Campaigning against dodgy cycle lane what do I do?

[GrumpyGregry]

So the residents' convenience trumps the safety of cyclists.

In short, yes. What else did you expect?

30 million drivers in the country, nearly all of them have the vote, nearly all of them think they own the rights to the road outside their door. No local councillor is going to alienate dozens and dozens of voters and council tax payers in their ward without very good cause. Marginally mproving the safety of cyclists is not a very good cause unless you can demonstrate an increase in real, not perceived, risk.

Probably better to try and get the unsafe lane removed (but won't happen because of local authority "my total of cycle infrastructure's bigger than yours" pissing contests) or just ignore it as it is unlikely to be making much of a real contribution to safety anyway.

My take, without knowing the location, the parked cars probably slow the other traffic down, probably making it safer for cyclists and pedestrians.

 

[dand_uk]

I have contacted the Town Council via their online message system .Had this reply within 24 hours.


Dear Mr Hodges

Thank you for your email I have forwarded your request to our Highways department and they will investigate.
If you feel we can be of any further assistance please contact us again.
Kim Farley
Customer Service Representative
Vale of Glamorgan Council

Will let you all know how it goes.

I recommend you send them this link:
View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYJBkLN-nC4
and tell them to skip to 4mins 40.

 

[benb]

I recommend you send them this link:
View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYJBkLN-nC4
and tell them to skip to 4mins 40.

That made me feel sick. Good reactions from the driver. Hope the cyclist was OK, and the person who opened the door got arrested.

 

[d87francis]

Apologies for the poor picture from google maps - but following your advice I have reported this to the council. It has bothered me for ages as the cycle lane makes drivers angry when I cycle at a sensible distance from the cars as they feel I should be in the cycle lane. If you're interested this is Warneford Lane in Oxford.

 

[400bhp]

Why do councils bother with these? They are so obviously wrong.

Is it to give someone something to do?

I'm really struggling...

 

[dawesome]

Why do councils bother with these? They are so obviously wrong.

Is it to give someone something to do?

I'm really struggling...

"Never mind the quality, feel the length"

 

[d87francis]

I'm afraid the report a problem page just gave a comment box and I didn't save what I sent, but I received a speedy reply (below) followed by the reply I have sent back.

Dear Mr Francis

Thank for you for your recent enquiry on the marking of the cycle lanes in Warneford Lane, and specifically the potential danger posed by cyclists being in the 'door zone' , and your suggestion that a buffer zone be provided to help address this. Our monitoring of the reported accidents here since the current layout was provided in 1997 thankfully shows no history of cycle accidents involving vehicles doors being opened, or other accidents where drivers are frustrated by cyclists choosing not to be in the lane. We also thankfully have seen very few problems of this type in the other locations where cycle lanes are adjacent to parking bays.

I will however be happy to review the scope for providing a buffer zone (clearly the road width will be the main constraint we will need to consider) but even if some adjustments are practical, with the very severe pressures on our budgets, it is most likely that we would only be able to implement any changes by combining with other works (such are resurfacing or if making other changes to the parking bays requiring remarking of the road)..

Please do not hesitate to contact me should you have any further queries on this matter.
Anthony Kirkwood
Road Safety Engineering Team
Environment and Economy
Oxfordshire County Council
Speedwell House
Speedwell Street
Oxford
OX1 1NE

{My Reply}

Dear Anthony,

Thank you very much for your kind email. I see that you are in an
almost impossible situation due to lack of budget and the width of
road and appreciate your willingness to look into this. I understand
that funding is put towards areas where there have been 'recorded'
accidents and as there have been none along this stretch of road it's
priorities must fall fairly low. It would be nice to know what the
risk assessment for this bit of infrastructure says about having a
cycle lane so close to a long stretch of parked cars - and perhaps
ensure that future risk assessments for other locations will deem such
a situation unsatisfactory.

I'm sure the amount of cycle lanes provided must look very good for
councils stats, and removing lanes can't be a popular decision.
However, as I doubt this issue will ever be of a high enough priority
to warrant a widening of the road to allow for buffer zones, perhaps
in this case the safest thing to do would be to remove the cycle
lanes?

I very much appreciate you giving up your time to look into this.
Many thanks
Dom Francis.

We have an area meeting on Tuesday 21st on cycling provisions in Oxford, with a proposed £300k to spend over 4 years, with local campaign group cyclox, the police, and the council all talking - which should be very interesting as I'd like to see a shift in attitudes towards planning for cycle provisions.

 

[growingvegetables]

I believe congratulations are in order. And an award of the OMJ - Order of the Monumental Jobsworth.

He's part of the "Road Safety Engineering Team", and yet describes the "door zone" as a potential danger area, because no accidents have been recorded involving dooring. The guy's a fool - door zone is an actual danger zone.

Hmmm - this shows (the post code search doesn't seem to be working ] shows 9 incidents involving slight injury to cyclists, and 2 incidents involving serious injury to cyclists. 3 slight and 3 serious to pedestrians. And 6 slight to car occupants, with an additional cluster around the end of the road.

I'm no professional - but if the cyclist injury rate is so comparatively high, doesn't that make our OMJ at least think that the farcilities may not be adequate?

 

[d87francis]

It would be nice to know some more information about the accidents on that map growingvegetables, a quick google hasn't revealed any press on accidents along there. I can imagine why there is such a cluster at the end, as there lies a magical roundabout - the only one I know that someone, more often than not, tries to pull out in front of me.

I have received a reply from Anthony:

Dear Dom

Thanks! - just two follow up comments in case of help - in terms of risk assessments, we carefully consider the possible safety implications of any new features (a formal safety audit is carried out for larger schemes, and even for relatively minor changes such as cycle lanes, a safety assessment will be carried out). The real test though of a scheme is how well in practice it works (as measured by the reported accident record) and we therefore monitor the safety performance closely to check for problems, as was the case when the lanes were provided here.

On cycle lanes more generally, we don't have any targets etc. for how many kilometres of lane are provided. There is in fact overall relatively little evidence (both locally and nationally) that their provision affects accident rates, but they are nevertheless generally popular with cyclists, and as a low cost measure, we are happy to provide them where we consider it safe and appropriate - I appreciate that there will be legitimate debate about the latter!

I have yet to pen a reply as I need some clarification on funding which will hopefully happen at our area meeting on Tuesday evening on cycle provision in Oxford. The is a provisional £300k over 4 years on the City Council budget towards cycling - but to complicate things within the City boundary the City Council maintain some roads and the County Council maintain others. So I don't know if money from this could go towards it. Still I think I shall forward this correspondence to Cyclox our local campaign group who shall be talking alongside the Council at the meeting. As I think it's atrocious that they consider this safe, and I guess it boils down to the age old story of waiting for accidents to happen before they change things - do they not realise that those people are not crash test dummies, they are real people with lives. I wonder if that means of testing an infrastructures safety violates the Convention of Human Rights and would be worthy of an appeal in the Court.

 

[Richard Mann]

Tony Kirkwood has a more detailed breakdown with accidents classified according to type, and was probably looking at the dooring category (I've attached the map of KSIs). The evidence is that we get more (and more severe) dooring incidents in places where there's sporadic kerbside parking and no cycle lane alongside (eg loading in St Clements). Painting the cycle lane seems to make cyclists take a slightly better position, and to flag up to motorists that there might be cyclists.

On the stats, Warneford Lane isn't particularly a problem, being fairly low speed for cars (so fast cyclists probably go in the traffic), and pretty narrow (and it's now 20mph, to boot). The parking is low-turnover, being mainly Brookes students. The ambition is to remove a lot of that parking, once the Divinity Road Area Controlled Parking Zone goes in. In the mean time, it's not top priority.

The City Council are putting up a bit of money (not very much, it has to be said), which will probably be spent on cycle lanes and further tightening of parking on main roads. At least it will if I have anything to do with it.

 

[400bhp]

It would be nice to know some more information about the accidents on that map growingvegetables, a quick google hasn't revealed any press on accidents along there. I can imagine why there is such a cluster at the end, as there lies a magical roundabout - the only one I know that someone, more often than not, tries to pull out in front of me.

I have received a reply from Anthony:

Dear Dom

Thanks! - just two follow up comments in case of help - in terms of risk assessments, we carefully consider the possible safety implications of any new features (a formal safety audit is carried out for larger schemes, and even for relatively minor changes such as cycle lanes, a safety assessment will be carried out). The real test though of a scheme is how well in practice it works (as measured by the reported accident record) and we therefore monitor the safety performance closely to check for problems, as was the case when the lanes were provided here.

On cycle lanes more generally, we don't have any targets etc. for how many kilometres of lane are provided. There is in fact overall relatively little evidence (both locally and nationally) that their provision affects accident rates, but they are nevertheless generally popular with cyclists, and as a low cost measure, we are happy to provide them where we consider it safe and appropriate - I appreciate that there will be legitimate debate about the latter!

I have yet to pen a reply as I need some clarification on funding which will hopefully happen at our area meeting on Tuesday evening on cycle provision in Oxford. The is a provisional £300k over 4 years on the City Council budget towards cycling - but to complicate things within the City boundary the City Council maintain some roads and the County Council maintain others. So I don't know if money from this could go towards it. Still I think I shall forward this correspondence to Cyclox our local campaign group who shall be talking alongside the Council at the meeting. As I think it's atrocious that they consider this safe, and I guess it boils down to the age old story of waiting for accidents to happen before they change things - do they not realise that those people are not crash test dummies, they are real people with lives. I wonder if that means of testing an infrastructures safety violates the Convention of Human Rights and would be worthy of an appeal in the Court.

Highlighted bit. He misunderstands risk. It is the accident rate, not the number of accidents. the number might be nil because very few cyclists actually use the road and/or the lane.

It would be better to look at larger studies on accident (rates) in cycle lanes, and their particular type (close to door zone or not).

 

[d87francis]

@400bhp - that type of study would seem the logical thing to do.

@Richard Mann - thanks for the map, I know Warneford Lane isn't the most pressing of issues with regards to cycling provision around Oxford, I have plenty of other niggles myself (such as the lamp posts in the cycle lane going up Headington Hill), but I mainly want to change the attitude that made them feel this was a sensible place to put a cycle lane in the first place. I know that budgets are tight, and waiting until they next resurface or paint to remove it would be entirely reasonable.

It may well flag up to motorists that there could be cyclists, but a driver in Oxford that wasn't already aware of that must be fairly unobservant; and wouldn't a sign post work better. I'm just slightly confused when you say 'Painting the cycle lane seems to make cyclists take a slightly better position', do you mean in general? Because I can't see how it puts them in a better position in this instance, the better position would be two foot to the right of the cycle lane.

I just struggle to see the logic with putting a cycle lane along the road in the first place other than purely to increase stats. The road is narrow and curves to the left when coming from Old Road, obscuring the view of someone about to open a door. As it is when cycling well inside the 'door zone' vehicles have to pass you too closely because of the width of the road - surely encouraging road users to share the space along here would be much safer?

 

[growingvegetables]

It would be nice to know some more information about the accidents on that map growingvegetables, a quick google hasn't revealed any press on accidents along there.

Sorry - I know no more than the guys say on their website; it's the police STATS19 data for 2000-2010 put on a map; there's a bit more on the Guardian Data Blog and the BBC

Fwiw - I used it to dig deeper into Leeds council's site to find
- road injury data (includes reports to download on sites for concern, and lengths for concern)
- Leeds Traffic Monitoring Report

Two points
- goodness only knows what other statistics are extraordinarily well hidden in the "well-ordered website hierarchy" of public transparency corporate obfuscation and ignorance.
- and it was worrying to find that my "spidey feelings" about incidents on the A660 corridor were spot on. Parts of that important cycling route have a cyclist casualty rate 10 times higher than any comparable important routes in the city.

 

[Banjo]

Thanks for all the replies and support.I have been up to my eyeballs lately with work and family stuff but have written a letter to the Chief Executive of our Highways dept .

The tone of the letter was friendly and non confrontational, I opened by praising them for some good stuff they have done then expressing my grave concerns about the cycle lanes in question. I have quoted the dft guidelines which the lanes dont follow and expressed concern about the possible death of a child (given its close proximity to 2 major schools).

Will let U know any future developments which may involve local councillor/MP .As a non political person normally I dont even know who they are but they will be finding out who I am if this turns into a whitewash.

 

[Banjo]

Success

Only sent the letter about a week ago.Had a reply saying someone was looking into it. In the last 24 hours or so the old markings have been removed and replaced with a buffer zone between the parking bays and the cyclelane Im not positive but I think the parking bay has been widened also. Personally I still wont ride in it but its a whole lot safer than before.