On Wednesday 4th February 2015 TfL held a board meeting. It was one quite different in nature from most, for in essence there was really only one important item to be discussed: Item 7 – Proposed Cycle Superhighway Schemes. Rather belatedly we now take a look at what happened at that meeting and, as far as possible, what has happened since then.
Old news
In one sense it may feel like we are presenting old news, but transport policy is something that always takes time to have an impact. And with the consequences of the decisions made at that rather unusual meeting starting to filter through, it is worth looking back at the arguments presented and re-examining them in the light of subsequent developments.
Superhighway procedural matters
It was approximately 19 minutes into the meeting that the Mayor introduced the main item on the Agenda – Approval for the proposed East-West and North-South Superhighways through Central London, as well as Cycle Superhighways 1, 2 (improved) and 5. It was immediately clear this was not going to be a simple procedural matter when he invited Howard Carter, General Counsel (and in essence the legal supremo at TfL) to address the meeting on the subject of conflicts of interest of Board Members.
Conflicts of interest were always going to be an issue on this particular topic for certain board members. Bob Oddy, for example, is a representative of the licensed taxi trade (black cabs) and a taxi driver himself was the most obvious one but there were others.
On the surface Peter Anderson, Managing Director of Finance for the Canary Wharf Group, may not have had an obvious conflict of interest, but the Group itself had lodged its opposition to the cycle routes (despite not going anywhere near Canary Wharf) and indeed Anderson himself had aired views suggesting a strong opposition. Sir John Armitt, meanwhile, may be well known for being a former Chief Executive of Railtrack and Chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority, but what is probably less well known is that he is currently Chairman of the National Express Group – who would clearly be expected to be unhappy about any proposal that reduced the roadspace available for coaches.
This issue of conflicts of interest had clearly exercised the mind of Howard Carter. He explained that he had already issued written advice to board members and stated that, because TfL could not be aware of the exact involvement of individuals, ultimately it would have to be a personal decision of individual board members as to what they declared. The concern was clearly with people holding senior positions in organisations that had delivered a response to the consultation. Daniel Moylan, meanwhile, stated that he was a councillor in the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea but was not involved in the consultation response, so did not consider that he had a conflict of interest. This did not appear to create undue consternation amongst other board members.
When is a board meeting not a board meeting?
The declarations (or lack of them) were important because procedurally those with a conflict of interest could not speak at a board meeting. Obviously in this instance, given the number of technical conflicts, this was something a problem. For despite those conflicts it was felt that it would not be improper for the board to hear a board member’s views – after all they may have something very valid to contribute, notwithstanding their interest in a particular outcome. In a move of both masterly pragmatism or pantomime (depending, perhaps, on your viewpoint) Carter proposed a solution: At some stage they would declare the board meeting formally adjourned, allowing those to speak who otherwise would be barred from doing so, and then formally re-open the meeting. All this without anyone having to leave their seat.
The proposal was accepted. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Mayor could not resist quoting historical precedent – that of King Baudouin of Belgium. In 1990 the Catholic king briefly relinquished the throne so that the Belgian Parliament could pass a law on abortion without the monarch appearing to be complicit. Once the law was passed the king resumed his position as monarch.
A slick presentation
With a creative issue around conflicts in place, the subject of the was finally addressed. This began with an impressive presentation by Leon Daniels. The tragedy is that, as far as we are aware, the only way of seeing this presentation is to watch the webcast itself and peer at the presentation within.
One of the things Daniels emphasised is that it just was not possible to have a trial of the East-West Superhighway, something that some had complained about. His point was that, whilst is was possible to use railway sleepers and cones to mark out the future layout, it just was not possible to change all the junction layouts as required (something we covered in Part 2: Government, Gilligan and Royal Guards). Furthermore the scheme would only work if all the elements were in place – there was no way one could test a part of the scheme in isolation.
Daniels emphasised that, rather than a trial, the way forward was thus to implement the proposals and, during the implementation phase, closely monitor the impact in order to ensure that the expected outcome was achieved. Any lessons learnt could then be fed into the next stage.
The case for the scheme – but where is the other side of the argument?
In many ways the presentation represented an impressive argument for the case for Superhighways. This does, however, pose a rather concerning question. Is this really what a TfL board member should be doing? TfL must be aware of the disadvantages as well as the benefits of such a scheme. Whilst board members were supplied with data concerning various current and estimated future journey times and some of the banned turns, at no point were any of the possibly more controversial issues raised by TfL directors so that Board Members could be more aware of them and take an even-handed view. The lack of a right turn from Westminster Bridge into Embankment for general traffic, for example, did not get a mention.
One would have thought that the duty of the directors was to present the advantages and disadvantages of the scheme and then add their recommendation and reason for it. If a criticism could be levelled at the approach here it would perhaps be that this approach was not taken here.
At the end of the presentation the Mayor, unsurprisingly, gave it his strong endorsement and rather informally suspended the meeting to allow the individuals with a conflict of interest to speak.
Time out: the taxi driver’s case
Bob Oddy used the opportunity to point out, as he saw it, TfL had, at a late stage, miraculously managed to double the road space available – which in his eyes meant that the scheme was not properly thought out in the first place. Leon Daniels stated that this simply wasn’t true, and that at various pinch points they found they were able to fit in an extra general traffic lane by a slight reduction of pavement widths and of the Cycle Superhighway itself. This reduced some of the delays which the initial modelling had highlighted, which had previously been considered to be unacceptable.
What seems remarkable, given that Mr Oddy is specifically appointed to the board to represent the taxi drivers’ interests, is that he failed to point out specific facets of the scheme that would severely disadvantage taxi drivers when he had a golden opportunity to do so. As well as the banned right turn at Westminster Bridge into Embankment (and the corresponding banned left turn in the other direction) there was the making of Horse Guards Road as a no through road, which would deprive taxi drivers of a very popular taxi route via Horse Guards Road into Great George Street and onto Parliament Square.
Time Out: The case of Canary Wharf Group
The other person who took advantage of the formal suspension to speak and point out his concerns was Peter Anderson, who raised a number of points.
Anderson felt that the scheme had been rushed through without going through the normal procedures (e.g. initial presentation to the Finance & Policy Panel, a subject to which we will return). He also pointed out that many people and organisations had concerns and wanted points addressing, and he and they felt that more time was needed to properly scrutinise the project and address individual concerns. He drew attention to a response from the Metropolitan Police who “raised a whole host of issues” about the scheme. The clear impression he gave was that the Metropolitan Police was not happy with it.
His next point was that traffic was doubled on “the westbound” but remains single lane on “the eastbound route”. He regarded the single lane as insufficient for the amount of traffic that “needed” (in his own words) to go down that road and expressed particular concern regarding businesses.
Anderson’s final point was that whilst the other Cycle Superhighways had a positive cost benefit analysis, the East West one was very much the exception. According to TfL’s own figures it would cost £38m to build but produce disbenefits of £200m per year. He did not think the TfL board had ever previously approved a scheme where the annual disbenefit was around six times the initial expenditure.
In conclusion he wanted much more consultation and a trial, dismissing the notion that this wasn’t possible. He also challenged the notion that the modelling shown by Leon Daniels in his presentation was representative of traffic at 0900 and expressed concern about traffic that would be “gated” (kept back by means of traffic light interventions) to keep traffic at a reasonable level in the centre of London. He seemed particularly concerned about deliveries, specifically that more delivery vans would be necessary to deliver the same quantity of goods.
The board reconvenes
Having heard the men’s comments, the meeting was reconvened. The Mayor resumed proceedings by addressing the issue of the Metropolitan Police’s concerns. Reading from a briefing provided to him by the Metropolitan Police themselves, the Mayor stated that they “support these proposals which they believe will significantly improve the safety to cyclists particularly at the many junctions on the route”. He stated he did not detect any opposition from the Metropolitan Police and he found it curious that it should be advanced as an objection.
As to Anderson’s concerns as to feedback from other parties, the Mayor commented:
“You also note that various bodies and commercial interests have been writing in. That is indeed true. Some of them have left the reference to the Canary Wharf response on their letterhead accidently. I congratulate Canary Wharf on the solidity of the campaign they have been running against this and I understand their concerns.”
He then went on to say that TfL have worked incredibly hard to address the concerns raised about delays. He added that this scheme would represent a general improvement for cycling and the general quality of life in London.
The Mayor also challenged the notion that the scheme was rushed. On the subject of a trial he backed up Daniels’ argument that it simple wasn’t practical. He also raised the issue that if it was known to be a trial then people with vested interests may well change their travel habits to skew the result.
Richard Barnes then also questioned the modelling shown and challenged its accuracy. This led to the Mayor stating that he often cycled in the area of Embankment/Northumberland Avenue at the time modelled and he thought it was an accurate representation – if anything slightly worse than the reality.
John Armitt’s concerns
Later on during proceedings John Armitt spoke very seriously, with passion even, about the scheme – one that clearly troubled him. It was also clear that, in this case at least, the board member had done his homework and read his notes. He spoke against the scheme choosing his words very carefully.
Armitt began by stating that whilst one cannot deny the good intent, that the biggest danger to cyclists in London are actually themselves and, given the way that many of them ride, one is surprised that the number of accidents is not far larger. He also stated that cycles may be the largest category of vehicle type in the rush hour, but that they didn’t convey the largest number of people trying to move about. It therefore had to be recognised that what was being proposed was something for a minority and not the majority. He further stated that the business case did not, to a large extent, work and it was being done in the face of the professional organisations that operate on the road network having considerable reservations about the scheme.
John Armitt also raised the point that the volume of papers given to board members three or four days before the meeting was beyond that which one could reasonably expect to read. He expressed concern about the need to keep London moving and stated that the Superhighways will make that more of a challenge “for a minority”.
The Mayor responded that you could forever go around in circles, but at the end of the day “do you do something or do you do nothing?”. His opinion was that the overwhelming majority of Londoners want to do something. The Mayor then restated the reasons why he thought the proposals were a good idea.
Armitt accepted the Mayor’s point and that maybe they should “give it a go,” but he stated that the board should not pretend that this was being done with proper governance or in the normal way of proceedings. On this point the Mayor more or less agreed. The feeling was that sometimes there was more to be considered than the straightforward business case and no-one was pretending the justification for the scheme was straightforward.
The governance issue is a valid one. Under normal procedure items on the agenda are initially scrutinised by a board panel. The cost and financial benefits of Cycle Superhighway Scheme would then have logically have been scrutinised by Finance & Policy Panel. It was claimed that this was not possible because its chairman was Peter Anderson of the Canary Wharf Group, who clearly had a conflict of interest. Curiously, no board member suggested that the simple solution would be to have required him to relinquish the chairmanship (and indeed not attend) a meeting of the panel to discuss the Superhighway proposal.
Leon Daniels was at pains to point out again that TfL would continue to consult with people affected even though the statutory requirement had ended. Furthermore the scheme would be closely monitored as it was implemented and lessons learned. Overall though it was clear that it had been hoped that the governance issue would be something that could have been left unsaid.
Rest of the meeting
Most of remainder of of the meeting covered the issues already raised. One further new topic that did arise, however, was the importance of approving the scheme at this particular meeting. This was because there was a tight timetable for the road works involved that had been carefully co-ordinated with other works in the centre of London. As is often true in these cases it was emphasised that a short delay in decision making would lead to a disproportionately long delay in implementation, as the schedule of works would have to be prepared again from scratch.
The human element of that decision was, sadly, further highlighted towards the end of the meeting, when Transport Commissioner Sir Peter Hendy grimly mentioned he had just received a tweet to say that a cyclist had been seriously injured in Park Lane in a collision involving a National Express coach.
Ultimately, the Cycle Superhighway scheme was approved.
Aftermath
Three months on from the meeting we are now seeing the consequences on the ground. Much was made at the meeting of the need to co-ordinate roadworks, but the underground cable fire at Holborn in April meant threw these into disarray. As Holborn Kingsway northbound is not expected to fully open until later in June (and even then to have a weight restriction in place) Sadly the huge effort to co-ordinate works must have been largely ineffectual.
Even without the disruption at Holborn, the Superhighway road works are causing a lot of congestion at many critical locations. As well as general traffic, buses are being delayed. In most cases the disruption is probably worse than it will be once the schemes are completed but the East-West Superhighway alone will involve considerable disruption until summer 2016.
Judicial Review?
One of the concerns for supporters was the fear of a judicial review. This was less that such an action would succeed but, if there was a good case to be made, that it could delay things.
That such a review would not likely have succeeded is largely down to two factors.
Firstly, it appears that only the Canary Wharf Group would have the appetite and funds to engage in such a process. Even if it were notionally brought by someone else, they would probably be behind it. The courts tend to take the attitude that “he who comes to court must do so with clean hands” and would likely have taken a dim view of an apparent underhand campaign to oppose the proposal.
Secondly was a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court, rather overlooked in the run-up to the election, that the government has failed in its legal duty to protect people from the harmful effects of air pollution. Even if the Mayor was considered, for some reason, not to have reasonably come to the decision he did at the time, this subsequent ruling would seem to make it more unlikely that the Mayor would come to any different decision if he were forced to reconsider the issue.
The good news for supporters is that it seems apparent now that such a review will not happen. Regardless of legal time limits, in practice the scheme is already too far advanced to be stopped.
The subsequent GLA Transport Committee
The relatively brief TfL Board meeting meant that, inevitably, there was a lot going on behind the scenes that was not talked about. It was therefore very enlightening to read a transcript of Andrew Gilligan’s appearance in front of the March GLA Transport Committee meeting.
The appearance of Gilligan covered all aspects of cycling and not just the Superhighways. Particularly relevant to the East-West Superhighway are comments about the Royal Parks. Rather amusingly he recalls:
“
The Royal Parks’ position in Hyde Park, which we have reflected in our route and as you will see in the consultation, is that the route must run on the roads… The Royal Parks’ position on St James’s Park and Buckingham Palace is the exact opposite, that it must not run on the roads, and that it must run on the paths.”
One question raised, but not answered, was on the issue of an agreement over night time use. The issue of the area in front of Buckingham Palace was discussed and it was revealed that this was regarded as “one of the most difficult gyratories in London for cyclists”.
What also emerged is strong enthusiasm from the Mayor’s Cycling Commissioner for the idea of the East-West Superhighway extending to one lane of Westway. He expressed the opinion that they would probably go out to consultation on the scheme in the summer.
A related issue of great concern was the “Central London Grid”. This is intended to complement the central Superhighways and provide various simple junction and other improvements to help connect cycle routes through central London. Mr Gilligan expressed his frustration that in his mind this was the simplest cycling task to do. One presumes this is because each scheme can be carried out in isolation and, because one is away from the main roads, there should not be major traffic management issues to consider.
Other revelations from Andrew Gilligan
Much more recently Andrew Gilligan has been quite forthright in explaining some of the problems and how the Superhighways almost didn’t happen. You can read about them in an article in road.cc. Amongst other things this reveals the reluctance of one borough to co-operate and the threat of what was effectively the nuclear option from TfL. As Mr Gilligan points out:
“
There is, in fact, a power in the GLA Act in the setting up of a mayoralty which allows the mayor to take control of any road in London, and we have to get the agreement from the Secretary of State so it’s not quite the slam dunk we hoped it was.
However we did contemplate using that power in one or two cases on the Superhighways. We didn’t have to in the end, the threat of it was enough.”
With everyone presuming that the borough in question is Westminster it is easy to see the scale of a threat. As aficionados of “Yes, Minister” will know, a government in power hates having to condemn and overrule the actions of a council run by the same political party, especially true before a general election. If such a proposal to transfer a road to TfL was to be put before a Secretary of State the quandary would have been to back up the local council and risk losing a lot of cyclists’ votes as well as being blamed for future cycling deaths, or to overrule the local council and give the impression of a disunited political party.
Meanwhile the cycling deaths continue…
One of the remarkable things about cycling in London is how much prominence is now given to every death of a cyclist. This is despite the BBC reporting the number of cyclists being at a record high and the number of serious injuries and deaths being at a record low. The great change is that there now appears to be a perception that these deaths are avoidable deaths that shouldn’t happen. A consequence of this appears to be very little opposition to the cycle Superhighways already approved.
So far this year there have been six deaths. All have involved lorries and five of the cyclists killed were women.
Uncharted Territory
In Summer 2016 the Superhighway changes should be a reality. As had been admitted by board members from the outset, TfL and London are really entering uncharted territory. Whilst it is unlikely that the schemes introduced will be rolled back, it is not known if there will be further appetite for cycle priority schemes. It could be that the experience of roadworks quells any major enthusiasm for an extension. Alternatively, it might be felt that London has reached a critical mass and that extending the scheme would be an obvious and sensible thing to do. Maybe then we will be closer to deciding whether the whole thing was a failed experiment, a damp squib, or, as we speculated in part 1, the point where London began to re-invent itself as a cycling city.
Thank you for an interesting argument.
That a panel cannot be convened because the Chair has a (potential) conflict of interest is really a rather ridiculous reason.
Who in the TFL Committee Secretariat / Legal Department thought it was a good enough reason to not have a meeting nor to suggest that the Chair formally recuse himself (simply not turning up would not be sufficient) and to hold the meeting with a temporary chair. Whoever it was needs a refresher course on good governance.
This sort of thing happens all the time in Local Government – the Chair declares their conflict and leaves the meeting room and the vice / deputy chair takes over.
Thanks for another thought provoking piece.
One thing that you mention in passing at the end, but I think is worthy of further analysis. The disproportionate incidence of lorries in fatal cyclist collisions. My impression (and I know this site prefers facts to anecdote) is that these are mostly lorries associated with the construction industry – often drivers on piece rates and hence incentivised to put speed over safety. (Be good if anyone has statics to back me up or price me wrong).
In one recent case, the driver was prosecuted – was already banned – was driving without insurance. How is it possible for businesses to operate in London with such flagrant disregard for the law?
A few weeks ago we saw a train company have its operating licence temporarily revoked because of a safety breach, yet there seems to be no equivalent sanction for rogue road freight operators.
I hope my point isn’t considered off topic. Can’t help thinking that “quick wins” could be achieved by much stronger enforcement against rogue truck operators.
The accident injury rate is falling, TfL released its Road Casualties and Collisions report for 2014 earlier this week.
The number of cyclists, pedestrians and motorists killed or seriously injured last year was down seven per cent, from 2,324 (in 2013) to 2,167 (in 2014).
Island Dweller says “often drivers on piece rates and hence incentivised to put speed over safety.
I am fairly sure that piece work as such is officially not legal for drivers in the UK. (It is apparently common in the US). For that very reason.
But this makes little difference in practice. If “the office” expects a particular job to be done in 4 hours, and a particular driver always takes 4.5, then some other reason is quickly found for not employing that driver any more. Drivers know this, so they generally go as fast as they can.
One queries: Which route is being referred to in the third paragraph in “Time Out… Canary Wharf?
A couple of wobbly phrases / typos in the text – near the start “In once sense” and in the Rest of the Meeting bit – “As is often in these cases” .
[Corrected. Thanks. PoP]
I am not sure I agree with your implied criticism of the role of TfL Directors when presenting a case to the Board. In essence they are there as the Sponsor of the scheme so you would naturally expect fair supporting options analysis in the papers but for any presentation to be in support of the preferred option / recommendation. That is always how approval meetings have worked in my experience of LT / TfL. The absolute key point nowadays, and a change from past practice, is the multiple consultation / stakeholder review points before reaching an approval meeting. You need sign off from many parts of TfL, you need to demonstrate rigour in selecting and analysing the options and how the final preferred option was arrived at. I’d also expect that soundings were taken as to the likely reaction / concerns of Board Members but that doesn’t circumvent the actual decision making process. That’s just common sense in making sure you know “how the land lies”. Clearly the Superhighway projects are towards the “mega” end of the project scale given their cost and impact so you’d expect, as you say, rigorous questioning by the Board. I have a sneaking suspicion that in this case the Board more than understood the “big picture” politics that were in play for this decision.
IIRC there was a lot of live social media comment while the Board Meeting was happening and severe criticism of the role of Peter Anderson. I did feel at the time that this was a bit questionable given the people who were complaining, largely the cycling lobby, must have known the Mayor was on their side and they were virtually certain to succeed in getting the project through. The other aspect is that if you are convinced of the merit of your argument / case why should you fear robust debate at a Board Meeting?
I suspect Mr Oddy didn’t comment because he knew it was a done deal and that the taxi trade, as we have examined separately, has zero faith in TfL so why bother arguing? That’s a cynical view but positively mild when set against the views of taxi drivers about TfL and certain senior people within it.
I’ve read some of the recent comments from Mr Gilligan. Seems he’s looking beyond May 2016 and trying to drum up support for the ongoing role of Cycling Commissioner. Cynical moi? 😉
“Armitt began by stating that whilst one cannot deny the good intent, that the biggest danger to cyclists in London are actually themselves and, given the way that many of them ride, one is surprised that the number of accidents is not far larger.”
Blame the victim? While there are some silly bicyclist’s (vs. dangerous drivers), I suspect that Armitt is not aware of the aggressive way you need to ride in London- hence the need for the project and other cycle priority schemes.
“He [Armitt]also stated that cycles may be the largest category of vehicle type in the rush hour, but that they didn’t convey the largest number of people trying to move about.”
Yes, one bike one person, but what about private cars (how many on average there?) and do you count the driver in a taxi? Also, bikes take up less road-space, pollute zero and are less capital intensive as vehicles. From his comment the banning of private cars and taxis would be the logical conclusion….
@Mike Jones – the average occupancy rate for private cars in London commuting is around 1.5, so given that 1 car takes up about the same space as 2 bikes (occupanys rate 2 x1!) , bikes are only slightly more efficient users of road space. Cabs are = despite what may seem to be the case when you don’t want one- only 22000 in number, as we discovered in the relevant article here, and not allof those will be(a) on the road at the same time, and (b) are operating throughout London,not just in the centre – so not a general issue. The real competitor for road space is the bus service,which moves many times the combined total of cars,bikes, cabs etc.
I have to say, I find it hard to swallow the “need” for cyclists to ride aggressively;the people who end up getting the s****** end of that stick are always the pedestrians…. try crossing the waterloo Road on a green pedestrian light sometime.
@ Graham H – long ago when I used to cycle regularly and there was barely any cycle lane provision on main roads I rode *assertively* to try to protect myself, have appropriate lane occupancy when needed and to avoid risks like opening car doors. I don’t see any need for aggression from any cyclists given there is less traffic on the roads these days, far more cyclists and more cycle lanes. I have no issue with cyclists being appropriately assertive even in the face of poor behaviour from other road users. I had two incidents when cycling daily and never had any need to behave badly. Ironically the most serious accident, which put me in hospital, was on a quiet local road with excellent visibility. I’ll never understand how or why the car driver turned across my path and had me fly across his bonnet or why they drove off without stopping.
This is a good spot to remind everyone that we are not discussing cyclist aggression and the causes thereof in this article, but Cycle Superhighways and the TfL Board discussion about them.
Commenting about cyclist behaviour will only beget more such comments ad infinitum.
@ Graham H. I think that the 2 cyclists = one car might (conservatively) apply in mixed traffic, but does not in segregated facilities. In Copenhagen, the cycle tracks squeeze much more capacity in than that, and that is what we are proposing here- cycle tracks.
PS. Aggressive wasn’t to imply violence (certainly not against pedestrians), though perhaps some civil disobedience; such as jumping the lights to preposition or riding contra-flow (as is standard in Belgium and Denmark). Also, just riding with an assertive attitude, that can feel pretty aggressive.
Cutting to the chase, one problem underlying LeonDaniels’ arguments about not being able to have a trial is that if the thing doesn’t work (or has disastrous effects on the bus network), it is going to be very difficult indeed to scrap it later. One can imagine the political arguments. So, maybe a leap in the dark without a safety harness. As a life-long Cornfordian, I don’t accept Boris’* arguments that you have to do something; it’s entirely possible that doing nothing is better than that, but these considerations are swept under an ever-growing Keshan rug.
*I fear Boris went to the Other Place, and so wouldn’t have had the necessary training in cynicism, accompanied by a suitable reading list.
Regarding Sir John Armitt’s comment that “the biggest danger to cyclists in London are actually themselves”. That may be his opinion but it is not supported by the evidence and he could have found this out if he had read any of several reports that have analysed the causes of London cyclist casualties.
@Graham H: TfL modelling uses a figure of 0.2 Passenger Car Units (PCU) for a bike, so they assume 5 bikes can occupy the space of 1 car. An HGV is 2.3 PCU, I believe and in their modelling they refer to road capacity in terms of PCU per hour.
@ Graham H – as I have said before the bus network will be impacted. It is already in a dire state in Central London and stretching into S / SE London with TfL themselves reporting massive delays – 20, 40, 60 minutes on all routes going through areas like Oval, Vauxhall and Elephant and Castle. Clearly that isn’t the E-W Cycle Superhighway but it is part of other schemes. I am now concerned that the extra money supposedly to be used for bus improvements may well be diluted by needing to add resource permanently on routes through areas which will be much slower following all the cycling works. One route is getting a resource increase because of 20mph speed limit being imposed in one borough. Others will surely follow pushing the cost of the network up. The draft TfL annual report for 2014/15 (released earlier this week) makes for depressing reading – massive increase in road network delays and incidents, bus excess wait time has increased, bus pass jnys up very marginally but well below the budget target, network kilometrage down (may be the result of industrial action). TfL have already set themselves worse (less challenging) targets for 2015/16 because of the expected impact of all the cycle and “road modernisation” plans.
Your observation about “do something” rather “do nothing” highlights the impact of political imperative. The Mayor has said the Cycle Superhighways will happen so they have to happen. He has said gyratories have to go and yet the scheme for Elephant and Castle has no positive business case at all and yet went through the Board. Now there may be flaws in the Business Case methodology for such schemes but you don’t usually bend the methodology if you can’t make a case. Normally you change the scope of what you want to do to make it perform better / have less negative impact or, as you say, you don’t do it all. I suspect these sorts of decisions have figured in all Mayoralties since 2000 but we’ve not known so much about them as there was less info flying around back then.
… just to add, the figure of 0.2 PCU for a bike could be seen as conservative as demonstrated by this photo on Theobalds Road showing 27 people on bikes in a space that could be occupied by 3 cars.
https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8318/8009097414_d9d6c1cbcc_z.jpg
@Reynolds953 -yes, but those 27 are stationary (and some are clearly spilling out of the”box”) and have been able to close up. I can’t imagine them all moving around so closely packed. I am sitting here looking at my son’s standard road bikeand two of those abreast are much the same as the width of a car – after all, both are dictated in the last resort by the width of people. Sure cars have the addition of the bodywork,but then cyclists don;t travel rubbing each other’s elbows. Length? The cycle is about the same length as the passenger compartment, if not slightly longer – and again, cyclists cannot ride bumper to bumper. So, you cannot even equate a car to 4 cyclists. I suspect that the TfL modelling assumption is basically flawed. They should invest in a measure tape,perhaps? Or stop driving around in limos?
The article refers to the “anti” lobbying activities of Canary Wharf Group but I also think it is worthwhile mentioning the “pro” lobbying work done by a couple of people (who weren’t PR professionals) in their spare time, getting the support of over 160 employers, including some major global names like Microsoft.
https://cyclingworks.wordpress.com
@Graham H – you my think the figure of 0.2 PCU is wrong but it is used the world over by transport engineers, not just TfL (sometimes it is called Passenger Car Equivalent or PCE)
It doesn’t mean they are correct, of course, but because it is in such widespread use and in so many design guidelines and software packages, it is unlikely to change anytime soon.
@Graham H
“The cycle is about the same length as the passenger compartment, if not slightly longer – and again, cyclists cannot ride bumper to bumper. ”
But cars don’t drive bumper to bumper either – I would assume that the PCU is the space taken by a moving car including the space between it and the next car.
@timbeau – of course,but two cyclists one behind the other require 2x a distance between vehicles, compared with a car – there are two of them,after all.
Let’s put some actual numbers around this: my car (a Golf) has a footprint of 2m x 4.2metres. A normal bicycle has a length of about 2 metres, and a cyclist, measured from elbow to elbow is =slightly under 1m wide. If you were a cyclist. how close would you ride to the bike in front? A metre? So 4x cyclists have a footprint of around 2×6 metres. Sure a car will then have to leave a space between it and the car in front – what would be a reasonable figure in slow moving urban traffic (average speed of London traffic around 12 kph for cyclists and cars alike)? Maybe no more than a couple of metres – so a single car would have a footprint of 2 x 6metres. Hey, that’s the same as 4 bikes… I’d just about buy a PCU of 0.25 but the fact that 0.2 has been used extensively for years doesn’t justify it – on the contrary,the nature of vehicles,people,and driving practices has changed so much in recent years that “past performance may not be a guide to the future”
@Graham H
“Sure a car will then have to leave a space between it and the car in front – what would be a reasonable figure in slow moving urban traffic (average speed of London traffic around 12 kph for cyclists and cars alike)? Maybe no more than a couple of metres”
Really?
Noting that the average speed is skewed by a lot of time stationary, the Highway code gives the typical stopping distance of a car at 20mph as 12 metres – of which half is the reaction time (“thinking distance”) so arguments about whether they are based on 1960s brakes are irrelevent – drivers’ reactions are no better now than fifty years ago. Even at 12kph (7.5mph), 2 metres would be extremely close.
Clearly, you don’t drive in London jams.
@Graham H – you could have 5 people on bikes in your 2m x 6m space with one in each corner and one in the middle, so a metre between the middle bike and the bikes to its right and left. In the 2m x 6m space there would also be room for the back wheel of a bike in the middle of the front and the front wheel of another bike behind the middle of the back.
People don’t cycle in “rectangles” but in overlapping echelons, so a couple of “half bikes” within the envelope will add up to a full bike.
Many apologies but I couldn’t resist it… clearly the 0.2 PCU figure is possible if you think outside the box… 😉
Moreover, cyclists are able to (and frequently do) occupy the “spare” space between the flow of traffic and the kerb – ie. space not useable by cars (or buses, except when they need to pull in to stop), especially when traffic is queued. So I’m not sure how helpful in reality any kind of “roadspace equivalent unit” is – just as TfL seem to have found you can sometimes add a bike lane without taking away a traffic lane (much to Mr Oddy’s suspicion).
It sounds like more bus lanes or an increase in the congestion charge or extension of its area would help offset the delay to buses. I wonder whether the western zone might come back onto the agenda?
One thing that puzzled me: if Mr Oddy was “specifically appointed to the board to represent the taxi drivers’ interests”, why would he be required to declare a conflict of interest and leave the meeting just because he was, umm, a taxi driver? Isn’t that his whole reason for being there?
@Reynolds953 – fair enough, tho’ not sure they cycle in neat echelons either! However, all this is – and it’s my fault – a distraction from my main point that the most efficient use of limited road space for passengers is always going to be a bus or a tram. Ithink we could all agree that privileging modes that take a disproportionate amount of road space is inefficient.
@Ian J – your last point, in particular, is difficult to fault in logic.
@Reynolds953 – Quincunx – that was the word I was looking for – Hey, a good nom du guerre for an Anonymous
Reynolds 953
Hopefully without invoking the moderators [SNIP]-mechanism, I agree with Arnitt & I’m a cyclist(!) There’s a case I saw last week … but no details, or we’ll get lost.
… make that FOUR cars, please? But you have a point.
Grahm H
Yes.
I still weep for the lost opportunity of Cross-River Tram
I would like to invite Graham to Tavistock / Torrington route during rush hour to check his claim that cyclists don’t ride bumper to bumper!
@Anonymous /Quincunx – terrifying! Clearly, cycling is even less for the faint-hearted (sc older, less agile,etc) and more like a Tour de France leg than I had imagined.
…more delivery vans would be necessary to deliver the same quantity of goods.
In that case they could be more but smaller.
Alternatively they could be larger and fewer, carrying more goods per vehicle with a reduction of road space used.
I am sure there is some complex modelling somewhere that is useful (or useless).
Improving London’s cyclists access and safety is a good idea.
But is this scheme the best one? Probably not. So it’s a suck it and see scheme.
@JeffinLondon – that’s precisely my concern – we suck it,we see it, and it doesn’t (maybe) work – at that point, abandonment is virtually impossible, and I do not see any signs of a Plan B. Trialling and an incremental approach have been ruled out.
“Mr Oddy was specifically appointed to the board to represent the taxi drivers’ interests”
This is very revealing – the TfL is concerned with the interests of the drivers, not the passengers. Foxes and henhouses come to mind.
While we’re about it, why not put Messrs Sainsbury and Morrison on the consumer protection regulator, a university professor in charge of the National Union of Students, and of course Murdoch in charge of Ofcom.
@Graham H – London cycling “peletons” are anything but neat but people are remarkably good at adapting to the space available. Bunching up when they need to, spreading out when they can.
Road space efficiency doesn’t seem to be an overriding priority of TfL anyway otherwise surely there would be more focus on further reducing the most inefficient uses of road space – single occupancy cars and those vans and lorries transporting a lot of empty space around London.
@Reynolds953 – yes, having a member of the household who specialises in the modelling of swarm techniques, I fear I have discovered more about this topic than most.
On the second point, I couldn’t agree more. Dealing with cycling seems something of a displacement activity by comparison – but then, goods vehicles don’t vote.
but then, goods vehicles don’t vote.
Nor does the Mayor drive one!
Anyone would think from some of the comments that an unprecedented and exotic experiment is taking place on the streets of London with the East-West cycle path. In fact you only need to take a short trip to any Dutch city to see dozens of fully segregated cycle paths going through a city centre. This approach is well-proven to be safe and effective. It is also one that will have many knock-on effects of the type that standard transport modelling is very poor at assessing. Sometimes judgements do have to be made, which is why we have a mayor and not just a cost-benefit analysis computer taking decisions.
@Anonymous – unfortunately, our mayor is unqualified to take professional decisions about transport planning – political decisions, certainly, technical ones, not – and to be fair to him, I doubt if he would claim to be a transport professional. In any case, the issues relating to cycling are in many cases, matters of traffic engineering and have nothing to do with that “cost benefit computer” – I really must meet that machine sometime; I wonder if it can also do the ironing.
@ Anonymous – there are times under this Mayoralty when I wish a CBA computer was taking the decisions rather than the Mayor. We’d have been spared a great deal of nonsense and needless expenditure (£400m I can come up with immediately). I understand the point about judgement but it must surely be informed and rational rather than just a “personality cult” in charge? (That’s not a partisan point btw – it’s a problem with the way the London Mayoralty works and the candidates it has so far attracted.) It’s already obvious that political directives and policies override “logic” which is fine if you agree with the policies. If you don’t then it can be terribly frustrating. For the moment cyclists have a friend in the Mayor but who knows what May 2016 will usher in for transport policy in London.
Walthamstow Writer – your point is well made, but leaves out the essence that Boris has already moved on to ‘another place’ and won’t still be London Mayor when all these chickens come home to roost.
Whilst I could sortof understand no right turn from Westminster Bridge (though surely increasing pollution by requiring vehicles to go around all four sides of Parliament Square) the removal of the reverse left turn seems utterly crazy. And whilst there may not be a judicial review of the _scheme_ I suspect that at some point the lack of any business case / BCR will result in a question mark over the spending being legal.
@AlisonW – and the disappointing thing about the Parliament Square arrangement is that it has sacrificed the opportunity to close at least one side of what is arguably one of the most iconic “urban realm” sites in the country to all traffic, to a purely transport scheme – surely the inversion of what should be the case? To see the benefits of traffic removal, one need look no further than Trafalgar Square (whatever the Clarksonian tendency has to say…)
@ Alison W – Boris will move on come 2016 but clearly he still intends to be “doing his stuff” right to the end given the number of schemes with immovable April 2016 deadlines in the TfL Investment Programme! Whether he’s allowed to grin alongside the Tory Party candidate to replace him while cutting ribbons for Cycle Superhighways or hanging out of NB4L number 808 I know not but you always have a risk of unworkable legacies left behind for a successor. Other than trying to embarrass a previous Mayor I’m not sure what trying to have past expenditure declared illegal achieves. If that was a valid tactic then I suspect hundreds if not thousands of bodies and organisations would be being dragged through the courts as we speak. Provided all the governance and controls are in place and used properly and the money’s spent on declared policy objectives or the need to respond to events I don’t see what’s wrong. There’s lots of things done by politicians people may not like but that’s life – we just have to put up with it or riot in the streets or vote them out.
On the issue of banned turns then I expect TfL have modelled the traffic flows, speeds and tail backs as a result of different junction designs and traffic light phasings. I suspect that granting timings for cyclists and for the “to be prohibited” traffic movement meant that in some circumstances you risked grid locking Whitehall, Parliament Square, Millback, Waterloo roundabout etc. For all the undoubted cleverness and sophistication of SCOOT traffic signals and mega computers managing the traffic I do occasionally wonder if we’re not being a bit too clever and creating an interlinked monster that is actually creating inflexibility rather than giving us flexibility. There may also be some policing and security issues in that part of town that have imposed restrictions on what can be permitted in terms of traffic management.
Re Boris I can see him once the Tories have selected a candidate for 2016 making that person if they are a member of the GLA the statutory deputy and delegating many of his powers to them. If not then one of his appointable deputies.
That would leave him with the title, the scissors to cut lots of ribbons and the few powers that he can’t delegate.
[Veering off transport and into political territory… LBM]
On the most efficient use of road space argument which keeps coming up, the answer is neither trams nor bikes, but is pedestrians. Good old walking is a far more efficient use of road space than anything else.
Not sure what the implications of that are other than spiking spurious arguments about the most efficient use of road space.
@Theban: the discussion of road space above noted the importance of the various modes moving at the same or very similar speeds, around 12-15 kph, say 8-10 mph.
A formed body of troops (young fit infanteers) can move at 4-5 mph. I think it unlikely that a large body of civilians, of various ages and degrees of fitness, could match or exceed this ‘on the open road’; congestion on the principal routes into central London would be another factor militating against the achievement of these speeds.
On the CBA versus political judgement thing. Some of the large NHS trusts were vocal in support of the cycle superhighways, partly to reduce cyclist injuries but also to counter the obesity crisis. The logic being if cycling is safer in central London then more folk will do it, and will be much healthier as a consequence. Trying to model the health benefits must be enormously difficult – do any of the transport CBA models even attempt to model that?
Also on the modelling / measurement issue, even though I’m a supporter of these changes I do worry about the impact on the bus network. But how can anyone measure the impact of superhighways when there are other major road schemes (I’m thinking remodelling of Aldgate) which are also causing major delays?
@ Island Dweller – don’t know about modelling the impacts from the road works but bus passengers are clearly feeling the pain. It’s also noteworthy that pedestrians are also not happy about the removal of crossing and mass bollarding at key junctions like Mile End. Plenty of feedback on Twitter (usual caution about sample sizes / self selection etc) as well as TfL’s own comments about delays and disruptions.
“Goods vehicles don’t vote”
Maybe not, but the Road Haulage Association can and does spend more on lobbying than campaign budget of every MP you’ve ever met.
I have to admit I’m baffled by the Canary Wharf Group’s opposition to the routes, and the way the estate’s roads are actively hostile to cyclists and pedestrians. Given that the vast majority of the workforce at Canary Wharf arrive on public transport or by foot or cycle, it seems a strange state of affairs.
I suppose it’s not surprising that the majority of my colleagues would prefer to work in the City than at the Wharf, for both the better access to transport and the more pleasant environment.
Is viewpoint of the Canary Wharf Group due to “old men in limos” rather than a rational business approach?
@JimH
You are conflating any CW opposition to the loss of Embankment route capacity, with a non-quantified assertion about the quality of the CW estate’s roads. Why should your point be taken seriously? What is your explicit evidence as opposed to assertion, and why the conflation of two different topics?
As a frequent visitor to CW and the City, for work, I would argue that CW presents a lot less total traffic than the City’s roads, and offers much more walking freedom. Of course, that’s my view. When did you last walk or cycle down London Wall or Eastcheap, and what was your comparative judgment versus CW, and why? That would be interesting.
@Graham H: Go to youtube, type in ‘Copenhagen Cycling Rush Hour’ or ‘Amsterdam Cycling Rush Hour’. That is what the East-West superhighway is trying to achieve. You can easily fit 4-5 bikes in a car footprint (which includes the distance between cars) with infrastructure depicted in those videos.
@Theban: My new commute from that grey area where Southall becomes Hayes to Shepherd’s Bush takes about 50 minutes by bike. If I were forced to take up walking like you suggest, I would instead try cramming myself onto an already overcrowded three-car Turbo at Southall station (I swear overcrowding there is worse than Mumbai) followed by an almost equally ‘cosy’ Central Line train at Ealing Broadway. Is that really in the best interest of other commuters?
@straphan – if you look carefully at all these much vaunted overseas examples of cycling – not a mamil in sight. There is a serious cultural problem in the UK in which the gentler element visible elsewhere , is missing.
@Jim H: I believe so, particularly as there are many business trips made between Canary Wharf, the City and Mayfair (where many hedge funds and other smaller institutions are located). Gentlemen of a certain standing would not use the Jubilee line or DLR to carry these out – they would in the very least use a Hackney Carriage for such purposes if a company car cannot be provided.
@WW: I understand your frustration with the way the bus network is going – and as a bus user I sympathise. However, despite what the modelling suggests, I think buses will gain from segregating cyclists away from bus lanes. I do agree though that the Elephant and Vauxhall gyratories could have stayed and safe routes for cyclists provided in another fashion.
@ Graham H – and the answer to your point is that the provision of comprehensive cycle priority will slowly but surely change the balance of “aggressive vs genteel” cyclists towards the latter category. The Dutch Cycling Attache, Tessel Van Essel, to the UK was on the Daily Politics recently (11 June edition, 54 mins in on I-Player) and she said no one in Holland dressed in special cycle clothes in order to ride a bike. It was all about just riding in your normal day clothes. Of course Dutch bicycles are typically designed to ensure clothing can’t get snagged on chains or covered with oil. They’re also relatively heavy meaning you don’t aim to work up a massive sweat to get anywhere and the design of the cycle lanes generally keep you moving at a sensible pace.
I have cycled in Amsterdam and elsewhere in the Netherlands and can confirm it’s a very different proposition to the UK.
@Graham H: I think this argument has been done to death. But here I go again:
Current infrastructure provides only for those who are brave enough to mix with road vehicles in close proximity. Furthermore, if you do try doing so, you will quickly discover that the faster you cycle, the less of a hindrance you are for the motorised, and as such you will be subject to fewer dangerous overtaking attempts, which are the no. 1 reason for cyclists landing in hospital. Furthermore, many cyclists in London (myself included) cycle because there is no space for them on public transport, yet they need to get to work in a similar timeframe. Amsterdam or Copenhagen do not suffer from such issues to anywhere near the same extent.
However, the main reason why there are no ‘mamils’ in the footage is because the infrastructure provided for cyclists is such, that the population has chosen to cycle en masse. The sheer volumes and the different cycling/fitness abilities of this much larger group of people means they collectively cycle at lower speeds, and use their bikes for a variety of purposes, not just getting to work where there is a shower cubicle available. I do not see what is so special about the UK that segregation of cycle lanes here would not lead to a similar outcome.
PS – talk about cultural change? Look at the clip from Copenhagen, where the car patiently waits to turn right allowing all the cyclists past. How many London cyclists have landed in hospital because someone ‘forgot’ to check their mirrors when turning?
MAMIL – middle-aged man in lycra
@straphan – without wishing to prolong what I quite appreciate may seem a dialogue of the deaf: (1) I agree with you about the need for change also in cultural attitudes of motorised traffic, and (2) it IS a cultural problem amongst UK cyclists: I have taken to carrying out informal censuses as I travel about the countryside in which I live, and where pressures from other traffic are very limited; random samples throughout the day show that over 90% of cyclists are indeed middle-aged men hunched in racing positions with all the gear, about 5% are “blokes on bikes” as it were, and another 5% are women, also cycling quietly along. A typical sample size would be about 20 cycles observed over about 20 minutes at a wide variety of locations.
straphan 17 June 2015 at 17:26
I hope it won’t take you long to learn that, ” that grey area where Southall becomes Hayes ” is very clearly demarcated by the Grand Union Canal.
Culture is influenced by environment. A segregated cycle lane using small plastic “armadillo” bollards was installed in Royal College Street, Camden, and surveys showed increased numbers of women and people in “normal” clothes. The numbers still don’t come close to Dutch or Danish levels but it is a start.
This is one of the interesting questions about the superhighways that can’t be captured in cost benefit analysis or traffic modelling. Will the perception of greater safety attract more women and a greater diversity of people and civilise the place?
Even though I am a typical MAMIL riding with the tigers and wolves of motor traffic I’m the first to admit that it isn’t a normal culture for a mode of transport.
Anonymice at 1341.
Try and cycle round the (lower) Westferry Circus roundabout. For a (newish) piece of infrastructure, it’s shockingly bad. Permanent semi darkness, fast traffic with multiple exits and zero safe provision for cyclists. I could go on with further examples but fear we’re heading off the main topic.
Unfortunately, there appear to be [SNIP] extremists on both sides of this debate & a sensible resolution is, therefore going to be difficult to achieve.
One one hand, there are the “Canary Wharf Crowd” for want of a better label …
On the other people like the Waltham Forest “LCC” leader, Paul Gasson, who is apparently on record as saying that “Private Cars should not exist”
This person is, apparently involved with LBWF’s “mini-Holland” scheme (See other cycling thread).
Personally, as someone who cycles, & also owns a car, but whose majority of journeys are either on foot or public transport, the whole thing looks like a giant car-crash.
[ Yes, that was a deliberate idiom. ]
@Graham H: Again: the countryside where one tends to go out cycling for a workout is a bit different than London where people use the bike for reasons other than leisure. I won’t say any more on the subject, as Reynolds 953 has pretty much said all I wanted to say.
@Alan Griffiths: I do not wish to divulge any further information as to where I live but let’s just say that administratively that area is rather interesting…
@Straphan: Like Graham H I live in a country district and my observations closely mirror his. Furthermore, the weekday lycra crowd tend to be commuting (unless they are taking briefcases with them for leisure journeys)
Temporarily off direct topic:
I have a very close friend, who lives in Swaledale ….
Since the Tour de France, she & the other locals find it amazingly difficult to drive anywhere at weekends (& there is no bus service) because the roads are full of lycra-clad err … I won’t repeat her language …. who also certainly appear to have total contempt for locals/motorists. [Reminder: Swaledale is not particularly close to London. Malcolm]
[Snipped reference (on grounds of repetition) to Waltham Forest mini Holland scheme, but including a new claim that road closure orders have been “found unlawful”. The council seems to admit to “omissions” in the consultation process. Malcolm]
Casual observation on my cycle commute in central London today suggested the majority were wearing ordinary casual wear T-shirt and jeans), a smaller number wearing suits. There were more people wearing skirts than lycra – and most of the lycra wearers were not middle aged, and many were not men.
@timbeau: Indeed, the only cyclist wearing lycra that I could see between Southall and Ealing on my way to work yesterday was… me! Everyone else was dressed in their normal attire and – what is important – most of them were not heading for Central London at all.
While reading this thread I have counted a dozen cyclists using CS7 outside my office window. Only 2 lycras but 4 women, most in ordinary clothes and only six helmets.
@timbeau
Can we also assume that none of the skirt wearers were men?
Can we also assume that none of the skirts were made out of lycra?
There’s a problem here, that I have tried to address, except I’ve gone at it from the wrong end (I think) …
What are the Boroughs doing?
We do know that they have radically divergent policies on the subject of cycling, though.
Westminster appear to be anti-cycle, from previous comments & reports here.
There’s a min-holland in (?) Richmond (?) about which we seem to know little.
LBWF’s “Mini-holland” policy appears to [SNIP], whilst not actually doing anything for cyclists.
Enfield have removed (?) all (?) their road humps – is this true or not?
Meanwhile there’s all the other boroughs …
Do we have any serious, consistent information on this, & is there any coherent picture emerging?
Lots of heat, not too much light.
@Greg
I’m not aware of any particular measures in Richmond, but Kingston got mini-Holland funding. After the first proposal for how the money should be spent was thrown out for improving the lot of pedestrians at the expense of cyclists,
http://road.cc/content/news/146624-kingston-overhauls-mini-holland-plans-after-criticism
a new proposal has got the green light – or rather the red-and-amber light, as work can’t start until August because it would disrupt the London – Surrey cycle race.
@Greg Tingey – what the Boroughs are doing is consistently inconsistent.
Enfield, Waltham Forest and Kingston were awarded funding for their “mini-Holland” submissions. The emphasis of each of their projects seems to be different – this may have been deliberate decision by TfL to trail different aspects of infrastructure rather than have 3 similar schemes.
Waltham Forest seems to have a focus on “filtered permeability” meaning reducing through traffic in certain areas (this is actually a key aspect of Dutch planning)
Enfield seems to have a focus on provision of better cycling provision on some major routes in the area.
Kingston? Well I cynically suggested they were the “control” who would spend money splashing paint on the roads to see if that made a difference. Kingston were told to go back to the drawing board with their plans and I’m not sure what the current status is.
Some other boroughs were awarded money for selected aspects of their “mini Holland” submissions.
Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea seem to be ideologically opposed to separate provision for cyclists. One could speculate if this has anything to do with their OMIL (old men in limos) residents.
For the rest, it is generally a story of underspending the money that is actually available to them and delivering little other than some paint splashed on the roads here and there. The underspending is from a combination of conservatism, timidity and genuine scarcity of expertise to plan and manage the delivery of schemes.
The mini-Hollands are meant to be an exemplar for the other boroughs and it is looking like they will end up a mixture of the good, bad and indifferent.
One can only hope that the other boroughs will learn from both the good and the bad and maybe this is just a learning curve that London needs to go through.
@ Greg – I believe all or nearly all Boroughs applied for Mini Holland funding. All get funding from TfL for local schemes each year. You cite Westminster but I understand Kensington and Chelsea is the real problem borough. It won’t cede road space for segregated lanes and has effectively scuppered a CSH that would have run in from Hounslow via Brentford, Chiswick, Hammersmith and Kensington into Central London. City Hall cancelled the planned CSH 9 because an effective route couldn’t be created. Hounslow and Hammersmith and Fulham are going to do their sections anyway.
http://www.getwestlondon.co.uk/news/local-news/cycle-superhighway-plan-runs-trouble-6098520
http://www.getwestlondon.co.uk/news/local-news/cycle-superhighway-9-go-ahead-7945187
I suspect that your basis point about different policies is right but do you want local representation or do you want a centrally imposed solution with no right of objection. That’s the basic problem we have – most people don’t want locals overridden but we should not be shocked if some boroughs then say “sorry thanks but no thanks” and concentrate on cars and car parking and development that supports that way of travelling.
On the subject of the boroughs, this blogger has written an article on how Brent spent £300,000 on bugger all.
http://www.voleospeed.co.uk/2014/12/whatever-happened-to-biking-borough.html
@WW – I agree with you that “you can lead a horse to water…” when it comes to the boroughs provision for cycling but TfL should have rigorous quality standards for funding they do provide.
timbeau
Thanks – I seem to have got the idea that it’s Richmond, but it’s actually Kingston (again) …
Reynolds 953
Waltham Forest seems to have a focus on “filtered permeability” meaning reducing through traffic in certain areas (this is actually a key aspect of Dutch planning)
I was not aware that the Dutch did that – thanks, but, certainly the WF proposals don’t actually do anything positive, for cyclists, at all … one actually makes one road bus-&cycle-only (which may be a good idea) … except that it is wide enough for a mini-bus + 0.5 metre for any cycles …. err, um ….
The local campaign in WF is trying to emphasise that: ” ….there are no actual cycle lanes proposed by WF, & why not?”
One can only hope that the other boroughs will learn from both the good and the bad and maybe this is just a learning curve that London needs to go through. With which I would whole-heartedly agree … my own opinion is that WF is “bad”, but we will see, that’s certain.
Someone I know, who is a retired professional Transport Planner, & is himself an enthusiastic cyclist ( he does not own a car) is dead-against WF’s proposals, which tells you something or other.
OTOH, I regard Kensington-&-Chelsea’s supposed stance equally unacceptable from the opposite extreme.
“Interesting Times” ahead can be safely predicted?
It should be noted that only outer London boroughs were allowed to apply for ‘mini holland’ funding. Inner/central London boroughs were all expected to benefit from the central London grid and the east/west and/or north/south cycle super highways.
@Greg Tingey – the Dutch have quite a systematic approach to design and generally won’t install separated cycle lanes if motor traffic speeds and volumes are below certain thresholds. Particularly in residential areas, they will implement measures to discourage motor traffic to ensure the speeds and volumes stay below those thresholds.
There isn’t anything specific to cycling with this approach as it is just trying to create a pleasant street environment where people on foot or on bikes don’t feel oppressed by the volume or speeds of motor traffic.
I’m not familiar with the details of the WF scheme but they may be focussing just on this type of design rather than the full suite of possible solutions, which shouldn’t be a problem unless they are misapplying it.
Some people seem to be positive about the scheme anyway.
http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/wfnews/13342487.Mini_Holland_works_already_having__positive__impact_according_to_some_residents/
@ Greg – If the Mini Holland isn’t installing separate bike lanes why have some been constructed on Hoe Street? I understand segregated lanes are planned for Selborne Road and on Lea Bridge Road. Ditto at the remodelled Whipps Cross roundabout. Forest Road is also going to be further “calmed” and will be remodelled on the stretch past the town hall. I know the Village area, near to you, is the bit that’s attracting all the comment because through routes are being removed. I also wouldn’t go “over the top” in your remarks about Orford Road in the Village about buses and cycles. The W12 bus is only every 20 mins M-S and every 30 evenings and Sundays. That’s hardly a lot of traffic volume or disturbance over what is a short stretch of route through the village. It’s coped well for years despite the narrow roads and parked vehicles that make clearances a bit tight sometimes. Something tells me a fair number of people would not wish to lose the bus route as it affords convenient access to the town centre and High Street. I understand why a lot of people won’t necessarily be convinced about the Mini Holland but I rather suspect there’s a master plan lurking in the Town Hall that if the scheme works then the Council will apply for further funding (if available from the next Mayor) to expand the scheme into areas that are currently untouched. I also think that Waltham Forest are keen to show they can actually deliver something unlike the other Boroughs who seem to have less momentum and where schemes have been modified from what was originally proposed and then modified back again (Kingston seem to have been affected by this). A record of delivery puts you in a good position to get a second go even if that will “upset” some other boroughs who want to implement full schemes themselves.
The http://www.enjoywalthamforest.co.uk/ website has all the details of what is proposed for where on the Mini Holland scheme. They’re gathering views about Forest Road at the moment. Interesting how many people don’t like their local environment and want the traffic slowed down although obviously this is a self selecting survey rather than one which seeks to achieve some sort of fair “objective” representation of all views in the area.
WW
I was referring to the lesser & minor roads, where the “mini-holland” is having greatest effect. However, Hoe St itself is being narrowed in places, making the transport “squeeze” even worse.
One “good” idea was to use the scheme to stop persistent “rat-running” – however it seems/appears that they may have overdone it, so that locals can’t themseleves get in/out – it is noticable that one bunch of objectors live in almshouses/sheltered housing & are dependant upon taxis for transport.
It’s certainly a mess, whether a good or bad one, time only will tell.
I would still love to hear more about the
RichmondKingston scheme – is there any solid information on that?One slight problem about the LBWF official site is that they only seem to want “good” news … the MiniTrue official output is very predictable – yes, I’m cynical, but then I’ve lived here since 1948 …
You are exactly correct about further expansion – a scheme has been proposed for the adjoining two areas ( which includes, of course, where I actually live) … the shrieks of opposition at the initial meeting certainly set the council officials back a bit – if only probably because it transpires that one road, nuch bothered by rat-runners & real safety issues have been asking for, lets call it proposition “A” … & then LBWF proposed the exact opposite, oh dear.
Going back a bit, so Kensington-&-Chelsea can’t apply for mini-holland, but they could “do something” for cycling but won’t … ( Correct? )
Looking forward, in a year or two, both cyclists & car drivers ( & TfL buses & licensed taxis of any sort) are going to be crossing invisible lines on the ground, the borough boundaries, & finding the ethos & road-layout & priorities & maenoverability changing radically in the space of a few metres.
I think I can confidently predict that said disparity in approaches is going to cause confusion, to say the least, if not outright chaos.
Time for some over-riding guidelines from Tfl, maybe?
Sadly a cyclist killed this morning near Bank. Of the 8 cycling fatalities so far this year, 7 out of 8 have involved HGVs, 6 out of 8 have been women.
Given that women are distinctly in the minority amongst bike commuters, that is a shocking figure.
@Reynolds The obvious question is why are female cyclists at so much greater risks in London. The LCC claim to have found a correlation between near misses and low speed. Men are cycling 50% faster than women. More dangerous in rural areas where the biggest danger is yourself and immobile objects. In dense urban areas, there seems to be safety in matching motorised traffic speed closer.
It seems we should, in non-segregated areas, be encouraging faster cycling. Even if this entails lycra and showers. And sportier hire bikes. And electrically assisted bikes. Or slower traffic in critical locations.
@Tom Hawtin – “It seems we should, in non-segregated areas, be encouraging faster cycling ” I know; let’s go one step further and encourage them to acquire Ducatti Monsters rather than toy electric bikes. Sure,this means that they will also require the additional clothing, but that should appeal even more…
Tom Hawtin
Maybe it is a coincidence (though I don’t think so) but that death at the Bank junction involved a “Tipper Truck”.
Now, even in the Great Green Beast, I steer clear of those things, as ISTM that their driven standard is very low.
I also note that in the very first month 95 HGV’s have been removed just within the City …
Which tells us something, maybe?
F’rinstance: A new TfL-funded Commercial Vehicle Unit, run by the City of London Police, has launched a crack-down on dangerous vehicles in the City, stopping 136 vehicles and taking 95 dangerous vehicles off the road during its first month of operation.
Just within the City (!) producing a 69.8% “strike” rate, strongly suggests that it is the vehicles’ owners who are largely responsible, followed closely by the drivers of those same vehicles.
Doesn’t it?
Re Greg
From the TfL press release:
“During the unit’s first month of targeted, intelligence lead operations, it found drivers of the 95 non-compliant vehicles to be committing a number of offences, including:”
If they are targeting which vehicles they are pulling over then it is hardly surprising that they manage to do 70% of them for something…
It all seem like a warm up act for September Launch of TfL’s Safer Lorry Scheme
The wording is bit dubious as a fixed penalty notice doesn’t necessarily take a vehicle off the road, 44% of City’s stops resulted in a fixed penalty notice.
May 2015 Stats:
The equivalent Met unit strike rate is 71% on the same targeted basis (752 vehicles pulled over).
City Police was 88 recorded actions from 136 pulled over.
DVSA/TfL unit was 163 recorded actions from 199 pulled over (82% strike rate).
City didn’t seize any vehicles like the Met and DVSA/TfL units did (24 & 7 respectively).
(Watch delays mount on construction projects across London over the next year if stats continue like this!)
@Tom Hawtin: and pray tell, what is the average speed through Bank junction for cars at that time of the morning? Having gone past that place for 2 years each morning I’m sure it’s not difficult to achieve by a 4-year-old on a bike with stabilisers.
Next time you try blaming the victim I shall be less civil with my reply.
straphan,
I fear you are being rather harsh. Tom did provide a plausible explanation of why so many victims were female – something I couldn’t understand. He also made the valid point that as things are it is probably, in general, safer to ride faster than slowly and more carefully. It is entirely reasonable for him to suggest electric bikes etc. may reduce the problem. To suggest he was blaming the victim for not cycling fast enough is a bit of an extreme interpretation. As you yourself point out, this is hardly relevant at Bank intersection.
Tom’s comment raises the issue of how much risk on a bike is related to time and how much to distance. Are you at significant risk simply by being on the road? If so is it a sensible strategy to make your journey as quickly as possible to reduce your exposure time?
Re Staphan & Tom Hawtin,
I suspect this particular fatality may have much more to do with Bank being a 5 way junction with a confusing road and lane layout (including some small islands overflowing with pedestrians to avoid). Vehicles for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd turns (all to the left to some extent – 90 to 170 degrees) all end up in the left lane (when do you use the left indicator for which turns?) and those for the 4th turn (right) in the right lane.
@PoP – If…if -there’s a notable body of evidence ( see these columns passim) that the biggest danger to cyclists is from right turning HGVs – that is definitely not time related. Somewhere in all this is a statistical fallacy – “life in the fast lane is safer” because it reduces the time exposed to certain classes of risk- and yet it brings with it its own new risks, not least because the acceleration curves of motor vehicles and cyclists are very different. (This debate is often replicated in the Hewett household when it comes to buying new cars…).
I fear I read Tom Hawtin’s post as simply a piece of special pleading, casuistry if you like, to justify faster cycling and mamil behaviour. I thought one of the points of cycling, even to work, was that it was a gentler,Dutch-style, way of getting there,with a bit of exercise thrown in for good measure.If it’s only for the superfit,then the very great bulk of the population will be uninterested, if not unable to use the mode.
@PoP: Decades of experience in Germany, Holland or Denmark have proven that segregated cycling infrastructure promotes cycling amongst the wider population, and makes it safer for all involved. I appreciate this is a forum for open debate, but why are we seriously responding to someone challenging these rather self-evident and established facts? I am happy to accept there are people out there who would rather cycling was banned or who would rather motorists were absolved of all guilt in collisions with cyclists, but I am not prepared to have a serious debate with these people.
Bear in mind that all recent fatal accidents – regardless of the sex of the victim – happened at junctions: Aldgate, Bow Roundabout, Vauxhall, Victoria, Ludgate Hill, Holborn – and now Bank. These are not locations where speed is an issue.
straphan,
I know this is an emotional subject but I could see nothing whatsoever unreasonable about Tom’s comment. I cannot see how Tom was in any way challenging the notion that segregated cycling is safer. As far as I am concerned he was making a totally reasonable statement provided it is taken in the right context. Put it this way, if I felt there was a need to remove inflammatory statements, it wouldn’t be his I would be removing.
ngh & straphan
I wonder …
IIRC a lot of cycling casualties are when an HGV turns LEFT without looking properly, or even signalling at all, sometimes, thus killing the cyclist.
Which brings me back to my original point, re-emphasised by ngh, about the safety of the “construction & use” never mind the driving habits of those supposedly in control of these vehicles.
straphan’s comment about segregated cycling, is, of course one reason why LBWF’s local scheme ( in the side-roads) is seen as not actually “pro-cycling” by many, including me
[Slightly modified to tone down graphic description. PoP]
@Graham H
I think it’s left- (not right-) turning HGVs which are usually the problem.
Although cyclists generally dislike, and avoid, sharing roads with fast-moving traffic (and I have had enough people overtaking me too close on my local suburban A-road to understand why it is a prime candidate for the mini-Holland scheme), the accident statistics indicate that this perception is misplaced. Everyone is at least going the same way, and the car overtaking the cyclists is likely to have seen it. Junctions are where the problems lie. And far too many cycle paths suddenly give up just as you approach one.
I rarely cycle now but when I did it seemed a lot safer for me to plant myself right in the middle of the vehicle lane at junctions. This annoys the hell out of drivers but it does make the cyclist impossible to ignore even by the most visually challenged driver. It also helps to prevent vehicles squeezing by and ‘cutting up’. I suspect female riders are less willing to adopt this passive-aggressive mode and get trapped into spaces where they cannot easily escape. I am emphatically not blaming the victims here, just suggesting that in UK traffic as it exists, it is impossible to rely on the good sense of all drivers. Sooner or later an idiot will come by and threaten the lives and health of all cyclists who are prepared.
Correction. The last sentence should have read ‘who are NOT prepared.’
Just to add – it is NOT the responsibility of a road user to speed up to avoid balking faster traffic. Deliberate and unnecessary dawdling is inconsiderate, and slow vehicles should of course allow others to pass if there’s room (higher penalties for centre-lane hoggers are long overdue) but if there isn’t room, you’ll just have to follow that horse, bus, milk float, tractor, steam roller, Chieftan tank or cyclist, until a safe overtaking opportunity presents itself or one of you turns off.
Re Timbeau and Graham H,
Indeed left turns (Zoolander) being the big issue with HGVs especially the rigid variety.
Speed vs junctions.
The road safety agenda was focused on speed for a very long time even when the stats showed other factors had a bigger effect. For example see TfL’s 77% advertising campaign* in 2014 which highlighted the casualty rate at junctions.
https://www.tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/toolkit-guide-motorists.pdf
*poster on lots of buses and bus stops in addition to hoardings.
Westminster Council have also been moving the start of double yellow lines further back from junctions (on side streets) in an attempt to improve sight-lines and reduce casualties over the last few years.
The words of Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, “why can’t a woman be more like a man?” did come to my mind…
The London Cycling Campaign “near miss” project was intended to investigate the consequences of near misses, not the causes, so the reasons for near misses are pure speculation.
Indeed, a study of overtaking at the University of Bath found that drivers left more room overtaking when the (male) cyclist was wearing a long blonde wig…
To take the emotion out of it, there is quite an established engineering approach to manage risk that starts with elimination, then substitution, then separation, some other things then eventually, the least effective measures like personal protective equipment.
This type of approach is applied by bodies like the Rail and Air Accident Investigation Boards as they systematically investigate an incident and produce recommendations with some clout (I believe).
There is no equivalent for road fatalities. The police investigate if a crime has been committed, so it isn’t really their role.
There is some analysis of cyclist deaths in London from 2007 to 2011 in the report below.
The biggest cause was the cyclist being “left hooked” (32%), next was being hit from behind (17%).
A problem with a lot of junctions in London is that cycle filter lanes and advanced stop boxes position cyclists exactly in the blind spots of HGVs.
“Taking the lane” is taught in cycling courses but people do find this intimidating and it isn’t a practice that will result in significant numbers switching to a bike.
https://www.tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/pedal-cyclist-fatalities-in-london.pdf
@greg tingey
It’s not that there will be invisible lines at borough boundaries which will mark completely different approaches, it is that different approaches are needed on different types of roads and in different areas. Segregated lanes may be sensible on main roads where there is a need to keep cyclists apart from heavy faster moving traffic, but entirely inappropriate on quiet residential roads, where the need is to slow traffic down to create a more welcoming and safer environment overall.
The problem with many of the comments in this stream is that they appear to presuppose that a given approach is best in all circumstances and this just isn’t true. Nor is this single best approach followed in the Netherlands, where, again, there are different approaches on different types of roads in different types of area.
The question as to just how to decide what’s best where is, of course, fraught and will depend not just on what cyclists want but also what other road users, frontagers, pedestrians, etc want. Hence it is properly a political problem. The idea that TfL could come in say what’s what is, of course, absurd. I can’t think of anything that would cause more rows, delays and bad solutions.
Reynolds 953,
I was taught that in many things in life the approach should be (in order of general preference):
1. eliminate the risk
2. reduce the risk
3. mitigate against the risk
4. accept the risk
@ Quinlet – TfL are attempting to address appropriate treatments for different types of street with the Roads Task Force “street families” classification and this is quite close to the Dutch approach to categorising roads.
As you say, there will be arguments about what the role of a particular street actually is – one person’s blocking of rat runners is another person’s inconvenience…
However I do think that TfL should have more quantitative guidelines for categorisation of street treatments, so if traffic volumes and 85th percentile speeds are above certain thresholds, then particular treatments are recommended, for example. That way, there shouldn’t be the mis-application of treatments for types of streets that they were never intended for.
Key stats from the TfL report Reynold linked to:
(based on accidents in London where all relevant info was available only)
74% of accidents at a junction of some variety
—
47% of accidents involved an HGV (7.5T+)
[71% of the HGV Drivers involved were 40+]
21% of the accidents involved a rigid tipper HGV (i.e. non articulated aggregate lorry)
—
32% were “left hook” (cycle heading straight, vehicle turning left)
26% were left hooks by HGV (cycle heading straight HGV turning left)
(so 55% of HGV accidents were left hook related)
8% involved the cyclist failing to give way or obey traffic lights (cars being the other party here)
8% involved both cycle and vehicle (100% HGV) turning left.
So the total left turns is 40% with 34% involving HGV.
Total right turns of all forms 4%
Type of bikes involved:
Mountain Bike 43%
Traditional shopping bike 11%
Which are possibly indicative of lower speed?
Reynolds 953
I really doubt that it is possible to be definitive based solely on traffic volumes and speeds. This is partly because circumstances will vary according to the nature of the road and partly because aspirations for roads will vary. Given a set of volumes/speeds one answer may be to try and reduce speeds and/or volumes while in another place you might want to accept that this is reasonable. I think this is as much a political problem as a technical one.
We have plenty of examples in the past where attempts to strictly define a technical formula for dealing with roads has caused immense problems. For example, the now discredited pv2 formula for installing pedestrian crossings led to places where a crossing was really needed but was consistently refused because the formula was not met.
@ Quinlet – fair enough points.
I think these sorts of issues will come to a head given the increasing number of boroughs putting in place blanket 20mph limits.
I admit a personal interest as the street where I live is 20mph but the measured* 85th percentile speed is 30mph indicating that whatever the signage and limits say, drivers are treating it as a 30mph road. An argument with the council awaits…
* measured by me in this case with some specialist software, a webcam and measured distances marked on the road 😉
@ngh
“Mountain Bike 43%: Traditional shopping bike 11% – Which are possibly indicative of lower speed?”
Impossible to draw such a conclusion on the figures quoted.
1. 43% + 11% =/= 100%. What sort of cycle was involved in the other 46% of accidents?
2. How many of each type are in circulation? What is the average daily (weekly, annual) mileage of each type?
@Quinlet. In a perfect world where everyone agreed about everything, you would be right about the absence of Greg’s ‘invisible lines’. You seem to be assuming a uniform level of rationality across the different boroughs. They could not even agree what colour a cycle lane should be (red or green), so expecting them to not create invisible lines between different ideas of cycle provision is somewhat idealistic. It very much seems as if Kensington and Chelsea will have cycle routes leading up to their boundaries with abrupt transformations into ‘devil take the hindmost’ in between.
Re Timbeau,
Indeed impossible to draw conclusions, hence my question mark hopefully soliciting some useful discussion…
Given the significant skew to (fatal/serious) accidents in the am peak commuting slot* 0800-0900 noted in the report, I would have expected more road/hybrid/folding bikes to be involved given the numbers I see on the road at those times hence I was wondering if that might be a factor?
*the pm peak does appear to be comparatively a lot safer than the am peak. Time to relax the HGV operating hours so they can be on the roads earlier in London?
Re Reynolds,
I though it was common knowledge that 20mph zones weren’t actually going to be enforced (and for the cynical just a nice way to keep giving councils’ tame contractors more work with signage and road markings!)
@ ngh : re: 20mph limits, I’m certainly not expecting the police to enforce the limits… in my case the majority of residents would like changes to the street design to reduce the speed, and there are a number of options in the council’s toolkit to do this.
I thought area-wide 20mph limits may result in a reduction of signage as there should only be the need for signs at the boundaries of the zone rather than on individual streets.
It is always been thought that 20mph zones would be largely self-enforcing on fairly busy stretches so long a significant proportion of motorists adhere to them. Even if no motorist adheres to them there is still an advantage to cyclists that this almost certainly puts the motorist at least partially in the wrong in the event of a collision.
I believe one of the problems of enforcing a 20mph limit is that the standard speed cameras are not authorised for use enforcing limits below 30mph because the necessary calibration, good enough for legal purposes, is not done. I don’t understand why this should be such a problem.
@PoP: As I said before: your forum, your rules. Forgive me, though, if I am a little acerbic towards people who still think the Earth is flat…
@ngh: First of, if the collisions were mainly at junctions, it is difficult to conclude speed was a major factor, as in most cases both the vehicle and the cyclist would have been travelling slowly. Second of, I’d love to do a cycle recognition survey amongst police officers – I bet you their definition of ‘mountain bike’ is somewhat wider than yours or mine.
The key issue with the majority of these collisions is – to my mind – getting drivers to look in the mirrors when turning left or stopping or even swerving to avoid a car trying to turn right. This applies to both HGVs and cars/vans. Too often they do not, because they are paying attention to other things. It is also true that an advance stop box is exactly the shape of a lorry’s blind spot. But I have recently had a closer look at a ’15 reg rigid 4-axle tipper lorry – the driver has no fewer than 5 mirrors to choose from (2 side mirrors, one at the top of the windscreen looking down, two at the top of the doors looking down). Very often though, they just don’t look.
Having taken advantage of the Met’s programme to sit in the other guy’s seat, I realise that although a lorry may be festooned with mirrors to cover every single blind spot, they can never all be in his line of vision, or even peripheral vision, at the same time. If he’s looking down the left side of his truck he can’t simultaneously see somebody who has stepped out just in front of his bonnet. (Many trucks’ dashboards are above an average pedestrian’s head-height).
The reason an advance stop box is the size it is, is precisely because a lorry’s blind spot is that big. You need to be at the front of the box to be seen (note that the lorry driver does not need to see the actual advanced stop line: a cyclist’s head will be three or four feet above it. What is dangerous though is if cyclists queue up on the left side of the advance stop box, thus blocking the exit from the “killing zone” (on the left of whatever vehicle is there) for any further cyclists arriving whilst the lights are red. They should move over and let later arrivals into the box too.
If I see someone plugging the exit when I’m in already in the box, I will delay moving off, thereby – sorry, -delaying the vehicles behind me – until everyone is clear of the kill zone: their safety is more important than white van man’s sprint to the next lights. If it’s me who is stuck in the neck of the bottle, I will let the vehicle to my right go away before I move.
@timbeau: I adopt pretty much the same strategy. I also appreciate that (a) there is no chance someone driving something as big as a lorry or bus will be able to see everything that goes on around them; (b) when turning the driver will have enough time to check all the mirrors and react to everything they see in them.
I guess the only reasonable solution would be to fit these vehicles with some form of sensor or cameras.* I believe TfL was already testing some contraption that alerts bus drivers if there is a cycle immediately to their left.
*Most modern trams employ cameras instead of mirrors to avoid hitting people at tram stops. The screens with the video feeds from these cameras are often located on the dash rather than in the top corners of the cabin so that the driver needs to turn his/her head less.
@ timbeau – a problem with ASLs is they don’t work well with the volume of cyclists that some routes in London are now experiencing. It isn’t a surprise that ASLs are hardly used in the Netherlands.
https://departmentfortransport.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/perfect-asl-scenario.jpg?w=500&h=375
In the photo above, the ASL box is full up with about 10 cyclists and the filter lane also contains about 8 to 10 cyclists.
If you are riding along the lane and there is an HGV in front, then yes, I generally wouldn’t go alongside it.
However I don’t think I’ve ever seen an HGV hang back because the ASL box and filter lane are full of cyclists.
So if you are in the filter lane already, can’t go forward because the ASL box is full and an HGV pulls alongside you… the safest thing is probably to stay put until the HGV moves off – and I would also look for an escape route onto the footpath and hope there aren’t any barriers.
The lack of visibility around the immediate front/side from a truck cab is sobering once you’ve sat in a cab driver seat and looked for yourself. The team at tfl have been trying to get the truck industry to adopt a different cab design. With the driver at “car driver” seat height and much more glass around the cab, rather like some designs of rubbish truck. I’ve lost track of whether there has been any meaningful progress on this.
Can’t help thinking that current cycle lane design (advance stop zones) is not fit for purpose because it gathers cyclists exactly into truck blind spots at junctions. Instead of reducing risk, is this design exacerbating its?
PoP
I was quite aware of what I was doing when I gave that “graphic description”
[And I was quite aware of what I was doing when I snipped it. PoP]
ngh/Reynolds
Thanks – that confirms my suspicions as to the most dangerous places & manoevers & types of vehicle involved.
Basically don’t get caught by a left-turning construction lorry, or you will become mincemeat. (euw)
PoP
20 mph in many cars is difficult to do – often close to a gear-change “slot” & the car speedo will be progressively less accurate at lower speeds.
I know mine is & I have to make an educated guess a lot of the time as to how close to a 20 mph limit I actually am.
straphan
Even the GGB has a small left-to-centre-rear “blind spot” – I have put a notice in the bottom of the LH side/end window warning people that “If you can read this I probably can’t see you”. I’m unlikely to miss a cyclist, but I can & have missed a low-slung small car that had got far too close behind me – their fault, because they should not have been that close, fortunately for me …..
[Snip. I think this or similar has been linked to enough times and not really on topic. PoP]
ASL Advanced Stop Lines for cyclists at traffic lights to give them priority over motor traffic.
@Island Dweller, According to various press releases/articles Cemex are currently trialling a Mercedes Benz Econic Tipper in London that offers much better visibility than existing trucks.
These supposedly cycle-friendly have their own drawbacks though.
It is in the nature of the work they have to do that vehicles used in the construction industry have to go off-road (building sites are often very uneven). High ground clearance is necessary to avoid problems in such places. Side guards are likely to get knocked off or bent upwards.
Secondly, there is a reason European trucks have their cabs high up over the engine – it reduces the overall length occupied by those two components, leaving more of the length available for payload. Given that there is a maximum length for a lorry (and longer vehicles are in any case less safe for cyclists) the more payload you can get in each lorry the fewer of them there will be. Trucks with car-like bonnets are rare in Europe, but common in the USA where length is less of an issue.
Dustcarts have low-level entrances for the same reason buses do – people are getting in and out all the time.
Re timbeau, JA Island Dweller
The M-B vehicle shown in JA’s post has few key differences from normal 4 axle tippers.
A normal 4 axle Tipper (20t load) has 1st and 2nd axle steering (with single wheels) which means a relatively large turning circle and the need to hang right to turn left and still almost clip the kerb mid turn. (3rd and 4 axles powered and dual wheeled (taking most of the load)).
Traditional low cab dust cart type chassis were 3 axle (1st steering with 2nd & 3rd axles powered and dual wheeled on the biggest examples) and limited to 16t load by not having the extra pair of single wheels hence why they weren’t liked by the industry. The front axle was further back from the front of the vehicle so the cab could be lower.
The M-B vehicle is 4axle (20t load) but is 1st and 4th axle steered (2nd and 3rd axles powered and dual wheeled) with the front axle further back like on a dust cart chassis. The unsteered wheels are now much closer to the centre of the vehicle so the turning circle will be much better.
Living, cycling and driving in the City of London I am seeing the impact of the construction of the cycle superhighway along Upper Thames Street every day. Firstly I fully agree that cycling in the City of London needs to be made safer. But, what I see just now is that the impact of restricting traffic on Upper Thames Street is to increase traffic through the City, including Bank Junction. This must increase risk for cyclists. I am not sure that rather than in effect building a cycling motorway through the middle of the City a better spend of money would have been to increase cycling safety at junctions in the City. Junctions are the point of highest risk for all road and pavement user, not improving dangerous junctions but putting more traffic through them does not make sense. But TfL only manage major routes…don’t blame the City I blame TfL for a narrow-minded policy on cycling to deliver grand schemes and not look after the whole picture. In Central London priority should be safe junctions not a limited impact of cycle motorways.
@ Anon – based on a tweet from AM Darren Johnson it seems the City Corporation worked up a proposal to improve Bank junction that was reliant on TfL funding to proceed although the City also had money to put forward too. In the light of the fatality Mr D Johnson is to ask Mr B Johnson whether TfL decided to delay / not fund the work at Bank. It is a matter of record that the “Better Junctions” workstream has been significantly scaled back due to funding issues.
One wonders whether the big CSH schemes are being pursued with urgency because they are “big” and can be pointed at as a legacy rather than a series of relatively “boring” junction schemes that might actually deliver more benefit to cyclists. We may never know what went on but sometimes “boring” is the best thing to do to maximise benefits in transport operation, safety and efficiency. Grand gestures are rarely the right answer.
Interesting that Ben Bradshaw has just raised cycling deaths in PMQs and has asked for a meeting between the PM and the all party Commons Cycling Group. The PM has agreed to have the meeting but did suggest the Mayor of London should be involved too.
http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/why-women-seem-to-be-more-vulnerable-around-traffic-blackspots-in-london-10341420.html
Contains some numbers, which may (or may not) be useful pointers in any discussion
Greg an updated but less detailed version of the stats discussed here:
https://www.londonreconnections.com/2015/bike-to-the-future-part-3-the-board-meeting-that-wasnt/#comment-248750
I didn’t mention that most left turn incidents involved women though which Ros has brought up, the discussion was focuses around HGV and left turns at the time.
From this report:
https://www.tfl.gov.uk/cdn/static/cms/documents/pedal-cyclist-fatalities-in-london.pdf
covering 2007-2011 in incredible detail (far better than the standard) some other newspaper articles have used that report in their analyses.
It seems ASLs might have helped with cyclists doing right turns but made incidents involving left hand ones worse?
From the pictures in the Standard it appears that the “Bank” lorry had all the extra mirrors fitted.
The article suggests once again that faster speeds and jumping lights is what makes cycling safer. If so, then the answer is to make slower cycling safer through segregated infrastructure. And if the data does indeed suggest that jumping the lights is safer for cyclists than obeying them then that is a damning indictment to the way people drive around here – both in Holland and in the UK those making a nearside turn (turning right in Holland, turning left in the UK) must give way to cyclists. Trouble is British cyclists get left-hooked on a regular basis, Dutch ones do not.
Re Staphan,
With the left turn incidents I suspect some of it is down to the drivers of larger vehicles focusing on getting the right front corner of the vehicle as close the traffic island (between the lanes on the road to their left pre turn) and not on anything in the mirrors especially those to their left as this is the simplest way of not hitting any fixed objects while doing a tight turn (v difficult to judge distances in highly curved mirrors on your inside). Fitting more mirrors won’t solve this issue as the driver can’t look in 2 places at once, as has been brought up already cameras and a lower driving position combined with a tighter turning circle are the only obvious solutions vehicle side.
On the road side is moving pedestrian / traffic light islands back from problems junctions by 3-4m a possible solution?
Jumping lights. It seems paradoxical that jumping lights could make you safer, and indeed the article warns against this (“other dangers”). But what is entirely plausible to me is an attitude split. The light-jumpers are accustomed to looking all around and relying entirely on their own observation for their own safety, and they probably continue to do this in other places (like down the left side of trucks). The non-light-jumpers, while they probably still usually look around them, place a bit more reliance on rule-following, both their own and, crucially, other drivers’. This comes badly unstuck when the other driver fails to follow the rule.
Turning left in a large vehicle. Any driver doing this nearly always puts a lot of their attention on the left mirror, even in the absence of cyclists. This is necessary to avoid the kerb. But obviously attention has to be shared, with looking forward as well (not to mention, in a rigid, checking the right mirror to check that your rear overhang isn’t demolishing a traffic island). I suspect that killing cyclists happens when the driver is momentarily distracted, and omits checking the left mirror for an unusually long period.
The point I am making is that the driver-behaviour change required is not a change from not looking in the left mirror to looking there. It is a change from looking there on 95% of occasions, to looking there on 100%.
Jumping lights might reduce the risk for the cyclist of being hit by a left turning vehicle, but it increases the risk for pedestrians. I have been hit (not seriously, yet, fortunately) 4 times in 18 months by cyclists jumping lights while I was crossing on a “green man”. All the cyclists took the view that it was my fault for being on the crossing. [And clearly – many other cyclists took care to look out for pedestrians as well as vehicles when they jumped the lights.]
@ML: PoP has already described my other comments on this thread as potentially inflammatory, but let’s just say as a cycle commuter I firmly take your side and would not hesitate confrontation to teach some other cyclists the basics of the Highway Code.
Regarding left turns: again, I refer to the video from Copenhagen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXw_t172BKY
Every scene filmed you see cars patiently waiting to make a nearside turn until all the cyclists have passed. Nobody ever waits in the UK. It is this notion that you need to give way to bikes while turning that needs to be firmly planted in the heads of all drivers – as the data shows ‘left-hook’ deaths are not just caused by HGVs.
Portsmouth Road scheme now green-lighted (green-lit?)
http://www.kingston.gov.uk/news/article/308/3_million_mini-holland_scheme_gets_the_green_light
The video makes interesting viewing – note how close and fast traffic overtakes (and using the pillars on the left hand side as a yardstick – they are about 20 feet apart – I think the film is being run at normal speed.)
@ Straphan – it’s quite clear that we have a long way to go. A fair proportion of drivers don’t give way to pedestrians who are already crossing a side turning which the car is attempting to enter. If, after decades, we still can’t get that right then it’s going to take forever to get cycling priority to work. I happened to be passing the new cycle lanes on Hoe St today. They’re all on a level and side turns have been paved to give the sense of a continuous cycle lane. However a car just turned straight into the side road without looking and if a cycle had been passing they’d have been squashed.
If I’m driving on Stratford High Street and turning left, I am overtaking cyclists in London’s safest bike lanes so its my duty to let them go first. This applies however impatient motorists behind me become.
Stratford High Street claims “London’s safest bike lanes” for cyclists. Many cyclists can be seen in Stratford High Street travelling faster than the vehicles, so they aren’t London’s safest bike lanes for pedestrians.
@Alan Griffiths
“turning left, I am overtaking cyclists in London’s safest bike lanes so its my duty to let them go first”
I’m not sure if you’re being ironic, but overtaking another vehicle (be it bus, steamroller, or bicycle) and then cutting left across its bows is “driving without due care”, whether they have their own lane or not. Traffic (including cyclists and pedestrians) following the straight ahead (main) route ALWAYS has priority over turning traffic.
“ALWAYS has priority…”
Always should have, perhaps. But certainly in the case of pedestrians in the UK, this is a rule much more honoured in the breach than the observance. Any pedestrians who might once have tried to cross the mouth of a side road without looking (relying on this rule) have already been winnowed out by natural selection.
In many other countries, particularly in northern Europe, this rule is actually observed. But certainly not here.
@WW: While UK roads are one of the safest in Europe in terms of numbers of deaths and so on, I find that they are so safe thanks in no small part to the courtesy towards other drivers taught during driving courses. However, even outside of London (where a high percentage of drivers passed their driving courses abroad) I cannot see that courtesy afforded to pedestrians or cyclists. In Holland, Sweden (or even car-crazy Germany) one of the key messages hammered home during a driving course is that it is the physically weakest road users (pedestrians and cyclists) that have priority. Though I have not participated in a driving course in the UK myself, it does not appear to me that a similar philosophy is applied.
Lord Holmes (a blind paralympic gold-medallist swimmer and member of the London 2012 Paralympic Games organising committee) has just published a report into shared space road schemes:
http://chrisholmes.co.uk/news/accidents-by-design-the-holmes-report-into-shared-space/
Admittedly the methodology for conducting his survey was rather biased (an online survey which people chose to respond to – i.e. those with a grievance were more likely to respond) and the sample quite small, a lot of what he says about shared spaces resonates with my experience of them.
strphan
Can I echo Lord Holmes about “shared space”?
This is one of the things that LBWF are getting all exited about in their “mini-holland” project, oh dear …
Meanwhile, I am waiting to see how long it is before the shared space outside Sloane Square tube station becomes a [edited for taste] space, decorated with pedestrian remains … [ I ran across it, in both senses of the phrase, about two weeks back & it scared me mightily. ]
Shared space schemes originated in the Netherlands but they were only intended for areas with low volumes and speeds of motor traffic. This seems to have been “lost in translation” in the UK as they have been applied to streets carrying a high volume of traffic.
Clearly some local authorities were taken in by the story pitched by consultants that they could improve an area for pedestrians without needing to address the elephant in the room – motor traffic.
I’m not familiar with the details of the WF scheme but one point is that even the Dutch don’t put cycle lanes in residential areas. They do however try to limit the speed and volume of motor traffic by trying to ensure this is just access traffic rather than through traffic. The WF “shared space” may be fine as long as they also restrict motor traffic (and of course, restricting motor traffic in the UK has major objections hence why politicians are reluctant to do it…)
…..and then we get people trying to divert the funding into their own projects
http://www.surreycomet.co.uk/news/13364789.Orange_alert__New_Malden_mini_Holland_scheme_under_threat_as_Thames_Water_demands___1_8m_to_carry_out_pipe_works/
(if the mains are in such a parlous state that increased cycle traffic would damage them, they probably ought to have been looked at anyway, regardless of the possibility of changes on the surface)
@timbeau -quite astonishing! (One implication is that TW wouldn’t bother to look at their pipes if they weren’t paid to do so… If I were a local councillor, I would point that out very publicly, with added remarks about TW’s stewardship of their assets, laced with additional comments about the flooding they have caused in the area already)
@ Graham H / Timbeau – is this the same Thames Water that did a deal with Boris for improved working on Central London road works and (IIRC) which saved Thames Water shed loads of money? I rather suggest the Mayor picks the phone and has a “meaningful” discussion with Thames Water. A completely ridiculous state of affairs but that’s privatised utilities for you.
@ timbeau – as an approximation, road damage is proportional to the fourth power of axle weight so if the pipes were going to be damaged by bikes, New Malden would be under water by now 😉
My engineering colleague informs me that he could get a gang down to dig a trial hole by hand for £300 – assuming they took the whole day to dig the hole. So £30,000 represents a very tidy profit for Thames Water – or else they are even less efficient than we previously thought.
@Reynolds 953
“if the pipes were going to be damaged by bikes, New Malden would be under water by now ”
Did you see the third picture in the article I linked to? (And SWT wondered why the good folk of New Malden wanted an entrance to the station on the down side as well as the up!)
Forgive me for making excuses for my old employers, but a ‘pipe track’ is not just a few 100mm pipes serving the local street. It will be a series of large diameter trunk mains (probably steel) operating at high pressure and serving thousands of customers. A few years back one of these pipe tracks blew beside the Hanger Lane underpass. The result was the A40 was flooded to a level that threatened the integrity of the bridge carrying the North Circular. It should not be a surprise that any utility, privatised or not, is unwilling to run that sort of risk. I suspect that they are more worried about the works to create the cycle track than they are about bikes. It may look like a bit of unused land, but it’s actually a vital part of London’s infrastructure.
To note that LB Waltham Forest has just started procurement for a mini-Holland wayfinding strategy design team. Perhaps WW and GT could apply as a joint bid?!
“ID: WBOWF-9Y6M-5FV3K6
Title: Mini Holland Wayfinding Strategy Design Team Procurement
You can register your interest in the above contract from 06/07/2015 17:45:00 until 13/07/2015 16:00:00”
MC
DO NOT TEMPT ME!
I must admit that: Wayfinding Strategy Design Team indicates that they haven’t a clue (again) but maybe that’s just me ….
@fandroid
The article made it clear that these are high pressure trunk mains. But if they are vulnerable to things happening on the surface, that is a problem for TW whether or not the cycle proposals go ahead. It might make sense to schedule inspections before fresh tarmac is laid down (instead of waiting until it has just been done, which seems to be the usual practice!) but if there were no cycleway in prospect it would still need to be done. Therefore it should not be paid for out of the cycleway budget.
They lost the right to public funds for routine maintainence to their infrastructure when they sold themselves into the private sector.
What works are they worried about? It is largely resurfacing. If there was a lot of piling to be done, it would be a different matter (Old Street comes to mind!)
…………..and not everyone thinks leaks in the pipe track are a bad thing…………
http://alisonfure.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/mini-holland-scheme-lm4-kingston-cycle.html
Cycle Quiteways in the square mile have been shelved according to the Standard:
“Cycling ‘quietway’ routes in the City set to be scrapped despite three deaths on London’s roads in 12 months”
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/cycling-quietway-routes-in-the-city-set-to-be-scrapped-despite-three-deaths-on-londons-roads-in-12-months-10384534.html
@ Ngh – not quite dead but certainly in “intensive care”. One wonders quite what is going on here in terms of the Borough vs City Hall relationship. I wouldn’t expect the City Corporation to be quite so clumsy in terms of PR given the recent history on cycling deaths / accidents within its area. There must be something else going on for such schemes to be seemingly rejected by the Corporation even though they will consult on them.
WW
Indeed – it is unusual for The Corporation to make such a major PR mistake – especially after they got the Smithfield regeneration wrong.
I wonder if they have plans of their own, & want to present them, independantly of City Hall?
I think it illustrates the variability of the boroughs when it comes to cycling provision; some are “friendly”, others are distinctly “unfriendly”.
Westminster have consultations out for remodelling of Baker Street and so-called Quietways and they contain very little for cyclists (not just an opinion, analysis using TfL’s Cycling Level of Service audit tool showed minimal improvements)
Contrast with Camden’s plans to upgrade the Tavistock Place cycle route which has become a bit of a victim of its own success and they are – shock horror – removing a lane used for motor traffic. This is linked to the overall changes to the Tottenham Court Road area covered in a previous LR article. Interestingly, they are doing this as a temporary trial therefore avoiding the need for a public consultation although a consultation will be needed if they decide to make it permanent after the trial period.
The provision of cycle lanes and cycle infrastructure in the City amounts to a turn-off at Aldgate (right turn from Aldgate into Jewry Street) and a bunch of signs allowing cyclists to cycle down one-way streets that are so narrow you cannot feasibly pass oncoming cars anyway. As far as I understand, they have also been quite vocally opposed to the east-west superhighway.
Aside from Kensington & Chelsea they are the most anti-cyclist local authority in London. They see cycling as being for the great unwashed – failing to ignore that once they wash, many cyclists put on suits and work in the City itself.
@ straphan – Westminster are pretty bad as well!
I’m not sure what the recently-scrapped proposals in the City were, but as a daily cyclist in the Square Mile I actually find it one of the more “cycle-permeable” parts of central London, with handy cut-throughs like these
https://goo.gl/maps/BEShk
https://goo.gl/maps/y3K3U
https://goo.gl/maps/oGx3U
https://goo.gl/maps/3YlBp
@timbeau: That’s all very well, but the ‘strategy’ (if you could call it such) of pushing cyclists onto small cobbled streets and leaving them no facilities at all on the main roads hasn’t really worked, as evidenced by the recent death at Bank, and another in October at Ludgate Circus.
I wouldn’t believe everything you read in the Standard, particularly not if it’s about cycling in the City. As I understand it, the story is as much about heavy handed lobbying by somebody with an inside track as it is about the actual position.
But the point of permeability is that you only encounter the main roads where you have to cross them. The problem is navigation – if you don’t know the back street routes to avoid nasty junctions like Bank or Ludgate Circus, they are difficult to find and not well signposted.
@Quinlet: heavy handed lobbying by somebody with an inside track
Maybe a former Standard journalist now working at City Hall?
straphan
Err .. The Corporation are emphatically not a “Local Authority” in the usual sense of the word.
And I’m not so sure about their actual (as opposed to percieved) “anti-cycling credentials.
Something doesn’t “feel right” about this, but I can’t put my finger on it.
quinlet/Ian J
Maybe a former Standard journalist now working at City Hall? Yes, that would fit.
There is a n other problem here, a somewhat delicate one.
There are one or two (or more) places in the City where lots of pedestrians cross the road ( I’m thinking specifically of Cannon St station as prime example) & there are frequent altercations & collisions with cyclists, usually of the lycra persuasion.
[Small snip. PoP]
Is this relevant, ot not?
@Greg Tingey: I realise that, but they do perform those functions with regard to road maintenance and traffic regulation, do they not?
@timbeau: Much of the problem with trying to divert bikes the wrong way onto narrow one-way streets is that these streets take cyclists around the places they are trying to get to; whereas for those who are merely passing through these routes are much slower than going the direct way along busier streets/junctions. On my old commute (Canada Water to Chancery Lane) I had to traverse most of the City (I crossed the Thames either on London Bridge or Tower Bridge) and – barring the Aldgate – Jewry Street cut-off I could not think of any way that any cycling infrastructure provided by the City of London would have helped me complete my journey by a more attractive (safer, quicker, flatter) route than via King William Street, Bank Junction, Cheapside, Newgate and High Holborn. Judging by the number of fellow cyclists I was going alongside every day, I was not alone in my choice.
I really don’t understand everyone’s concerns about the cycle superhighways not working or being the best scheme.
Segregated cycling lanes are always good. More is always better. You’ll end up seeing what works and what doesn’t (in London) once you actually start building them.
Pedro
“Always”?
You really sure about that?
“Most of the time” – I would agree with, though.
“More is always better”
No
I can think of lots of circumstances where that is not the case.
@Pedro -to reinforce what Greg says, think of some other transport modes where “some” is fine but “more” is emphatically not always so – motorways for instance. As for building things to see whether they work or not, that is a recipe for littering the landscape with redundant structures; lovely and a jolly good way of spending limited funds.
@ Pedro – I think segregation is fine on busy corridors with at least a level of cycling demand. Improving safety on those corridors is essential and once complete the vehicular traffic will rebalance. However there are other instances where I am not convinced. We’re in the midst of Mini Holland-itis in E17. I’m not going to regurgitate the angst over the road closures in the Village area – much reported and commented on. Instead we have a load of work going on to create “Copenhagen curbs” (I may have the wrong term here) with paved over areas in place of tarmac although road traffic is still permitted to cross the paved area. The problem is that no one knows how to use them. I nearly saw a young child crushed by a car – the child had got a bit excited and run off from mum who was chasing behind. The child ran on to the paved area and nearly ended up under the wheels of a VW. The child had no idea what was going on but I suspect would not have run off a normal kerb into the road. I’ve seen umpteen other instances of near misses. I can’t see the point of the adjusted paving – it offers nothing to cyclists but seems to be a recipe for collisions, injuries and death because of a complete lack of education by the Council and TfL who are funding this mess. What happens to all this spending when someone is seriously hurt and the design / its implementation is found to be the cause / a contributory factor?
The objective of more cycling is laudable enough but why is money being wasted on redesigned infrastructure that is dangerous, partial (not part of a comprehensive cycle lane) and seemingly not connected together? I agree with others that there is no blank cheque for any transport investment and the last thing we can afford in tightening financial circumstances is to chuck money away of stuff that looks good but is ultimately not useful and not used.
WW
Spot on.
I was nearly flattened by a cyclist outside the “Queens Arms” corner of the “No motor vehicles” area of the central mini-holland, because now, there are no curbs, & the cyclist came round the (blind) corner on what had previously been a segregated pavement.
Fairly soon, as you say, someone is going to get hurt.
Pedro 6 February 2016 at 14:59
“Segregated cycling lanes” have been a tremendous success in Stratford High Street, where
1) there’s lots of space
2) TfL and Newham staff designed the works together in great detail
3) the improved safety in a busy main road has connected routes at either end that are more cyclist friendly.
Nearby Broadway and The Grove are nothing like such a success and I fear that 2) was absent.
Silvertown Way, also a busy main road where there is lots of space and routes at either end that are more cyclist-friendly, has been undergoing designs for a year or more. However, the local councillors have been told there may not be enough budget to segregate by building kerbs (what are curbs, WW & GG?) where there is room for them.
AG
“Lots of space” – yes.
One small part of LBWF’s mini-holland looks as though it might work – along Lea Bridge Rd – where there is mostly plenty of room for segregated lanes – excellent, I hope.
They appear to have screwed-up the design of the Whipps Cross soon-to-be-ex-roundabout, but we will see.
@Alan Griffiths
“what are curbs? ”
As I am sure you know, it is the American spelling of the British English “kerb”, the stone edging of a pavement (“sidewalk”). The “curb” spelling is conventionally reserved in British English for the sense of a restraint. But we have gotten used to Americanisms on here.
as with “gotten”, or are we looking at irony here?
@Graham H
I think that was Timbeau’s little joke … But I do wish we could try to preserve British English from US cultural imperialism for a long as possible.
V likely, although timbeau always seems such an earnest sort of chap…
….though not without a sense of humor.
Except… “gotten” isn’t an Americanism. It even appears in Shakespeare and Pope, among others.
Like using “fall” instead of “autumn”, it’s a usage that became less popular during the last couple of centuries in the UK, but remained in common use in the US.
@Anomnibus – it is an Americanism now, however Not every word Shakespeare used is still current English – when did you last say you were shent?
using “fall” instead of “autumn”, helps me remember whither the clocks go back or forwards by an hour
@ Alan G – “curb” is me going senile and my brain melting. My spelling and typing is getting progressively worse. My apologies – I clearly should have used “kerb”.
Returning to the topic of cycling provision TfL have launched some new rather challenging Cycle Superhighway schemes for consultation today.
Kings Cross Gyratory
East West Cycle Superhighway
North South CSH Farringdon to Kings Cross
Swiss Cottage to West End
These all include pretty major changes to the highways and controversial moves like a partial car ban at Regents Park and a lane nicked from the A40 elevated section! It will be interesting to see how these schemes play alongside the Mayoral Election campaign. There have already been screams from motorists today.
Enfield are about to railroad (sorry GH) through the A105 (Green Lanes) mini Holland proposals despite vehement opposition from the majority of affected residents. My principal worry is about the “Copenhagen style” bus boarders where the cycle lane is raised to pavement level at bus stops. Bus passengers will alight directly onto the cycle lane. Cyclists, like everyone else, will be unable to pass stopped buses on the offside. We have been advised that bus passengers will have priority over bikes, but I have no idea who will enforce this. I reckon that such stops will prove to be a lethal hazard.
Has this type of bus stop been implemented in any of the schemes referred to here? If so, how well are they working?
(For the record my opposition is not over the principle, it’s just that the actual plan is a hugely expensive, poorly researched bodge, which particularly disadvantages the elderly and disabled.)
Re Nameless / Greg / WW,
I though everyone should have learnt that Copenhagen type schemes don’t work given the Cowley Road scheme in Oxford over decade ago (on a narrowish road that is an intensive bus AND cycle corridor with lots of shops and cars) but obviously not…
or is this time different? 😉
(This comment may bear a strong resemblance to one from around 3 years ago …)
@ Nameless – the “floating bus stop” concept has been used in several London schemes. It’s on Hoe St in Walthamstow in a couple of spots. I’ve yet to see a single bicycle use their lanes so haven’t seen any conflict. They also exist on CS2 between Bow and Stratford – again I haven’t seen too many cyclists but those I have seen are often moving quickly with no attempt or perceived need to slow down in the vicinity of bus stops. I have seen bus passengers step off buses straight into the cycle lane without any apparent recognition of the risk of there being a passing bike. This included people wheeling shopping trolleys and buggies into the cycle path and then pausing, as people do, to sort themselves out before walking off to where they are going. One other oddity I spotted along the Mile End Road was that the floating stops are very limited in length. They’re designed for two buses to stop but if the first bus stops short a following bus cannot park properly and if it opens its centre door then people will step directly into the cycle lane.
Floating stops are proposed for very busy places like Elephant and Castle (by the Met Tabernacle) and Farringdon Street. These places have high cycle volumes but also very large pedestrian volumes. I think there will be issues when the new lanes and stops are commissioned.
The fundamental issue here is education and publicity. I may well have missed something but I have yet to see anything that really explains to all affected road / pavement users what is happening, what the right behaviours are *and* what the legal position is. This is all new infrastructure which is unusual in the UK and it needs explaining before something serious does happen.
( goes away to check )
Ahem – well it seems I was wrong. There are videos on the TfL website that explain how the new lanes work and how people should use them. I think they need some more promotion from TfL on more general TfL social media channels and elsewhere. They may have been promoted via Cycle related twitter feeds but I don’t subscribe to those.
@WW
“a lane nicked from the A40 elevated section”
Is this really the only way to get the superhighway across RB Kensington? Over a mile with no exits or escape should you get caught in the rain or get a mechanical problem? Surely it should be running at street level?
It will be a white elephant.
And a cycle lane on this steep ramp? Really?
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5197268,-0.1859714,3a,75y,258.4h,81.34t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sApjSlNb-Beqkwm2sY9HP7A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
and this one?
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5149031,-0.227383,3a,75y,66.48h,73.12t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sPwTDBRgsLS1LESoZC71H6A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
This looks remarkably like a way of reducing the viaduct to two lanes earlier than at present to avoid queues building up on the approach to the two lane Marylebone flyover – the M4 bus lane was an earlier example of this.
@ Timbeau – this is a guess on my part but RBK&C have been notoriously unco-operative about cycle superhighways / cycle lanes on “their” roads. They have effectively scuppered CS9 which was supposed to run from Hounslow through Chiswick and Hammersmith and into the West End [1]. Their “belief” in shared space means they won’t give up roadspace to anyone and certainly not to segregated cycle lanes through Olympia, Kensington High Street and Knightsbridge. Therefore I suspect this proposal is the only way TfL can create something from the West as they control what happens on the A40 corridor. If I was cycling there is no way on earth you’d get me on an elevated lane on the A40 or anywhere else. I’m scared of heights for one but exposure to wind, rain and the other issues you cite would put me off completely.
One is therefore left to wonder whether TfL have come up with something so “ludicrous” that it then forces the debate back to “why can’t we have a facility at ground level?” Over to you Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea …..
[1] http://www.getwestlondon.co.uk/news/local-news/cycle-superhighway-9-go-ahead-7945187
@WW – over a dozen floating bus stops have been in place in Brighton for a couple of years now with no reported incidents according to a report by Mott McDonald. As always the devil is in the detail of the design such as care to ensure there are unobstructed sightlines.
@timbeau – I think the A40 route could be quite popular given the sheer distance with no interaction with motor traffic. In the Netherlands and elsewhere there are plenty of cycle routes over long bridges where it isn’t possible to get on or off for some distance. I commute by bike to central London from West London and the A40 could very well be quicker than a more direct route because of reduced stopping and starting. I’ll need to check what that gradient is to see if I’ll need my granny gears though.
Regarding RBK&C, I understand that plans for the cycle route through Hounslow and Hammersmith and Fulham are being developed but it looks like it will miss the deadline for consultations before the mayoral election purdah period. The section through Hammersmith gyratory did manage to make it out to consultation however. The route will basically follow the A315 and stop at the borough boundary near Olympia where cyclists will throw themselves at the mercy of RBK&C and the traffic of Kensington High St until they can pick up the East-West route at Hyde Park.
RBK&C were ever so proud of the remodelling of Kensington High St done a number of years ago and I think it will be a number of years before they are prepared to see it dug up again.
@Walthamstow Writer – in the TfL consultation for the A40 they mention they are looking at putting in screens to protect against crosswinds and spray although I’m guessing that these won’t be full enclosed…
You are right that TfL went for the A40 as they control it but the consultation for a watered down CS9 stopping at RBK&C should come out after the mayoral election.
ngh
[Unnecessary dramatics snipped. LBM]
Are there readily-available facts/statistics/publications about the Oxford failure?
If so, I think a lot of the rest of us could use them ….
Greg,
No – it was a DfT demonstration project for changing main roads into mixed priority ones approved in 2001 so there is very little if anything useful kicking around the internet on it. The Council latched on to it hoping that someone else would pay for what they already wanted, unfortunately it didn’t work like that… The council ignored the local advice they already had as it couldn’t be used in way that fitted a standard DfT “consultation” as DfT were picking up most of the bill their process and items teehy wanted to try had to be followed (and in a hurry to get the cash). Sound familiar?
The core issue was that the road was too narrow so doing anything was an inefficient use of money.
They had to undo lots of it including most recently some of the cycle “safety” measures at the Plain roundabout because the traffic (especially buses) could never leave Cowley Road in rush hour and the County Council couldn’t afford more buses etc. (c.f. TfL requiring more buses because of 20mph limits / congestion in London).
The adjacent London Rd (road to Headington, A40 and the coach route) was done over a decade later and did thinks very differently (similar to TfL’s best schemes).
@ngh
Cowley Road in 2008
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.7443076,-1.229013,3a,75y,116.68h,70.38t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s47k5c8s_0ABSBr0mIaEimA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Note the “give way to bus passengers” lines
London Road last year
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.7618925,-1.2040762,3a,75y,260.94h,67.32t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1saMxKfHVcMh8YW9vkBM0ydw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Note the young sapling in the middle of the cycle lane on one side, and the “priority to side road” on the other
Certainly different. But is it any better?
@WW & @R953
Please note that bus boarders and floating bus stops are two different things:
A floating bus stop is one where the cycle lane is diverted to run behind the stop, i.e. the passengers have to cross the cycle lane to get to the stop. At these the bus passenger alights directly onto the pavement at the stop. He or she then crosses the cycle lane to the rest of the pavement.
At the proposed bus boarders, the bus stop is on the main pavement. The cycle lane is raised to pavement level for the length of one bus only at the stop. The bus passengers get off directly onto the bike lane. Bearing in mind the lack of any clear sightline until one is out of the bus door, it is practically impossible to avoid stepping into the path of a moving bike. The design is rendered more hazardous because even if cyclists choose to ride in the single main traffic lane, they are unable to pass the bus on the offside. Faster cyclists will therefore veer onto the shared area to pass the stopped bus. As neither the passengers nor bus drivers have a clear view of what is immediately behind the bus, collision is made more likely. This is before you take into account the fact that motorcycles and mopeds (eg pizza delivery) will be tempted to use the bus boarder area as well. Who will stop them, or will there be cameras at every bus stop?
Bear in mind that bus passengers include a higher proportion of groups such as the elderly, disabled and visually impaired, who are concentrating on stepping down without injury, the likelihood of spotting approaching bikes is even smaller.
Who will make sure that cyclists make due allowance for blind bus passengers who might step into their path?
Finally, it is only a matter of time before the first fast cyclist comes a cropper when the wheelchair ramp is extended into his path at night. Will his next of kin or carers have to sue the driver, the bus operator, TfL or the borough?
By the way, none of those videos seem to refer to bus boarders. As for expecting the general public on foot or occasional bus users to change their habits in any reasonable timescale, good luck…
It is not unlikely that these shared use bus boarders will eventually come to be viewed in the same way as open platforms, just too dangerous to be allowed. (Although you could put an extra crew member on each bus to ensure that disembarking passengers are safely conducted to the pavement – I suggest that they could be called “conductors”).
@ Nameless – I agree with you that if a “bus boarder” means sticking a cycle path on the footpath then this doesn’t sound like a good idea.
In general I dislike “shared use” paths as they aren’t good for people on foot or on bikes unless the volumes of people using the path are quite low.
This bus boarder notion, as described here, seems, as they say in other parts, just “too daft to laugh at”. In fact it seems so daft to me that I can’t avoid the feeling that I am missing something.
When a tram used to stop (at a tram stop) away from the kerb, vehicles were explicitly banned from passing them on the left (which was permitted if they were not at a tram stop). This was when I learnt to drive, when the rules were vacuous away from Blackpool and Douglas, but had to be learnt anyway.
It seems to me that something similar should apply to these boarders. Cycles should be banned from using the cycle track to pass the bus on the left for as long as it is stopped there. Of course, if that was the rule, 100% observance would be impossible, given that both the current prime minister and a possible future one (who happens to be London Mayor) have form for riding through red lights. (And apologising afterwards, of course). I seem to be drifting off the point…
@R953
The cycle lane is at street level, ” lightly segregated ” from the remaining carriageway by raised reflective marker studs called Armadillos (‘oes?). However at most bus stops, there will be a ramp raising the lane to pavement level. After the stop there will be a ramp down to road level again. The cycle lanes on each side of the road will be sufficient to reduce the rest of the road to one lane in each direction. If there is any oncoming traffic at all, nothing will be able to overtake a stopped bus. This system will be applied over several miles, broken only by areas with shops or major junctions, which have different hazards.
There are numerous other faults with the scheme about to be rubber stamped by Enfield Council’s cabinet but this aspect is the glaring howler.
The council has proved totally immune to reasoned discussion.
@ Malcolm
I wholly agree with you but very much regret that, just because a scheme is patently and lethally idiotic, doesn’t mean that a council in thrall to a fashionable and vociferous lobby won’t bust a gut to implement it at all costs (actually £30 million of the Mayor’s money if you include the other schemes at various stages in the pipeline).
Nameless
Given & assuming what you’ve said is 100% correct…
How long do you give it before it has to be rowed-back on?
Or do we think that one or two vulnerable pedestrians have to be seriously injured, maybe killed, before sanity returns?
@GT
I don’t think that any amendments will be made until a bus operator finds itself subject to a legal claim where a driver has been accused of carelessly opening the doors and allowing someone to climb down, or putting the wheelchair ramp down, into the path of a speeding bike. Until the dispute commences, no one will realise that drivers actually have no view of the road immediately behind their buses. Even where there is a window, this is usually above a cyclist’s head height. As soon as the insurers realise there is an inherent problem and start to raise premiums and / or claims excesses, the operators will pull the plug. Of course this will take a couple of years after the first few deaths and life changing injuries. Unfortunately, the earliest victims are likely to be elderly and of limited means with no one to make a claim on their behalf.
Until then, all who criticise the scheme are roundly but erroneously condemned for their perceived hatred of cyclists and addiction to the use of “two-ton carbon belching killing machines”.
I would go on but my detailed objections to the rest of the scheme ran to several pages.
I also suggested leaving the roads as they were but reducing the A105 speed limit to a properly enforced 20 mph would be a much cheaper and more effective way to encourage cycling. However, this provides no glory for cycling campaigners and little material for council officers’ and consultants’ CV’s.
A far as accuracy is concerned, I am just using the published scheme consultation details and statements that there will be a few amendments, such as allowing ambulances and Dial-a-Ride to stop on the cycle lanes. We won’t know the final details until the scheme has been approved.As far as bus design, driver and passenger behaviour are concerned, I actually use buses around here. Many of the proponents of the scheme clearly don’t and they don’t want to know about it. I am willing to bet that they have neither seen a blind man get off a bus nor seen the wheelchair ramp in use. As for an old dear struggling with a Sholley, forget it.
And none of the publicity has pictures of the scheme after dark and in the rain.
One final brief observation – the scheme drawings indicated that all provision for the 125 bus (4-5 bph each way) to terminate anywhere in Winchmore Hill or Palmers Green will be removed.
@ Malcolm et al
Does anyone have an early post war copy of the Highway Code which no doubt referred to best driving practice and laws concerning tram stops? Even if the law mentioned above no longer applies, the recommendation still could have some legal effect. I wonder if the DfT are open to suggestion for new rules.
Here is a floating bus stop at Stratford High Street. Note the fact that the cycle lane is lower than the pavement except directly behind the bus shelter. Note also the ponding on the cycle path – the contractors had to come back and fix the drainage! I leave it to the reader to decide if there are any trip hazards associated with this design.
A slightly different design in Hoe St Walthamstow as part of the Mini Holland works.
Nameless says “ no one will realise that drivers actually have no view of the road immediately behind their buses“.
That is widely realised by anyone who has ever driven, or observed the driving of any large vehicle or even a small van. It is not really a problem (apart from reversing) because if any bike or other moving item is going to pass the bus, it has to be on one side or the other. This fact is used whenever a driver intends to pull away, change lanes etc.
This is only a small niggle, however, and does not invalidate any of the rest of your heartfelt observations. To add the supervision and care of alighting passengers to the driver’s many other responsibilities does seem highly inappropriate.
Malcolm, when I said no one, I was thinking about the people responsible for planning and implementing the scheme.
It would become a problem if the driver has not noticed that a bike is now following close behind the bus and has only decided to use the cycle lane and shared space just before the bus doors are opened.
This addition to the driver’ responsibilities may seem inappropriate but is likely to be assumed retrospectively after a collision. It must have been someone’s fault and the bus operator is the most immediate insured party to lodge a claim against, especially if the cyclist has picked himself up and legged it while the driver is calling an ambulance.
“Driver Smith, you must answer the question or be found in contempt – did you check to see that it was completely safe to open the doors and let this frail, arthritic, hard of hearing, partially sighted old woman off? Yes or no.”
So far the bus boarder in Royal College Street is the only one I am aware of:
https://goo.gl/maps/567k15qyhM92
I think these designs would be fine if the cycle path was fenced, with short gaps in the fence before and after the bus stop to allow people to get to and from the bus stop.
@Nameless: As soon as the insurers realise there is an inherent problem and start to raise premiums and / or claims excesses, the operators will pull the plug
If a legal principle were ever established that bus companies were liable for injuries to passengers after leaving the bus, in any circumstances, they would be lobbying like mad for a change in the law – and in any case the Court of Appeal has already held that “to hold bus companies liable would be a considerable burden and would be a considerable extension of the law of negligence that would be difficult to justify” in a similar case.
The cycle lanes on each side of the road will be sufficient to reduce the rest of the road to one lane in each direction. If there is any oncoming traffic at all, nothing will be able to overtake a stopped bus.
Herein, I suspect, lies the nub of the objection. On the other hand, this means that bus flow is likely to be much better than on roads where the bus has to pull in to a bus stop surrounded by parked cars, then gets stuck waiting for a gap in the traffic before it can pull out.
[Snip. Repetition. PoP]
WW
Everybody – please look again at the second picture that WW linked to?
Note the completely “level” road-exit (Grove Rd) on the right of the picture, the cyclist swerving out into the road & the much greater ability of any wheeled vehicle, mechanically powered or otherwise, to simply “roll” along the pavement.
@Greg
I don’t see the raised exit from the side street as a problem, (away from the junctions, all streets seem to have normal kerbs) and the give way lines are in the right place (before crossing the cycle lane) although the Astra has encroached beyond them. This is probably because of the tree in the planter to the left of the cyclist, which will have obstructed the driver’s sightline, resulting in the conflict you noted – it will be far worse when it has grown to the same size as the tree on the nearer side of the junction. The planter also makes it difficult for traffic turning left into the side street to negotiate the turn.
To go back to the original topic…. I see the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA) have lost their case for a Judicial Review of the Cycle Superhighway schemes.
The LTDA claimed that TfL should have obtained planning permission but Mrs Justice Patterson rejected the application.
The LTDA have now had applications for Judicial Review rejected for the cycle superhighway scheme and redevelopment of Tottenham Court Rd so they seem to be spending a lot of their members money on QCs…
It may be of interest to note that the LTDA has just lost its claim for judicial review of the decision to build the East-West Cycle Superhighway: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2016/233.html
@Reynolds 953- probably the thick end of £0.5m!
@Anonymous of 1218 – why not read the post of 1206 first?
Re Reynolds 953,
I suspect LDTA members tend to do quite well out of Barristers in general so you could view it as bit of loyalty being repaid (particularly as the judge doesn’t appear to have found anything in LTDA’s favour at all.)
Network Rail will probably be handing copies out to various individuals for are trying to JR them at the moment…
@Ian J
1. I don’t think you are actually off the bus until you have let go of the handrail. Ever watched someone blind getting off? Similarly a mother might be off but the front wheels of her baby buggy are still on the bus.
2. I’m not sure about this improved bus flow – parking is already strictly controlled on the existing Urban Clearway and most drivers give way to the bigger buses pulling out. What happens when a bus gets caught in the tailback from the stopped bus in front? And if there is a slow moving obstruction such as a dustcart?
So, as I understand it:
All the works are covered by the Highways Act 1980 which specifically exempts highway work from requiring planning permission.
As planning permission was not required, the issue of whether it was breached does not arise.
(and now the really damning bit)
Even if the claim had been successful, there is a question of what remedy should be applied (if any)
The answer would be none because:
i) they left it far too late to bring the review and a lot of public money had been spent not only on the works themselves but in co-ordinating the works with major events and other works
ii) breaches of planning permission is something that is up to a local authority (or other appropriate authority) to pursue. The implication is that even if the LTDA had won on every other point, as Anne Robinson would have said, they leave with nothing (except possibly having got their costs back).
Someone with a better understanding please correct me if I am wrong.
JR means Judicial Review
@PoP: not sure if it’s relevant, but when ordinary people are found to have breached planning permission requirements, they can be required to re-instate things to how they were (demolishing extensions, etc) and if they fail, it can be done for them and billed to them. So in principle there was a remedy which might have been enforced. All irrelevant, just as you say, planning permission not being required anyway.
It also seems slightly odd for the court to bring in the fact that it was public money. If public money is misused, the matter doesn’t normally go unresponded-to on those grounds. (Surcharges may arise though).
@PoP: my interpretation after having skimmed the judgement wasn’t that the work was exempt from requiring planning permission because it was covered by the Highways Act, but that: “the defendant [TfL] … did not err in law and was not irrational in reaching its conclusion that there was no significant adverse environmental effect from the proposals as a whole.”
And because of this: “planning permission is not required for phase one of the EWCS as a whole”.
However: “That is not to say that it [planning permission] may not be required…. for other cycle superhighways or for parts of them in the future. Each scheme will need to be judged on its own facts and circumstances.”
So my interpretation was that TfL followed proper process and carried out a rational assessment of the environment impact and concluded that planning permission wasn’t required.
The LTDA clearly disagrees about the degree of impact but “exercise of planning judgment… is not for the court.”
Re PoP,
Correct and on ii) I would add that it was also stated that the Local Authorities concerned did not believe that there had been a planning breach therefore the only theoretical chance of a successful JR for LTDA aims would be against the LAs to change their minds and pursue planning breach(es) and not TfL!
At least the LTDA don’t tend to be as persistent in appealing as a certain Mr Whitby (see the planning
nightmaresissues part of the Hendy report)Malcolm,
You have rather missed the point and, as someone who has notified the council about a neighbour doing something detrimental to me without planning permission, spoken at the planning subcommittee etc. etc., I can tell you that it is effectively only the council that can enforce a planning decision (retrospectively made in my case).
So much as I (or the LTDA) may rant and wish to take remedial action, that is not possible, all the aggrieved party can do is hope that the local authority will take action. The don’t do this unconditionally on your behalf, they do it because they too (or rather, the councillors) are also concerned about the breach.
The issue about public money (or private money come to that) is about proportionality. If this money has been spent on some thing that has been consulted on etc. etc. is it really in the public interest for a ruling to require a remedy that involves undoing all the work already done?
I understand there was a last minute legal attempt to stop the works at London Bridge a few years ago and any delay would have delayed the project for a year. The problem was that to hear the case in full would take it beyond the first major blockade. My understanding was that the ruling was that the objector better have a pretty solid obvious case to have any hope of causing such a drastic, expensive and disruptive delay. As the claimant did not have a compelling easily decided argument it was determined that the works could go ahead. After that it came pretty irrelevant as to what the judgment would be if the case went ahead.
Reynolds 953,
As I say I am not an expert but my understanding is that, even if planning permission is not required, a planning authority is required to act rationally. That is to say not that you have to agree with their decision but that is was made on a rational basis and not an arbitrary illogical one. Hence the importance of Environment Reports etc to show the the evidence has been gathered and a decision has been made consistent with the parameters for making a decision. If TfL look at the evidence and rationally form one conclusion and the LTDA forms a different conclusion then that is just tough for the LTDA. They have a high hurdle to climb in, not to put too fine a point on it, showing basically that TfL was off its rocker.
Again, very willing to be corrected by someone who knows better than me.
PoP
I think you are right and in the case of breach of planning permission, the council must determine if it is in the public interest to take enforcement action and could decide simply to do nothing. This would be unusual because it would set a precedent, but it’s not impossible.
ngh
I assume you meant
THIS REPORT ??Fascinating skim-read, shows what a lot of work really is in the pipeline …
[Hendy Report (PDF). PoP]
As regards the Aristotle lane case ( P40 of the Hendy report ) well, NR got what they asked for.
If they had proposed a bridge, with proper access from the word “go”, I suspect it would have been finished a lot sooner ….
Quinlet
It happens fairly frequently in this neck of the woods. The planning authority often decides that retrospective action is not necessary.
Paying Guest,
Indeed. A further consideration that a judge may take into account is whether it would have made any difference and, presumably in this case, it would not have done so. So a technical breach for failing to provide an adequate environment statement for the long term noise impact of an extension to a cemetery would probably not be enough to prevent the development from taking place for example. If a ground drainage and flood assessment and an investigation into the possible contamination of watercourses had not been done that would be a different matter.
All this really does wonder if the LTDA thought this through. Lose and you are out of pocket, win and you can say “we were vindicated” but all you have done is jumped the first hurdle. In fact even if you win, you have now shown to TfL (as if they did not already know) that Judical Reviews may not be a major problem even if TfL loses the judgment – though ethically TfL should not be thinking on that basis.
Re Greg,
I was thinking more of Mr Whitby (ex ICE president) vs NR now on the Nth* court case on the Ordsall Chord in Manchester having previously tried to derail the TWA order numerous times before even resorting to using the courts.
*Where N is probably heading towards 6 at the moment and NR have finally sent in the excavators.
Aristotle Lane: Au contraire, there was originally opposition from other locals who didn’t want one let alone with proper access (closure preferable to them) as it would have over looked their gardens more etc. so no easy choice for NR they would have had opposition either way so went down the middle and still ran into problems!
(On further investigation the allotment users were found to be using a metal rimmed wheels on their wooden wheel barrows as well as dragging massive 4 wheeled trolleys across a 4 track pedestrian only level crossing so could not actually cross “safely” to begin with…)
You can see why NR want to get rid of as many as possible especially with CR2 etc.!
The example in Royal College Street by Nameless is horribly dangerous for anyone getting off the bus. If the cycle lane could not go behind the shelter, it should have terminated before the bus stop so the cyclists have to wait behind the bus.
@PoP: I wonder if the LTDA could have been encouraged (and funded..?) by Canary Wharf Group whose opposition to the EW scheme is mentioned in the article.
If so, maybe Canary Wharf Group thought it was worth one last swing of the bat.
However for the LTDA, it looks like they will be opposing every major cycling scheme (they have already spoken out about the extension to the EW scheme)
As you say, the judgement just confirms what TfL should do to remain squeaky clean when it comes to subsequent projects so has probably made TfL’s job easier.
Reynolds 953,
Intriguing thought about Canary Wharf Group. It would make some sense because the cost per member of Judicial Review would be quite substantial and surely the LTDA can’t afford to fund all the Judicial Reviews they are seeking?
It hadn’t occurred to me that a Judicial Review judgment is effectively a user’s guide to how to avoid being subject to a Judicial Review about the same issue in future. It would be very hard to overturn a previous Judicial Review judgment.
@ngh
Presumably Mr Whitby is now at risk of being declared a vexatious litigant, which would leave him open to all manner of more punitive costs and other sanctions. I suspect the LTDA, though, would have to do quite a lot more (unsuccessfully) to be in the same boat.
PoP: just on JRs and black cabs, this isn’t the LTDA, but another group of cabbies have a crowdfunding campaign to raise £600k for a Judicial Review of TfL granting a license to Uber… They have raised £133k to date.
http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/action-for-cabbies/
I worry that some people think that because they don’t like something, these are grounds for a Judicial Review…..
Coming back to cycling, & partly from the conversations in the “Blue Posts” last night …
It would seem that the various local councils who are involved in “mini-holland” schemes are now regarding the latter as a matter of personal virility (a.k.a. “willy-waving”) & that no amount of reasoned criticism will divert them from their chosen paths, & that getting them to admit that any part of their wonderful (consultants) schemes could possibly be wrong will be met with deaf ears.
It will take a long time to undo the harm that results.
Incidentally, it also seems to be a common thread to Enfield, Waltham Forest & Kingston that the consultants ( & for that matter the cycling campaigners) are none of them locals, with appreciation of each particular district’s special peculiarities, thus annoying the local residents even further ….
@Reynolds 953 – fortunately, the exorbitant costs of a JR act as a filter, otherwise – you are right- the courts would be perpetually clogged with the disgruntled. (That syndrome is a variant of the “I didn’t agree with the coroner/courts so I demand a full public inquiry – at someone else’s expense…).
@ Greg – interestingly the Assembly Plenary meeting went on to discuss “Motions” after the Mayor and Commissioner vanished. One such (Green Party) motion was about the cycling improvements and wanting to ensure momentum is maintained as the Mayoralty and Assembly are re-elected in May. The Conservative member Andrew Boff stood up to amend the motion but not because it was about cycling. They all love cycling now. Roger Evans seconded the amendment. The problem was the consultation process or lack of it. Ditto the “arrogance” and “closed ears” of those promoting the schemes. There were several examples quoted (not LBWF that I recall) and it was even said that cyclists themselves were being ignored if they suggested changes to the schemes. It was quite telling that cycling itself was lauded as an eminently good thing by all the parties on the Assembly but there was very significant concern about how things are being done. Needless to say the amendment was lost but it is worth watching the webcast (towards the end) to hear the debate. I did think about the contributor here (Nameless) who has commented about the Enfield scheme when I was watching the webcast.
Graham H
Unfortunately, it was probably a London transport tragedy that started the push towards JR’s
Google for “Marchioness disaster”
@Greg Tingey – the feeling in the Department at the time was that it was LB Bromley and Fares fair that really lit the blue touch paper -and then Ken himself seized on the ploy only too eagerly.
Graham H,
I think Ken was more sinned against than sinned (Fares Fair, Kennington residents against the congestion charge, Braithwaite Arches).
n.b. Not sure if Braithwaite Arches was a judicial review but it is the same sort of thing (I am unhappy so I will delay things for everyone else).
@PoP – initially, yes, later when we took LT off him, no.
I went for my first ride along the new EW superhighway over the weekend – I found it very impressive. It was well used with lots of people on Boris bikes and I saw several guided tourist groups on bikes as well.
I used to commute along that route and the many traffic lights provided an opportunity for a bit of a rest… no longer. There are a few bike-specific lights but I think I got green for all of them so it was a bit of a reminder that I need to get fitter!
I did have a near miss with a foreign tourist near Westminster Pier when he stepped onto the path looking completely the wrong direction. However a saving grace for the tourist would have been a collision with me would be preferable to a collision with a car or a taxi.
@Reynolds 953
As a regular user of the NS highway I would agree with most of this – there is a green wave but the phasing of the lights to join or leave the highway at mid points leaves something to be desired: I timed it as 4 and a half minutes between getting a green at Queen Victoria Street and finally being able to cross Blackfriars Bridge, having been held at two further sets of lights on the way. The intersection at the south end of the bridge, (where the new cycle superhighway intersects and National Cycle Network route 4!), is also extremely badly laid out.
One thing I have noticed is that the traffic lights inevitably tend to bunch cyclists up, resulting in a veritable peloton when the lights change, all jostling for position as the fastest cyclists will not necessarily be at the front. And, unlike on the Tour de France, there will be a similar peloton coming the other way!
@ Timbeau – I thought the new cycle lanes were supposed to “de-macho” cycling? Talk of pelotons suggests we need to put everyone on Dutch style heavy bikes to even out the pace. 😉 Can’t recall seeing pelotons on Dutch cycle paths nor experiencing them when I used their paths many years ago when on holiday. Seems the UK cycle trade is largely made up of getting people to buy ever more expensive, glitzy bikes and loads and loads of “kit”. On the odd occasions I look at websites for cycle shops I have to make sure I’m sitting down when I look at the prices for new bikes these days. The complete antithesis to how it is in Denmark and the Netherlands where bikes are simply workaday basic transport.
WW
Only too true!
Dutch & German bikes, with which I am familiar (as lent-rides) mostly have a dynamo light with capacitors for “standby”. Often made by Shimano – & almost impossible to get in this country, presumably for “fashion” reasons
@Walthamstow Writer – like all consumer products, bike manufacturers are compelled to add the latest gizmos and make high blown marketing claims to persuade the public to buy the latest model…
I don’t actually think bike prices have gone up any more than inflation however at any price point you’ll get more for your money than a few years ago. Looking at the website of a high street retailer, I can see perfectly decent, new, non-sale bikes from mainstream brands starting at just over £200.
OK, they come without accessories needed to make them practical for daily use (lights, locks, mudguards…) and selling these add-ons make more money for retailers but you could still get on the road for less than a, say, zone 1-3 three month travel card.
This is a new bike as well. There are plenty of sources of good second hand bikes, even police auctions (although Gumtree and Brick Lane Market are notorious for stolen goods…)
WW re: ‘pelotons’. I agree that they do things differently in the Netherlands. Some progress has been made towards making heavy bikes widely available in London, thanks to the efforts of the previous Mayor and a couple of banks. Here in darkest Battersea I do see a few Dutch style bikes.
Re: UK cycle trade: the current situation seems to be a combination of late model capitalism, the absence of a domestic manufacturing base and suppliers going where the demand is (& profits).
I wonder whether the fashion among the young for gear less (“fixie”) bikes is a backlash?
One advantage of the ‘cycle only’ boxes at general traffic lights is that they allow for a bit of sorting by ability at the start.
Reynolds 953: yes, and those in regular employment with an enlightened employer can also benefit from a cycle purchase scheme to spread the cost over time and get a (small) income tax benefit.
I fear though that the chief beneficiaries of that scheme are people buying unobtainium frames and tricking them out with the latest and greatest wheels and gears etc. And their suppliers of course.
@Old Buccaneer – I think one of the reasons for the popularity of fixies is they are popular amongst bike messengers because there is not much to go wrong. Some people like to mimic the “urban cool” of couriers. They’ve even got a name for them – fakengers.
The cycle to work scheme has a limit of £1000 and the true zealot MAMIL wouldn’t be seen dead riding something that cheap!
Reynolds 953: oh, the joys of divisionism*. If it’s a practical, “good enough” solution why be rude about it? I wear Levis but I’m not a cowboy, gold miner or fashion victim.
Other reasons for choosing a fixie might include: less to steal; no need to faff about with gears at all those traffic lights (assuming you have stopped for the red light in the first place, of course); budget constraint. I suspect ‘less to go wrong’ appeals to professional and amateur (‘fakenger’) riders alike. Zealots are another matter, here as elsewhere.
Cycle to work: GBP 1000 sounds like the right upper limit then, good.
LBM: MAMIL = Middle Aged Man In Lycra
*I appreciate that you are merely describing the phenomenon not necessarily approving of it or participating in it.
@old buccaneer
Unfortunately too many people don’t know how to use the cycle boxes and instead of all moving up to the advanced stop line (where you can be seen even from the elevated position of a lorry cab stopped at the main stop line), they queue up in line astern on the left of the box, blocking the entrance to the box for latecomers who are then bottled up in the killing zone on the left of said lorry.
And this is assuming the box hasn’t got a taxi squatting in it.
The pelotons I refer to are not made up exclusively of the lycra brigade. While the lights are red a heterogeneous queue of cyclists, from bromptons to Boris bikes to zirconium racers, builds up (and as cycle lanes are narrower than normal cycle boxes they have to wait on line astern) are all released at once, jockeying for position as the differences in power and transmission manifest themselves (a Boris bike has such low gearing even I can outdrag a racer over the first twenty feet or so!) So you have maybe a dozen or more bikes setting off as the lights change, two or three abreast, meeting a similar group coming the other way as their lights have just turned green too!
Finally something I can comment on with expertise! The cycle super highways are brilliant.
some oddities remain….
the hight of the sleeping policeman on the embankment is quite entertaining – more suited to BMX than racing bikes. To me it seems unnecessary (never seen anything quite like it), but i imagine we’re stuck with them until we can prove we won’t run pedestrians over..
Crossing the Vauxhall gyratory without the cars could end up being the single most successful intervention. Only gripe is the shared space at the between the exit of the bike lane on the south of vauxhall bridge and the crossing is a bit too much pedestrian and bike conflict – i’ve not seen anything happen – just feels like its not as well designed as other bits. I couldn’t tell from the plans if this will get sorted out when the broader ‘end state’ design for Vauxhall is achieved.
Bike Bling – mostly driven by the adoption of carbon fibre which made it possible to engineer bikes to be stiffer, lighter, more aerodynamic and more comfortable – all at the same time! The engineering, materials and performance of bikes of the 1990’s have more in common with the bikes of the 1920s&30s than those of today.
The unspoken truth behind the strava fitness posturing, is that the main contributing factor in the early 21st century emergence of the MAMIL/MAWIL is our bikes are just much, much easier to ride fast on than previous generations’!
Timbeau: better five minutes late in this world than thirty years early in the next.
It sounds to me as though the cyclists are better off in their own space rather than shared space, which was kind of the point.
I can’t immediately see a solution* to the advanced box issues you describe. I wonder whether stopping before entering the space between the kerb and the hypothetical lorry would increase your life expectancy, though.
If the advanced box issues are that bad, perhaps we should abolish the boxes?
*sensible, broadly applicable, widely accepted by road users.
@OB
Indeed, if I can see that I can’t get into the box because someone is blocking the end of the cycle, I will wait behind the very -definitely -not – hypothetical lorry.
Cycle boxes, if used properly, are a very important safety measure, ensuring that a lorry etc stops far enough back that a cyclist can be seen.
I don’t know the answer to the grand Prix start when the lights go green on the cycle path. There seems to be much more variation in acceleration between different costs than with motor vehicles.
What is noticeable is that a much higher proportion of cyclists actually do stop at red cycle lights: maybe 2% don’t, where it is nearer 10% at general traffic lights (still a minority, but they are the ones that get noticed)
@Old Buccaneer/Timbeau – Advanced stop lines and boxes for bikes are really only of some benefit when there aren’t many cyclists. Once numbers increase, the box and the filter lane fill up and cyclists are placed in the very place they are meant to avoid. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a truck hang back because there are cyclists in the filter lane.
Consequently Advanced Stop Lines aren’t common practise in the Netherlands.
@Hayes Cyclists – I know what you mean about the speed humps on the Embankment… at least they are sinusoidal so OK to cycle over. In contrast the Royal Parks have installed some rumble strips on shared use paths in Hyde Park and these are awful to cycle over at any speed. As a result, the path now resembles a cyclocross course with bikes scooting off to the side to avoid the strips and, predictably, the grass is the loser in that encounter. Maybe once the EW route through the park is completed the paths will be used less.
@Greg Tingey – until a couple of years ago it was compulsory to have dynamo lights on non-sports bikes in Germany. The Germans obviously didn’t trust batteries. Dynamo hubs and lights are quite pricey with retail prices ranging from about £80 to £160 for a hub and then about £50 for front and rear lights.
timbeau thanks for that.
Kind of leaves me with two further questions:
1 what more, if anything, the authorities can or should do about people who ride into what you call the ‘killing zone’?
I assume some of them do it deliberately and that some education and enforcement is under way at present.
2 how the authorities would or should react if 8-10pc of another class of road user (motorcyclists, van drivers, lorry drivers, bus drivers, horse riders) ignored instructions to stop?
Again, I’m assuming a small percentage of cycling people behave that way on most occasions rather than most people behaving that way on, say, 10-15 pc of occasions.
timbeau on variation in acceleration:
I guess there are a number of factors:
1 more variation in behaviour among cyclists (“power cyclist” (is that a thing?) vs MAMIL (never seen a MAWIL, but don’t deny their existence; do they actually behave like MAMILs in ordinary life as opposed to competitive events? I’ve no idea…) vs novice vs the unfit occasional cyclist, the latter two perhaps thinking more about arriving in one piece than posting a personal best on the internet)
2 more variation in power to weight ratios
3 more variation in cycle performance from stationary (eg between the bicycle as sports equipment and the trusty Dutch steed), though I note what you said about the gearing on bank-sponsored bikes.
4 motor vehicles (other than motor cycles, of course) have less room for manoeuvre off the start line.
Re Old Buccaneer,
I’d also add my other half’s observation that the acceleration characteristics of folding bikes like Bromptons being very different too with only 1 large chain ring and a small number of gears being built arround cruising speed rather than quick off the mark. (Torque delivery at low rpm being the issue). Once they get going they can shift.
MAWILs certainly do exist round my way.
Another factor in acceleration off the line is manifest it one junction I use a lot, where one exit leads to a steep hill. Those making for that exit have a particular incentive to make a fast start to get some momentum for the hill, and also to avoid being balked by slower cyclists before they get there and having to rub some of the momentum up in the brakes.
The area I refer to as the “killing zone” is the space immediately to the left of the leading vehicle at the lights. Often marked as a cycle lane for cyclists to filter into the cycle box, but not a safe place to be once the lights have changed.
Here is an example of what I mean
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5120208,-0.103407,3a,37.5y,254.27h,85.85t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1st28WmV5nr61Pasy0C1mxMQ!2e0!5s20151001T000000!7i13312!8i6656
The lorry driver waiting at the front would have little chance of seeing a cyclist waiting in the cycle lane beside him if the cyclists exit into the actual box is blocked by other cyclists.
I’ve started cycling on the Cycle Superhighway from Clapham North to Edgware Road, via Stockwell and Vauxhall Bridge. I feel that the cycle lane is great across the bridge if you approach directly south, but poorly sign-posted in terms of actually getting onto it.
The other problem is that if you use the cycle crossing on the south side of the bridge, you can be waiting AGES to cross and may as well use the more dangerous road. The same problem happens on the stretch of cycle lights on Vauxhall Bridge Road. They’re actually quite inconvenient and add maybe 5 minutes to my journey time if I happen to arrive just as they go red.
I’m still trying to decide whether having the separate and safer path is worth the extra journey time! It’s good to hear that the other CSH have more green waves though! It suggests it can be fixed and altered!
@Old Buccaneer/Timbeau – engineering beats education and enforcement. At the moment the message regarding Advanced Stop Lines appears to be somewhat confused: “yes, I know we’ve painted a white line and a bike symbol on the road but you sometimes shouldn’t cycle there”.
And as I mentioned, when have you ever seen a driver hang back because of cyclists in the filter lane?
I know it is easier said than done but depending on volume of cyclists, ASLs should really be phased out and junctions should separate motor vehicles and cyclists by time and/or space.
@Reynolds 953
“engineering beats education and enforcement”
Quite, but when it takes over four minutes to negotiate one multi-stage junction (from the first set of lights going green to the third and last set doing so) is it surprising that some cyclists will choose to mix it with the motor traffic which has a clear run once the first (and only) set of lights relevant to them go green?
Cyclists going through red lights. Pedestrians do the same, and it does seem odd at “toucan” crossings that there is a double standard – pedestrians may legally cross the road against the red man but cyclists may not.
Cyclists (and pedestrians) cross against the lights at their own risk, of course, and the potential consequences of a cyclist crossing against the lights are rarely as severe for other road users as they would be if a motorist jumped the lights. Indeed, in a collision between a cyclist and a pedestrian, other things being equal, the cyclist is quite likely to come off worse because of the higher speed (s)he is travelling at.
But rules is rules, and it is only a (highly visible) minority of cyclists who flout them.
@anon
The Blackfriars Bridge cycleway is similar – great for through traffic, but a pig to get on or off at intermediate points – notably the intersection with National Cycle Route 4 at the south end of the bridge.
Even the direction signs are inconsistent and confusing, with this sort of thing:
http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/ea8d2ef8dc72470e8912e43f5b783e8e/cycle-superhighway-sign-with-directions-to-wandsworth-high-street-dbt8g9.jpg
http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/dbec102701a44260bf1774a95191cdd2/london-england-signs-for-cycle-super-highway-cs7-c4n30r.jpg
(NCN signs use miles but LCS signs use minutes!)
OB
Nowhere nearly as bad as “cyclists” (where we are assuming 5-10% ignore red lights) but far too many car drivers also ignore red traffic lights. Even at 1-2%, given the mass + velocity involved it’s damned dangerous.
I have not taken a survey, but I suspect that at least the 1% for cars, and quite possibly the 5% for cyclists, are an overestimate. But even if the real proportions were only a fifth of the those figures, they would both be cause for concern. Of course, both figures will vary a lot with time of day and day of week.
“engineering beats …” evidence, please. Extra marks will be awarded for cost-benefit and value for money analysis.
Apologies: I’ve spent years supporting evidence based policy making (which beats policy based evidence making, in my view). Don’t discuss.
timbeau re “crossing at own risk”: but if bad stuff happens, others also bear the costs of the poor decision. Such as: NHS;friends and family; employers …
Compare & contrast ‘one unders’, level crossing incidents …
@Old Buccaneer – if you’d like evidence, then take a trip to the Netherlands where ASLs are practically unknown. That is because they engineer junctions to keep people on bikes and vehicles separated by time and/or space rather than “magic” paint. In the case of ASLs, education would seem to mean teaching people to cycle where the bike sign is painted except when they shouldn’t and what laws are there to enforce?
As for cost benefit and value for money analysis for road changes, that’s often just dodgy calculations where a minutes delay for a driver multiplied by millions of drivers equals economic ruin for the nation 😉
Reynolds 953: thanks. It seems to me that using time as well as space is central to finding a better modus vivendi between classes of road users in London; difficult in a congested, time-poor city.
@ Malcolm – I’ve no source of evidence and can’t quote a percentage. All I will say is that as traffic speeds have fallen and congestion has worsened that people’s patience evaporates. It causes everyone to take / consider taking additional risks – going through red lights, making a mad dash across a road to get a bus, taxi drivers pulling U turns, Uber drivers going the wrong way down streets. I’ve been on more than one bus in the last year that’s taking a chance on amber lights that were turning red. Endless examples on social media of driver and cyclist stupidity / selfishness. Stressful travelling conditions and time pressures don’t help anyone. The latest examples of “not paying attention” are motorists and vans driving up / parking on the new cycle superhighways – especially the N-S one! One poor van driver got the wrong end of Baroness Jenny Jones (Green Party Peer / former AM) who was cycling to the House of Lords and came across a van in the CSH. 😉
On red light jumping by cyclist, TfL did a survey on this but it isn’t particularly recent, dating back to 2007. It would be interesting to know if behaviour has changed.
http://content.tfl.gov.uk/traffic-note-8-cycling-red-lights.pdf
There are probably similar surveys on motor vehicles jumping red lights but I couldn’t find any from a cursory search.
There is a flaw in the methodology of that survey leading to a misleading conclusion in that survey. It says that people are most likely to run a red light when going straight ahead. But that is not what the figures say. It says that OF THOSE WHO RUN A RED, the majority are going straight on (and very few turn right). This is counterintuitive as you would expect left turners to be the most likely to do it (it’s easy to do – simply creep forward and then join the cross flow)
The flaw is that the survey did not count which way those who waited for the lights went when the lights changed. It could be that the vast majority of cyclists were going straight ahead, and the proportion of light jumpers who did so was simply a representative subset of that total. It could be that no-one turning left waited for the lights to change, whilst the vast majority of a much more numerous group of straight-aheaders had waited.
For those who might want to see how far the UK has to go on cycling matters then have a look at the articles on the Bicycle Dutch blog. There are several articles about the 2016 Dutch Cycling City competition with videos for each of the candidate cities. Looking at the volumes of cyclists in the City centres and parking provision shows how impressive things are. The other thing it is interesting is the ongoing pace of development and improvement showing that infrastructure isn’t a one off activity.
There’s a 2011 study of London cyclists here:
https://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/1179/1/Cycling_and_the_city_published_author_copy.pdf
According to Dave Hill in the Guardian it ‘explores why in London “cycling is disproportionately an activity of affluent, white men” [under 40]’ and he summarises the research & puts it into context here:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/davehillblog/2015/oct/12/why-are-london-cyclists-so-white-male-and-middle-class
I would hope to see that study repeated now and again in five years’ time when the new bicycle civil engineering has bedded in.
Ideally it would help shape cycling policy & transport policy more generally in London. One can but dream.
@timbeau: This is counterintuitive as you would expect left turners to be the most likely to do it (it’s easy to do – simply creep forward and then join the cross flow)
Indeed in many parts of the world it is perfectly legal, for cars as well as bikes.
@WW: as traffic speeds have fallen and congestion has worsened that people’s patience evaporates…examples on social media of driver and cyclist stupidity / selfishness
And yet road fatalities and serious injuries have never been lower (and cyclist fatalities have flatlined despite rising rates of cycling).
Saw an exchange on Twitter yesterday (between a tfl account and a private hire user), where tfl assert that – in weekday morning rush hour – the majority of vehicles using Blackfriars bridge are now cycles. Sadly no statistics in that tweet. Going to be interesting when we do get an updated usage census.
@island dweller
As one of those cyclists, I would not be surprised at that statistic.
Note that a snapshot may give a false impression as at any given moment there are probably more motor vehicles than cycles on the bridge. The difference is that two minutes later most of the motor vehicles are still there, but a new batch of cycles have replaced those that were there before.
Moreover, the number of vehicles is not the whole story. Although most vehicles have only one occupant, some have as many as eighty.
I would also estimate that there are more pedestrians than cyclists.
@Island Dweller
There are now a number of streets in central and inner London where bikes are now the majority user in the peak period (Theobalds Road is another example) and in Hackney there are more bike journeys than car journeys in total.
@Ian J – thanks for the report reference. I thought it was interesting but not really surprising that the pedestrian and cyclist killed and serious injury rate tended to be worse in the outer boroughs than the inner boroughs.
Timbeau. Quite right. Counting vehicles/cycles is all very well, but an important statistic is how many people are passing along a given stretch of road.
As with all statistics, depends entirely on what purpose you are measuring it for. Not very relevant for estimating emissions or congestion for example.
Normally the most sensible measurement is of people passing along a given stretch of road other than anyone who is only there in a driver or similar capacity. So a taxi with no passengers counts as zero, with one passenger counts as one. For buses, it is only the number of passengers that count. The difference can be quite critical in certain circumstances e.g. for the school run do you include the driver?
@pop
“for the school run do you include the driver”
Depends whether the child(ren) in the car are old enough to walk to school, or use public transport, unescorted (were they attending a school for which that is possible, instead of the miles-away school the parents have chosen, or conversely have been forced to use because too many children from miles away are attending the local one.)
And further questions for the school run are whether the driver is also picking up some groceries, or popping in on Auntie May. As PoP says, it all depends on exactly what you are going to use the numbers for. And if you don’t know, you probably should not be counting at all.
PoP, timbeau, Malcolm: surely it’s about consistency: if your method excludes the driver, say so & carry on.
The only driver one might want to include when looking at the school as a destination is the teacher/staff member who self-drives to school. And perhaps (hugely edge case, but I have known it happen) a pupil who self-drives to school. Oh, go on then, governors and tradesmen too.
Malcolm I think that if you ask about origin and destination you should be able to tease out answers to your questions. Again, disclosing your method seems to be the right approach.
@OB
That’s the problem, how can you tell by looking at a vehicle whether the driver is simply chaufeurring the payload or not. Fairly obvious if it’s a taxi or a bus, but not in other passenger vehicles. (For the present, I would assume a driver of a goods vehicle is not supernumery) Even if the driver is the only occupant, are they travelling for themselves, or going to/coming back from taking a passenger somewhere, or simply delivering the vehicle itself somewhere (e.g to an MoT test)?
(Incidentally, what is the point of “not in service” buses running on their normal route? If it’s fully crewed and in working order, why can’t it run in service. Too many times I’ve seen such buses sailing past long queues, apparently because it is only the driver who needs to get home!
@timbeau – 26 May 2016 at 14:30
(Incidentally, what is the point of “not in service” buses running on their normal route? If it’s fully crewed and in working order, why can’t it run in service. Too many times I’ve seen such buses sailing past long queues, apparently because it is only the driver who needs to get home!
Driver’s permitted hours?
timbeau of course you can’t obtain motivation by mere observation.
It is not a problem, though. It becomes a problem if you *imply* motivation to those you observe and use the inference to support policy choices. It goes back to what PoP said: ‘what is the object of the exercise?’
In the school run case, if your objective is to reduce school running by car, that’s what you want to measure. What else the driver does has to be obtained by survey/interview. As you noted above, the prevalence of school running, particularly at primary level, will be affected by other policy choices, among other things.
Just on the points about assumptions used for bikes, drivers and passengers, the DfT will be launching a “propensity to cycle” tool.
I haven’t got my head around it yet, as it seems quite complex, but it supports “what if” scenarios about car journeys being replaced by cycling, and the resulting impact on roads.
I assume it contains assumptions about numbers of passengers in cars but I haven’t found if these are stated. The current tool contains commuting data (down to the ward level in London) and other types of trips will be added later this year.
The tool hasn’t been launched yet but is available to have a play with.
http://pct.bike/london/
Free bus travel for the under 18s in full time education was introduced by Mayor Livingstone partly to reduce school running*, I believe. As others have noted elsewhere on this site, particularly but not only in relation to Nicole Badstuber’s piece on the TfL briefing for Mayor Khan, that policy has imposed costs on TfL and other bus passengers, particularly in the morning peak. It has also brought a range of benefits, which we can discuss. I’m bound to say I don’t believe abolition of the policy is practical politics, at least for the foreseeable future.
*and the associated vehicle emissions.
@JohnUK
Does that mean a bus driver is permitted to drive beyond his permitted hours provided the bus is empty?
@timbeau
No such exemption in normal circumstances. However, the usual rule of thumb for out of service workings is two-thirds of the in-service running time, so a driver should be able to reach a depot more quickly and remain within hours, than by running in service. Ideally though, the scheduling shouldn’t run so close to legal limits so that this becomes a problem in the first place.
With regard to “not in service” this is partly to save time. This is especially true on the outward journey to the terminus when it is a location a long way distant from the garage in order to provide the first service of the day. It may also mean that a driver can get back to the garage “within his hours” whereas otherwise he couldn’t.
It is also the case that the current policy, not quite universally applied, is to avoid planned short journeys in order to keep things simple for passengers.
Finally, there are some routes where the bus might be on its service route when observed but elsewhere deviates significantly when “not in service”.
@ timbeau – all sorts of reasons why a bus may be “not in service” and running along its usual route.
1. Drivers hours (as discussed above)
2. To get the driver back to the garage for a meal break / relief.
3. It may simply not be physically possible to use other roads away from the usual route. Often if there is an incident preventing buses from running they are forced to await the arrival of a TfL area manager to advise on a diversionary route. This is to prevent buses getting stuck, ending up facing low bridges etc etc. Sometimes there be a known and recorded diversionary route from the point at which buses are stuck but this is rare given the immense network of roads in London and possible permutations as to what route is affected and where the incident is.
4. The bus is running oos to make up time having been late on a previous run. The bus may run right to the end of the route or some other point at which it has regained its schedule and come back into service. I’ve yet to see buses do the “we are missing out the next 20 stops but you can stay on board if you want stop 21 or further” like the TOCs do. Instead they throw full busloads on to the roadside and expect 80+ people to get on the full bus behind. 🙁 And yes that’s the voice of experience speaking.
Further to timbeau’s query about out of service buses, I’m not sure how the would-be passengers waiting at stops (for whom I have every sympathy) can know what the “normal route” of the out of service bus even is, since it would not normally display a route number.
Walthamstow Writer,
Point 3: indeed. It was a long time ago (over forty years ago) but from my experience drivers were under strict instructions not to deviate from the prescribed route except when authorised to do so by either an inspector or police officer. Presumably the latter because failure to follow directions would constitute an offence.
Very often there isn’t a problem in establishing the suitability of the diversion as the alternative is already a bus route used by the same type of buses. Again, in the old days it was bit easier because if approved for RML it would be automatically approved for RM (but, strictly speaking, not vice versa).
I would imagine nowadays being authorised to deviate from route by radio would also be allowed.
A notable example of a pre-arranged diversionary route that is not normally a bus route in South East London is on the 119 route where Glebe Way is used when buses cannot use Corkscrew Hill for any reason. In the days when snow was a common winter occurrence passengers got very used to this. No fare reduction for the shorter route though!
And to let the engineer out, just because a vehicle can be driven under its own power, doesn’t mean you can use it in service (e.g. Defective doors, covered in bodily fluid etc) – though I suspect the defective in service limits on the buses are somewhat more relaxed than on the railway! (And driver/timetable logistics probably far more common than vehicle serviceability)
@Malcolm,
In London at least out of service busrs usually on change the destination blind to “Not in service”, but leave the route number blind displayed, so it is usually blindingly (sorry) obvious whether the bus is on its normal route. It does seem that many of these runs are done simply to get the driver (but not the waiting public) home on time.
timbeau: I see. Leaving the route number displayed strikes me as very sloppy practice. Even if controllers are responding appropriately to some of the circumstances suggested above (and I note your belief that often they are not) they ought to bear in mind public perception. I wonder whether the perhaps-anachronistic London insistence on roller blinds rather than digital displays is a factor here.
Greg mentioned “far too many car drivers also ignore red traffic lights”, which is demonstrably true, but also note just how many bus drivers happily cruise through reds too. Occasionally I’ll comment to them if it is quiet, as I did on a #29 on Tuesday. After I commented “I see you were in a hurry to get here, going through three set of lights on red” he replied he “hadn’t noticed”. Somewhat worrying!
@Alison
But at least bus drivers know, through experience, which box junctions are covered by CCTV control and which not. They don’t drive into the yellow boxes where there is CCTV. The same is true with red light cameras.
@ Timbeau – I am prone to more than my fair share of gripes about TfL’s buses but I really don’t think you are being fair in repeating your statement that empty buses are just about “getting the driver home”. There are a myriad of valid circumstances as to why buses run out of service. Surely it wouldn’t kill you to accept this?
@ Malcolm – modern spec TfL buses normally have smart blinds which are electronically controlled. Running a bus not in service should remove all route numbers from view and blinds will show “not in service” (NIS). Older buses, with manual blinds, may not even allow the driver to change the number easily and certainly not side and rear blinds. Old style blinds used to wound from upstairs and not the cab. Drivers are also instructed to reset their I-Bus modules so buses NIS do not give a predicted arrival on Countdown signs or apps / webpages. It is immensely frustrating when drivers fail to do this and a bus you expect to turn up drives past.
@ PoP – you are right that these days Centrecomm (the bus control room) can set up diversions using radio and in conjunction with operators I-Bus control rooms. In some circumstances (e.g. an emergency) Centrecomm can override the operators. Obviously if you’ve diverting over routes already used by buses of the same dimensions then there should be no great issue. However out in the suburbs things can be rather more difficult hence the “on the road” intervention. The other thing is that a number of diversions are preset anyway – we’ve all seen the signs tied to lamp posts directing buses in different directions. These are related to “Notice of Events” which are pre-determined and notified and drivers will use the alternative routes when instructed to do so or from a given time.
When I commented that counting people was possibly a more useful metric than counting vehicles, I was thinking of road capacity. Of course, counting vehicles is useful when trying to get a grip on emissions and congestion. Also, there is a very valid case for counting non-passenger vehicles as the city has to be serviced in order to function at all. However, getting sidetracked over which drivers of private vehicles should be counted is a detail too far, and as for buses not in service— well!