London Assembly Transport Committee's review of cycle schemes

[Ticktockmy]

At the other extreme, an area where the case for segregation is - I think! - unanswerable is along major A and B roads between towns. I avoid these like the plague because they are so deeply unpleasant to cycle along. I am never going to cycle on the A281 between Horsham and Guildford ever again, unless there are major changes. Likewise the A29. Too many near death experiences. There is no margin at the side, and the speed differential is so great, it's frankly terrifying. Look at the KSI locations for cyclists - such a large number are on busy "rural" A and B roads, out of all proportion with the number of cyclists using them.

There is a cycleroute all the way from Guildford to Christ hospital then B roads into Horsham, but the route over Baynards tunnel can be a bit of a huff and puff well it is for this old fellow:-), and of course not so fast a the road route out throught Cranliegh and Ewhurst.

 

[jonesy]

If we can get 30% modal share we'll need FAR fewer buses too By the same token, we have a mega-tube-system unlike either Copenhagen OR Amsterdam which takes the majority of the load and doesn't take up any cycling space. I don't think it should be underestimated what an incredibly huge difference it would make to London's transport system if we had "Amsterdam" levels of cycling. We would need, quite simply, far less road space for motorised vehicles (although actually that would have to be a cause, not an effect). Point taken anyway - London is massive and has a massive population and we're a LONG way off having a modal share while will dent public transport usage in any meaningful way.

I don't think you can have looked at the figures...
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/corporate/Travel-in-London-report-1.pdf

Can you identify the group of trips that can be readily transferred to cycling? Distance matters a great deal here, and London has large commute distances than most places.

One problem is that everything here is seen as a new problem. Take banning lorries (I know you didn't mention this). Everybody points out the issues with it without realising that these issues have been solved in other cities before and those lessons can be learned. Obviously it's more difficult to do it that way, but in some places it's viewed as being worth the annoyance for the benefits that it brings. It's the same with bike paths. NL has spent years finding ways to restructure things so that bike paths will fit and cars are made to suffer, and the people love it. We just sit here and say "nope, roads too narrow" and it's complete bollocks. This stuff has all been done before. Of course things aren't identical here but go in with the right people with the right experience and the right brief and budget, and it's possible to create an environment with a similar effect.

Ultimately this needs wholesale change of attitude to free up enough space but we can start with one route at a time. In some places like Gronigen they ripped out entire major road systems to turn the city centre into virtually a car free environment. Not doable in London in any sort of short or medium term, but shows what is possible with the right political will. Surely ripping out some parking and a few traffic lanes isn't completely unthinkable.

re Oxford and Cambridge, I've never cycled nor spent time in either. When I look at the Cambridge Cycling Campaign website they seem to be promoting the installation of segregated cycle paths, so I guess they see value in them and believe that they help. I have no personal experience to fall back on but certainly the CCC website looks "pro-facilities". I know that Oxford is renowned for it's narrow on-street cycle lanes which don't count as segregation for me, to be honest, but aren't VC. To be honest it's hard for me to comment on those two cities.

Well as you are so insistent that we can learn from European cities with high levels of cycling, would it not be appropriate also to see what is going on in British cities with high levels of cycling? Because, for the nth time of repetition, the vast majority of cycling in both cities takes place on the road, with the cars, buses, white vans etc, the sort of thing you said will NEVER happen. Furthermore, while there have been efforts, mixed, to introduce cycling specific facilities over the years, the growth in cycling, which occurred in Oxford in the late 70s and early 80s, pre-dates it. And both cities have high levels of bus use as well.

There are many other factors that affect cycle use; clearly segregation is neither a necessary condition (e.g. Oxford) nor sufficient (Milton Keynes), so we really have to understand what actually makes a difference, and what is most appropriate under different circumstances. Hence approaches like the previously mentioned Hierarchy of provision. Segregation at all costs has given us the crappiest bits of the NCN and LCN, wasted loads of money and political support for cycling, and very often made things worse for existing cyclists than they were before.

 

[stowie]

Stowie mentioned two things that really could do with expanding on. Strict liability insurance is, potentially, the biggest thing for cycling you can imagine. In 1970s Vancouver the state owned monopoly car insurance company told drivers they wouldn't be covered if they hit a pedestrian. Result - pedestrians stepped off the kerb with the air of seaside promenaders. vehiclle speeds dropped to 25mph on broad suburban streets and cyclists multiplied like rabbits in a city in which the climate is rubbish (I remember it raining every day in August). So - strict liability insurance could change our streets for the better, reduce speed, reduce injuries, and cost, in aggregate, nothing at all.

The other point he made was about Hyde Park. There's no question that the paths parallel to Park Lane are a good thing. The question is - what's the potential of paths across parks? I'm pretty gloomy about them. I accept that they give cyclists a competitive advantage, I accept that they increase permeability, and that they offer another layer of oversight which may deter crime. On the other hand - some of us who campaigned for the path across Tooting Common back in the 80s have to recognise the resentment that's caused by cyclists effectively cutting the common in half - as we have to recognise that the small number of cyclists on canal towpaths are not neccessarily an ornament. I suspect that circumstances alter cases. The path across Clapham Common, which affords cyclists a safe and convenient route from Streatham, Balham, Clapham and points south to Chelsea Bridge seems to work well, but then it's not as well used as one would imagine it could be. The general point is that there is a heirarchy of provision and that pedestrians, not cyclists, are at the top of that heirarchy.

And - the steel men are here, the carpenters are here, the sparks is here!

I think Strict Liability (I hate that term, completely incorrect, more a presumption of liability for civil matters) is a great idea. In actual fact, I think it is more than a great idea, I think it is absolutely critical - especially when one considers the incredible comments coming from judges from time to time on cycling matters. But I don't think it would increase modal share or change drivers' behaviour. Most bad driving isn't because the driver feels they haven't got to worry about their no-claims bonus - it stems from ignorance of their actions and a misplaced sense of ownership of the roads. Most drivers don't want to hurt or kill cyclists, they are simply unaware of the consequences of their actions. On the flip side, the Daily Wail hysteria about cyclists acting with impunity and hurling themselves under the cars of hapless motorists when they feel like some more cash is utterly ludicrous - again most people wouldn't think that maiming themselves for some compensation is a particularly good deal.

The Vancouver insurance, if the modal share is actually causal and not simply a correlation, is significantly different anyway. From your description, instead of the insurance paying out, the motorist was told "hit a pedestrian and you are on your own". Completely liable for court costs and compensation. That, as a motorist, would make me think twice (on top of the fact that one would never want the injury of a fellow human on one's conscience).

I didn't mention about Hyde Park - I think that was another poster. But I did mention about the towpaths, and you are right, I don't think cyclists are entirely accepted on these paths (not least because they are pretty narrow and sometimes in a poor state of repair). But on the Lea Valley Tow Path and the surrounding canals, I can assure you that in the summer they are pretty busy with cyclists - both for commuting and leisure. They are also rather wonderful - an incredible way to get in and out of the city without the bother of traffic (and also a great excuse to enjoy the wonderful Victoria Park!)

 

[srw]

There are many other factors that affect cycle use; clearly segregation is neither a necessary condition (e.g. Oxford) nor sufficient (Milton Keynes), so we really have to understand what actually makes a difference,

People in Oxford are civilised, svelte, intelligent, all-round good eggs. People in MK are numpties.

More seriously, I think it's clear from Oxford, Cambridge and London that having a large population of relatively young people with relatively little money and filthily expensive and inconvenient parking makes people look to solutions other than driving. That may be buses, tubes or cycling.

 

[jonesy]

People in Oxford are civilised, svelte, intelligent, all-round good eggs. People in MK are numpties.

More seriously, I think it's clear from Oxford, Cambridge and London that having a large population of relatively young people with relatively little money and filthily expensive and inconvenient parking makes people look to solutions other than driving. That may be buses, tubes or cycling.

Again, let's not overstate the student effect. Cycling has a large modal share for travel to work in both cities. And it certainly isn't just low paid employees who cycle either. I'd fully agree on car parking being a motivating factor, as is traffic congestion. Travel distances is another. MK is very low density, travel distances are much greater, so cycling is not competitive with driving, whereas in Oxford and Cambridge there are a lot of people living within easy cycle distance of where they work, and they can cycle there directly, without having massive inner ring-roads, gyratories etc to cope with. But they still do it on very busy roads with all the other traffic, and that's what ozzage was saying will never happen.

 

[srw]

Perhaps I should have said "relatively young, and young-at-heart". I haven't been around Oxford for yonks, but my recollection is that there was a definite bias towards the younger end of the age spectrum, and a noticeable decline in cycling outside term. It's the sort of place where someone settles at the age of 20-not-very-much as a poverty-stricken postgraduate. If you get in the habit of cycling then you never lose it. Certainly I got into the habit of commuting in London as a 26-year-old recent student, because the £600 a year I would save by not buying a tube extension to my season ticket was going to pay for a lot of Brompton. Having got into that habit I never really lost it.

Completely anecdotally, I'd say that the relatively young (say [carefully picking an age that isn't at all biassed by his own] those under 41) are over-represented in London commutes these days. There particularly seems to be an over-representation among 20-something women, often on sit-up-and-beg bikes in ordinary clothes. Unless I'm just getting middle-aged and happen to notice 20-something women disproportionately.

I'm not sure I buy the distance thing. MK is basically a flat, featureless 3-mile by 3-mile square, with the centre at the centre (as it were). Oxford is about the same size, but with large segments taken out because of Port Meadow in the river - and, importantly, the residential areas tend to be further out, and there are one or two fairly stiff hills. Cambridge is flat, featureless and small, but I gather the nearby villages are also pretty important residential areas.

 

[jonesy]

Yes, cycling does drop off outside term time. Nonetheless, the modal share for cycling to work is around 15%, that is very high for the UK and, by definition, is not students.

I'd agree that cyclists tend to be younger, but from my experience there is a broader range of age, and more equal gender split, than in London. And cycling in Oxford is much more likely to be undertaken in normal clothing than in London, though as numbers of cyclists increase in London, and Boris bikes take off, I think we can reasonably expect a more representative demographic.

Regarding travel distances, I didn't think there is much debate that MK has a very low urban density. Oxford's residential areas aren't further out at all: there are very large populations just the other side of the Plain around Cowley Rd and up to Headington; as well as along the nearer parts of Botley, around Abingdon Road, and Jericho. The housing is just packed in more, you don't get terraced housing in MK. You have far more people within a ten minute ride of Carfax tower than you do within a ten minute ride of whatever best defines the centre of Milton Keynes- from my recollection of nearly 20 years, the centre is very spread out, vast expanses of car parking and very little housing nearby.

 

[CopperBrompton]

I'm not familiar with Oxford, but in Cambridge it's definitely not just students, but people of all ages including well into their 80s. I can't recall ever seeing anyone cycling in Cambridge wearing Lycra.

London is a bit different, where there's a definite Lycra clad Roadie component, but even here I would say the majority of cyclists are wearing normal clothing.

 

[ozzage]

I don't think you can have looked at the figures...
http://www.tfl.gov.u...on-report-1.pdf

Can you identify the group of trips that can be readily transferred to cycling? Distance matters a great deal here, and London has large commute distances than most places.

The logical thing to aim for is to move people from using private vehicles on shorter trips to bike. This is also the best possible outcome obviously. NR and tube are going to have less transfer to cycling than buses, as buses are used more often for shorter trips than both NR and the underground. All I said was that more cycling = less buses and I stand by that. More cycling also = far fewer cars as well! The overall point is, as I stated, that we could have far fewer motorised vehicles on the road with levels of cycling as seen somewhere like Amsterdam. Surely nobody would argue with that?

I was incorrect that the tube takes the majority of the load, however by distance it is equal to bus use so I wasn't far off and it doesn't change my argument. The fact is, that the tube takes up a massive load so the population differential has less effect (still huge!) than it would have otherwise.

Well as you are so insistent that we can learn from European cities with high levels of cycling, would it not be appropriate also to see what is going on in British cities with high levels of cycling? Because, for the nth time of repetition, the vast majority of cycling in both cities takes place on the road, with the cars, buses, white vans etc, the sort of thing you said will NEVER happen. Furthermore, while there have been efforts, mixed, to introduce cycling specific facilities over the years, the growth in cycling, which occurred in Oxford in the late 70s and early 80s, pre-dates it. And both cities have high levels of bus use as well.

On one hand it's fair to say that I should be familiar with Cambridge and Oxford, but by the same token by the arguments put forward by many people (I don't necessarily mean in this thread) it's clear that most of those opposed to segregation have never cycled in a city where it's done properly.


That aside, I've spent a few hours looking at the map here http://www.camcycle..../resources/map/ and Google Earth to try to get a feel for the facilities in Cambridge. Now OK I can't go back in time and see what was there in the 70s, and I can only base things on what i can see in Streetview and on the satellite view, but what I saw is a quite highly developed network of routes.

These are very often on quiet roads and have a surprising number of off-road routes (either shared path alongside the roads or truly off-road through green space) as well. Clearly there are routes on A and B roads as well but I found a surprising number of cycle lanes, both mandatory and advisory on these routes (far better than you would see on equivalent streets in London, in my opinion), and as I mentioned before a clear indication that the CCC is working towards MORE segregation (eg latest newsletter re getting rid of parking in the cycle lane along Gilbert Road which is surely a precursor to making it mandatory). I would definitely NOT say that Cambridge is proof of vehicular cycling being successful, at least not from what I saw from the air and on street view. It's full of paths!!

I definitely saw gaps in the paths etc but I get the distinct impression that while the CCC promotes on-road cycling, they firmly believe that segregation is necessary in high traffic environments for the city to go to the next level.

Am I completely wrong? Can somebody here can give an informed and objective response to that?

I'm interested in the way you phrased the question. Do you believe that we have nothing to learn from European cities which have over 40% modal share? If they were other British cities would you be happy to apply the lessons in London?

Edit: By paths above I also mean lanes.

 

[ozzage]

I had trouble quoting this in the msg above for some reason, so added here:

There are many other factors that affect cycle use; clearly segregation is neither a necessary condition (e.g. Oxford) nor sufficient (Milton Keynes), so we really have to understand what actually makes a difference, and what is most appropriate under different circumstances. Hence approaches like the previously mentioned Hierarchy of provision. Segregation at all costs has given us the crappiest bits of the NCN and LCN, wasted loads of money and political support for cycling, and very often made things worse for existing cyclists than they were before.

I don't think anybody has asked for segregation at all costs. I certainly don't. The hierarchy makes sense in theory but mostly just means that they have an excuse to do virtually nothing. Bear in mind too that the crappiest bits of those networks are sometimes highly valued by casual cyclists. Not always, obviously, because much of it really IS complete garbage, but I often see criticism of exactly the type of facilities (shared pavements for example) which could encourage new people to cycle.

 

[dellzeqq]

Shared pavements are just ghastly.

It doesn't hurt to see ourselves as others see us from time to time. I remember discussing the Regents Canal towpath on the Greenways committee. Cyclists whizz along, scaring the living daylights out of walkers. The Ramblers made a case for getting cyclists off the towpath. They were right.

There's a real shortfall in Ozzages reasoning. He or she sees motorised traffic as a given, and that we (cyclists and pedestrians) should retreat from the streets, leaving the car to roam unfettered. The entire thrust of urban planning should be to limit and moderate motorised traffic.

 

[GrumpyGregry]

The entire thrust of urban planning should be to limit and moderate motorised traffic.

Please can you get elected...

...except that statement probably makes you unelectable in a country where 3/4's of the voters own cars.

 

[CopperBrompton]

It doesn't hurt to see ourselves as others see us from time to time. I remember discussing the Regents Canal towpath on the Greenways committee. Cyclists whizz along, scaring the living daylights out of walkers. The Ramblers made a case for getting cyclists off the towpath. They were right.

There are a minority of cyclists who don't give way to pedestrians on shared paths, and do, as you say, cycle much too fast in close proximity to pedestrians. Ironically, I think it is very often the same cyclists as those who would complain about drivers who do the same to them.

In both cases, it is the minority giving the majority a bad name.

 

[As Easy As Riding A Bike]

It doesn't hurt to see ourselves as others see us from time to time. I remember discussing the Regents Canal towpath on the Greenways committee. Cyclists whizz along, scaring the living daylights out of walkers. The Ramblers made a case for getting cyclists off the towpath.

They scare the daylights out of other cyclists too! Some of the chumps on that path have sped past me so fast I've had a major wobble - I'd rather have been on foot.

 

[As Easy As Riding A Bike]

There's a real shortfall in Ozzages reasoning. He or she sees motorised traffic as a given, and that we (cyclists and pedestrians) should retreat from the streets, leaving the car to roam unfettered. The entire thrust of urban planning should be to limit and moderate motorised traffic.

If I am permitted to speak for him/her, I don't think that is fair to Ozzage. Certainly, from my perspective, if there is to be segregation (certainly not everywhere), I don't think it should be a "retreat", or about making the roads "unfettered" for cars.

If you look at the history of segregation in Dutch urban centres, it has involved the reallocation of space that was once used for cars - be it parking, or extra lanes of vehicular traffic. Space has been taken away from the car.

Importantly, it's not about taking the bicycle away from the road, it's about making some (or all!) of the road specifically for the bike and/or pedestrians.

(Of course, with piss-poor planning and weak political will, we end up with the former, rather than the latter - and this is a major problem).

And finally - to restate my position - segregation is only a part of the broader strategy that we all agree on - to limit and moderate traffic. On most suburban roads, there is no need for segregation, provided there are lower speed limits, more limited vehicular access, measures like shared space, and so on.