This is the second part of my look at applying the principles of Sustainable Safety to Twickenham town centre. Go refresh your mind of part one.

Previously on Pedestrianise London.

Back in October last year I started to look at how the Twickenham Area Action Plan might look if it were put together by the Dutch. We looked at how the streets of the town are used, how they should be prioritised to reduce unwanted behaviour and encourage a positive environment.

Since that time, the borough council have pushed ahead with the plan which has now moved into a more detailed phase after it’s initial consultation. So let’s do the same and look at how, following on from part one, we’d design the region based around the principles of Sustainable Safety.

A quick recap. Here’s the lay of the land. We have the main north/south through route of London Road into King Street into Cross Deep (blue), and the east/west distributor route of Richmond Road to Heath Road (orange), with property access roads in green and pedestrian/cycle only in red.

So here we go, a detailed plan for the town from yours truly…

Let’s go in for a good look at the details.

Twickenham Station

Starting from the north end of town, the station is a critical link. It not only brings people to the town but also rugby fans to the stadium on match days, so it has to not only have all the usual train station type stuff, but also be suitable for handling the masses.

The traffic light controlled t-junction between London Road and Whitton Road is currently designed to aid the flow of traffic from the two roads heading towards town. Since it is in effect a fork in the road, it is an ideal candidate for a three pronged roundabout. Whitton Road is also a good candidate for closing to through traffic to the A316 since it is a narrow road and this function is already adequately carried out by London Road.

We have chosen to completely close the entrances to Cole Park Road and March Road to motor vehicles so as to simplify the road layout by removing these unnecessary junctions since these access roads are already accessible by alternative routes.

London Road heading south towards town is currently a 3 lane road with a bus lane heading south and a cycle lane that’s mostly used by buses heading north. Removal of this underutilised space along with removal of the central reservation creates room for wider pavements and cycle tracks that run behind the bus stop pull ins.

The pelican crossing has been replaced with a single stage zebra positioned outside of the station entrance and between the bus stops allowing easy transfer from train to bus.

Arragon Road

At the beginning of the London Road shopping area we re-direct traffic off of London Road and down Arragon Road thus freeing up London Road to be an access only space that will be more pleasant for pedestrians and the shops that run along both sides of the street.

At the junction with the priority changed, we have removed the existing traffic lights (and the race to get onto the bridge over the railway first that came with those lights) and replaced them with a single lane roundabout with central and corner “truck aprons” to allow for the wide turning angles of buses and delivery trucks. Due to space and the legal size requirements of roundabouts, this would actually technically be a large mini-roundabout, ie. a roundabout without a central curbed area, but with the truck apron acting as a de-facto curb.

With the south portion of London Road becoming a pedestrianised zone, it can be repaved with an attractive tactile surface and made pedestrian and cyclist friendly. Alterations to the bus routes would now take northbound buses up this portion of London Road via the southern bus only entrance, while southbound go via Arragon Road.

The roundabout could be done without and the junction treated as a pure right of way junction, but the roundabout helps reduce vehicle speed and so helps with the pedestrian and cycle crossings.

Along Arragon road, a bi-directional cycle track has been added to the north side. Although bi-directional paths are usually to be avoided in urban areas, in this case it is safe and worthwhile as it simplifies the junction with Amyand Park Road, provides better access to the primary school, and since the south side of the road simply runs around the multi-story car park there is no required access there for people on bikes or on foot. Having a bi-directional track also helps us optimise space and keep room for on-street parking.

Richmond Road

Where Arragon Road meets Richmond Road and becomes York Street we keep the traffic signals but again rework the junction to improve cyclist safety and pedestrian crossing times.

We have a cross roads but not enough road width to give each turn it’s own traffic lane, so we need to either combine or remove some turns. We can’t easily remove any, so we’ve had to combine some together which gives us two choices:

• Either we have to inconvenience cyclists and pedestrians by making them wait while motor traffic for the combined turns get a green;
• Or make sure that the cycle track comes close to the roadway so it is obvious that cycles may be present and that the roadway crosses the cycle track.

As we have the end of a bi-directional cycle track to deal with which adds the requirement of additional crossings, we’ll be best to stick with the first option.

The light stages are shown below, they should be triggered by detection loops and/or push buttons and should be flexible, for example the third stage could combine parts of the second stage to allow left turning motor vehicles from York Street if there are no crossing pedestrians.

If we went with the second option, the cycle track across south side of Arragon Road should be kept close to the roadway and a warning sign should be included for turning traffic. Of course, there is no suitable sign in the UK, here’s how the Dutch do it.

“Let op” literally “Look out”. Note the flashing orange turn signal and the warning sign below, the cycle track in question is to the right beyond the bushes slightly out of view. Picture courtesy of Google Streetview.

London Rd / King St / York St / Church St

The heart of town is this main junction between the two main routes at the intersection of the three main shopping streets.

Since we want to encourage people into this area, we want to reclaim this area from the traffic heavy junction it is currently. The best way to do this is to remove the traffic junction entirely. So we’ve closed this end of London Road to through motor traffic traffic except for buses coming from King Street while keeping it open to cyclists and pedestrians.

We’ve also added two sets toucan crossings to King St / York St to allow people to cross between London Road and Church Street. These could be zebra crossings depending on traffic speed and volume, and if so a central island refuge could be added to aid crossing, although it would need to be wide enough to fit a bicycle.

The entrance to Church Street has been constrained to humanise it with a tight corner radius, a steep vertical curb deflection, and tactile pavement-like surface; although in practice we could remove it altogether to create a larger pedestrian space and remove any potential conflict since it’s accessible from Richmond Road.

Cross Deep

Along the full length of King Street we have included cycle tracks that run behind the disabled parking, loading bays and bus stops.

At the far end of King Street we have the Cross Deep junction. Due to space restrictions we’ve stuck with a set of traffic lights rather than install a roundabout, however we’ve made some changes to the three lane confusion that currently exists.

We simplify the lane arrangement to a two lane entrance and one lane exit for each aspect of the t-junction. This allows us to synchronise the traffic movements of each mode (motor traffic, bikes, and pedestrians) together into the same stages (all right turns go together, etc. I inadvertently spoke a little about this junction last post) so as to make for a safe yet efficient junction.

Conclusion

So there we go, my take on how the council could revitalise and revolutionise our town centre through inclusive street design inspired by our friends across the North Sea.

Now I’m not a traffic engineer, but as far as I understand all the things I’ve mentioned are possible within current legislation, so the only real barrier is political will. Plus nothing here is specific to Twickenham, we can apply these and similar techniques to any town or village to re-shift the balance back towards a people friendly environment.

Of course, taking the risk of reducing capacity for road vehicles would be a brave one, politically, but there’s only so much space in our towns and all evidence points to the fact that traffic always grows or shrinks to fill the available space as long as you provide people with quality alternatives (a phenomenon known as traffic evaporation). Some day we’re going to have to have these decisions forced upon us, perhaps it’s time to start getting prepared?

Mr Phil Jones let me know that when I used term “phase”, I should have been saying “stage”, so I’ve updated the content below as such, but since my “witty” play on the word “phasers” wouldn’t work I’ve left the post title as is. Please excuse my artistic license.

With the Mayor’s excellent Cycling Vision comes the inevitable chatter about “bicycle phases through traffic lights” and how the inclusion of bicycles into junction design will negatively effect stage timings.

There seems to be a school of thought that by providing for bicycles at junctions, you need to provide a dedicated bicycle phase in a similar ilk to the way pedestrian stages are handled in the UK. However this isn’t the case. I’ve talked of this before so I’ll try not to repeat myself too much.

Let’s look at the details via some lovely diagrams, first up how a standard UK crossroad junction is staged up.

In the following, blue is our motor traffic, green our bicycle traffic, and yellow our pedestrian traffic. Each frame of the diagram shows the movements allowed in a stage of a standard crossroad junction. Arrow heads show movement direction, while crossbar heads show waiting at a red signal.

1. In the first stage  traffic flows freely north/south and can turn east/west from both directions at will by giving way to traffic from the opposite direction. Bicycle traffic is mixed in with motor traffic and expected to blend seamlessly with motor traffic movements, while pedestrians are halted from making any movements other than turning the corner they are already on or crossing to a mid-carriageway refuge.
2. The second stage is just like the first but for the east/west direction.
3. The third and final stage is an all green pedestrian crossing phase. We stop all motor and bike traffic from all directions and allow the pedestrians to go crazy, but realistically we only give them enough time to cross a single roadway.

We apply the same treatment to t-junctions too, except that left turns from the straight ahead route can turn in both motor traffic stages  Below is an image of a typical t-junction curtsey of Google Street View, in fact this is a junction I know well as it’s in my home town of Twickenham.

Now let’s look at a better, fairer, safer, but still efficient way of staging our junction (aka what they do in the Netherlands).

The first thing you’ll notice, we have 4 stages instead of 3, but the difference is that in each stage we have separation of vehicle movements by type. The only potential conflicts are between cyclists and pedestrians, a conflict type that has proved to be manageable by both parties (depending on volume).

We have two straight on stages where motor vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians all get a green light, but all motor vehicle turning is prohibited.

Each is followed by a turning stage where left and right motor vehicles turns go together, while bikes and pedestrians are only allowed left turns. To do a right turn, you go straight on in the straight on stage and then wait for the transposing straight on phase to complete the turn. Not ideal, but safe, easy, and the stage sequence can always be optimised for common turn directions.

The turning stages can be skipped if nothing is detected by inroad detectors or pedestrian push buttons.

This setup removes all the dangerous conflicts from the junction as well as removing the usual UK ambiguity of combined straight ahead and turn lanes which cause their own conflict and confusion.

The negatives are of course that to separate vehicle movements we need to separate vehicles that want to go in each direction. As such we need a traffic lane per direction, something which could be problematic is space is at a premium although there might be more than we’d expect since we can do away with large pedestrian refuges.

Via the magic of digital manipulation, let’s see how this might look if we were to apply it to our Twickenham junction above.

As you can see, on our approach we’ve split the turning motor traffic into two lanes, and while the left turning traffic is held at a red signal, bikes on the red cycleway and pedestrians on the pavement also have a green signal for turning right via the toucan crossing going straight across the road to the cycleway and pavement on the opposite side. 

Note that the cycleway carries on past the motor traffic stop line and through the pedestrian crossing (priority here would depend on volume and controlled via a zebra/give way setup) and is far advanced in line with the pedestrian crossing of the east/west roadway. This not only provides a safe place for bicycles to make a right turn from, but also puts them into clear view of left turning motor traffic (which will always have a red light when bicycle traffic has a green).

We’ve separated our varying modes of transport in time and space so as to remove the conflict points, while also providing an efficient junction that gives each mode equal share of green light time.

So let’s hope junctions like this are in the Mayor’s plans for London.

I’ve come across a strange collation that is probably more conjecture than science, but that I think is interesting anyway.

Countries that have low levels of cycling have traffic signals with repeater lights, and those with more cycling do not have repeater lights.

Really? As I said, there’s no scientific data behind this bold claim, just the observations of a transport geek, but maybe there’s something in it. 

So what is a repeater light?

In the UK, traffic lights appear next to a stop line. This stop line is a thick solid white line that stretches across the carriageway and that can only be legally crossed when a green light is shown at one end of the line. In some countries the lights themselves are the marker to stop at (I’m looking at you France), but here we make it nice and simple and have a big white line to show exactly where you have to stop.

This the best picture I have of UK traffic lights, as you can see the repeater lights opposite the junction allow vehicles to encroach into the junction.

Because of this line and the fact it is the stopping point, we can have something that other countries can not, extra traffic lights that are not where you have to stop but are just there to make sure you see the lights. These are repeater lights. They repeat the intention of a light at a stop line to add more impact and make sure we notice that stop light when we’re busy looking the other way.

The UK has repeater lights, so to does Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, the countries in North America (although sometimes they just hang a single light in the middle of the junction, but it’s still beyond the stop line), whereas the other countries of Europe (you know the ones, the ones with more than 2% cycle modal share) all have traffic lights only on the entrance to traffic controlled junctions.

And this the best picture I have of Dutch traffic lights. The lights are positioned a cars length in front of the stop line meaning you have to stop behind the line to be able to still see the lights.

So why could this correlation be? Who knows? It’s probably just a coincidence, however that’s not to say that there’s not something in repeater lights being a bad thing. Let’s look at the facts…

Repeater lights allow you to still see the lights even once you’re beyond the stop line. Whether you are motorist or cyclist, the repeater light allows you to happily stop within the pedestrian crossing (or ASL, although the less we talk about them the better) and still know when the lights have changed. My experience of driving in countries without repeater lights is that everyone (yes everyone without fail) stops behind the stop line, simply because if they run past it they then can’t see when to go, get beeped by the car behind and feel like a bit of a prat.

So perhaps my point is that it’s not the drivers/cyclists fault that they sometimes progress over the stop line, perhaps it’s the design of the lights themselves.

The 1960’s overzealous requirement to think for the motorist by filling their entire vision with red lights to such an extent that many don’t see the stop line at all, we’ve all seen the poor chap whose somehow managed to get confused and stopped at the repeater light on the exit of the junction much to the mirth and anger of his fellow travellers stuck behind him.

So perhaps it’s time for a change in rules. Now we have LED light technology which removes the possibility of bulb failure, we could do away with the confusing, ugly, cluttering repeater lights and make our traffic controller junctions just that little bit safer for everyone?

When it comes to cycleways and talk of how we fit them into the urban landscape when we have busy multi-functional roads, it’s common for people not to be able to imagine how it can be done. And it’s not for want of trying but for the simple fact that we’re not very good at doing it in the UK due to being too single minded and not looking at the bigger picture so we don’t have much practical knowledge to draw upon.

Cycleways are often looked on as either an afterthought to be squeezed into a design as a box ticking exercise or as an individual addition to an existing streetscape. This always leads to a poor implementation as the cycleway conflicts with the other requirements of the space.

Instead, cycle provision needs to be an integral part of the design, but not just for the sake of cyclists, but as a benefit for all users of the space. Let’s look at how.

Above is a typical (if highly stylised) urban road layout. We have a main through route running north/south on the left hand side and a local residential street on the right. Running east/west, again we have a residential street at the top and a main through route to the south.

We might assume that since this is an urban environment, the through routes act out a multitude of purposes; as a busy through road, a bus route, a shopping street. Since the first rule of Sustainable Safety is to have mono-functional roads, we’re obviously in for a tough time of things. There’s a number of options depending on the lay of the land and budget.

Ideally we’d move the through traffic to somewhere else via a by-pass. By-passes have a bit of a bad name for themselves, but being pragmatic, if we have traffic that isn’t going to magically go away, moving it away from people into it’s own dedicated space is a good idea. The key is to not add the by-pass to increase capacity, it must just move the through traffic out of the way, so traffic reduction techniques must also be used on the old street we are trying to free up.

If a by-pass is not an option, then we can try to move the other uses of the street, for example by encouraging shopping on a parallel street by improving it’s environment.

Realistically, in dense urban areas at least, these options will not be realistic, so we’ll have to deal with the multi-functional nature of the street as it is the best way we can which will mean some compromises. The best compromise would be to remove any on-street parking so as to free up space for pedestrians and cycles and provide convenient off-street parking.

Let’s presume we’ve found a way to fix (or at least compromise on) those problems.

So here we have added cycleways to our main routes, pretty simple standard things, at least for the Dutch.

Where the two main roads meet, we introduce a standard traffic controlled junction with separated cycle and pedestrian provision.

Moving away from the main junction, the introduction of the cycleways introduce the need for a treatment where they cross side roads. The CROW manual gives us two options, depending on the volume of traffic and the space available.

We either move the cycleway away from the roadway at the junction so as to create a buffer space for turning motor vehicles and to add give way road markings. Or we move the cycleway closer to the roadway so that sight-lines are improved and the cycleway in effect becomes a curb separated cycle lane.

So far we’ve just looked purely at adding cycleways to the main through routes, but we can do better. If we think beyond this, we can improve the local area for all users.

First off, we’ve adjusted the residential access junctions to improve its gateway function. Gateways are borders between road types that act as an indicator that the user is moving from one road type to another, they should slow traffic right down via calming measures such as steep gradient changes and surface texture and colour.

This example above is common in the Netherlands, it continues the pavement across the gateway, giving a zero radius to the junction as well as a steep vertical deflection and a stark visual impression that pedestrians have priority and that motor vehicles are entering a different type of road. The Ranty Highwayman recently looked at such set-ups and whether they could be implemented in the UK (spoiler alert - the answer is yes).

Here’s another example courtesy of Schrödinger’s Cat, this time including a cycleway in the mix rather than a cycle lane, if you haven’t already please check out The Alternative DFT for more info.

Secondly, we’ve also closed off our second residential area entrance on our east/west through road.

A problem with the original street layout is that as soon as the main north/south road gets busy and congested, the residential road will be used as a rat-run to relieve the through route. Something which will be a detriment to all other users of these streets, something which the streets were not designed for, and something which we should try to stop.

The best way to do this is to simply close off the area to the possibility of through traffic either by closing off roads completely or by clever use of one-way streets (in either case pedestrians and bicycles should be able to continue to use the road).

This also has secondary advantage. Conflicts on our roads occur not on the straight bits but at the bits in between, the junctions. So junctions should be where we concentrate on safety, Sustainable Safety says a good way is to ensure that when vehicles of differing masses meet, the difference in momentum is kept to a minimum by keeping speeds low, by separating vehicles in time or space (traffic lights vs bridges and tunnels), or by removing the junction all together.

So the less junctions we have, or at least, the less junctions on roads with high speeds (anything over 20mph is considered high speed when talking about pedestrians and cycles), the safer our overall system will be. By removing a junction that is replicated elsewhere, we not only stop rat-running between these two junctions, but also make the road that contains the junction safer for all while encouraging walking and cycling by making those modes more attractive with shorter distances.

In conclusion, what I guess I’m trying to say is that it’s not just a case of chucking in some cycleways and hoping they work (and giving up when they get complicated), the whole local area needs to be looked at as a complete network as simple network changes can have big positive impacts on how people can use the available space.

The main road into my in-laws village from the main road has a cycle track running alongside to enable cycling out towards the other villages the other side of said main road. It also is a nice way to get to the fast buses that run along the main road so as to avoid having to take the slow bus that weaves through the villages. It’s not, however, going in the right direction for central Rotterdam or the nearest Rotterdam metro station which are in any case better served for bicycles by the old road leading from the centre of the village which is more direct and no longer open to motorised traffic (and I’ve talked about before).

Here is the cycle track I’m talking about:

As you can see, close to the village the distance from the roadway has to shrink due to space and so it becomes protected by a crash barrier to keep the level of perceived safety high, whereas away from the village it is 2 metres from the roadway and “protected” by a row a trees.

These above pictures are from a few years ago. Upon visiting for New Year, I noticed that the roadway had been resurfaced. Other than new tarmac, nothing about it had changed. However, since the cycle track is deemed to be part of the same route as the roadway, it too got resurfaced.

And not just any kind of surface, no, the same super smooth surface as the roadway complete with a new centreline to reinforce the knowledge that it’s bidirectional.

If you look closely you’ll notice that they also replaced the old metal crash barrier with a new wooden barrier which is much more aesthetically pleasing (the roadway side is still metal, but clad in wood).

Also, the crossing at the end just before the village has been widened and improved, including the addition of a central tactile surface on the corner to narrow the roadway and help decrease vehicle speeds.

Why am I telling you all this? Two reasons.

Firstly, I feel that it’s important to get infrastructure right, but it’s also important to get something done and then have the forethought to improve it as time goes on and unforeseen is uncovered. Obviously there is a lower minimum of quality that must be achieved for something to be worthwhile in the first place, so we need to ask for the best when it comes to quality, but we also mustn’t rest on our laurels, everything can be made better, we must always keep on pushing for perfection and more importantly, budget for future upgrades.

Secondly, it shows how with the right systems in place, cycle infrastructure can be funded and maintained as a part of existing road infrastructure projects. Road projects should not just be about getting tarmac down to people to drive on, but about the whole public realm together as a single integral whole.

People can often have a hard time understanding how the Dutch can make cycling more attractive and more convenient than driving, and I can understand why this sounds like impossible unless you’ve seen it for yourself.

This New Year, again we were in Zuid Holland visiting family and friends, and this gave me the opportunity to see a specific example of how the principles of Sustainable Safety can promote cycling as a transport option.

As we were travelling by car out of a residential area along a local distributor road after visiting my brother in-law, we passed a guy on a bicycle (on the fietspad of course). A few minutes later when we were out of the area and on the main through road loading off towards the motorway, who did we pass? Yes, the same guy on the bicycle (again on the fietspad). Damn cyclists, taking short cuts! Let’s look at how he accomplished this magical feat.

Here’s a diagram of the lay of the land.

Ah ha! There we go, can you see it, yes, Mr Bicycle had a sneaky short cut. Hmmm, how come the distributor road doesn’t join the through road at that point like the cycleway does? That seems a little unfair.

The answer is due to the principles of Sustainable Safety which among other things say that you should minimise conflict. Conflict occurs when you have different flows of vehicles coming together, aka, at junctions. So the easiest way to minimise conflict is to minimise the number of junctions. Since through roads have the most traffic and the highest vehicle speeds, it makes sense to minimise the junctions on them, and as such the residential area is joined to the through road only at a single location (which happens to be a roundabout since they are statistically the safest junction type).

Obviously this is great for safety and doesn’t effect the motorist that much, yes he has to go a little further along the slow distributor road, but in return he gets an easy exit onto the through road via the roundabout rather than having to try to pull out onto a fast moving road. To do the same for pedestrians and cyclists doesn’t make any sense since there’s no safety issue with junctions that don’t involve motor vehicles and so leaves the cyclist with a nice short cut that allows them to get to the main road faster than the car driver.

This is just one example of how with the right planning and thought, cycling can be made fast and convenient while also making motor transport safer and easier.

There seems to be some confusion regarding the “early-start” invention that TFL came up with for Bow roundabout and now appear to be wanting to roll out across other locations.

Rather than looking at what works in other parts of the World, TFL have stuck to that favourite old British mentality of “not invented here”, and so we’ve ended up with an untested solution that is anything but satisfactory but which has been spun by some PR into something that sounds amazing.

So what’s wrong? Let’s have a closer look.

When the main road has a green light, the cycleway is held at a red signal.

And then finally when the main road has a red light, the cycleway has a green signal into the ASL, but no further.

Can you see what’s going on yet? Yes, although this means that bikes always end up safely in the ASL, bikes will always hit a red signal and so always have to stop. So it’s not an “early-start” for cyclists, it’s an “always-stop” for cyclists.

So how can we fix this? Easy, we do what they do on the continent, separate vehicle movements in space and/or time.

Want more info? Check out my post on how the Dutch do signalised junctions.

When it comes to cycling and more specifically, the design of cycling infrastructure, the Dutch do things very differently to us Brits and this shows in their amount of everyday bicycle usage. We can look at pictures of the Netherlands and swoon over the segregated cycleways as much as we like, but the really important question is; what DFT rules need to change to allow us to recreate a little bit of Holland here?

Let’s look at the characteristics of a Dutch cycleway and see what’s missing:

Consistent surface

A key principle of Sustainable Safety is that of consistency, or rather, that of being able to recognise a new environment via familiar patterns and layouts. This improves safety, if every cycleway looks familiarly like a cycleway, then we all expect to see cycles upon it, as such the Dutch have standardised on a consistent red tarmac rather than the hodge-podge of colours and patterns we sprinkle on our roads (and they used to on their cycleways).

I think we can manage that, we can build nice smooth roadways with lovely smooth tarmac, so we can do the same for cycleways. Nothing needs changing, just the practice of treating cycleways as a kind of roadway rather than an afterthought and to standardise on a nice red colour for the tarmac (red is less garish than green or blue while remaining distinctive).

2m wide

To be comfortable, cycleways need to be wide enough for the wobbliest of cyclists or for two bikes to be ridden side by side. So the Dutch mandate a 2 metre wide path by standard (1.5 metre minimum where space is scarce).

I’m pretty sure that we’ve got the same if not more space in the UK than they have in Holland, it being one of the most densely populated countries in Europe (in fact on average twice as densely populated as the UK), and even though we often measure in feet and inches, I’m sure we can measure 2 metres to produce nicely sized cycleways.

Forgiving curbs

Curbs can be a pain, especially if you crash into them and fall off your bike. However they don’t have to be. If you’re building a cycleway for cycles, then you don’t have to use curbing designed for motor cars. Instead you can use what I think the Dutch call the forgiving curb, a curb with a nice 45 degree angle, so rather than strike your pedal and topple over the curb, you harmlessly bounce off of it.

Can we build tracks without enormous towering curbing funnelling us dangerously into a narrow twisting spaces? There’s nothing in the DFT guidelines saying not, so of course we can, we just need guidelines to introduce forgiving curbs into the repertoire of solutions.

Separation from motor traffic

The Dutch have a set of simple rules stating how much separation there should be between the roadway and the cycleway/pavement depending on the speed limit of the road.

The faster the road, the more separation, and if there’s no room, then a physical barrier should be used to provide not just physical safety, but also to make people feel safe. Again, it’s just guidelines on how much separation there should be based on the type and speed of the road.

No parking

Car parking is a problem with cycle infrastructure when it comes to the UK, even when a cycle lane is painted with a mandatory solid line (mandatory meaning that motor vehicles must not enter), it is still perfectly legal for motor vehicles to park in the cycle lane. Crazy. It is possible to paint a double yellow line within the cycle lane so as to ban parking, but this often fills half of the lane with paint providing even less room for bikes and still doesn’t disallow waiting within the lane.

All of this is a waste of time and paint, the Dutch of course have a much simpler solution, you’re not allowed to park directly on the carriageway of a major road outside of an urban area (as far as I understand, that’s a road flanked with a solid white line), and when you do enter an urban area they restrict parking to designated parking spaces only (see the sign on entering the village in the image above).

Could we do that here? Probably, it’d just require the changing of some existing rules, we could start by simply making it illegal to park in cycle lanes.

Continuous

Dutch cycleways are continuous, that is they don’t have gaps in them, they are a complete solution from door to door, unlike in the UK where when the engineering gets tough, the cycleways become pavement or roadway.

Here are some pictures to remind you of what it’s like in the UK, these particular examples from the wonderful A316 cycleway in the London Borough of Richmond Upon Thames which vanishes as soon as a junction appears.

In contrast, when you get to a junction on a cycleway in Holland, the cycleway continues safety through the junction either by being part of the signalised junction, having right of way, or by giving way, depending on the type of junction and the volume of the roads and cycleways.

Can we do this in the UK? Yes of course. We have cycle traffic lights and we have cycle priority junctions, it’s just a case of continuing the red tarmac through the junction and adding some paint, signs and/or lights (we’ll look at indicating priority below). Technically there’s nothing stopping it being done this way, just for it to be a DFT recommendation so that engineers don’t worry about getting into trouble for doing things differently, shared use pavements are the easy way out as well as being the officially sanctioned option, it’s no wonder so many get built.

Cycle traffic lights

As mentioned above, to have continuous routes when you have traffic light controlled junctions, you are going to need specific traffic lights for bicycles.

That doesn’t sound too tricky, just put up some more lights and point them at the cycleway. Sometimes you need to put them near to lights for motor traffic so you need to differentiate between them, and so you paint the light bulbs like little bicycles and everyone knows where they stand. Alternatively if space is limited, you shrink them down in size to more cyclist friendly dimensions.

The problem in the UK is that although you can have green and amber bicycle shaped lights, the DFT don’t allow us to have bicycle shaped red lights which causes confusion when they have to appear amongst the myriad of lights they love to decorate roadway junctions with (see Bow roundabout “head-start” for an example). We also can’t make small lights, they have to be the same size as lights for motor vehicles.

Priority over sideroads

And finally we get to the biggie.

In Holland a cycleway (and a pavement) is deemed to have the same importance and thus priority as the roadway it follows, so even when separated by 5-10 metres from the roadway, it retains the priority over any sideroads that the roadway has. This makes logical sense and is enforced on the ground via the use of give way markings (the triangle markings) and “elephant feet” markings (the line of big square markings).

In the UK such things are mandated by the DFT in chapter 5 of it’s guidelines “Traffic Signs Manual” which has a whole section (section 16, a massive 7 pages of the 151 page chapter) devoted to road markings for cycle infrastructure.

Section 16.16 talks about cycle tracks (that’s a cycleway that is separate from a roadway) crossing roadways.

CYCLE TRACKS CROSSING ROADS

16.16 Except as described in para 3.25, a cycle track crossing a road will be the minor road at a priority junction, and marked as shown in figure 16-5, or be under signal control (see figure 16-6). The marking (sometimes known as “elephant’s footprints”) formerly shown on working drawing WBM294 and in LTN 1 /86 “Cyclists at Road Crossings and Junctions” should never be used to indicate an unsignalled crossing point. It is liable to cause confusion, and be misunderstood as giving cyclists priority over road traffic. At signalled crossings, the marking to diagram 1055.1 is usually adequate to indicate the crossing point for cyclists. However, if the route to be followed is not straightforward, the “elephant’s footprints” marking might be helpful. As it is not prescribed, special authorisation must be sought from the Secretary of State (see para 2.1).

And as you can see it explicitly states that a cycleway always yields priority to a roadway, no matter what size or statue the roadway or cycleway are. It also states that the elephant feet markings should not be used as they may cause confusion (and heaven forbid perhaps alert a driver to the presence of cyclists).

This guidance leads to crappy cycleway designs like below, but you can’t blame the engineers, the guidelines tell them to design it like this.

There is one exception to this guidance however, as stated by paragraph 3.25 (section 3 is “stop and give way markings” in case you’re interested).

CYCLE PRIORITY

3.25 Regulation 25(6) enables the marking to diagram 1003 to be used to give priority to a cycle track crossing a road. The length of road crossed by the cycle track must consist of a road hump, which should be of the flat-topped type. The hump must extend across the full width of the carriageway, in accordance with direction 34(2). The marking to diagram 1023 should also be provided, together with a longitudinal warning line to diagram 1004 on each approach. The hump must be marked with diagram 1062 (see para 21.9). The Give Way marking should be placed on the carriageway of the road, not on any part of the hump.

What this basically says is that to be given priority, the cycleway must cross the roadway on a hump marked with warning triangle markings and give way markings in the roadway.

This isn’t really all that great, what we really need is a simple, space efficient, and consistent way of marking these crossings so that everyone has a clear indication of what’s going on, maybe the internationally recognised elephant’s feet markings (which are only allowed at signalised crossings in the UK). So DFT, lets change the rules to allow elephant’s feet markings on cycleway crossings to show priority and at the same time add an implicit give way meaning to the markings so we don’t need to muddy the road surface with pints of white paint.

Conclusion

So to sum up, we can get a long way with today’s DFT guidance and with just the will to take cycle infrastructure seriously, but there are a few gaping holes that could do with being fixed and that we should be pushing the DFT to fill.

1. Introduce guidance on how to install forgiving curbs.
2. Guidelines on how much separation there should be between roadways and cycleways based on the type and speed of the roadway.
3. Make it illegal to park in all cycle lanes.
4. Introduce guidance on how to continue cycleways through junctions.
5. Allow bicycle shaped red lights and small light stacks for cycleways.
6. Change the rules to allow elephant’s feet markings on cycleway crossings to show priority and at the same time add an implicit give way meaning to the markings.

Simple. Job done.