car-centric junction design

You can find junction design like this all over Britain. Part of the verge has been appropriated, rounded-off, and re-allocated as carriageway for the benefit of vehicles turning into, and emerging from, a side road. Pedestrians are sent on a diversion.

The purpose of this design may benefit larger vehicles, which require more space to turn, but it also encourages car drivers and others to approach or exit the junction faster than they might otherwise have done. This is bad for cyclists, since there is a greater risk of a ‘left hook’ (i.e. a driver overtaking and then immediately turning left) and also encourages some drivers to exit the junction in the face of an oncoming cyclist.

But it is also bad for pedestrians. It ignores the natural desire line. To be diverted for a distance of some ten metres up a side road in order to cross (with another ten metres to return to the original route) is inconvenient and adds to journey length and time. But it also greatly increases the chances of a pedestrian being knocked down while crossing, because this design removes the pedestrian from the sight line of drivers approaching from the rear. This creates the classic scenario for the speeding driver to assert that the pedestrian “just came out of nowhere”.

How could this design be improved?

The original sharp T-junction design could be restored, forcing drivers to turn in and out of the junction at much slower speeds and with much greater care. The footway needs to be reinstated to what must surely once have been its original route, directly across the junction, with no diversion.

Perhaps a better solution would be to keep the design but continue the footway across the junction in a straight line on a raised table. But for that to work there would need to be markings on the carriageway that gave pedestrians absolute priority.

Either way, existing junction design like this, which is found everywhere in the U.K., illustrates how fundamentally car-centric and hostile to walking and cycling street design in our society is. And most people won’t even notice; design like this seems as natural as the weather.

The location is Rawcliffe Lane at the junction with Brompton Road, in a city proud to boast that it puts the pedestrian first in its transport planning.

more scenes from the Hierarchy of Provision

Both the CTC and the now defunct Cycling England (which lives on digitally) praise York as a city which puts pedestrians and cyclists ahead of motorists. Naturally York council is delighted by such praise and there is much mutual back-scratching.

Let me focus today on pedestrians in York, who are failed in this city at every level – including those of enforcement and infrastructure. You’d never know it from Cycling England, which illustrates this document with this:

And now a scene from Goodramgate on a weekday. There are scenes like this all over York. Neither York’s car-centric police force, nor York’s car-centric council carries out enforcement against this kind of parking.

The vehicle shown above seems to be associated with a local business. It was still parked in the same position (but joined by a second unlawfully parked vehicle) when I passed by three and a half hours later and took these photos of a woman with a baby in a pram, who were forced out into the road in order to get past.

My next photographs show the crossing point between Lendal and Museum Gardens. Every day thousands of tourists on foot pour down Lendal and then have to find a way across vehicle-choked Museum Street to reach a large park beside the River Ouse which contains The ten-acre botanical Museum Gardens, a ruined abbey, and the Yorkshire Museum. And they get no help at all in crossing the road. Neither a zebra crossing nor a signalled crossing. York Council leaves them to get across a traffic-choked highway as best they can. In a city where pedestrians vastly outnumber drivers, and where cycling is stagnating, York Council puts motorists first and is every bit as committed to 'network assurance' (smooth traffic flow) as Transport for London.

some lorries in York

photo: Trevor Moorby 



Fire crews had to cut the enormous vehicle out of the 12th century archway, after the lorry attempted to squeeze through late on Thursday. 

The driver was perhaps following the advice of his SatNav, which told him the most direct southbound route out of the city from the Marks and Spencer store on the corner of Parliament Street and Pavement.

York has some of the worst traffic management of any city in Britain. Motor vehicles can access almost every part of the historic city centre. Micklegate Bar ought to be closed to all motor vehicles. A city which, with the right policies, could easily have the same cycling levels as Groningen, is totally in thrall to the internal combustion engine. The prevalence of heavy goods vehicles is just one part of York’s malaise, and underlines how cycling will never thrive in this kind of vehicular cycling environment.

(Below) Where the M & S lorry got stuck. Can you spot the cycle lane?

(Below) This naughty cyclist cycled through the arch and along an empty pavement to get past the stationary vehicles blocking access to the cycle lane and ASL. It is pointless condemning such behaviour if at the rudimentary level of infrastructure you prioritise motorists while still pretending to 'encourage cycling'. There's no point in cycling in a city centre if it's slow because you are held up by motor vehicles.

 

 

This lorry driver on Museum Street (below) is stationary and completely blocking the signalled pedestrian crossing (spot the green pedestrian signal in the background).

Everywhere you go in York you will encounter vehicles parked on the footway, including massive HGVs like this one (also on Museum Street). Neither York Council nor York police have any interest in enforcement. 

(Below) Conditions for cyclists on Lendal Bridge. 

(Below) Moments after I'd taken this photograph the driver of this lorry jumped the lights and went across while the light was still showing green for pedestrians. Bootham Bar. This kind of criminal recklessness by lorry drivers is, of course, not unusual across a wide range of behaviour and reflects both the failure to enforce road traffic law and the derisory penalties handed out on those rare occasions when offenders are successfully prosecuted.

Scenes from the Hierarchy of Provision

As we know York Council is firmly committed to a Hierarchy of Provision which puts pedestrians first, then cyclists, with car drivers way down the list of priorities.

In fact York is so pedestrian-friendly that it even supplies gym equipment on its public footpaths, allowing wheelchair users and people with twin pushchairs to tone up their muscles prior to attempting to get past any unusual obstructions which might block their way.

Location: the public footpath between Keats Close and Milton Carr.

Cyclists enjoy similar design consideration. These cycle lanes can clearly be seen to come in front of places for parking vehicles, so in that sense the cyclist definitely comes first. St Leonard's Place and Bootham.

Two cyclists negotiate safe passage

If you happen to take a train to York and then walk into the city centre, which is very close, you will soon come to this junction (below), where Station Road meets the junction with Rougier Street.

Here, York Council’s priorities are very clearly the convenience of drivers over the convenience of pedestrians. Pedestrians are expected to cross a standard two lane carriageway in two separate light phases. Once you have crossed a single lane at the green phase you are then confronted by a red phase and expected to wait on a small traffic island with zig-zag fencing designed to deter pedestrians from attempting anything so anarchic as crossing the road in one go.

Apart from all the other objections to this way of treating pedestrians, the island is far too small to accommodate the sheer volume of pedestrians during busy periods.

The phasing, needless to say, is weighted in favour of the driver, not the pedestrian.

This photograph shows a typical situation at this junction, with nine pedestrians strung out across the entrance to Rougier Street, three of them marooned on the traffic island. A man with a case, who is almost certainly heading towards the station, has stepped out into the carriageway and is standing in the path of any left-turning vehicles approaching him from behind from the Lendal Bridge direction. He has probably walked out beyond the footway out of sheer frustration at the length of the red signal, only to be stopped in his tracks by oncoming vehicles approaching from the third arm of this junction, Leeman Road

This junction forms part of a one-way gyratory which funnels motor vehicles and cyclists along the arms of a triangle which connects Station Road with Leeman Road. This next photograph (below) shows the point at which Leeman Road meets Station Road opposite the junction with Rougier Street. You will see a cyclist pushing her bike. My reasonably informed guess is that she plans to cycle along Leeman Road (which provides access to a broad swathe of suburban west York) and preferred not to go round the gyratory. Instead of cycling she prefers to get off and walk across the pedestrian crossings. If my guess is correct, she is negotiating her safe passage in a lawful way but at some inconvenience to herself in terms of the time taken to travel a short distance.

I can be altogether more certain of the destination of this second cyclist, because I caught it on camera. This photograph shows Rougier Street. Now there are seven pedestrians marooned on the traffic island and six more waiting to cross from the Lendal Bridge side. But look carefully (below) and you will see that a cyclist has arrived on the scene. Instead of turning left into Station Road, as required by the one-way system, he has chosen to wait on some dashed white lines in the centre of the carriageway, just before the traffic island. He can be seen wedged between the double decker bus heading into Rougier Street and the oncoming single decker bus which is about to turn left into the gyratory. The single decker bus is forced to pass the cyclist quite closely, thanks to an illegally parked DHL delivery van, which is partly parked on the footway, on a double yellow line, while obstructing the cycle lane.

The behaviour of the pedestrians in the next photograph (below) is interesting. The light phase is at red but while three pedestrians hang back, five other pedestrians decide to make a run for it. In the foreground an officer worker in a white short ignores the traffic island altogether and sprints along Station Road. The cyclist remains exactly where he was.

(Below) Three more pedestrians make a run for it, while the cautious ones continue to wait. The cyclist also waits.

(Below) Oncoming vehicles from Leeman Road are held at a red light and the cyclist sees his chance. He weaves between the crossing pedestrians and cycles against the traffic flow on Station Road. This is plainly a local cyclist who knows the phasing at this junction and prefers to turn right by exploiting its opportunities rather than behave as a vehicular cyclist is supposed to, by obeying the rules and cycling round the gyratory.

(Below) Our cyclist has made it across to the ‘right’ side of the road, where he catches up with a long line of vehicles backed up across Lendal Bridge all the way from the junction of Museum Street and St Leonard’s Place. Our cyclist plainly possesses self-confidence, as he overtakes a stationary ambulance using the oncoming lane. In the foreground a pedestrian avoids the time-wasting exercise of using the signalled crossings by instead walking across in front of a slow-moving van.

My impression is that some York cyclists prefer not to cycle round this particular gyratory and will adapt their behaviour to avoid doing so. The two cyclists I observed were negotiating their own safe passage in their own chosen ways. One obeyed the rules, one did not. But neither wanted to conform to the expectations placed upon vehicular cyclists by infrastructure which is comprehensively car-centric and neglectful of the interests of both pedestrians and cyclists.

Of course if York Council really put pedestrians and cyclists first it would block off all access to Rougier Street to motor vehicles at this junction, and completely re-design this junction. But as we know, in York the car is king and the Council shows no inclination to change its priority of smooth traffic flow and of encouraging drivers to access all areas. Cycling, needless to say, can never thrive in an environment like this.

The Weavers

I’ve noticed that among the complaints levelled against that anti-social category defined as "cyclists" by the bulging-eyed foam-flecked cyclophobes who infest the comments columns of local newspapers, apart from jumping red lights, not wearing helmets, not wearing “responsible clothing”, repeatedly almost killing pensioners and pedestrians in general, self-righteousness and road tax dodging, is the sin of weaving.

Cyclists weave in and out of traffic. They do not act in a responsible and structured way, like all those motorists who form an orderly queue. Cyclists are anarchic weavers and weaving is bad.

The description of cyclists as weavers is not in itself inaccurate. But I object to the attachment of a value judgement. I’m a weaver myself. Weaving is simply an inevitable consequence of having to cycle in an environment saturated with motor vehicles.

I’ve never understood the argument of the vehicular cycling brigade that Dutch infrastructure would slow us all down and it’s much better to share the road. I’m not a slow cyclist and I find that cycling in London I’m repeatedly slowed down by drivers. They are always stopping or turning round or clogging up junctions or just driving in long lines at 10 mph. That's when the streets aren't already clogged up by on-street car parking. The thing is, I need to get past them. I have no interest at all in cycling at 5 mph or in waiting behind a vehicle belching toxic blue fumes. I bike therefore I weave.

Here are two weavers in York. Female, both in their twenties by the look of it. They have emerged from either Bootham or Gillygate and are heading into the city centre. What happens here, by Bootham Bar (not a place to sip cocktails but an ancient city gate), is that they catch up with stationary motor vehicles on St Leonard’s Place. They overtake a stationary bus and a blue car and are then faced by a typical York zig-zag pedestrian cattle pen (which is ludicrously small for the vast crowds which pour across here in the summer and which obliges pedestrians to cross the road in two separate light phases – note also the pedestrian who is ignoring it altogether because it doesn’t meet the pedestrian desire line). So they weave through the gap between the blue car and the car in front to join the crap CTC-approved cycle lane.

Almost at once the crap CTC-approved cycle lane fizzles out to make way for that far more important feature of any city centre, parking for taxis. But as the first cyclist moves between the parked taxi and the car stationary in a traffic jam she is faced by a woman about to hurl open the front passenger door of the next car in the traffic jam.

I am pleased to report that she managed to avoid the swung-open door and rejoined the next scrap of crap cycle lane. By weaving. 

Weaving is a survival technique and a way of maximising the advantage of cycling. Because if a bicycle is a vehicle and must behave like a vehicle, then there isn’t much point in cycling in a British city.

Modal share in any British town or city depends on how many people you can persuade to weave. As weaving requires great confidence and courage it is not for the hesitant, the nervous, or anyone who thinks cycling should be relaxing and easy. Both the weavers shown here are dressed in traditional weaving costume - one has high viz gear and both are wearing helmets.

And now here is a song about vehicular cycling and “churn”.

What is York’s cycling modal share?

(Above) How York council promotes cycling 

(Below) Actual conditions for cycling in York. A cyclist stuck amidst stationary vehicles on Lendal Bridge. 

The quick answer to the question "What is York’s cycling modal share?" is: no one knows.

York Council relies on the ten year national census for its assessment of commuter cycling modal share. It makes no attempt to discover what the true modal share figure is for cycling in York overall. You would never know this from the history of British cycling promotion, however. In 2008 the London Cycling Campaign asserted that modal share for York was 19%. According to the CTC between 1991/1993 and 1995/1998 modal share rose from 15 per cent to 18 per cent. These last figures can only refer to general modal share (since the general share is always less than the commuter share, and the commuter share in the 1991 census was 18 per cent). However the picture given of cycling becoming more popular in York in the 1990s was dealt a blow by the results of the 2001 census, which indicated a commuter modal share of 13 per cent.

If York lost over a quarter of its commuter cyclists between 1991 and 2001 it is not remotely credible that utility cycling boomed over the same period. There is always quite a gap between commuter cycling share and utility cycling share, so if York’s rate for commuting was 13 per cent than it seems highly unlikely that overall modal share was higher than ten per cent.

Let’s go back down memory lane to 2005:

[Richard Lewis] spoke of a planning and design hierarchy of road user groups with the needs of pedestrians, and cyclists considered first, and private motor cars last. He told us that the city of York had made many improvements on the basis of this hierarchy and as a result the number of collisions has reduced by a third, and cycling and walking have both increased. Cycling in York now accounts for 20 per cent of journeys compared with just two per cent in London. 

I find this statistic baffling and I can find nothing to support it. It would indicate a continuous rise in cycling in York, something not borne out by other data. Nick Cavill and Dr Adrian Davis on behalf of Cycling England celebrated York not as an example of increased cycling but for its glorious and uplifting stagnation:

The 1991 census reported that cycling and walking made up 30 per cent of all journeys to work in York and they still comprised 29 per cent in the 2001 Census. 

That’s a misleading presentation however, since a rise in walking’s modal share conceals a dramatic decline in cycling (down from 18 per cent to 13 per cent).

The theory that York’s general modal share in reality probably doesn't exceed 10 per cent at most is reinforced by The Cycling City and Towns Programme Overview (May 2009), which sets out some figures (page 6). Here, for York, the “approximate mode share for cycling (as quoted in towns/cities workplans)” is identified as 10 per cent.

However, commuter cycling may well have slumped since the 13 per cent modal share identified in the 2001 national census. An obscure report which refers to 2007-2008 includes these very interesting figures: (section 6.7, page 16)

York Northwest Revised AM Peak Modal Share Outputs 

Peak modal share for cyclists in York Central was 12 per cent 

For York City it was 8 per cent 

Bear in mind that these are the very highest figures available for commuter cycling at its most popular time of day. The figures for utility cycling would be somewhat lower. The available figures appear to indicate that at best, cycling is stagnating in York; at worst it is declining. Either way, it is a failed city for cycling, which, for such a compact city, ought to have an absolutely massive modal share for cycling.

There are other little indicators of the failure of cycling to grow in York. A “Personalised travel planning” pilot scheme tried out in York in 2005 found that 20 per cent of all trips moved from car to other forms of transport. There was no increase in modal share for bikes (the explanation offered was that commuter cycling was at saturation levels, which is somewhat ironic in the light of the figures).

York is a city where over a quarter of primary school children would like to cycle to school when only five percent are currently doing so.

For those attending the football ground relocated to the Community Stadium, travelling by bicycle is projected at just 2 per cent.

The instability and wide variation in modal share figures traditionally given for York raises questions of methodology. The census is not a particularly satisfactory tool for determining modal share, as it relies on a single question about mode of travel to work. It assumes that the person filling in the form is accurate and that the census genuinely records all residents, and it also only measures commuter cycling. (The national census is also culturally determined in the data it seeks. It asks questions about motor vehicle ownership but excludes figures for cycle ownership per household.)

A much more satisfactory methodology is the cycle count, but the value of any results is shaped by the location of the count, the number of sites used for counts, the frequency of the counts, and the time of day and month of the year. A wide network of full-time automated counts is arguably the best methodology. Questionnaires also supply useful back-up information about individual travel choices, provided that they are very detailed (as TfL’s are) and provided that the samples are representative of the population (which they may not be).

Modal share is the key statistic in determining how successful a town or city is at creating a cycling-friendly landscape, and it is significant that York Council is not really interested in finding out what its modal share is. The true figure might well be shocking and would give the lie to the widespread promotion of York as a successful and cycling-friendly city.

It is not a coincidence that the usual suspects have always been keen to praise York as a cycling city. The reason, I think is very simple. York supposedly demonstrates how vehicular cycling really can work and be as good as any continental model. York also claims to embody the principles outlined in the CTC’s beloved Hierarchy of Provision (the CTC’s page shows a location in York which supposedly embodied best practice).

Cycling England cheered on (see p. 36 here) York City Council’s Transport Priorities:

1. Pedestrians
2. People with disabilities
3. Cyclists

categories which are way ahead of

6. Car-borne shoppers

and

8. Car-borne long stay commuters and visitors.

Anyone who believes that York’s transport planning puts pedestrians and cyclists ahead of car drivers belongs either in a lunatic asylum or in the offices of the CTC. Amusingly, the CTC’s new infantile fantasy is obviously a projection of York (it is geographically accurate, with the railway station, the Minster, the river Ouse, and the bridges all where they should be, albeit slightly distorted by hallucinatory drugs) and with exquisite timing York Council has come up with its own infantile transport campaign.

For York ever to achieve the levels of cycling which would be found in a Dutch city of similar size the shallow gimmicks and all the ‘encouraging cycling’ initiatives would have to be ditched and serious cycling infrastructure introduced. That would mean segregated cycle tracks on all the major routes into the city centre (one such route is the site of the most recent and troublingly ambiguous serious collision involving a cyclist). It would also mean closing two bridges to motor traffic, and emptying the car-sodden joke pedestrian zone of its cars and providing through routes for cyclists. Travelling by car around central York would need to be made inconvenient and subordinated to cycling and walking flow. Of course before all this happened it would be necessary to understand what is presently wrong with cycling in York and then to ask for the Dutch-style solutions which would release suppressed demand.

Meanwhile it transpires that in York

Certain parts of the city centre and Fishergate are in breach of European air quality limits designed to protect us from the effects of long-term airborne pollution, for example by nitrogen dioxide. 

The Rougier Street/ George Hudson Street area is even worse. Nitrogen dioxide levels are so high here that, for those with conditions such as asthma, there is an immediate risk of health problems. 

In a sign of where York’s true transport priorities lie it is reported that

TRANSPORT bosses in York have not given up on the hope of one day dualling at least part of the city’s northern ring road – even though it could cost up to £150 million. 

And for a classic example of the toxic and self-defeating contradiction which lies at the heart of transport planning in York and everywhere else in the UK, there is the aspiration to

 • Reduce congestion, so cutting travel times and making York a more pleasant place to live and work 
 • Encourage more people to cycle and walk by reducing the dominance of the car – thus improving health. 




(Below) How cyclists create their own permeability in a car-centric cycling-hostile urban environment such as York.

A cyclist travelling south gets into the fast lane on Piccadilly at the junction with Tower Street. What’s he up to? This is a left-turn only junction, where Piccadilly meets the hellish inner ring road.

All becomes clear. He wants to turn right. And because the road network is designed to manage traffic flow not help cyclists, he avoids getting locked into a diversion around a gyratory by simply executing a sharp right turn through the gap in the central reservation supplied by an unsignalled and unmarked pedestrian crossing point.

Having made it to the far side he is able to cycle west on the dual carriageway. A solitary cyclist alone in a sea of cars, coaches and lorries. And if a driver should happen to "clip" the cyclist, the railings ensure he'll bounce back into the carrriageway.

Just fancy that!

We can promote cycling without worrying that this will lead to more casualties. It is clear that ‘more’ and ‘safer’ cycling are perfectly compatible.

Research by CTC has found that cycling is safer in local authorities in England where cycling levels are high. 

[ Research based on comparing ‘Average serious injuries and deaths per 10,000 cycle commuters per year’ and modal share ]
 
York, the authority where cycling to work is most common, is, by our calculation, the safest place in England to cycle. 




The CTC defending York against the charge that it is a cycling-unfriendly city:

National CTC spokesman Chris Peck said: “You shouldn’t measure cycle safety by numbers of injuries, because if you do that you will simply find the places where cycle use is very high have more people being injured 

Child cyclists in Waltham Forest, Hackney and York

Child cyclists in Waltham Forest. The location and year are unknown but this is easily recognised as a typical local street of terraced housing, and my guess is that the photo was taken some fifty or sixty years ago. The above photograph is reproduced from a poster at the Vestry House Museum, Walthamstow (which is well worth a visit – please note that a single bike stand is available for visitors coming by Waltham Forest’s most unpopular means of personal mobility).

Everybody knows that cycling in Waltham Forest is crap. A modal share of less than one per cent indicates that very few adults wish to cycle on roads crammed with lorries, buses, vans and cars. The conditions shown in the old photograph above no longer exist. Every street in Waltham Forest is now car-sodden, every spare inch is devoted to parking bays - even though the borough still has high levels of non-car-owning households. Child cyclists dressed like this would also nowadays attract condemnation from so-called "road safety" experts, police officers and others keen to stress the need for cyclists to wear high visibility apparel and helmets.

Very few parents in Waltham Forest want to see their children cycling to school on roads which have cycling infrastructure like this.

This is what it’s like to cycle on High Road Leytonstone a street which Sustrans was once happy to identify as “cycling friendly”. (When I read Sustrans’s rose-tinted view of cycle routes in Waltham Forest – once available on-line but since deleted - I realised this was yet another distinguished UK cycling organisation which seemed never to have encountered the concept of subjective safety.)

Where very few children cycle you know that cycling is perceived by parents as unsafe. A lot of orthodox UK cycle campaigning is dedicated to the proposition that parents are wrong. They must be taught that statistically cycling in Britain is safe, and that all that is required of children to cope with traffic is a spot of cycle training. This approach is behaviourist rather than infrastructural.

However, even some of the very keenest cyclists come out with remarks like I don’t want my kids to ride on today’s roads. It’s a not unreasonable position. In recent days a 12 year old child cyclist has been killed, a 13 year old cycling with his father has been run off the road by a lorry and a 15 year old cyclist has been killed.

The corporate media is in a perpetual moral panic about cyclists, including children. Here’s a recent example. Even if the story’s thrust is true, all it signifies is that child cyclists have nowhere else to go.

Which brings me to Hackney and York, places which in my opinion have a preposterously exaggerated reputation as places where everything is hunky dory for cycling.

I would argue that in reality both Hackney and York are failed locations for cycling, though you’d never know it from cycling campaigners or cycling commentary. The reasons why cycling is going absolutely nowhere in Hackney and York is perfectly simple: all that’s on offer is vehicular cycling. The result is that modal share isn't growing in the way it should be growing. In York, cycling has been stagnating since the 1990s. In Hackney modal share seems stuck at below ten per cent. In both places the modal share seems dictated by unique local factors rather than by cycling policy.

If John Franklin is the guru of British cycle campaigners, the LCC’s Hackney branch surely comprises Mr Franklin’s cadre. I don't think I am misrepresenting it when I say that the biggest local campaign group in Britain is firmly committed to vehicular cycling (via UK-style permeability and speed reduction) and unenthusiastic about segregated cycle tracks. The historical overlap between this local LCC branch and the London Cycling Campaign’s personnel is quite illuminating, and to my mind helps to explain why the Love London. Go Dutch campaign has been significantly diluted.

Cycling campaigners are very fond of statistics. Here’s a killer stat that to my mind gives the lie to the claims made for cycling in Hackney. Data from Hackney Schools' School Travel Plans (STPs) shows that 33% of pupils from primary and secondary schools would like to cycle to school but only 3% do. 

Faced with this parlous situation, what is Hackney Council’s response? The usual crap:

Encouraging cycling to school 

Cycle promotion ideas for schools: 

• Ensure there is secure cycle parking for pupils and staff at your school and publicise this well, for example in newsletters and during assemblies 
• Organise cycle training for pupils to improve their skills and increase their confidence 
• Encourage staff to cycle. Ask members of staff who currently cycle to work to become 'cycling' champions' to promote cycling to other members of staff 
• Hold a cycling event, for example a 'bikers breakfast' or 'bling your bike' activity perhaps during Bike Week in June 
• Reward children who cycle to school, for example a prize draw for children who cycle at least once a week, to win fun cycling related prizes 
• Offer incentives to staff to switch from driving to work to cycling instead - e.g. prize draw or sustainable travel bonus 
• Inform staff about free cycle training available from Hackney Council 

Cycle safety 

Advice for parents - children and young adults cycling to school: Provide bright and reflective clothing, supportive shoes and a back pack Buy a well fitting cycle helmet. 

In other words, do almost anything except build the kind of safe, convenient cycling infrastructure which encourages huge numbers of Dutch children to cycle to school.

And to add to the mix, here’s another crumb that an internet search exposes: Safety [is] the number one issue in deterring cargo bike purchase in Hackney 
 
Let’s move on to York, where over a quarter of primary school children would like to cycle to school when only five percent are currently doing so 

The Cycling City York project (which cost £7 million and seems to have resulted in not one centimetre of Dutch-style cycling infrastructure being built) was claimed to be a great success.

However

It became clear early-on that one of the three main measurable targets – to double the number of children cycling to school – was an unrealistic goal, although one which would continue to be striven for. 

This goal is only “unrealistic” if you approach it with vehicular cycling solutions. In the case of York, it’s the same tired old crap:

To raise the profile of children cycling and show how safe it was, a number of events were organised: Themed bike rides (i.e. Biking Vikings, Roaming Romans etc); Virtual competitions (i.e. End to End Cycle Race); Save My Bike days; Beauty & The Bike; Mountain Biking; Cycle Chic; etc. 

You can blather all you want to about cycling being statistically safe, but few parents want to send their children to school on roads like this (which happens to be Gillygate, in central York - although it could be almost any urban street in Britain).

Let the last word go to Dave Horton:

The language of choice, in which many people who say they are promoting cycling continue to engage, is poisoning cycling’s future. We must move away from it, because it is a lie – when it comes to children’s cycling, we have exterminated agency. Until we recognise and rectify this, we will have no democratic culture of everyday cycling, let alone children’s cycling, in Britain.

York: the anti-cycling city

Students of CTC-speak may recognise some of the vocabulary:

He spoke of a planning and design hierarchy of road user groups with the needs of pedestrians, and cyclists considered first, and private motor cars last. He told us that the city of York had made many improvements on the basis of this hierarchy and as a result the number of collisions has reduced by a third, and cycling and walking have both increased. Cycling in York now accounts for 20 per cent of journeys compared with just two per cent in London. 

Yes, it’s our old friend Hierarchy of Provision (and for the actual York context of the CTC’s site-unspecific photograph, see this).

The claim that York is a city where the planners meet the needs of the pedestrian and the cyclist first and those of the motorist last seems to me quite extraordinary. York is a city in thrall to the car, with astonishingly bad transport management. Walking and cycling in York are, well, crap. I’ll return to Richard Lewis’s starry-eyed and highly questionable view of cycling and walking in York on a later occasion. The claim that York has a 20 per cent modal share for cycling is one long overdue for critical scrutiny.

For the moment let me note some recent events in this cycling-friendly city this year.

In April it was announced that “to ease congestion”

A CYCLE lane at a York junction is to be removed at a cost of £12,000 – only three years after it was put in. 

City of York Council’s cabinet last night approved taking away the bike route to make way for the reintroduction of a left-hand traffic lane at the junction of Clifton Green and Water End, despite emergency services and cyclists opposing the move. 

Yes

A TRAFFIC lane which was controversially removed from a busy York junction has been reinstated. 

The left-hand filter lane at the junction of Clifton Green and Water End was taken away in 2009 to make more space for cyclists, but the changes were blamed for longer queues of cars in the area. 

Emergency services and cycling campaigners had called for the cycle route to remain and council officers admitted it would make the area less safe for bikes but said returning to the original layout would cut congestion. 

(Below) Southbound vehicles on Clifton approaching the Green. This intersection is now exclusively dedicated to “smoother traffic flow” and the signalled junction in the distance doesn’t even have a pedestrian crossing. Pedestrians are expected to scamper across three lanes of traffic in between the signal phases.

Needless to say, the more York’s car-centric councillors and officers try to make things easier and more convenient for drivers, the longer the traffic jams grow and the more car-sick this very compact city becomes.

Meanwhile, in connection with plans for “improvements” to streets in central York:

A CYCLING campaigner says he is concerned that the council plan does not guarantee bike access to Fossgate in York. 

Paul Hepworth, who is press officer for the cycling organisation CTC, said: “It makes no commitment either way, in respect of daytime access for pedal cyclists along that street. 

Fossgate provides a useful and pleasant outbound link between many cyclists’ journey origins and destinations. A compulsory detour via the heavily-trafficked Piccadilly corridor, would reduce the attractiveness of cycling as a travel choice.” 

Not only has York never moved a centimetre towards the successful Dutch template for cycling, but now even bog standard vehicular cycling infrastructure is being removed “to ease congestion” and an important route for cyclists that cuts through the city in a straight line is being considered for closure to cyclists.

But cheer up!

CYCLISTS will be heading to York’s Rowntree Park this weekend when a Festival Of Cycling is staged. 

All types of pedal-powered bikes, from everyday two-wheelers to specialised three and four-wheelers, along with mega bikes seating up to eight people, will be available for people to try out. There will also be daredevil cycling stunt shows from The Clan on Saturday and Savage Skills on Sunday. BMX fans can also try out their skills. 

This is intended to

encourage non-congesting modes of travel, to improve air quality and to help boost the local economy. There will therefore be information on walking, bus travel, journey planning, and car sharing, and electric vehicles from Toyota, Mia and Smart will be on show. 

Because of course electric cars are just what you’d want to see at a Festival of Cycling, no?

With the characteristic dishonesty which permeates U.K. cycling promotion, this Festival is illustrated by smiley cyclists in a bucolic off-road vehicle-free location:

Photo taken from here

Students of masculinity and cycling should take a look at the illustration used to promote the Festival of Cycling here.

The one thing cycling promotion in Britain never does, of course, is show the actual urban conditions for cycling. Like here, for example. Keep right on for York’s historic Minster, which is visible in the distance. Yes, the Hierarchy of Provision really delivers here on Museum Street, does it not?

However, there is one admirable note of realism in this Festival of Cycling. Acknowledging the standard of driving to be found in York and its environs - and especially on the A64 - there will be

a special display/demonstration by the North Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Extrication Team who will demonstrate how a car crash victim is cut free from a wreck.

York: the latest incredible crap

CONTROVERSIAL 20mph zones could be increasing rather than reducing the risk of accidents, a new report has warned. 

The reduced limits could be lulling pedestrians into a false sense of security, so they take less care, a transport boss at City of York Council says. 

The revelation has sparked calls for a rethink on York’s “twenty’s plenty” campaign, central to Labour’s transport strategy.

Conservative group leader Ian Gillies said Labour’s push for 20mph zones was “purely ideological”, and said: “Motorists ignore them, the police will not enforce them and there are no statistics to justify them.” 

Over to Joe Dunckley.

Cycling in York – update

(Above) The kind of advanced cycling infrastructure that has made York the safest and most attractive city in Britain for cycling. 

Yes, make no mistake – York is a city where the cyclist is number one.

And now here is the news.

Crap cycling & walking in York

(Above) Cycling in car-sick York

York is a very compact city:

With less than three miles - or around 18 minutes by bike - between the outer ring road and the city centre, getting around York by bike is fast and easy.

However, modal share figures for the period 2007-2009 indicate a growing rise in the number of York children who travel to school in a car. A report entitled A Sustainable Travel to Schools Strategy for York commented:

Detailed research is required to ascertain why children and young people do not walk or cycle in York.

Successful promotion of sustainable modes of travel to schools will contribute towards reducing traffic

Detailed research is not necessary. York is a car-centric city with a grossly inflated reputation as a cycling- and walking-friendly city. In fact its transport planning is little different to that of Transport for London or that found elsewhere in the UK. York’s transport planners prioritise ‘smooth traffic flow’. If you want to reduce motor traffic you have to inconvenience motor traffic and make it less convenient and attractive than walking, cycling and public transport. But York is like everywhere else, a grossly hypocritical highways authority which prioritises the private car while simultaneously ‘encouraging’ walking and cycling with empty words and smiley-smiley slogans.

Infrastructure for walking and cycling in York is subordinated to the convenience of drivers and motor vehicles. On busy streets pedestrians get sheep-pen crossings, which require two separate green phases just to cross the road. Cyclists get crap cycle lanes. Where infrastructure does exist that benefits pedestrians and cyclists, it is widely flouted. Drivers enter Advanced Stop Lines at red. They park across cycle lanes. They drive over crossings when the lights are green for pedestrians. They rat run through the pedestrian zone, unhindered by any enforcement. York’s crap council doesn’t even have dropped kerbs as a basic universal feature of the walking environment. Everywhere you go in York you encounter unlawful pavement parking and hundreds of shattered flagstones. York’s car-centric police are not interested in enforcing basic road traffic laws and neither is the council; York council could obtain the power to enforce footway parking but hasn’t done so.

There is no mystery why most people don’t cycle in York. It’s the infrastructure, stupid. If you make driving convenient and smooth, with lots of handy car parking, many people will choose to drive into and around city centres. If you make cycling subjectively unsafe, don’t enforce even minimal traffic restrictions and don’t supply enough parking, or supply parking with a high rate of theft, most people won’t cycle.

In the last ten years of the twentieth century York lost one third of its cyclists. No one who writes about York and cycling ever seems to mention that fact, but then most writing about cycling is at the default buoyant optimism setting. In place of a demand for infrastructure that works are substituted appeals for more promotion and marketing and cycle training and trying to make drivers behave responsibly. If you market a product that is crap people might be persuaded to buy it once, but after that they won’t.

York City Council has still not restored the level of cycling that existed in 1990, nor is it likely to as things stand. People cycle in York despite the infrastructure, not because of it. York ought to have an absolutely massive modal share for cycling, bearing in mind that it is a very compact city and also has a large student population. In reality York has dismally failed to build on its traditionally high modal share. Incredibly, the council (rather like TfL and the London Borough of Waltham Forest) is pursuing even more car-friendly policies. The pedestrian zone is being nibbled away at the edges for more car access. Here’s a traffic order I spotted on a lamp post last year:

York’s much-promoted pedestrian zone is a car-sick joke. This (below) is the heart of the pedestrian zone. Drivers rat-run through it all day along, undisturbed by York’s indifferent police and indifferent council. Blue badge owners are legally permitted to enter the zone and park there. Cyclists are banned. York’s pedestrian zone is a total farce. Only a nation with an utterly impoverished vision of civilised urban centres would regard York’s joke pedestrian zone as iconic.

And now let’s revisit York’s famous ‘magic roundabout’. Would you want to send your child to school on cycling infrastructure like this? The three photographs below show the A1036 leading north-east out of York towards the roundabout. Cyclists who want to go straight ahead at the roundabout (up Stockton Lane) or right (along Heworth Road) have to get into the cycle lane between two lanes of motor vehicles, as shown in the third photo. Remember that this is nominally a 30 mph road, though many drivers are plainly exceeding the limit.

(Below) The 'magic roundabout', heading south back into York. Note the closeness of the car to the narrow cycle lane. Then look at the wider context in the next photograph.

The design of the so-called 'magic roundabout' is astonishingly mediocre and comprehensively car-centric. The potential for complete separation of cyclists and motor vehicles on approach roads to the roundabout and on the roundabout itself is glaringly obvious. Get rid of that parking for two side-by-side cars and put in a segregated cycle track. That's the solution to York's cycling stagnation, here and elsewhere in the city.

(Below) Continuing south from the roundabout we come to this. Who would want their child to cycle to school on a cycle lane like this? York, like the London Borough of Waltham Forest, thinks putting a narrow cycle lane alongside parking bays is a brilliant idea.

(Below) The cycle lane stops before a junction. And a cyclist is overtaken by a driver signalling a left-turn.

(Below) Beyond the junction the cycle lane begins again, then soon comes to a sudden halt. Parking bays take priority. Yet York Council has the gargantuan nerve and hypocrisy to claim that private car users are at the bottom of its road hierarchy, with cyclists taking precedence.

If you keep going you soon come to Foss Bank and more iconic cycling infrastructure.

For more about York’s magic roundabout see this 2003 CTC article here (pages 6 and 7), which I wasn’t aware of when I wrote my original critique. Also check out As Easy As Riding a Bike’s very interesting follow-up piece.