Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads.
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- • So what’s this franchising for? (PassengerTransport)
- • Wireless augmented reality audio Tube navigation standard (ITUNews)
- • Underground lines vertical profile maps (DanSilva)
- • TfL to cut road speeds to boost safety (MayorWatch)
- • Paris Métro car made from old train tickets (TransportDesigned)
- • Toronto’s killing streets – a pedestrian hit every 4 hours (Globe&Mail)
- • You cannot join the World Bollard Association (AtlasObscura)
- • NYC’s next big park aims for High Line magic (FastCoDesign)
- • Detroit’s Michigan Central station finally gets new use (WashingtonPost)
- • Third world transport shifts (TransportFutures)
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The LU vertical profile maps are very good. Clear and well produced.
Leon Daniels appears to be echoing C Wolmar: “What is franchising FOR?”
As for lowering bus speeds, the measures being invoked seem to refer forwards to the next article, as in: “Bollards to you too!”
Cyclists – the reality gap….
Why is it that cyclists seem to be Teflon coated in the eyes of “authority”, and can do no wrong, yet the ones I see on a daily basis take no notice of street signs, have little regard for the Highway Code or pedestrians, ride dangerously wearing headphones, take telephone calls and REGULARLY ignore traffic lights…?
TfL’s new plan will commit it to…… “tackling the danger that cyclists experience, rather than seeking to change their behaviour”
Whilst not by any means the only problem, I would suggest that cyclist behaviour is a not insignificant part though, so why is it the elephant in the room that must never be acknowledged or dealt with??????
Re: GT – With the difference being that Wolmar asks his question in order to elicit the answer he wants you to come to without considering other options, whereas Daniels is actually asking how a mutually-beneficial arrangement might be achieved.
The answer to the Wolmar question (i.e. the one he wants you to think doesn’t exist) is quite simple and is the same as for all those other applications of the same principle: French municipal transport, German regional transport, etc.
An aside on the (wonderful) vertical maps is how much of the ‘Underground’ which is usually considered to be ‘above ground’ is actually *below* ground level, even the District.
@Mackay
I don’t think there is any evidence that wrongdoing by cyclists is any more prevalent than motorists jumping red lights, parking on double yellow lines, going the wrong way down one way streets, etc. Yet as a society we don’t seem to have done much to tackle that for generations and spent billions still creating projects that were meant to benefit drivers. At least where cyclists ignore traffic lights or ride dangerously they are risking themselves more than anyone else while motorists driving dangerously are more likely to harm pedestrians or cyclists than themselves.
You really can’t have it both ways, you have either to have strict enforcement for all road users or accept that you will get high levels of rule-breaking. If you want to say that we shouldn’t invest in cycle facilities until all cyclists cycle properly then we also shouldn’t be investing in anything for motorists until they all comply with the law.
@Quinlet: A lot of the reasons why cyclists do the things they do, which may or may not be dangerous to themselves or others, is because the roads aren’t designed for cyclists nor do most car, van, truck or bus drivers drive in a cyclist firendly way.
As for them being on the phone, Mackay obviously needs to look in cars (or vans or trucks). The number drivers of motor vehicles who are on the phone (without hands free kits) is truly staggering! Cyclists by contrast are seldom on the phone in my experience …
Quinlet says that the dangerous things cyclists do is mostly putting themselves at danger… but that is what we are trying to reduce, danger to cyclists (!!)
Whilst I will happily concede that there are more motorists on the phone than cyclists, I don’t think you can seriously suggest as many motorists as cyclists blatantly pass or ignore red traffic signals, particularly when they have not just changed or are not about to, and as for going the wrong way along one way streets, again, hardly a motoring common occurrence, but certainly more prevelant amongst cyclists!
Quinlet I don’t want it both ways, I’m happy for BOTH motorists and cyclists to obey the Highway Code and for our (mostly absent nowadays) law enforcement to deal with both if they don’t… but then drivers get points and could be banned, cyclists get…. errr what exactly…? Oh there we go again, one rule for motorists, and the cyclists…?? well, they just do what they like and get away with it don’t they!
Although there is plenty of civility, compromise and common sense around at present, experience on this site tends to suggest that attempts to quantify the badness of some cyclists, and to quantify the badness of some motor vehicle drivers, and to compare the two figures, rarely reach a useful conclusion, and sometimes lead to excesses of zeal requiring moderation. So I would just like to warn anyone thinking of joining in on this particular question, to express themselves carefully, and to be sure to continue the evident reasonableness which has been shown in the last few comments on this topic.
Mackay:
I suspect that a lot of the political pressure to make cycling safer is the result of the well publicised incidents where the cyclist has been killed/injured when they were doing the ‘right’ thing. Unfortunately, doing the ‘right’ thing often makes cyclists ‘invisible’ (more accurately, takes them out the of the area of concern for a driver), which makes it more likely they will get hit. Anything that reduces that likelehood can only be a good thing, and may make some other cyclists modify their behaviour too.
@Balthasar: if franchising and shifting risk to the private sector is such a desirable model as Daniels implies (and Tory ideologues boast) one wonders why widespread private ownership of the road network is not more popular here.
Anonymike:
While every cyclist killed or injured is one too many, I’d be interested to know how many WERE actually doing the right thing, and how many were not… media reports rarely seem to cover that aspect….
@Mackay
The evidence on accident analysis suggests that the majority of accidents involving cyclists and pedestrians are the fault of motorists while only a minority are the fault of the cyclists or pedestrians who are injured. That would seem to suggest a focus for accidentduction activity.
Mackay:
There’s some evidence that faster and more aggressive cyclists are less likely to be killed on the road in London.
For example: https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/why-women-seem-to-be-more-vulnerable-around-traffic-blackspots-in-london-10341420.html
Thank you bob…. interesting….
I read the main problem expressed by the article as lorries turning left being undertaken by cyclists – cyclists shouldn’t be undertaking vehicles indicating to turn or turning left, it says so in the Highway Code, so cyclist wrong… but no doubt cyclists see it differently… (of course!)..
I also note that those cycling quicker (and therefore closer to the speed of the motorised traffic) and those who get away quicker at the lights are less likely to be killed, but I don’t interpret that as “aggressive” though… I feel you’re trying to imply that in order to reduce your chance of being killed a certain amount of rule breaking/bad behaviour is ok, and it didn’t say that at all… you can still cycle quicker/quickly without the necessity for aggression… perhaps some of the Lycra louts should try that!
An awful lot of London’s cycling infrastructure funnels cyclists down the left side of left turning traffic on purpose. See for example the junction of Grosvenor Road and Chelsea Bridge Road. It seems perverse to blame cyclists for a behaviour TfL is training them to carry out.
Secondly, filtering to the front is not an illegal manoeuvre and it puts only the cyclist at risk, which places or in a different category to jumping lights or speeding.
Thirdly, getting an early start at lights is being adopted at more junctions through the use of cycle specific lights, which serves a similar safety purpose as illegally anticipating the lights – getting slower cyclists into the field of view from a HGV cab before it starts moving.
Anyway, yes, I am certainly saying that breaking rules to reduce your overall risk is ok, provided it doesn’t increase the risk to anyone else. If you’ve not ridden a bike in the city recently I think you might be underestimating the vastly improved view you get by not having glass and pillars in the way. Of course some people cross the line to reckless behaviour and should be caught and fined – but that’s not really a good use of police time compared to things which actually stand a chance of doing real damage, like driving a vehicle which has failed its MOT.
@Mackay
I’m not sure how you read the Standard article as saying that ‘the main problem expressed by the article as lorries turning left being undertaken by cyclists’. While both the coroner and the AA surmise that that is the case, there is no evidence to back this up and it is equally likely that the lorry in question could have overtaken the cyclist and then turned left in front of them. The more rigorous assessments of cycle accidents show that injured cyclists were more likely to fall into the category of ‘going ahead’ which is exactly where you would find the cases of a vehicle overtaking and then turning, with the cyclist either in the blind spot or ignored.
The underground vertical maps don’t appear to take horizontal distance into account, instead just showing stations equidistant from each other, which is a shame.
The prints say “Platform level” but it appears that it’s almost certainly “Track level at platform”.
John: If you read the associated text, you will see that equidistant stations was a deliberate design choice (“taking inspiration from Beck”). Presumably that is because actual inter-station distances cover such a wide range that (e.g) Covent Garden and Leicester Square would be infeasibly close on any sensible-sized diagram.
But the data is all in the public domain, so anyone is welcome to put in the work to create their own diagrams using an alternative approach.
@Mackay, Quinlet
My experience of cycling in Slough was that drivers of long vehicles would start to overtake but fail to complete the overtaking manoeuvre before turning left. A 16m artic doing 30mph overtaking a 1.5m bike doing 25mph will take ~8s to complete the overtake, and cover over 100m of ground. However, a left-turning truck won’t behave like that: it will commence the overtake at 30mph and slow down as it approaches the junction, and with the reduction in speed differential we get a much longer overtake time and distance where the bike is stuck on the inside of the lorry.
And if you’re stuck inside a lorry, you can’t see very much ahead of you other than the cycle lane because there’s a 4m tall truck blocking your view, so if the truck slows down you can’t tell if that’s because it is preparing to turn left (or right) or because there’s traffic ahead. HGV drivers — contrary to many myths — actually do indicate most of the time, but if the lorry is next to you, you have a very poor view of any indicators: the ones on the trailer are behind you, the ones on the front of the tractor are pointing away from you, the ones on the rear mudflap of the tractor are generally hidden below the side of the trailer, so the only ones you have a hope of seeing are the side repeaters on the cab wing. Provided the cab isn’t steered slightly away from you as it would be if swinging out to turn left… or moving across to a lane further right; and the sun isn’t in the wrong relative position to tell the difference between illuminated and not — this is especially a problem with the side repeaters as the sun can shine through them which it can’t do to any light mounted on the front or rear of the vehicle. Even if you do see the cab repeater on its first flash, it is rare to get more than 3-4s of indication in which time you need to come to a controlled stop. But while stopping is necessary it is not sufficient: you have to be able to stop short of the junction if you’re not going to get squished while stationary as opposed to squished while moving. A fairly aggressive 0.5g stop gives you 25mph-0 in 4s covering 20m, so if you’re closer to the junction than that when you first see the indicators, you’re caught and there is nothing that you can do about it despite obeying the highway code to the letter.
Moosealot: A very clear and evocative description of the lead-up to what might be a fatal accident.
One could add that on at least 90% of the occasions when the events you describe occur, the truck driver will see the cyclist in the left mirror before squashing him or her. Possibly a much greater proportion. But whatever the exact figure, the fact remains that sometimes someone will die. The best general conclusion may be that large vehicles and cyclists should not be expected to share the same roads.
It is not only artics. Similar difficulties are only slightly mitigated if the vehicle is a 12 metre rigid truck or coach.
“A 16m artic doing 30mph overtaking a 1.5m bike doing 25mph will take ~8s to complete the overtake”
Point taken, but 25mph on a bike is quite fast, and very few drivers would attempt to overtake anything going that fast if they were in a 30mph limit, especially if they were planning to turn left shortly. A cyclist going that fast would be well advised to “take the lane” (ride near the centre of the lane) to discourage risky overtaking manoeuvres if the lane is too narrow to overtake safely.
And Rule 168 of the Highway Code says “If a driver is trying to overtake you, …….slow down if necessary to let the vehicle pass”. This will reduce the time the manoeuvre takes.
This Rule is in the general section, which applies to all road users.
None of this, of course, excuses the overtaking driver from failing to observe Rule 167
“DO NOT overtake where you might come into conflict with other road users. For example
•approaching or at a road junction on either side of the road
………………………
Stay behind if you are following a cyclist approaching a roundabout or junction, and you intend to turn left”
@Timbeau
20-25mph would be my typical speed on a main road in Slough. It’s pretty flat, the roads I used were a decent width and had marked cycle lanes (which I used) and it was a 5-mile commute that I did by bike purely because it was quicker than taking the car, so I pushed myself a lot harder than people who cycle longer distances or for leisure. Taking the centre of the road would be questionable given the presence of the cycle lane and would end up with some really dodgy overtaking manoeuvres.
At 25mph I would expect to be treated as a separate lane of traffic and have a steady stream of vehicles overtaking me until the queue for the next set of lights. To slow down because somebody was overtaking you would be to slow down for the entire journey, to the point that I might as well have take the car.
Fortunately for me, Slough didn’t have many barriers between the road and pavement on the corners, so on the once-or-twice-a-week that a vehicle would try to turn left through me and I couldn’t stop in time, I could generally ditch onto the footpath.
The point I was trying to get across was that if there is a collision between a lorry and a cyclist when the lorry is turning left, it isn’t automatically the cyclist’s fault, which is what Mackay appeared to be implying.
@Malcolm
The truly awful part of it is that it is not a legal requirement for trucks to have mirrors/cameras that can see all the way down the side of the vehicle when turning. Because it would be too expensive and it would only affect UK-registered vehicles anyway.
While there are some execrable lorry drivers out there, I believe they are a small minority, and I’m aware that it can be very difficult to judge a cyclist’s speed from a vehicle. A perfectly reasonable lorry driver could believe they had a big enough speed advantage over a bicycle to have completed the manoeuvre, decelerate and turn without any trouble, and not have the visibility to learn otherwise.
It seems popular to put signs on the back of large vehicles warning that they have blind spots, although I always read them as “it’s cheaper for us to put up this sign to pass the blame to you when we kill you than it would be for us to make this vehicle safe.”
I believe all artic tractor units (and rigid trucks) have a wide-angle left hand mirror which does give a full view down the inside when turning (up to the point when the unit is almost at right-angles to the trailer, at least). I am not sure if it is a legal requirement, though I suspect it is. There is certainly no view down the outer side of the trailer while turning, that would require cameras and relatively expensive interconnections – but the outer side (most of it) is moving away from any obstacle.
But wide-angle mirrors are by definition convex and make the cyclist appear narrower and harder to spot. As you rightly say, most truck drivers are aware of the limitations and generally avoid accidents. But it only requires one, possibly exceptional driver to make a misjudgment which can have fatal consequences.
I don’t know how of any research indicating how much safer large vehicles would be (if any) if they were fully equipped with cameras. Part of the problem is that a driver only has two eyes and one brain. Any car driver doing a reversing manoeuvre can have difficulty looking in both side mirrors, any reversing camera and looking around for people walking past – sometimes simple could be better.
Moosealot
It’s not easy, actually, bacuse I have put a similar sign in the LH rear-side of my Land-Rover:
“If you are close enough to read this, I probably can’t see you!”
Yes, I have noted that I have a (small) blind-spot & that’s the best I can do.
The Met Police have a programme to let cyclists sit in a lorry cab and see what it’s like. When I took this up it was very apparent that, despite the lorry being festooned with more mirrors than a Mod’s Vespa, it was impossible to have more than a few of them in line of sight at once – you had to turn your head through more than 90 degrees, in more than one plane, just to get them all in view.
I doubt that monitoring a bank of TV screens would be easier.
@Timbeau “Point taken, but 25mph on a bike is quite fast, and very few drivers would attempt to overtake anything going that fast if they were in a 30mph limit, especially if they were planning to turn left shortly. ”
If you’d like to see some evidence that it happens frequently, just pop down to Priory Lane on any weekday evening. That’s a narrow road with a 20mph limit and cars often exceed 30mph to overtake cyclists moving at 25mph+. Many cars then turn immediatly left into Clarence Lane.
HGV drivers are generally better at defensive driving than car drivers in central London, possibly as a result of outreach schemes like the one you mention.
@Timbeau. Drivers overtaking a cyclist then immediately cutting let across them? Sadly very very common, I witnessed exactly that just a few hours ago.
Re the poor view from the drivers seat of a truck. This is something that the previous mayor campaigned on – he claims that one of the reasons he became a cheerleader for leave (in the campaign we cannot mention) – was that existing EU rules prevented the mayor imposing London specific safety rules. These would require lorries used in London to have a low seating position (to be at eye level with cyclists and pedestrians) and almost ‘floor to ceiling’ windows at the side.
Ironically (given where we are with the political issue that cannot be mentioned), I believe this truck design is now being introduced.
Moosealot
It is precisely because of the lack of side visibility that both the current and previous Mayors were heavily promoting much greater direct visibility with things such as lower cabs and glass panels in side doors of lorries. Some of this is now getting into regulations, but the bulk does require changes to European standards. This has been agreed in principle by the EU but, as a result of lobbying by the Swedish (Volvo, Saab) and French (Renault) governments who opposed even allowing the changes to be made on a voluntary basis , the earliest date these can be manufactured is, if I remember correctly, 2021 and the date for mandation is as late as 2026.
This is an illustration, not of European perfidy, but of the lobbying power of the vehicle manufacturers .
Re Quinlet,
Renault trucks has been a Volvo trucks brand for 17 years.
The low cab truck market is currently essentially split between Mercedes and Dennis hence the Franco-Swedish alarm at being shut out of a much bigger market.
There are plenty of Mercedes low cab cement mixers and skip lorries beginning to hit the streets.
Low cabs are fitted to vehicles such as dustcarts to allow the crew to come and go in and out of the cab. The disadvantages for the operator is that there is no room for the engine underneath the cab, which ultimately means less of the overall length is available for payload. The maximum length rules are much stricter in Europe than in the US, hence the almost ubiquitous arrangement over here of what our American friends consider unusual enough to give it a name – the “cab-over”.
Lorries used in the construction industry are a particular problem as they need high ground clearance in order to work off road on uneven construction sites. This high ground clearance makes the cab relatively high, even for a lorry, and also makes it difficult to fit side guards (or to avoid them being broken off if they are fitted).
Crew access is only one reason for low cabs. As previously mentioned, there are believed to be safety benefits as well. However, it may not surprise anyone to note that these (probable) safety benefits are having a hard time prevailing when up against hard cash (payload within given length) and industry lobbying.
Re M, Timbeau,
The area at ground level (- head height) visible from the low floor cab is circa 2 times that of conventional cabs.
The low level cab trucks also have rear axles steering and a much smaller turning radius and lower corner swing out. (Much better manoeuvrability on construction sites has made them popular with drivers)
The potential skirt problems were actually raised from some manufacturers not end users, not much of problems in reality.
Cement mixers, Tippers and Skip Lorries aren’t length limited so no excuses there…
The Super Sewer is taking over from Crossrail in terms of raising the bar on truck safety issues with low floor cabs, low panel (not frame work) skirts and plenty of other things mandated as part of the contracts. Hence expect to see lots of these low cab trucks mainly along the corridor between the Thames and the A3.
Hanson are currently taking delivery of another 33 low floor cement mixers mainly for the Super Sewer contract.
Similarly several local skip firms low cab trucks are beginning to arrive too.
The aerodynamics (and fuel consumption) of the low cab tippers is apparently much better at motorway speeds than conventional cab trucks…
@Greg
There’s a huge difference between a car or Land Rover where as a cyclist you can bang on the side window and get the driver’s attention if they’re about to turn left over the top of you, vs a large truck, bus or coach where you can’t. I’m sure that given you are aware of your blind spot, if you heard someone knocking on the side of your landy as you turned left, you would stop as swiftly as possible.
@Timbeau, others
It doesn’t need a massive bank of cameras or mirrors. A blind spot monitoring radar/lidar comes as standard on a £22k Hyundai, but can’t be done on an £80k truck?
I think (hope) that Greg is fully aware of the size of his Landrover. But I think his point was rather that a sticker warning of a blind spot is worthwhile, regardless of the details of said blind spot, and it may be a bit too cynical to suggest that someone applying such a sticker is only doing so because it’s cheaper than other measures.
The point about possible monitoring equipment is well made, however.
@Moosealot
“you can bang on the side window [of a car] and get the driver’s attention if they’re about to turn left over the top of you, vs a large truck, bus or coach where you can’t. ”
Actually, most modern buses have very low driving positions, as the driver has to be at a suitable level to issue tickets/monitor Oyster readers/etc as passengers board, and most front platforms are now down at kerb-skimming level. (This brings its own hazards, as bus wing mirrors are low enough to clout passing cyclists and/or waiting passengers)
@Timbeau: bus wing mirrors are low enough to clout passing cyclists and/or waiting passengers
Or those, like me getting off the bus….
Cyclists don’t have a monopoly on morality. I was nearly hit by one whilst I was crossing on a zebra crossing on the Mile End road. He flew by at high speed which may be why he failed to see the police car which had obeyed the law to let me cross. Said patrol car then turned on lights, overtook him and “had a word”. I wish it had been more as I was truly shocked and frightened. I’m very happy for there to be more cycling in London. But bikes will never move the number of people who need to use buses and it really worries me that constant talk of limiting speeds means bus travel becomes yet more slower and unattractive. Thirty mph on main bus roads please.
“But bikes will never move the number of people who need to use buses ”
In general, maybe true, but observation on Blackfriars Bridge suggests there are many more cyclists on that route than there are bus passengers. (This is, however, partly because of the perverse routing of most buses between the South Bank and the City by an indirect route – if you take Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges together the cyclist/bus passenger balance is closer to 50/50)
Cycling is only ever going to be a viable mode of transport for a minority of the population. Anyone with any mobility problems, carrying heavy bags, or who does not want to arrive at their destination as a sweaty mess, will never cycle – I know I won’t. I agree with MikeC that cyclists should never be prioritised over buses.
I don’t think a cyclist versus bus users debate is at all helpful. We actually need both used as much as possible. Yes, there will always be people who cannot or don’t want to use a bike just as there will always be people for whom buses do not provide an adequate level of service for the journey they want to make. But if we don’t maximise both bus users and cyclists (and walked journeys) the roads of London will remain wholly clogged – mainly to the detriment of bus users. Incidentally, MikeC, buses rarely get above 20mph in any case, certainly in inner London.
Electric cargo bikes might be the thing which causes the biggest change over the next 5 years. No sweating at speeds of up to 15mph, huge load carrying capacity, agile enough to slalom through traffic, and big enough that even a land rover will think twice before attempting to run one over.
Also, saying that people with mobility problems will never cycle does them a massive disservice. I’ve seen a good number of hand cycles and other specially adapted bikes around London. I imagine it must feel rather good to get around under your own steam instead of having to wait for someone to fetch or lower a ramp all the time.
On bus speeds I think the Swiss principle of “you don’t need to go fast, just avoid going slow” applies – the time savings from priority measures that can avoid time spent crawling in traffic jams or stopped at lights, and measures to reduce dwell times at stops (eg. all door boarding) will be much greater than a short time spent at 30mph rather than 20mph in between stops, traffic lights, junctions etc.
Ian J
And road design ( or complete lack of it ) can make huge differences to that very useful idea.
Round here, most of the newer road “humps ” are such that, if you go over them at 20, no problem, if you go over at 30 – ouch.
BUT
There are some roads where the humps are painful on a bicycle (!) & others where either someone forgot, or didn’t care, usually at a pedestrian crossing & a nominally “20” road suddenly involves slowing down to about 5 mph – not good in a bus going over one, either.
It also appears that many London Boroughs have this, erm, “dichotomy” shall we say?
@Bob
“Also, saying that people with mobility problems will never cycle does them a massive disservice.”
I know several members of my family for whom the converse is true – when conditions such as arthritis made walking difficult, they were still able to cycle.
timbeau: that also applies to me. However, the original observation should perhaps have been that some people with disabilities will either be unable to cycle, or very reluctant. (And the reluctant bit applies to many people without disabilities too). The existence of cyclists with disabilities was worth noting, but it really makes little difference to any cyclist/bus rivalries.
Exactly. The problem is not the small amount of space dedicated to or used by busses or bikes.
In the suburbs of London, the best thing you could do to increase road capacity world be to eliminate on-street car parking for anyone without a blue badge.
It would effectively widen the roads (providing space to reduce conflicts between bikes and faster traffic), and also reduce the incentive to drive a private car into town centers because parking would be very expensive.
Bob et al,
It used to be a legal principle that ‘the king’s highway is not a public stable yard’. Sadly, in my opinion, this is no more. I have even seen planning applications for flats where it is admitted that the developer has not provided enough parking spaces but produced a mumbo-jumbo report to show that there will be sufficient space parking on the road (implicitly outside other people’s properties).
Quintet I’m afraid that’s not right. All over London for the last 24 months buses have had time added to schedules specifically to allow for the negative affect on running time of boroughs implementation of blanket 20 mph speed limits. So they weren’t all creeping along so slowly before. Add in roadworks, increased car and private hire traffic and it adds up to a worsening situation. Increased cost because lower speed needs more buses to keep the same frequency or cut frequency and lower attractiveness to passengers leading to lower revenue. There is a bus crisis that London Transport needs to recognise. I agree with Ian J about the Swiss not going slow principle. It should be a guiding principle for bus routes in London. Finally Pedantic it’s a great point. Why are people allowed to leave their chunk of metal on the highway right of way – at no charge?
An interesting byway you’ve opened up (so I’ll park in it!):
Chief Justice Ellenborough in Rex v Cross (1812)
“The King’s Highway is not to be used as a stable yard. A stage coach may set down or take up passengers in the street, this being necessary for public convenience, but it must be done in reasonable time, and private premises must be procured for the coach to stop in during the interval between the end of one journey and the commencement of another.”
Things seem to have changed a bit since then – many residential streets now seem to be little more than communal driveways/parking lots, with very little, if any, through traffic. When / how did the principle start to be applied that you can leave a motor vehicle on the highway for days on end?
It was never done in the days of horsepower, even if the horse was unhitched (are you still allowed to park a detached trailer in the street? – I know you need a licence for a skip)
Maybe rhetorical – though question has an answer.
Attached trailers count as part of the vehicle unless restricted by local bye-laws such as controlled parking zones and permits.
Temporarily unhitching is usually ok for problems, flat tyres, supplies, operational reasons. Overnighting is covered by lighting requirements it must be with the flow of the traffic with reflectors and must be lit at night and comply with any other normal parking rules e.g not within so many meters of any junction.
By separating the legal provisions for trailers are set out in section 137 of the Highways Act and Regulation 103 of the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Act of 1986 which relate to the obstruction of the highway. Just being on the highway is not sufficient to create an obstruction under this legislation. The obstruction has to be wilful and designed to deny access to the public to the highway and constitute an unreasonable use of the highway.
Caravans parked on the highway are generally deemed to be an obstruction and your Local Authority will serve notice on the owner to remove it. If it is not removed then the police will be informed and the can have it towed away under regulation 3(1)(a) of the Removal and Disposal of Vehicles Regulations 1986. They can charge for the removal and return to the owner.
Isn’t it the case that it’s policy to provide less than one parking space per flat in new blocks? Or was that just an idea and varies between places?
Exact parking rules do vary from place to place (and from time to time). And they are generally extrema, rather than exact stipulations. But in London (and probably elsewhere in cities at least) there has been a move from stipulating minimum quantities of parking (to cut down on-street parking) towards stipulating maxima (to discourage car ownership). Naturally when you only have one lever to try to control different things, problems and contradictions do arise.
In the thirties and fifties, there was an expectation that all cars would be garaged, at least when near home. Right up to the seventies, when away from home overnight, some drivers hired space in a local garage near their destination.
@Herned
Both residential and commercial developments in London have been subject to maximum parking standards since 1976. As Malcolm has said, the exact figures vary from time to time and from place to place, but the general pattern today is to link these to public transport accessibility – the better the public transport the less parking is allowed. Some boroughs add a couple of twists to this, allowing a higher plot ratio (amount of development) where public transport is better, providing an incentive for developers to develop where public transport is better, and allowing developers to contribute to public transport improvements so that they can get a higher plot ratio for their sites. For commercial developments in areas of very good public transport the maximum is now down to below 1 space per 1,500 square metres of development.
Housing is slightly different in in parts of outer London there are still some minimum parking provisions with new housing. In inner London, though, the trend is towards ‘car-free’ housing where the developer is not allowed to provide parking and where the residents do not qualify for residents’ parking permits. Surprisingly, these are popular developments, partly because they are aimed at young professionals (often without children) and partly because they are then cheaper to construct and cheaper to buy because you don’t have to pay for a parking space you don’t need.
An interesting further quirk relating to parking provision is the trend for some of the parking nominally attached to a particular block of flats to be rented out (on a short- or long-term basis) by schemes such as “Just Park” to other users. The beneficiaries of these parking fees may in some cases be the occupiers of the flats.
@Malcolm: I used to live in a block of flats with one space per flat. It was a late 80’s construction out in Docklands. At that time a space inside the building would have been necessary otherwise your car would be vandalised or worse…
With regards to the letting out of spaces. That happens in the burbs too. People close to stations let out a part of their drive.
Just Park, and others, are acting as agents of the owners of the parking spaces, so that the income goes to the owners with JustPark taking a small cut. It’s an interesting idea but usually where there are drives or parking spaces that the owner wants to rent out there’s not that much demand. But sometimes demand and supply happily coincide.
As we are mentioning buses and cycle facilities let’s just mention the delights of the Mini Holland scheme in Waltham Forest. Road space lost to the point that any car wishing to turn right causes a massive queue of vehicles. Ditto if a bus stops at a bus stop. Roads become a solid mass of vehicles at school run/white van man going home/rush hour times. All we have seen in Waltham Forest is an erosion of bus frequencies and vastly slower services. We face further cuts in the near future.
We are about to see the abandonment of part of the integrated bus / rail station because the council wants a cycle lane where bus passengers are currently set down. Two bus routes won’t use the bus station in future forcing people to choose one stop over another and thus lose 50% or more of current departures in the bus station. This will worsen interchange options for passengers, be damaging for those who are impaired and cause overloading of already bus services. These seem to be the plans of idiots.
And as for pedestrian / bus user safety where there are cycle lanes. Cyclists ride the cycle lanes in either direction despite them being aligned to traffic lane methodology. There are no stop / wait markings at bus stops on the cycle paths meaning cyclists have no obligation to stop if a bus stops to let people alight or board. I am just waiting for the inevitable collision between a cyclist and alighting bus passengers. The council have just got round to extending zebra crossing markings on to the cycle lanes to force cyclists to stop if someone is crossing. We have lost pavement width to squash in cycle lanes. We have lost bus priority all over the place making buses slower and more prone to delay.
The whole thing is an utter disaster in my opinion. It has not been properly thought out nor are the scheme objectives properly weighted / balanced to afford appropriate safety and provision for those who are supposed to benefit from the “Safer Streets” programme in the Mayor’s Transport Strategy. I am fed up as a pedestrian and bus user having to forever watch out for cyclists whizzing hither and thither and no one doing anything to enforce whatever “rules” actually apply to the use of Copenhagen crossings and cycle lanes. Oh and we still have cyclists riding on the pavement *and* on the road despite all these shiny new segregated cycle lanes. You couldn’t make it up.
Sorry that was a rant but the scale of the mess warrants an investigation.
[Very slight edit to soften one sentence. “Rants” such as these are not at all encouraged, but this one does manage to concentrate on the actual difficulties, without naming names. Malcolm]
@Timbeau. I have no idea how scientifically rigorous this study was, but it appears to disprove your assertions.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2018/jun/26/mini-holland-schemes-have-proved-their-worth-in-outer-london-boroughs
The guardian article does report an increase in cycling, and in walking. However, the word “bus” appears nowhere in the article. I suspect that buses and bus stops may be invisible to Guardian writers.
@Malcom
Assuming the study is rigorous and correct, then surely the quote below implies that buses are being held up no more than before by congestion?
One of the main objections was the idea the mini-Hollands would benefit cycling at the expense other other modes. But Aldred’s study says: “We found no evidence of this. For instance, there was no evidence that time spent in cars was increasing (due to congestion), nor that walking environments were becoming less attractive due to the introduction of cycle lanes.”
@Island Dweller 10;22 – which assertion of mine are you referring to? Or did you mean to reference WW’s post?