High Road Leytonstone: ‘more appealing’ than Dutch cycling infrastructure?

David Hembrow has reproduced a photograph used in a recent post of mine with a scene from a Dutch street, commenting: In the Netherlands, this is a technique used to civilize residential streets which are not busy through roads, which do not have a high number of motor vehicles passing through and which have a 30 km/h speed limit. In the UK the same thing is being done on busy through roads with higher speed limits and lots of traffic. 

He shows lots of other Dutch examples here.

This provoked a comment:

I do not see what is wrong with the UK example you give in this post. Dare I say that the smooth tarmac of the UK cycle lane looks more appealing to me than the Dutch cobblestones... In addition, that is not a "parking lane" to the left of the picture, as the double yellow lines are also applicable within that section of road. This must therefore be just a loading bay. P.S. May I just clarify that I cycle a lot in both the UK and mainland Europe and generally feel that UK cycling infrastructure is very poor, often lethal. I just think that this particular photo, showing a well-maintained road and relatively wide cycle lane, doesn't really illustrate your point very well. 

This is a good example of the confusion which can arise from a simple comparison of two apparently similar scenes. However before commenting on that, let me quickly say that the commenter is quite mistaken in asserting that the High Road Leytonstone photograph shows a loading bay. It doesn’t. Anyone can park in these bays and similar bays can be found all along this road, most of them filled with cars (as shown in the photo above). The reason why the bays shown in the photograph used by David Hembrow are empty is probably precisely because they aren’t outside shops.

Mixing with motor traffic on a Dutch street is quite different than it is on a London street. I realise in retrospect that my photo is unintentionally misleading because it makes it appear that High Road Leytonstone is a quiet street with little parking. In fact my photo just happened to be taken when there was a gap in the traffic. Luckily it was one of a sequence which I took while cycling up this street on a weekday and I reproduce the other ones below to put this isolated photo into context.

High Road Leytonstone is a road which links up with major London through routes and it carries huge volumes of motor traffic. One relatively small section is one-way with a contraflow lane for cyclists. This last feature is of course welcome but isolated infrastructure for cyclists is no use at all unless it forms part of a coherent and connected network. This remains the British disease: cycling infrastructure of any sort is always built on car-centric terms: as soon as it conflicts with the greater priority of ‘smooth traffic flow’ it notoriously comes to a sudden end. And, depressingly, Britain continues to go ever-backward. Over in South Gloucestershire they are seizing space from cyclists and pedestrians to benefit drivers.

In the London Borough of Waltham Forest things are no different, with the model used on Wood Street E17 (below) being rolled out across the borough. It is madness to build out the footway forcing cyclists closer to overtaking motor vehicles, especially buses and lorries, while at the same time creating new dangers from ‘dooring’. To do this is to make the conditions of vehicular cycling even worse and more off-putting than they were before. Here on Wood Street cyclists are pushed even closer to overtaking motor vehicles on a dangerous bend.

The recent ‘improvements’ on High Road Leystonstone are designed to encourage car use for short journeys, and they have been introduced with the enthusiastic collaboration of Transport for London. In some sections, including the one shown in the photograph used by David Hembrow, speeding is a problem. The speed limit is nominally 30 mph – far too high for a shopping street with residential housing mixed in – but some drivers are plainly exceeding this to a significant degree when the opportunity arises (such as early in the morning, or in the evening, or when traffic levels are low).

High Road Leytonstone is a major route which runs north-south from the Green Man Interchange (where the A114 and the A11/A1199 and the A113 connect with the A12, which connects the M11 motorway and North Circular Road (A406) with the Blackwall Tunnel) down to Stratford. Its ‘A’ road status was revoked when the A12 was reconfigured and pushed through Wanstead, Leytonstone and Leyton. Just looking at a map can give completely the false impression, since this section of the A12 is basically a motorway (albeit with a 50 mph limit) and cyclists are banned, while High Road Leytonstone, which lacks even the status of a ‘B’ road, carries massive volumes of motor traffic, far in excess of other local roads of equal status.

High Road Leytonstone is precisely the kind of direct, major route with high volume traffic which requires Dutch-style segregated cycle paths and where the space is available. It is a road which was once earmarked for total pedestrianisation – a project which was relentlessly subverted to result in the motor vehicle choked mess of today. Bear in mind that it is in a London borough where cycling’s modal share is, according to the most recent TfL figures, under one per cent. High Road Leytonstone has standard vehicular cycling infrastructure, including the classic template of the cycle lane leading into an Advanced Stop Line cycling reservoir. This cycling infrastructure notoriously lures the unwary cyclist into danger, especially when it concerns a lorry driver’s ‘blind spot’. Here is a recent instance which occurred on High Road Leytonstone, not far from where the photograph used by David Hembrow was taken.

The photographs below show conditions for cycling northward on High Road Leytonstone after the junction with Southwell Grove Road, a distance of less than half a mile. They were taken in a single continuous journey over a period of about three-four minutes. The first one was taken just before the scene shown in the photo used by David Hembrow, and the others show conditions beyond that location.

The reality is that the double yellow line ‘No Waiting At Any Time’ restrictions, designed to deter drivers from parking in the cycle lane, are regularly ignored, and that apart from the danger of ‘dooring’, drivers leaving their parking space rarely bother to consider if a cyclist is coming along, and block the cycle lane as they manoeuvre to slip into the line of traffic backed-up from the signalled junction at Church Lane. The final blurry photograph records what happens when a bus driver moves into the cycle lane in order to deposit passengers before reaching the bus stop.

In short, cycling up High Road Leytonstone is not a relaxing experience, and is fraught with danger and obstruction. The notion that conditions for cycling on this street are superior to those found on Dutch streets is not persuasive.

Advanced Stop Lines and cycling safety

Photo: The Argus. The aftermath of a collision which apparently involved a left-turning vehicle and a cyclist.





Yesterday the car-centric Department for Transport announced that it was still determined to shun best practice at road junctions and was instead recommending the usual stale vehicular cycling solutions which will predictably result in cyclists being killed and maimed and which will do absolutely nothing to bring about a mass cycling culture in the UK:

The Department for Transport has published today a review of design solutions to protect cyclists at road junctions. It found that the four leading methods of protecting cyclists were creating advanced stop lines for cyclists at traffic lights; painting coloured cycle lanes across road junctions; straightening staggered road crossings; and changing traffic priority at crossings to give right of way to cyclists crossing roads on cycle lanes. The study concluded that it would be cost-effective to launch trials of coloured cycle lanes through junctions. It found that allowing cyclists to turn left at red lights was among the worst possible solutions. 

The bit about ‘changing traffic priority at crossings to give right of way to cyclists’ sounds on the face of it quite progressive but it’s ambiguously worded  and I think all they are referring to is a theoretical right of way embodied in painted markings on the carriageway rather than an infrastructural one such as dedicated cyclists-only crossing phases or absolute priority for cycle paths at all side roads.

All the rest of these ‘design solutions’ are very obvious vehicular cycling crap with decades of failure embedded in their implementation. For example, some years ago the London Borough of Waltham Forest went through a coloured-cycle-lanes-through-junctions period, and these crap lanes did absolutely nothing for modal share because they provided no protection from turning or overtaking motor vehicles. (Though to be fair they were very useful for blind cyclists.)

The DfT ought to be setting an example but remains ideologically committed to prioritising motor vehicle infrastructure and the speed and convenience of drivers. I must say I find it rather weird to read the London Assembly's Transport Committee chair Caroline Pidgeon saying things like “The Department for Transport must allow TfL to catch up with best international practice”. The DfT is wilfully indifferent to best international practice, but then Ms. Pidgeon herself seems more than a little confused about what it amounts to. Trixi mirrors, training for lorry drivers, and poxy little lights for cyclists giving them a few seconds start at the lights are not best practice and form no part of Dutch cycling culture. And when I read people talking about segregated cycle tracks “where possible” my heart sinks, because there is no shortage of people who can come up with excuses why it can’t be done (roads too narrow, utilities wouldn’t like it, deliveries to shops, bus stops, would get in the way of car parking, just not possible).

In any case

A year on from the Kings Cross fatality we still have no understanding of why or how TfL makes decisions and takes actions when it is warned of danger to cyclists on roads it has designed, nor how it takes a measured responsible risk assessment when reopening a road following a severe cycle accident. 

And now let’s see how “protecting cyclists [by] creating advanced stop lines for cyclists at traffic lights” works out in York, which as we know from the CTC is the safest place in Britain to cycle [see previous post, below]. Here (below) we see a woman cycling east in the cycle lane on Bootham, approaching the junction with Gillygate. A massive left-turning heavy goods vehicle is waiting just behind the Advanced Stop Line (ASL) for the lights to change.

What happens next is that the woman undertakes this massive lorry and then positions herself ahead of the ASL. She has done something highly dangerous – undertake a lorry indicating a left turn – and she has acted unlawfully by moving beyond the ASL.

The point, of course, is that the infrastructure conditioned her behaviour. In Britain’s congested towns and cities it is quite common to encounter this kind of cycling infrastructure – a narrow cycle lane leading up to an ASL. Cyclists quite naturally undertake the line of stationary vehicles waiting for the lights to change, especially here on Bootham where, as a testament to York Council’s long history of discouraging walking and cycling, the vehicles can sometimes stretch all the way back to Clifton Green.

The danger point comes if the lights change while the cyclist is undertaking and hasn’t yet reached the ASL (always assuming that the ASL isn’t full of vehicles, as they so often are – a consequence of the prejudice against enforcement which informs all UK policing, which is institutionally car supremacist). This is where so many cyclists get caught out, alongside left turning vehicles at junctions. But having successfully negotiated the undertake it's only sensible to go beyond the ASL, because that may well put you slap bang in the driver's blind spot. Cyclists respond to perceived hazards in classically Darwinian fashion. Rule-breaking ensures survival, however much this may distress the 'winning respect for cyclists' brigade.

The solution, as the Dutch understand, is to separate cyclists from turning vehicles at junctions, either by separate signals or by cycle paths physically segregated from the carriageway.
 
Because the cyclist went beyond the ASL she ensured she was probably not in the driver’s blind spot, and when the lights changed she went on her way unharmed. It worked for a solitary cyclist, but imagine the situation if there were twenty or thirty cyclists queueing at this junction, some going straight ahead and coming into conflict with left-turning vehicles. Look at the space required by this driver to turn left into Gillygate, a two-way street:

The DfT’s solutions for safer cycling at junctions are risible and inept.

Conditions for York cyclists are no better on the two other roads leading to this junction, which also have an ASL.

This is the narrow cycle lane on Gillygate, approaching the junction shown above. Not really cycling-friendly, is it?

Here we see a woman on a bicycle on St Leonard’s Place, cycling north towards the same junction. She is forced to a stop by a stationary bendy-bus (caught up in the line of stationary vehicles backed up from the traffic lights at the distant junction)  which, wisely, she chooses not to undertake.

If you want to know why York is a failed cycling city, why cycling is stagnating there, and why the CTC’s claims for York are delusional and idiotic, look no further, dear reader, than the conditions shown in these photographs.

It’s a cycle-friendly road!

Our streets and neighbourhoods need to be redesigned. To encourage more people to choose to use their bicycles, the roads must be made more cycle-friendly so the risk, and the perception of risk, are both significantly reduced.

I am delighted to say that the B160 in Walthamstow here at the junction with the A503 addresses the vital issue of ‘subjective safety’ and fully meets the LCC criterion of amicability, with a well-marked cycle lane leading to a cycling reservoir or ‘Advanced Stop Line’. Enjoy.

Scenes from a (cycling) revolution!

‘But officer, there was no need to knock me off my bicycle just because I’m not wearing high viz gear like you’

Transport for London reports a one hundred per cent increase in people cycling to confrontations with the police during the first ten days of November.

Sorry, I was daydreaming. Photo above taken from the Evening Standard. Back to reality:

In Trafalgar Square an irate bus driver confessed: "I was sympathetic until they blocked my bus. Where are the police?" Good question.

Yes, it’s such a shame when people thoughtlessly or illegally cause an obstruction to other road users, isn’t it? In Trafalgar Square of all places!
























Where are the police when people wantonly break the law by driving into Advanced Stop Lines for cyclists when the lights are at red? Oh here they come – joining the other drivers already in the ASL.























Fortunately in the London Borough of Waltham Forest we are blessed both with a magnificent network of on-road cycling infrastructure and with bus drivers who display at all times a strict adherence to road traffic law and who show every consideration for cyclists.

Cycling city York twinned with Waltham Forest

York is one of Britain’s finest cycling cities, second only to Cambridge in its wondrousness. So why do its roads and cycling conditions remind me so much of the London Borough of Waltham Forest? Or anywhere in Britain.

Lendal Bridge.

Streets redesigned for cycling

The London Cycling Campaign demands that transport planners Redesign our streets for cycles, with a lovely photograph some cycling-friendly infrastructure (naturally it contains no cyclists, but then the LCC doesn’t worry about such trifles). Yes, after 31 years of campaigning the LCC knows what really works for London – although some of its members are getting a little restive.

And here’s a local example of this kind of cycling-friendly infrastructure, with a generous cycle lane and Advanced Stop Line, in delicious pink. This helps cyclists on the busy A503 to safely negotiate the junction with the A112.

Enjoy.

Cycling promotion, Dave Horton, TfL and Chingford

Conditions for cyclists on Station Road, Chingford E4.

Dave Horton is a sociologist and cyclist, and writes a lot about cycling.

At the level of representation, our task is to generate and continuously reaffirm positive representations of cycling as an ordinary and enjoyable practice, something I am pleased to see happening in, for example, the recent marketing campaigns of both Transport for London and Cycling England.

Personally, I see no point at all in promoting cycling. Who wants to cycle on roads like Station Road, Chingford? It might be relatively safe - the traffic is moving at a crawl - but it certainly isn't pleasant, and the advantages of being on a bike are negated if you are also stuck in a traffic jam and can't get past. Needless to say Transport for London's dodgy statistics about 'cycling in London' exclude any measurement of cycling in places like Chingford, where the very low level of cycling would spoil all those radiant statistics about ninety per cent increases in cycling trips. The London Borough of Waltham Forest is equally reluctant to measure cycling on streets like these. Nobody in the cycling establishment wants to measure or acknowledge failure.

The marketing which Dave Horton is so enthusiastic about comes at a cost. Here’s some number crunching about the cost of Transport for London’s glossy cinema adverts encouraging people to ride bicycles:

Craig (in the comments):

at info shot per head that is £8.45 which is terrible for such a limited audience. £8.45 is a free cycle lock for nearly 3 million cyclists. Or nearly 3000 Sheffield style cycle stands. Imagine if there were 3000 more places to actually park you bike.

And when I finally got ahead of the Chingford traffic jam and approached the junction with the A110, I was overtaken by this lawless anti-social yob who cruised into the ASL at red and sat there, without signalling. Chingford police station is just up the road, but you can be quite sure that its officers have never once made the slightest effort to enforce the ASLs here, which are ignored all day long by drivers who know perfectly well that the Metropolitan Police has no interest in enforcing them.

‘Bike boxes’ arrive in Toronto

In cycling-hostile Canada (where they fine you for not wearing a helmet) the car-centric highway engineers are introducing vehicular cycling infrastructure with a proven record of failure. But not to worry – it creates the impression that something is being done for cycling even though it won't result in mass cycling.

They’re meant to make intersections safer, but the new bike boxes on St. George and Harbord Sts. are being mostly overlooked by cyclists and drivers alike.

“What the heck is a bike box,” you ask?

It’s a painted pavement marking that gives cyclists a designated space to wait at a light, in front of cars.

Toronto became the latest city to introduce bike boxes this month, joining bike-friendly cities such as Vancouver, Portland, Ore., and Amsterdam.

The few cyclists who waited inside the box generally were wearing a helmet and one pantleg rolled up.

Jared Kelly cleared

London’s police force has clearly learned nothing at all since the notorious case of the black cab rapist. Once again the police have preferred to believe a violent cab driver rather than his victim.

A cyclist has spoken of his relief at being cleared of assaulting a taxi driver involved in a crash in Oxford Street.

Jared Kelly, 39, was only able to clear his name when two witnesses came forward after reading about the case in the Evening Standard.

He had confronted the driver whose cab cut in front of him, causing him to crash into the back of the taxi and fall off his bike. In the exchange in March, the driver grabbed a scarf around Mr Kelly's neck and throttled him unconscious.

Despite pictures showing a red mark around Mr Kelly's neck, one witness said Mr Kelly, a screenwriter from Westbourne Grove, had attacked the cabbie.

But at a hearing at South Western magistrates' court he was cleared of assault after the cabbie's evidence was found to be not "credible".

In the comments:

i know something of this story so i'll ask evening standard: what happened to the taxi driver who 'produced' a witness who, coincidentally, was a taxi driver also and made a statement supporting the false events?

why did the police side with the tax driver without any real evidence and is there any truth that, as taxi drivers, because they are often a source of police information, are sided with, to the point of (as in this instance) criminality?

will the taxi driver lose his licence, as i'm led to believe that it goes with a criminal prosecution, or will the case be dropped through a colluded 'lack of evidence'? surely the two witnesses count in the prosecution in this violent, aggresive act.

come on, evening standard, do your job and investigate!

- mazza, london, 05/10/2010 17:21

The driver of black cab 57871 is contemptuous of Advanced Stop Lines for cyclists and my photographs show him driving into an ASL at red. But this driver is protected both by the Met and the Public Carriage Office, which both institutionally serve the interests of lawless black cab drivers. Monmouth Street WC2 at the junction with Long Acre, where the scale of criminality by cab drivers (and others) in the ASLs is at epidemic levels. But don’t expect ever to see the car-centric anti-cycling Met ever enforcing the law at this location, or at any other ASL in the West End.

(Below) First pic: a motorist drives into the ASL at red. Second and third pics: a black cab driver in the middle lane respects the ASL and stays out of it. He is then joined by a second black cab, whose driver enters the ASL.

How to avoid obstructing an Advanced Stop Line

Too many drivers occupy the cyclists’ Advanced Stop Line. This G4S driver has respected it by parking beyond it, at the same time helping pedestrians to develop their road crossing skills at a major junction. The Baker’s Arms junction, on the border of Leyton and Walthamstow.

A new angle on cycling infrastructure

My photo shows an Advanced Stop Line at the junction of Leeman Road and Station Road, York, looking towards Rougier Street, photographed from the city walls.

Along comes a bendy bus.

























The driver has stopped his wheels outside the ASL but the forward part of the bus extends some two metres beyond the wheels. Cycling along beside the bus and squeezing into the ASL along that magnificent cycle lane would be inadvisable. If the lights turned to green while you were doing this the bus would hit you. The death-trap railings on the traffic island would trap you. You would be mangled or crushed.

The railings are there, of course, to serve as a cattle pen for pedestrians, who are allowed a few seconds at green to sprint to this refuge, where they must wait another couple of minutes to cross the rest of the road. Well, we wouldn’t want motor vehicles to be slowed down by pedestrians, would we?

As everybody knows, York is an iconic ‘cycling city’. Onwards with the cycling revolution!

‘Street rangers’ will crack down on central London ‘rogue cyclists’

Businesses have ordered their street “rangers” to stop rogue riders amid fears that the Mayor's bike hire scheme will increase problems in central London. People in Holborn and Bloomsbury are being encouraged to report bad cycling to the wardens

The initiative has been launched by “inmidtown”, a business organisation representing 550 firms between the West End and the City of London.

Inmidtown, which is funded by a levy on the business rates of its members, works with Transport for London and Camden council.

Last year 200 cyclists were stopped over four days during Operation Responsible Cycling. Business leaders fear the arrival of Boris bikes — there are seven docking stations, holding up to 176 bikes, in the area — will make matters worse.

Its “Considerate Cyclist Code” has 10 tips for better cycling, including:

* Don't cycle after drinking.
* Use back streets to avoid traffic.

Or to put it another way

This business organisation, which is a public-private partnership with Camden Council, is making up its own rules of cycling conduct and not based on recognised authorities. Not only is this organisation allowed to part-privatise public space, it is also creating its own private rules of conduct.

In effect, they are making up their own rules, enforcing them with the use of a private quasi-police force.

There is the usual, er, robust commentary on London Fixed-gear and Single-speed.

The rangers will not, of course, be cracking down on rogue drivers (a phrase which, curiously, no journalist ever uses). I was in this very area on Monday and snapped a few examples of rogue drivers who deliberately drove into Advanced Stop Lines at red. Funnily enough they were all drivers working for businesses. Could we please have a list of the 550 firms involved in this, so that we can check on their drivers and the amount of clutter they may put unlawfully across pavements?

























(Above) A law-breaking B&Y Express Couriers van driver reg. KR05 KHY alongside a law-breaking Addison Lee cab driver reg. LT59 WKN on New Oxford Street
(Below) A law-breaking BTU-group driver, reg. RE10 XAN, on Bury Place.

More crap cycling in York

York certainly seems to maintain its Advanced Stop Lines for cyclists, which are a lovely shade of green. And, like London drivers, York drivers regard them with complete indifference. Lendal Bridge.

novelist Susan Hill ‘doors’ a cyclist

If any blame was the cyclist’s perhaps he had been riding a tad too close to a line of parked cars, but safer that than too far out into the road.

On the contrary, cycling in the middle of the road in this situation is the correct position to take. The problem is that you are then perceived by drivers as wilfully obstructing them and subjected to the blowing of horns or the screaming of obscenities.

Having made her confession of sin, Hill then rambles on, the sub-text of her piece being bloody cyclists.

When I was in London last week and my taxi was stuck in Piccadilly, the cabbie and I commented on the number of cyclists weaving in and out of the heavy traffic, ducking and diving between lanes and buses and lorries. Few of them wore helmets, they all ignored the red light, they ignored the rule I had drummed into me as a learner driver – ‘look first, then manoeuvre.’ They mostly do it the other way round.

But that’s an ignorant car-centric perspective. The reason why cyclists behave like this is that London is a city which promotes cycling while absolutely refusing to provide a safe, fast, convenient cycling infrastructure. London is an astonishingly backward, car-centric city where the pathology of fossil fuel addiction is naturalised by its transport establishment. What is Susan Hill, who is apparently an able-bodied woman, doing travelling by taxi in Piccadilly? Why isn’t she walking, cycling or using public transport? Does she even reflect that the reason she is 'stuck in Piccadilly' is that Piccadilly is a site which, absurdly, is clogged by cars and taxis. In any civilised society Piccadilly would be empty of private motor traffic and taxis and the only available surface transport modes would be walking, cycling or trams.

We are such polyps. Look at the human body, then look at a bus, or even a small car. No contest.

Which is why it makes sense to segregate cycling from high volume motor traffic. But that would impinge on the 'right' to drive or park a car in central London, or even use a taxi.

A friend of mine was killed when a delivery lorry pulled out sharply in front of her as she cycled through Covent Garden. I am amazed it doesn't happen more often and my cabbie had a few choice words to say about bikes.

This seems a very muddled piece of writing from someone who is a professional writer. Her friend was evidently not at fault when she was killed by a lorry, so why are the opinions of a taxi driver introduced? I imagine most London cyclists have a few choice words to say about cabbies.

(Below) Two law abiding road users respect the Advanced Stop Line and one lawless yob doesn’t. Can you spot the yob? Monmouth Street WC2.

Every day is Critical Mass for drivers

(Above) Markhouse Road E17. Don't try getting past these cars on a bike because you can't.

(Below) This woman is her gas guzzling jag quite deliberately cruised into the cyclists’ Advanced Stop Line on Great Newport Street WC2. It’s quite absurd that anyone should be allowed to drive a private car around this part of central London but London’s entire car-centric transport culture is built around pampering toxic anti-social car criminals like this, who are not even required to obey basic road traffic law.


























(Below) This woman on Cranbourn Street WC2 is allowed to drive around central London in her sports car suppressing walking and cycling and poisoning the air. The pedestrian crossing is obstructed by a black cab.

A classically bad cycle lane

Here’s some classically bad cycling infrastructure in central York, a place which purports to be the second best city for cycling in Britain, and which the Cyclists’ Touring Club asserts is the safest place in Britain to cycle.

I refer to this pathetic scrap of cycle lane on Gillygate, some six or seven metres long, which then vanishes as it meets the junction with Bootham, then starts again, running in a crescent moon line as it joins St Leonard's Place, until it terminates at a pedestrian crossing and then a taxi rank, after which it starts again.

This first section (with badly maintained, substandard markings) actually increases danger for cyclists by encouraging novices to stay close to the kerb alongside a potentially lethal section of railings. Far from being in this narrow green lane, a cyclist coming out of Gillygate should occupy the centre of the carriageway to prevent any driver overtaking her on this sharp bend.


























Looking back towards Bootham, with Gillygate on the right (below). See how the cycle lane takes an impossibly sharp turn. If you do get knocked off your bike here by an inattentive left-turning lorry driver, there’s a sign attached to the death trap railings which states that the Accident and Emergency department of York Hospital is just up the road. Now that is helpful.

























This lane has all the characteristics of vehicular cycling infrastructure. It brings no benefits to cyclists, it’s fragmented, it stops for vehicle parking bays, it confers a false sense of protection, and drivers are free to intrude into it if they wish to while simultaneously regarding the lane as the place where cyclists ought to cycle.




























(Below) The lane vanishes at a pedestrian crossing and bays for taxis. That black cab has just left the bay.



























(Below) Taxi bays take priority over cycling.























Oh yes, and one other thing.

A clear message about York's cycling status has been fixed to signs on approach roads to the city.

Cycling City York branding, complete with the message 'Respect On Our Roads', has been added to the city's 'Welcome to York' signs.

I caught up with that taxi at the junction with Museum Street. As you can see, the driver is displaying the typical cab driver's respect for cycling infrastructure.