lying about the friendliness of their streets for cycling is productive, let alone honest.
Last month Cyclists in the City showed how Tesco have apparently failed to consider that anyone might want to cycle to their new shop on Clapham Road, even though it lies directly on a ‘Cycling Superhighway’ (which despite their faults have a high density of cyclists travelling along them). No cycle stands are provided at all, and people are reduced to locking their bicycles to the railings of an internal disabled ramp, probably inconveniencing, through no fault of their own, anyone in a wheelchair, or with a pushchair.
Well the (considerably larger) Tesco metro store on Battersea Park Road – which also lies on a Cycling Superhighway, CS8 – is no better. No cycle stands, at all, anywhere.
There is, of course, an enormous free car park.
People arriving by bike, on the other hand, are reduced to locking their bicycles to the railings near the entrance.
This, like the Tesco store at Clapham, is ‘cycle parking entirely by accident rather than design.’
I counted seven bicycles locked up in this improvised manner, which again formed a significant percentage of the shoppers inside. Yet this mode of transport has been completely ignored by the planners.
In this case, it is not Tesco that are directly responsible, since the shop was until recently a branch of Somerfield. Courtesy of Google Streetview –
Evidence of a total planning failure. Notice how difficult it was – at the time the Streetview car passed by – to simply cross the road here. A forbidding Maginot line of defences stands in your way, first the enormous brick island wall in the middle of the road, then the anti-personnel fence on the far side.
Things have changed with the construction (or rather ‘construction’) of the ‘Superhighway’ – but not much.
The brick wall in the centre of the carriageway has gone – only to be replaced by another anti-personnel fence, which is more difficult to cross. The fence on the pavement side has gone, but only, I suspect, to make it easier for people to exit their cars from the parking bay on the left. The road is no easier to cross. Notice also that on-street parking is still privileged over a decent, protected cycle track here, despite there being an enormous off-street car park for this supermarket, as shown above. There is no need for on-street parking here, and yet cyclists are again expected to cycle in the door zone of parked cars, while traffic whizzes by, inches to their right. Remind me how this is supposed to be a ‘Superhighway’?
Meanwhile pedestrians wishing to cross the road upon exiting the store – like the young lady in the picture below – have to make a lengthy detour to get around the fence, to the point where the car park exits onto the road. The barrier stops here so vehicles can make a right turn into the car park – you can see the turn-in bay to the left of the photo. Naturally enough, the barrier stops where it is convenient for cars, not for pedestrians.
This isn’t an out-of-town supermarket. This Tesco store is in the centre of a high-density conurbation, where despite the hostility of the design, I strongly suspect the vast majority of people arrive on foot or by bike. Yet Tesco (or initially, Somerfield) have been allowed to construct an enormous free car park, have not laid on any provision for people arriving by bicycle (not deliberately, anyway), and Transport for London continue to maintain a road layout that is deeply antagonistic to both pedestrians and cyclists.
Both Danny, of Cyclists In the City, and more recently Joe, of War On The Motorist, reference the Sustrans study of a street in Bristol, which revealed that shopkeepers grossly exaggerate the importance of the private car as a means of conveying people to their stores. Joe has some good ideas as to why this might be.
High street shopkeepers and business owners greatly overestimate the importance of drivers to their success. Why? Perhaps proprietors are more likely to be drivers themselves, and, as is so often the case with motorists, can’t get their heads around the fact that so many others aren’t? Perhaps their view of the street through the big shop window is dominated by the big metal boxes passing through? Perhaps they see the apparent success of the big soulless out-of-town supermarkets and shopping malls, attribute that success to the acres of car parking, and leap to the conclusion that car parking is all that a business needs for success — that the model which succeeds on the periphery can be applied to the model that is failing in the centre.
I have two possible reasons to add to this excellent list. The first is that – certainly in the case of supermarkets like the one on Battersea Park Road – store owners probably believe that cars enable customers to buy more goods. In their eyes, someone on a piddly little bicycle is probably only going to be able to buy a rucksack’s worth of stuff, unlike a car boot-full. The logic then runs that they are not worth bothering with.
The second, and more substantive, reason is that the layout of our streets themselves suggests to store-owners and shopkeepers that no-one is walking or cycling along them. The manager of the Tesco store on Battersea Park Road looks out of his window and sees a street designed for cars. Is it any wonder, then, that he or she adapts his store for people arriving in motor vehicles, and won’t countenance the notion that most people aren’t actually arriving in them, despite the best efforts of Transport for London?
Perhaps Transport for London should start helping people to cross the road.
The story of the police officer who, sent flying through the air by the driver of a stolen car, immediately got to his feet to pursue and arrest said driver, has made the national news this week.
The police officer, Dan Pascoe, was plainly very lucky to escape with only serious bruising.
While the media focus has understandably been on his heroism, there seems to have been little attention paid to the driver – his offences, and his subsequent punishment. They certainly weren’t mentioned on either the BBC or ITV news pieces I saw.
Unsurprisingly, this individual – one Lee Adamson – has a rather chequered history.
The court heard police followed up information the stolen car was being driven near junction 11 of the M25. After arriving at the stretch of motorway, they spotted the car and Adamson, from Hayes, Middlesex, who drove along the hard shoulder at ‘high speed’ after being seen. Police pursued Adamson at speeds of up to 90mph before the crash, the court heard. Adamson, who had 25 convictions for 53 offences, was on licence after being released from jail in March at the time of the crash.
53 previous offences, of which it is reasonable to assume a fair proportion were driving offences, given that he was already disqualified.
Lee Adamson was driving a stolen car, without insurance, without a licence (again, because he was disqualified), at 90 mph on the hard shoulder. He deliberately drove into a police officer, and then failed to stop after the accident.
How was he punished?
[The judge] sentenced Adamson to 18 months in prison for dangerous driving, four months for driving whilst disqualified and one month for resisting an officer. He was also disqualified from driving for two years and will have to take an extended test. No separate penalties were given for the other offences.
23 months in prison, with a 24 month driving ban.
Driving bans are served concurrently – so Adamson has effectively been banned from driving for… one month.
I doubt he will be taking that ‘extended test’ either – he’s getting straight back behind the wheel regardless.
Adamson is merely one among many criminals who have used repeatedly used vehicles in a lethal manner on Britain’s roads, criminals who the judiciary don’t seem to think deserve to be banned for life, only serving them with concurrent driving bans, that are effectively empty punishments, because they cannot drive anyway. I mention here two that I have posted about previously –
David Howard – who, like Adamson, rammed a police car and police officers, as well as other drivers, in my town of Horsham – was convicted of dangerous driving. But as a disqualification from driving for this offence is only of the order of 12 months, and Howard is serving a five-and-a-half year prison sentence, he will be free to drive upon his release from prison. Indeed, a driving ban is not even mentioned in any of the news articles I can find about his sentencing.
Likewise Terence Fowler – who sped through a level crossing seconds before a train passed, as well as hitting 90 mph on suburban streets – was also convicted of dangerous driving, but again, as he is serving a three-and-a-half year prison sentence, he will also be free to drive upon his release. Again, no mention of a ban in any news articles, presumably because it will disappear while he is in prison.
These criminals – and countless others – are simply not being taken off the roads. It is a sick farce.
The Guardian have a piece up on their bike blog addressing the awkward question of ‘primary position’ – a topic I have previously addressed here and here. In both my pieces, I accepted that assertive road positioning is, in general, the safest way of negotiating Britain’s roads on a bicycle. However, I felt – and still feel – that there are two major problems with the ‘primary position’ technique. The first is that – while the technique itself is designed to discourage reckless and stupid manoeuvres by motorists – it will, in a minority of instances, increase the danger posed to a cyclist by reckless and stupid motorists. Instead of squeezing past a ‘gutter riding’ cyclist through a pinch point with a foot to spare, some homicidal lunatics will insist on squeezing past an ‘assertive’ cyclist at the same pinch point, and this time there will be mere inches to spare, if that. The author of the Guardian piece describes precisely this experience –
While writing this blog I “took the lane” on an east London road as a lorry approached in the other direction. The driver behind overtook anyway, passing within 30cm of my front wheel while honking his horn.
The second, and I think more general problem, is that it is a strategy that is completely alien to the vast majority of British road users. As I wrote in my initial post
No-one seems to have told U.K. drivers about it [the primary position]. Putting yourself out in the middle of the road can, in my experience, appear to some drivers as an act of deliberate provocation. They don’t have a clue what you are doing.
And it is indeed this cluelessness that lies behind another kind of unsavoury incident reported in the Guardian piece –
Hannah Widmann, a 26-year-old London student, took “primary position” at traffic lights when a driver behind started using her horn. Hannah said: “When I pulled left [from primary position] after about 25m, she had lowered her windows and herkids were screaming at me, using incredibly offensive terms.“
Charming. Cycle Of Futility reports a similar experience of primary-position-induced road rage (this one with the added bonus of Metropolitan Police ignorance about primary position – a seemingly widespread ignorance, that I touched upon here, and that is also discussed in the Guardian piece itself). And I also included my own experience of an enraged motorist, who gibbered about my being ‘in the middle of the road’, despite there being totally inadequate space to pass me safely. The cycle trainer David Dansky, quoted in the Guardian piece, acknowledges that this lack of understanding is a problem. But – somewhat optimistically – he seems to believe that the problem will magically disappear –
You still get drivers who don’t understand, but as more and more people get on their bikes you get more understanding from drivers.
More and more people get on their bikes? Is this really happening anywhere outside of central London? I don’t think so. And even where there are more people on bikes, I don’t see a corresponding increase in ‘understanding’ from drivers, as countless youtube videos of cut-ups and close passes in London will attest. But uncomfortable truths – like the fact that people aren’t getting on their bikes, at all, in Britain, precisely because of the hostile road conditions – don’t seem to penetrate the relentlessly sunny outlook of those like Dansky, who seem to think that the best way to achieve a mass cycling culture is to continually emphasise the positive in the vain hope of attaining the numbers required to get the ‘understanding’ or the ‘safety in numbers’ that will sustain a virtuous circle of improving conditions for cyclists. The fact that we aren’t getting anywhere, and haven’t been for decades, doesn’t seem to penetrate. Dansky is of the opinion that London’s ‘success’ as a ‘cycling city’ is due to ‘persuasive’ measures – promotional attempts to convince us that cycling in London is fantastic. His comments are reported in this Crap Waltham Forest piece–
it is exactly the measures Dave [Horton] is sceptical about that have contributed to London’s success as a cycling city. Transport for London’s behaviour change programme includes the congestion charge and a raft of adverts on billboards and TV promoting cycling using positive images of people riding in London, many without cycle helmets.
London can, in no reasonable sense, be described as a ‘cycling city.’ In fact it compares extremely poorly to pretty much every western European city I have visited.
Is this what we’ve been reduced to? This is hype triumphing over substance, both in strategy and outcomes. I am more than slightly fed up with the apparent refusal to acknowledge that conditions for cycling in Britain are intolerable for the vast majority of people, and also with the refusal to veer from a strategy of building a mass cycling culture by encouraging people to have the ‘confidence’ to venture into traffic, with its attendant dishonesty about how wonderful it is to cycle in our towns and cities. I am a confident cyclist, and I find cycling stressful and unpleasant. The simple truth is that we are never going to reach the ‘tipping point’ of numbers where safety and understanding increases by just training people, or by mounting glossy advertising campaigns. Neither makes the actual experience of cycling pleasant, relaxing and convenient. We need to adjust the environment itself – not lie about it, or train people to cope with it.
One small crumb of comfort, I suppose, is that however bad things are in the U.K, they are certainly not as bad as in New Zealand – one place you certainly do not want to take a ‘primary position.’
Incredibly, it seems that Transport for London are entirely disregarding the welter of criticisms their plans for ‘improving’ Blackfriars Bridge have received over the last few months, and are simply pressing ahead, regardless, with their preferred scheme. This evening.
In doing so, they are ignoring the hundreds of letters of protest, the thousands of petition signatures, their own safety audit, the unanimous decision of the Assembly Members in calling for a review of the scheme, and Boris himself.
Their sole argument for ignoring this mountain of opposition appears to lie in this passage –
Analysis by TfL shows that usage by cyclists through this junction is predominantly for travelling to and from work and is therefore concentrated during traditional ‘rush hour’ periods, particularly in the morning heading northbound and in the afternoon heading southbound. Vehicular speeds are predicted to be at their lowest through the junction during peak time, at an estimated speed of just 12mph, creating a much improved and safer environment for cyclists to pass through.
It’s hard to know where to start with this guff. All modes of transport will peak during the rush hour, as Cycle of Futility points out, and be at their lowest at other times. So this is a particularly weak argument for ignoring the safety of cyclists, especially outside of peak hours, when traffic speeds, by Transport for London’s own logic, will be substantially higher, and numbers of cyclists will still be significant.
In addition, a mere ‘average speed’ of 12 mph does not reflect the reality of peak speeds on the bridge, and it is quite obviously the peak speeds that present the real danger. Here is a video taken by a cyclist, moving through the current 20 mph speed limit on the bridge.
No doubt ‘average speeds’ at the time this video was taken were around 12 mph (note the slow-moving northbound traffic) – that doesn’t, however, remove the fact that a biker travelling at close to 50 mph presents a serious safety issue. But Transport for London apparently think differently – average speeds are their indicator of safety.
But to suggest that because average speeds are low, there is no need for an upper speed limit, leads inevitably to the farcical conclusion that there should be no speed limit on Blackfriars Bridge at all. It is this paper-thin argument that Boris presented to the Assembly a few weeks ago; I thought, at the time, that it was Boris simply clutching at whatever superficial justification simply popped into his head. Yet it seems, astoundingly, that it has originated with Transport for London themselves. Boris has simply swallowed their stupid logic and regurgitated it.
The final baffling piece of the argument is what someone has termed ‘safety through congestion’. To me, the idea that Transport for London could be selling a clogged road network as some kind of bonus for cyclists shows how desperate they are.
What are they playing at? I think the best explanation is the one At War With The Motorist comes up with –
TfL have misjudged the mood on this one. In the 1950s the future was the car and road transport, and for five decades TfL could get away with their assumptions and their institutional motorism. The times are a changin’. We need to show TfL that they can’t get away with this in 2011.
Indeed, it’s time to show Transport for London that their stone-age assumptions about how our cities should be organized are out of step with what the vast majority of citizens want. It’s time to get angry.
There’s a large protest ride planned for 6pm this evening, which will merge with the later monthly critical mass.
There’s an interesting article in the current issue of Private Eye (Eye 1292) about the government’s apparent willingness to allow longer articulated trucks onto our roads.
It asks the rather pointed question
Why is a Tory-led government considering letting even longer lorry trailers roam Britain’s roads while a Tory mayor, Boris Johnson, kicks bendy buses out of London for hitting cyclists?
At least bendy buses are confined to routes their drivers know well. Longer lorry trailers, if approved, will turn up anywhere, including places their drivers have rarely or never navigated before. Lorries are already involved in most fatal cycling accidents in London, with left turns the most common factor.
Quite so, and the length of these trucks – 18.75 metres – will be in excess of the length of bendy buses, with the added difficulty that instead of being jointed at the centre, like a bendy bus, the trucks will have an enormous fixed length of 15.65 metres, which will created tremendous difficulties both for the driver in negotiating some of our urban streets – especially those they are unfamiliar with.
Here’s a video of the difficulty a bendy bus caused me recently while I was cycling in London, on a route the driver should know well –
To think that even longer, and less flexible, vehicles will be on unfamiliar roads should make any cyclist’s blood curdle.
Private Eye notes, with some justification, that
Cyclists, motorists and pedestrians waiting to cross a road could be in for a nasty, or fatal, surprise.
Additionally, the government hasn’t factored in the cost to local councils that these longer lorries will undoubtedly impart on the street environment, on the grounds that these longer lorries will be same weight. Current articulated lorries already destroy signs and barriers in my town as they attempt to manoeuvre – something any Horsham resident who knows the back area of Waitrose will be fully aware of – so this damage can surely only get worse with greater length. Unlike changes to planes, trains and ships – which have to factor in costs to the public infrastructure they use – the road haulage industry seems to have been given a free pass.
What is worse is that the government even accepts that the new lorries will be more dangerous, but, according to Private Eye
it brushes the problem aside by saying that the number of lorry accidents “is expected to fall” because longer trailers would result in fewer lorry “movements”. Yeah, right. Truck journeys were expected to fall after previous lorry enlargements, but increased instead (Eye 1206).
Indeed.
So it looks like we are going to have plenty more behemoths on our roads, many of which will often be running around empty, or near empty – it is going to be very difficult to fill their vast capacity all the time – which will cause increased danger to vulnerable road users, and increased damage to our infrastructure.
This is to say nothing of the probable changes to the road layout which will undoubtedly occur at a later stage, as councils make adaptations – most of which will, again, undoubtedly be detrimental to cyclists and pedestrians. Wider radius bends are not friendly to these road users, given that they inevitably result in higher vehicle speeds, and greater crossing distances.
Very, seems to be the answer, given that they seem to think pedestrians are just like cars.
How so?
On pages 25-27 of their Network Operating Strategy document (draft), Transport for London describe how they have conducted ‘Signal timing reviews’ of over 1000 traffic signals since 2008. This was, apparently, one of Boris’ key Mayoral commitments, outlined in his ‘Way To Go!‘ policy statement.
We are told that TfL
regularly reviews and collates data on the performance of its 6,164 sets of traffic signals. Data recorded measures stop/start delays at traffic signals for both pedestrians and vehicular traffic in terms of:
• The number of occasions traffic queuing at a red traffic signal clears the junction in the first green phase of the traffic signal
• The number of occasions pedestrians waiting at a ‘red man’ signal clear the kerb during the invitation to cross ‘green man’ phase of the lights
Subsequently, we find that, by adjusting the timings, TfL have achieved
an average 7.93 per cent reduction in stop/start delays at traffic signals. This was achieved with no dis-benefit to pedestrians and with improvements to both traffic and pedestrian flows across nearly all times of the day and night.
Notice that this passage reveals that the only “stop/start delays” TfL are interested in are those that affect motor traffic – the “7.93%” figure refers to motor vehicles, namely that the
Number of occasions when queued traffic will have cleared through the first green phase
has increased from 72.13% before the review, to 80.06% after it. As this is a ‘signal timings’ review, it is clear that this increase can only been have achieved by increasing the length of time that motor traffic has on a green phase, and therefore by decreasing the amount of time that pedestrians have on a “green man” phase.
But apparently these changes have been made with “no dis-benefit to pedestrians” – indeed, TfL tell us that conditions have improved for pedestrians, in that the
Number of occasions when pedestrians waiting to cross the road easily clear the kerb during the first green man/blackout period
has increased from 94.1% to 94.77% after the review.
Wow! Things are better for everyone, right?
Err… no.
If we stop and think about this for a second, it is quite obvious that the 7.93% improvement in “stop/start delays” has been bought at the expense of pedestrians, and it is only TfL’s superficial and motor-centric way of defining delays to pedestrians that masks this basic fact.
The amount of time pedestrians have on a green phase may not have changed, but the amount of time they have to wait for a green phase clearly has – this is where the extra time has come from for the improvement in motor vehicle delays.
The ludicrous way in which TfL has measured ‘pedestrian delay’ quickly becomes apparent when you realise that you could hold pedestrians waiting for a “green man” for half an hour, and TfL’s figures about “pedestrian delay” wouldn’t change one iota. The hundred or so pedestrians that might have gathered at the crossing, waiting tirelessly for a green signal to cross, would all still be able to “reach the kerb” on the other side during the “green man” timing. But despite waiting for half an hour to cross, in TfL world, they apparently wouldn’t have suffered any delay – because let’s not forget, TfL define “pedestrian delay” as
The number of occasions pedestrians waiting at a ‘red man’ signal clear the kerb during the invitation to cross ‘green man’ phase of the lights
Barmy.
How can TfL be this stupid?
The obvious answer – they are so motor vehicle-centric, they have simply defined “pedestrian delay” in exactly the same way as they define “motor vehicle delay” – that is, by whether x units “queuing” at a junction manage to get through the junction during that green signal.
But this isn’t how pedestrians are “delayed” at all – they’re delayed when they have to wait for a green signal to occur, not by whether they can “get through the junction” when it does.
This is clear evidence that TfL simply haven’t given a moment’s thought to the way pedestrians get delayed at junctions.
Pedestrians aren’t cars, you chumps.
Cycle of Futility has plenty of other objections to this document, the consultation for which closes today. Feel free to bombard Transport for London with as many of these as you wish. The email address is here.
Our urban planners seem to be collectively labouring under a rather strange delusion; a delusion that removing pavements and tarmac road surfaces and replacing them with an expanse of granite blocks will automatically result in an environment that is ‘civilized’, one in which all road users, be they behind the wheel of an HGV, or sucking a dummy in a pushchair, harmoniously integrate in some Elysian nirvana.
Exhibition Road in South Kensington (which will apparently look something like the picture above) is the latest – and perhaps the most significant – in a long line of ‘conversions’ that have taken place across London. The planners boast that
The crowded, narrow pavements and heavy traffic will go. In their place we will make an elegant kerb-free surface across the length and width of the road. Pedestrians will have more space and vehicles will be limited to 20mph. We’re changing Exhibition Road from an area dominated by cars to one that puts people first.
A lower speed limit is obviously an improvement, as is the notion that pedestrians will have ‘more space’. But I am not so sure that the ‘heavy traffic will go’, and consequently, as we will discover below, it is not at all clear that pedestrians will get that extra space. There are, it is true, some changes to the road layout – vehicles will no longer be able to make left turns onto Exhibition Road from Cromwell Road, and there also appears to be a proposed closure at the end of Thurloe Street. But to me this does not seem to be sufficient. Kensington and Chelsea’s Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) notes that
Stage 1 of the Project would remove virtually all turning movements at the junction of Exhibition Road with Cromwell Road, with the following benefits: (i) introduction of direct, straight across, pedestrian crossing facilities, instead of the existing ‘sheep pen’ crossings which are difficult for wheelchair users, (ii) simplifying traffic movements at the junction should improve safety – the junction has a poor accident record, (iii) reduction in traffic flow in Exhibition Road – this is forecast to reduce from the current 1,100 vehicles per hour during peak periods, to around 600 – 700 vehicles per hour.
Getting rid of the pedestrian pens and making it easier to cross the road is fantastic, but note that there is still going to be a significant amount of traffic passing down Exhibition Road. Now I think that the Assessment’s figures of 600-700 vehicles per hour are decidedly optimistic, given that this amounts to only 10 vehicles a minute passing along the road at peak hours, which I find hard to believe. For instance, this streetview picture shows plenty of vehicles heading south on Exhibition Road – as there are no changes planned for southbound traffic entering Exhibition Road, we can expect to see precisely this volume of traffic southbound on the new street layout, which will therefore, in all probability, be far in excess of a mere 10 vehicles a minute.
Indeed this source suggests, more realistically, that the changes will only lower traffic volume by 15% – that is, to around 1000 vehicles per hour.
So where are these vehicles in the picture at the top of this post?
Even if we accept the lower 600-700 vehicles per hour figure, the very same Assessment notes that
if vehicle flows are greater than 100 per hour, pedestrians will not use the vehicle zone as a shared space
So at peak hours – and indeed probably at nearly all times outside of the dead of night – Exhibition Road will not be a shared space at all. It will just be… a road, exactly as it was before.
The findings of Kensington and Chelsea’s EIA tally closely with research on shared space carried out by the Transport Research Laboratory. The report, Public Transport in Pedestrian Priority Areas, TRL PR/T/136/03, Crowthorne 2003, is apparently unpublished, but the relevant findings are included in the Department of Transport’s 2009 Appraisal of Shared Space document –
There is some evidence that pedestrian freedom of movement is restricted by traffic flow and speed. York [the TRL report author] identifies a series of thresholds with combinations of vehicle flow and speed above which pedestrians tended to walk along what would have been the footway area rather than walking along the central street space:
traffic (other than bus) flow exceeds 50 vehicles per hour with speeds not exceeding 30mph
traffic (other than bus) flow exceeds 100 vehicles per hour with speeds not exceeding 25mph, or
traffic (other than bus) flow exceeds 200 vehicles per hour with speeds not exceeding 20mph.
So, assuming that the 20 mph speed limit is at least moderately adhered to by drivers, this research suggests that pedestrians will simply stay away from what they perceive to be ‘the vehicle space’ once flows exceed 100-200 vehicles per hour – well below the projected figures for Exhibition Road.
A study undertaken by TRL in 2003 for TfL’s Bus Priority Team indicted the limits to which pedestrians in London may be prepared to share a surface with traffic. This study found that below flows of 90 vehicles per hour pedestrians were prepared to mingle with traffic. When flows reached 110 vehicles per hour pedestrians used the width between frontages as if it were a traditional road, that is the majority of pedestrians remained on the equivalent of the footway and left the carriageway clear for vehicles.
All this research clearly shows that Exhibition Road will not be ‘shared’ – it will be a road along which motor vehicles travel, and pedestrians will keep to the margins. Consequently I fail to see how this will change ‘Exhibition Road from an area dominated by cars to one that puts people first’, as the proponents enthusiastically suggest. The pedestrians and motor vehicles will stay in exactly the same places they were before the work was carried out; this is a ‘shared space’ only in the sense that pedestrians and vehicles will ‘share’ a uniform surface of expensive granite setts (and why is it always granite that is the material of choice for these schemes?).
Despite all the bold talk of ‘shared space’, this is something that Kensington and Chelsea have apparently been forced to concede –
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea don’t believe the scheme is actually shared space. A spokesman said: ‘We don’t really class Exhibition Road as a ‘shared space’ though there is no definition for what shared space actually means. In Exhibition Road there is no traditional kerb upstand separating the pedestrian space from the vehicular traffic, but there are distinct zones.’
Well this is shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, because quite obviously Exhibition Road, with the expected vehicle volume, could never have been a ‘shared space’ – pedestrians will not be prepared to risk their lives sharing it with the projected flow of vehicles. So this is a fudge. An expensive fudge – costing over £27 million.
All that was really needed was a narrowing of the road itself, and the creation of a much larger explicit pedestrianized area (with, dare I say it, cycle tracks included within it), with plenty of pedestrian crossings along the street – you can see the width available in the streetview picture above. Or, even more boldly, close the street to motor vehicles entirely.
But these kinds of solutions don’t appear to fit in with the fashionable thinking of ‘shared space’ gurus, who seem to be remarkably persuasive in getting councils to implement their visions of utopia. For them, it appears, the aesthetics of the design come first – the emphasis in this case seems to be on ‘elegance’ – while concerns about motor vehicle flow seem to get pushed into the distant background.
Now I can agree that a street free from clutter such as pedestrian barriers is more aesthetically attractive than your typical urban street. The problem, however, is that the mere attractiveness of a street, in architectural terms, is not enough to create a pleasant street. It’s necessary, but not sufficient. But ‘shared space’ proponents have an unfortunate propensity to gloss over one important factor that impinges upon the quality of a street – motor traffic itself.
Their argument – their sole argument on this matter, as far as I can tell – is that the apparent ‘good chaos’ created by a lack of clarity in these kinds of street layouts is a sufficient means of taming the motor traffic. This is the position of Ben Hamilton-Bailie, a prominent shared-space advocate who happens to be involved in the Exhibition Road scheme –
Ben Hamilton-Baillie, an urban designer who has helped to draw up the plans for Exhibition Road, said that motorists would still have full access to the road, but it would be like driving through a campsite. “You don’t need signs everywhere on a campsite telling you to give way or stop or slow down, because its blindingly obvious what you need to do,” he said.
This is all very well, but there is a difference between ‘a campsite’, as we understand it in everyday language, and a campsite that has a major road running through it. All the evidence cited above, about pedestrian behaviour in the face of major traffic flow, suggests that there will be rather too much chaos, of an organized vehicular kind, for this type of ‘solution’ to work. There is too much motor traffic, and it will dominate. No amount of smooth surfaces, lack of street signs, and general absence of clarity, will compensate for this basic fact.
This obvious conclusion is also evident from the DfT research mentioned above, which notes that
Drivers in platoons of vehicles seem inclined to follow the preceding vehicle without particular reference to pedestrians. Similarly pedestrians moving in groups seem to follow one another. In neither case is there clear communication between different types of user. Indeed it may be that where flows of pedestrians are sufficiently high an ordering effect is taking place whereby users of all types concede priority to those users already in the space at the time of their own arrival.
That is, pedestrians won’t get a look-in if the traffic stream is too dense. Here’s an illustration, a video I took of interactions outside Sloane Square tube station, another recent ‘shared space’ conversion –
When there aren’t vehicles about, people cross normally. When vehicles are approaching, however,people give way to them (usually because, as in one instance in my video – the silver Golf at around the 2:05 mark – the cars just barge through regardless). And once there is a stream of motor vehicles flowing past the tube station, subsequent to this belligerent Golf, pedestrians are halted. There is none of the usual give-and-take you would get when pedestrians are interacting with each other. In other words, the smooth granite setts do not mask the fact that this is simply a road. Pedestrians are not going to step into a road in front of motor vehicles, let alone into a stream of motor vehicles. In fact, the only measure that seems to make it easy to cross, in this scheme, is the severe speed bump that slows vehicles as they enter it. I would say that without it, this area would be positively dangerous for pedestrians.
The conclusion is obvious – it is the speed hump, not the shared space, that makes it easy for pedestrians to cross. Indeed, if we genuinely cared about pedestrian movements, we would see a wide pedestrian crossing here, which would explicitly give priority to pedestrians. That has not happened – presumably because it would ‘interfere’ with the flow of vehicles into the suburban streets that lie to the south of the tube station. And, I would guess, because a pedestrian crossing is anathema to the ‘naked streets’ tenet of the ‘shared space’ philosophy.
And this brings us to the crux of my argument. ‘Shared space’ advocates seem reluctant to address, head-on, this vexed issue of motor vehicle flow, which is baffling, given that all the evidence suggests that excessive motor vehicle flows actually hole their schemes below the waterline. Their only response seems to be to stick their heads in the sand and wish the issue away, a response so odd that it leads me to the conclusion that they are primarily concerned with making a street look attractive, rather than making it attractive.
Another example. Hamilton-Bailie, as well as being responsible for the Exhibition Road scheme, is also behind the recent conversion of a large swathe of Ashford in Kent into shared space. To counter local concerns, Kent Council produced this rather intriguing didactic video, giving residents helpful advice about how to be safe in a ‘shared space.’
It starts with some ‘shared space’ in action, at Seven Dials, where we see how wonderful these schemes are for pedestrians –
At this point we have to remind ourselves that this is a promotional video, apparently showing the benefitsof shared space; we also have to remind ourselves that proponents of shared space are always keen to talk about the ‘civility’ of these designs, that are simultaneously ‘capable of handling traffic flow.’ There is no contradiction, it seems, between ‘civility’ and ‘traffic flow.’ What was I just saying about the priorities of ‘shared space’ advocates?
We then meet Hamilton-Bailie himself.
Note how much ‘sharing’ is going on in the ‘shared space’ behind him.
I cannot escape the impression that this is, again, just a road, but one without kerbs. (And, presumably, a very expensive road.)
The impression is further confirmed when we see our presenter using this –
Yes, it’s a pedestrian crossing.
If the streets are truly ‘shared’, then why do pedestrians need a special place to cross it? The apparent contradiction is not addressed.
Just like Exhibition Road, therefore, we have a new environment that purports to be ‘shared’ but in fact is pretty much exactly the same as the previous environment, except the surface has changed, and some signs have been removed – all, presumably, at great expense.
Another theoretical ‘shared space’ in Ashford, that looks very pretty, but which in practical terms isn’t shared at all. Again it is impossible to avoid questioning the priorities of the designers.
Finally, we come to the example that provoked this rather long and rambling piece – the new ‘shared space’ in Byng Place, Bloomsbury, which forms the heart of this excellent piece by David Arditti, which much of the logic of my argument here borrows from substantially. He writes
In 2006 Terry Farrell, the most influential architect in London, and an adviser to Boris Johnson, was commissioned by Camden Council to write a document called Bloomsbury: A Strategic Vision.This, far from being strategic, just proposed a cosmetic revamping of a few streets, some of them in Shared Space style. In the artists’ pictures in the report, pedestrians were shown skipping in carefree manner on the roads of Bloomsbury, or enjoying a continental café culture there. But, strangely, there was no mention of how all the through-traffic would be removed from the streets. There was also no recognition of the fact that a strategic, high-use cycle route ran through here, the Seven Stations Link, or LCN Route 0, as I described in my last post.
The Farrell report recommended destroying the highly-popular segregated cycle track through Torrington Place, Byng Place, Gordon Square and Tavistock Square, built only 4 years before at great expense, and replacing it all with Shared Space. Worryingly, the case put forward was purely an aesthetic one, … not one based on safety or on promoting cycling. The cycle track was in fact an irrelevance to Farrells. They hadn’t even understood what it was for. And nothing in their plan actually took motor traffic away.
Leaving aside the strange irony of a man responsible for foisting this fantastical monstrosity onto London dealing in ‘aesthetics’,
the case presented is indeed a curious one.
Again we see an odd blind spot when it comes to dealing with motor traffic. How is to be addressed in the scheme, given that, crucially, too much motor traffic, as we have seen, negates the very concept of ‘sharing’ that these projects are built on?
It is proposed that the segregated cycle ways and road surface [in Byng Place] be replaced by a shared surface consisting of granite setts. A number of options for doing this are illustrated below. Each approach would encourage vehicular traffic to move at less than 20mph.
I’m not seeing it myself, Terry. How does simply changing the road surface from tarmac to granite encourage drivers to travel at 20 mph, instead of 30 mph?
But that’s all that is proposed in the document! There is no ‘taming’ at all, beyond the notion that deliberately creating a lack of clarity encourages more responsible driving; lower traffic volumes simply do not follow from this premise.
And so this is what Byng Place looks like today –
Notice how the ‘shared surface’ is encouraging drivers to travel ‘at less than 20 mph.’ In your dreams.
Notice also how no pedestrians, at all, are choosing to share this space with motor vehicles, which is unsurprising, giving that we have large lorries and vans thundering through here, along with plenty of taxis and other motor vehicles. We have a lady dashing desperately across this ‘shared space’ at around the 0:30 mark as an ambulance bears down on her. I also encountered this destroyed street sign, evidence of just how carefully vehicles are being driven through here. (I do concede that if the street was truly ‘naked’, then this sign would not have been here to be knocked over in the first place. But I leave you to draw your own conclusions about whether driving would be of a higher standard in the absence of these signs.)
Contrast this reality, then, with this mythical image of Byng Place, taken from the same ‘Strategic Vision’ document –
in which, incredibly, all the motor vehicles that use this road have vanished into thin air. The sleight of hand is remarkable, because there are no concrete proposals anywhere in the Farrells document to actually reduce traffic volume.
So what has been achieved at Byng Place? As far as I can tell, the road has merely been resurfaced, and needless confusion has been created between pedestrians and cyclists, where none existed before.
That’s it.
Oh, and close to a million pounds has been spunked up the wall.
David Arditti writes that ‘shared space’ is an ahistorical concept, in that it
offers no explanation of how things came to be as they are now. It therefore is unconvincing in its assertion that the problems that we have on streets, with all their modern infrastructure, can suddenly be solved merely by removing the infrastructure and leaving the street “naked”. For the infrastructure we have evolved to solve perceived problems. Why should putting policy into reverse-gear and going back to a mediaeval street not result in just all the same problems that the infrastructure developed to solve?
This ‘problem’, of course, being motor vehicles, and the way they currently dominate our urban streets. Redesignating the nature of those streets, deliberating creating confusion on them, and making them look pretty, does nothing to address this fundamental issue.
‘Shared space’ is unfortunately a classic example of style over substance, and it misses the point spectacularly.
East Street, Horsham, c.1955. A street yet to receive a helpful redesign from shared space advocates, yet strangely one in which people are happy to mingle anyway, because of the general absence of motor traffic
The same scene, today. Now a pretty ‘shared space’, created at great expense, but one that is objectively worse for pedestrians than the street was in 1955. Spot the issue.
The “i-unit” is a form of “personal mobility” that seeks to attain a greater balance of meeting individuals’ wishes to enjoy freedom of movement, harmony with society, and harmony with the Earth’s natural environment.
A form of “personal mobility”, you say?
Hmm.
I’m not sure the above is an accurate description of what the ‘i-unit’ is seeking to attain. Toyota’s real purpose is quite obviously to create a car for extraordinarily lazy people – a car you don’t have to get out of when you want to have conversations, move around other people, eat food, and so on – in other words, be a ‘pedestrian.’ You can keep your sweaty backside where it belongs during every stage of human interaction.
Variable Positioning – The i-unit has a compact size enabling the passenger to move among other people in an upright position in low speed mode, and a low center of gravity that ensures stable handling when the vehicles reclines in high speed mode.
The goal of Toyota is to provide a personal mobility, which can be used on roads but also does not hinder interaction with pedestrians. For this the i-unit has two possible setups. First, there is an upright low speed setup, where the rider has a higher position and can have conversations face-to-face with pedestrians and can move among people. This upright position can be transformed while driving to a low position, where the rider sits much lower and more reclined. This high speed setup has a much lower center of gravity and is for driving at higher speeds.
In other words, it’s a very expensive, shape-shifting version of this –
It is, I am unsurprised to announce, just as absurd as Toyota’s vision’.
I mean, WTF?
The selling-point of this ‘vehicle’ again seems to be laziness, and of an even more extreme kind –
although it is possible, and indeed great fun, to drive the EN-V manually, it is really designed to drive by itself…. Because it is autonomous, drivers could read, have teleconferences or sleep while being driven around in them… Send it out in the morning to take the children to school, have it pick up a friend on its way back for a morning coffee. Travel in it to the local pool and make it pick up the shopping while you go for a swim….
I expect it wipes your bottom for you too.
Vehicles like this will, of course, never be the solution to our urban transport problems, because there’s already a solution, one that has been around for well over a hundred years – it’s a ‘vehicle’ that allows face-to-face interaction, can travel at speeds of up to 20 mph, is compact, energy-efficient, allows your children to go to school independently, can negotiate with pedestrians, and is a fraction of the cost of these stupendously over-engineered and technology-crammed devices.
The bicycle.
The car industry know this of course – they’re not that stupid – yet they keep on attempting to foist these bizarre ‘solutions’ on us. It’s like trying to market a £100 digital ‘i-Cup’ as the solution to all our drinking problems.
It would be nice to think that these ‘i-Units’ and ‘EN-Vs’ are an enormous practical joke at our expense, and that the boardrooms at these companies are full of ribald chuckling and table-slapping as the executives marvel at how gullible we all are.
But unfortunately the more obvious and cynical explanation is that these monstrosities are so deliberately absurd that another absurd urban transport mode – the motor vehicle – suddenly seems quite sensible by comparison.
RT @OxonCyclingNet: No consultation and against national standard LTN 1/20, Oxford's only central traffic-free cycle lane (Parks Rd) has be… 3 days ago
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