Friday Reads – 13 September 2019

1. The Gare du Nord proposal for separate Departure & Arrival areas & no effective concourse seems utterly bonkers.
   As the article says – “Make it LESS like an airport” ( Or words to that effect )
   Why do people do this?

2. @Greg T – difficult to disagree. Even NR abandoned its curious plans to relocate the Waterloo concourse “upstairs” on the grounds of passenger flow.

3. @Greg T

   I recall when the Western concourse opened at Kings Cross the intention was that all passengers for platforms 0-8 would go by way of the mezzanine and the new bridge spanning the platforms*, the gateline by the barriers being strictly for arrivals only. But passengers are creatures of habit and, despite attempts by staff to enforce it, the segregation broke down within hours of opening.

   *unlike the old one, which only served platforms 1 , 8 and (apparently) 9&3/4, the new bridge serves all nine platforms.

4. Separating arriving and departing passengers can be helpful.

   Vastly increasing the distance people have to walk is definitely not.

   Kings Cross, for me, gets 5 out of 10 for this. Unnecessary up and downing for departing passengers. But the fantastic roof on the new blister is some compensation.

5. Ironically “separate Departure & Arrival areas & no effective concourse” is exactly how King’s Cross station was designed to operate when originally built…

6. The story about K&C veto of the cycle route is a few months old now.

   TfL haven’t yet published the results of the formal consultation. They changed the format from the click support/oppose box type questions used in previous consultations to free text so people have to write something. It will be interesting to see how many people responded compared to the opposition tactic of asking people to email K&C councillors.

   Also TfL learned from the CS11 lost judicial review as the consultation was structured into different sections. So even if K&C veto the plans in their borough, that should not stop the plans in Hammersmith and Fulham assuming that borough agrees.

7. “I am all in favour of cyclists, but….”, now what does that sound like again?

   I do love this other excuse that keeps being dragged up, which is that traffic must flow. No, that’s wrong. Traffic needs to be able to get somewhere and then the driver needs to be able to park and get out of the car and do stuff…

8. If traffic doesn’t flow, then it is not traffic. So in that sense, it must flow.

   But the flow rate of city road traffic always settles to the same rate as the trains. If going by car is faster than by train, then more cars come along, to slow the rate down. And conversely.

   In cities with no trains, the equivalent equilibrium is with walking speed, for a similar reason.

9. @Malcolm – 13 Sept, 14.48
   Many of the departing passengers at Kings Cross come from Euston Road and the Underground exits on the piazza area in front of the station. There aren’t any low level screens showing train departures (destination, time and platform) at the entrance to the concourse or near the barriers. It is necessary to walk at least 30 yards across the main concourse to adequately see the high level large departure screen. Then you have to retrace your steps to get to the barriers. For many passengers the only information they need is the platform number for their train. This extra walking distance of about 60 yards (taking about 45 seconds at average walking speed – longer for less mobile people or if the concourse is congested) means unnecessary movement of people across the concourse, and it is rather annoying, particularly if the train is soon to depart.

10. @Malcolm – that’s the theory, but the theory goes on to discuss what the “swing” or base determining mode might be, which would obviously vary from city to city. I’m slightly sceptical in that all the cases presented seem to be chosen to meet the argument, but partly also because each case usually turns out to be “special” in terms of modal coverage, topography and so on.

11. Stuck in traffic? You ARE the traffic.

12. The now old Guardian article doesn’t recognise how TfL appears to the people being consulted (and I have direct experience of the process for CS11).

    In short, TfL comes across as a bit “high handed”, “we know best”, and that’s a recipe to put peoples backs up from the start, hindering rational debate and discussion. Even the name is wrong-Superhighway. Nobody would support urban vehicle road called a superhighway these days, so putting that word next to cycling is ill-judged, in my opinion

    My experience: TfL didn’t engage to get views of key general concerns of a scheme before drawing up initial proposals; when the proposals are presented they come across as a “done deal” with consultation appearing as an exercise in PR/influencing, and didn’t present the case why possible alternatives were not chosen (and there were alternatives for CS11), or explore the balance between the “winners” (e.g. longer distance “commuting” cyclists from our of borough in the case of CS11) and “losers” (e.g. local residents and local short-distance cycling having to deal with traffic displacement onto residential streets). The latter point is especially important for diversity since there are different types of cycling mission that a cycling scheme should aim to balance.

    The comments stream also highlights the potential deficiencies of traffic modelling performed, and TfL were absolutely not open to scrutiny of the traffic modelling for CS11, tried very hard to prevent external review of the models.

    One of the comments on the article

13. The Quartz article was unfortunately written shortly before there was a major construction accident in the project it mentions in its headline, the Kolkata East-West tunnel extension. A major tunnel flood and collapses occurred when they tunnelled into an unexpected aquifer. The collapses caused subsidence which has made homeless about 400 people. Likely to be very difficult to sort out.

    https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/hundreds-homeless-after-digging-for-kolkata-metro-tunnel-hits-water-body-2096110

14. We posted the technical details of the Kolkata East-West Tunnel collapse in this Industry post.

15. @Miles T : you don’t appear to have actually looked at the Holland Park – Notting Hill scheme otherwise you would have seen that it wasn’t called a superhighway. The name has been de-hyped from the Mayor Johnson era so it is a plain old cycleway now.

    Kerb separated bidirectional bike lane is a more accurate description of the scheme but a bit long winded.

    Your complaint that TfL don’t open up their traffic modelling raises an interesting point. I stand to be corrected by people who actually work for TfL but I understand traffic modellers will generally be educated to degree level in maths, science or engineering and then have several years additional training on the range of modelling tools used (there isn’t one modelling tool, there are a number of different ones which will be used for different aspects of a scheme).

    Would you expect TfL to educate members of the public to the level required to understand and use the tools?

    A common saying in engineering is that all models are wrong, but some are useful. Experience is needed to understand what is actually useful from the huge amount of data that can be generated from modelling tools.

16. @Reynolds953

    My point about “superhighway” was in context of how CS11 scheme was presented to the public, I agree the Holland park scheme is not branded that way (although I think the “superhighway” word is now branded in the minds of media and populace through extensive previous use, even if now unfairly applied).

    It’s all about perceptions and presentation, and in my opinion TfL really did set off on the wrong foot in terms of engagement, and consequently lost a lot of potential goodwill and ability to achieve a consensus outcome rather than the confrontation that resulted from the process (with a demographic that was likely to be effective in resisting the change).

    There does need to be better provision for cycling in the area, but CS11 scheme wasn’t right; and there could been simple, cheap pilots of alternative options that provided more evenly for various types of cycling better.

    Regarding opening up the modelling data. I agree there would be a high degree of expertise required to understand inputs and outputs, but data, assumptions, and details of methods should be accessible none the less so that concerned citizens can choose to employ (and pay for) their own experts (and there are bright people outside the official industry as well to help validate the assumptions).

    There was a lingering feeling in the process; that TfL thought it was self-evident that traffic would be reduced/discouraged by reducing road provision, where the locals although thought it self-evident that there would be an increase in ratrunning through residential streets of St. Johns Wood (because this already happens southbound especially when Wellington road is congested, traffic migrates to Abbey Road, Boundary Road/SJW Park/Ordnance/Terrace or High Street).

    Anytime someone presents an outcome is self-evident is when detailed analysis of the facts is needed; the potential ratrunning was undermodelled (and the perception was the TfL team considered that scenerio to be an inconvenient risk to be glossed over).

    As they say, sunshine is the best disinfectant (in terms of prevention of abuses and errors by public officials) , that’s why Freedom of Information is so important in public governance.

17. CS11 may not be explicitly branded as a “Superhighway”, but the clue is in the second letter of its name.

18. There are some strong echoes of TfL’s approach to consultation on CS11 with their consultation on the West London tram proposals in 2007/08 – in the same part of London, too. In both cases, the lack of sufficiently open and wide consultation early enough in the process allowed opposing arguments to take root and spread, even where they were not particularly true. Surely a lesson to be learned here.

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