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Showing posts with label pedestrians. Show all posts

Town Centre Cycling

Today, the Borough Council's Economy and Environment Scrutiny Committee receives a report about cycling in the town centre during 2010. As most people will recall, when the centre of Darlington was pedestrianised, there was considerable resistance from a number of quarters to the idea that cycling could be part of the new arrangements. But following a number of studies, including our own, that showed that town centre cycling posed little danger to anyone, the council backed cyclists. At the same time, and to calm the fears of others, it agreed to set up a monitoring programme and regularly review the decision. Today that review takes place.

You can download the full report here. Here are some interesting extracts:

"whilst cycling continues to increase across Darlington and at high levels through the town centre, no personal injury accidents have been recorded by the Police and incidents reported to the Transport Policy team do not show any collisions between a cyclist and a pedestrian."
During this period, there have been three collisions between pedestrians and cars (two taxis and a private car) in the Pedestrian Heart. The private car failed to stop. The manner of the reporting suggests that the pedestrians were at least partly to blame. All injuries were described as slight.
The only cyclist/car accident reported was not strictly within the Pedestrian Heart. A car decided to do a U-turn at the Stonebridge/Tubwell Row/Crown St mini-rdbt. A cyclist attempted to avoid a collision, contact was minor, but as a result he collided with a kerb and then a wall. This was rated as a serious injury. There is no comment as to prosecution or outcome of injury.
There has been only one 'reported incident' in the year - by a cyclist, of cyclists: ".. two young cyclists overtook him at close proximity on Tubwell Row and then appeared to nearly collide with two pedestrians before performing a dangerous overtaking manoeuvre on a car."

A representative from the Campaign will be at the committee meeting today to argue that the monitoring process should now be terminated.

Contraflow Signage

Earlier this year, Cambridge Cycling Campaign succeeded in winning local council support for the setting up of trial "cyclist contraflow" signs in parts of Cambridge. And as one of Darlington Cycling Campaign's members pointed out to me today, Cycling England has been encouraging all cycling towns to make one-way streets two-way for cycling.

Here in Darlington we have already asked officers on a number of occasions to consider this. One area where this is perhaps more urgently required, however, is at the Duke Street exit of the Pedestrian Heart. Here, cyclists who leave the town centre are confronted with a particularly narrow road outside the Coop Bank, a road that is designed to be one-way for motorised traffic.

This picture shows the view from outside the town centre. This evening, on my way home from the station, I was cycling out of the town centre on this stretch when I noticed a car accelerating towards me and beeping his horn (at 8pm in the evening). He seemed in a great hurry. The reason soon became clear. He screeched to a halt before I was able to exit the narrow road into Duke Street to tell me off for cycling "the wrong way down a one way street".

Having obligingly opened his car door to tell me so, I hung on to it in order to inform him that, in fact, he was entering the Pedestrian Heart, an area in which cycling is allowed both ways. But this was not enough for my car-centric friend, who clearly believed he had the right to speed into the pedestrianised Skinnergate because the bollard had been lowered.

Clearly, there is an education job to be done here. And what better way than to introduce, as is the case in many other countries, contraflow signs on one way streets. The usual safety "experts" will of course argue that "for safety reasons" this just cannot be introduced. But why is this deemed so unsafe, and ONLY in the dear old UK? Because we continue to pander to bad motorist behaviour, rather than developing an expectation of care when driving in built up areas. Contraflow cycling contributes to this.

Look again at the picture above, and you can see a so-called "flying motorcycle" sign. This is supposed to signal a road that is two-way for cyclists, but not motor vehicles. But how many motorists understand this? Especially when there are time restrictions which run out in the evening.

Perhaps more pertinent in this case is the question - why do motorists, other than commercial vehicles loading and unloading, require access into Skinnergate at all? Their only possible destination is a couple of hundred yards from this exit anyway. Would it not make sense "for safety reasons", and indeed to save the NHS some money by encouraging a bit more walking, to simply keep motorised traffic out of the town centre altogether?

Statistics v Anecdotal Evidence – An Explanation

Why have there been so many reported “near misses” between cyclists and pedestrians in the pedestrian heart? When the Cycling Campaign’s own documented video evidence has found these incidents to be extremely rare?

Perhaps my experience on the way to the railway station this morning is one explanation. As usual I cycled into the town centre from Woodland Road and, on reaching the top of Priestgate, slowed down to walking pace (Bondgate was still relatively empty) to prepare to push my bike down the narrow pavement on the one-way part of that street. Nobody on the pavement, so a short one legged scooter to the first obstruction (a traffic sign) a few metres down and I stopped to get off. An elderly couple were slowly approaching from the other direction. I waited 15 seconds or so for them to approach, did my usual pleasant “good morning” (Code of Conduct rule 3?) to let them pass, and got an immediate earful of complaints.

“Why are you not on the road?” they complained to this stationery cyclist?

“Well, because it is a narrow, one-way street full of buses”, I replied. “Could you show me the cycle path, please?”

“You’re just totally selfish. You shouldn’t be on the pavement. You only think of yourselves”, and off they went, perhaps ready to announce another “near miss”. Certainly it was an unpleasant encounter.

But it also points to the problems inherent in definitions of “pavement cycling”. I scootered the first few metres (one leg on ground, the other on a pedal) simply to reach a point where I could fully dismount. If I had dismounted and pushed before these elderly people passed me, as opposed to stopped, I suspect the space was too narrow (two elderly people, a bike and a dismounted cyclist) for us all to comfortably pass. Better, I thought, to stop altogether behind the obstruction, take up less space, and allow them to pass. Was I breaking the law because I was not fully dismounted?

I have always felt that consideration for others should take precedence over strict legal concepts. Good cycling always involves judgement and interpretation on the road. With so little dedicated cycling space on Darlington’s streets, it is also needed on pavements. And the Home Office agrees.

Shared Space in Drachten Revisited

Last year two members of the Cycling Campaign visited an example of Shared Space in Drachten, Netherlands. You can see our original post and video here.

Since that visit, the Space's designers have posted an assessment of its impact on YouTube. Here it is. Some highlights stand out, when considering its implications for Darlington:

*It is a roundabout where 22,000 vehicles daily pass by. I wonder how these numbers compare with, say, the Victoia Road/Grange Road roundabout, where a solution for a cycle crossing is yet to be implemented?

*We have no queues anymore.

*The interaction around the roundabout - meeting each other, greeting each other. This refers to how car drivers and cyclists relate on the roundabout. Imagine!!!

After the overnight in Sneek, a wet morning's cycling to the town of Drachten, comparable in size with Bishop Auckland, and with a Shared Space project on its inner ring road. Ten miles out from Drachten, the road - and cycle path - are closed for road works. What do we get instead? This specially constructed, temporary diversion for cyclists. This was in a small village, and it even had a nice lady at the end of it to stop traffic so that we could cross a busy road.

The Shared Space concept is one that is gaining increasing support across Europe. In Drachten, the project is based on the removal of traffic lights on the busy inner ring road, and their replacement with roundabouts, and junctions like the one in this video.

A bit like a zebra crossing for cyclists and pedestrians, but without the beacons! We used the crossings ourselves without a hitch, but what we noticed was that a routine was established by cyclists whereby they signalled their intention to cross with a wave of the appropriate arm, and local car drivers were waiting for the signal. In other words, local customs had developed to deal with uncertainty.

The one car that failed to stop was a Polish-registered vehicle. The cyclist in question, however, was alert to the possibility and probably stopped in time when he registered that the Polish driver was dreaming rather than looking. This, we conclude, is the hub of the problem. Like Poles, most British car drivers also currently dream in these situations, safe in the assumption that they have absolute right of way.

How can we change such behaviour to something more appropriate to urban driving? After so many years of motor dominance in our urban spaces, we are still trying to develop cycle routes in towns like Darlington on the assumption that the motorist should not be disturbed. Yet in contradiction, there is now said to be a hierarchy of traffic modes that puts the disabled, pedestrians and cyclists above motorists in terms of priority.

This theoretical commitment now needs practical application to tackle the major barrier to urban sustainable transport development - British car driver behaviour. Rather than run away from the issue, we badly need politicians, local and national, who will show leadership, and start the long haul towards more considerate - and aware - urban driving.

20mph and a Speed Management Strategy

Just as we learn that Portsmouth City Council are working towards a 20mph speed limit throughout their city, and just three months after Darlington Cycling Campaign's call for similar measures in our town were dismissed as too ambitious, I accidently come across a consultation process for Darlington and County Durham's Speed Management Strategy.

Naturally enough, the Campaign was not alerted or informed about this consultation process, and the deadline for responses is today, June 4th. One of the key objectives of the proposed strategy, which is billed to run until 2011, is to reduce the risk to vulnerable road users. Hmm, wonder if that might mean cyclists?

If anyone can manage in the next couple of hours, you can email comments on the strategy to traffic.management@darlington.gov.uk.

Good Time to Review Ambitions

15 months ago, The Guardian published a feature story by Matt Seaton about Darlington's ambitions as a Cycling Demonstration Town. The article was based on a long interview with then Cycling Officer Oli Lougheed.

Despite Oli's apparent chipper attitude to his job, with £1.5m rolling in from Cycling England to spend over 3 years, he moved on to Manchester shortly afterwards. But the article is instructive in laying out both the short-term ideas and long-term ambitions/vision of the local authority.

As we argued at our recent Symposium, the local authority alone can be quite good, if they get it right, at short-term plans. Witness the near doubling in cycling in Darlington over the past year. But long term ambition requires much more. Some quotes from the Guardian article are instructive:

Under the new scheme, Darlington's transport team plans to put in nine or 10 "radial routes", running from the periphery right to the centre....The new radial routes will reassign priorities where they intersect the ring road, and will make all the formerly pedestrianised areas dual use. The philosophy here is that cyclists can coexist perfectly safely with walkers, European-style; where it is clear that an area is dual use, cyclists automatically adjust their behaviour, slowing down and riding sensibly...."The object is to create boulevards rather than traffic corridors," says Tim Crawshaw, the council's chief designer of the public environment.

"The difficult thing is that you build the infrastructure and promote it," says Lougheed, "but it takes years for people to change their habits."

The hierarchy of road users that transport officers like Lougheed now work to reads as follows: disabled and visually impaired people first, pedestrians next, then cyclists, public transport, delivery vehicles, cars used for business with more than one occupant and, at the bottom of the heap, single-occupancy motorists.

As I cycle down a broad residential street with Lougheed, he tells me how a simple measure like taking out the central white line will reduce traffic speeds. Without the sense of a safe, segregated corridor down which they can drive at 35mph, motorists instinctively move towards the middle of the road. But then they become aware of needing to drive more slowly in case they meet a car coming the other way. All of a sudden, they're driving at 25mph - just because a white line has been taken out.

The Cycling Campaign has been doing considerable research on peoples', and especially motorists' habits. Yet we see very little sign yet of these being challenged by, for example, reassigned priorities where radial cycle routes intersect the inner ring road. Indeed, the current works behind Marks and Sparks indicate otherwise - cyclists will cross the ring road with pedestrians at a Toucan crossing.

With Darlington something like half way through its Cycling Demonstration Town period, this would be a useful time to reassess these ambitions:

*Were they really there in the first place, or was this just media spin?
*Will we still get our 10 radial routes, or have some been dropped?
*What happens when radial routes hit the inner ring road?
*How does the hierarchy of road users tally with the allocation of road space?

These and many other questions should not only be asked of the council. The reason why ambitions change or get dropped is as much through political opposition as lack of political will, and in Darlington there are certainly at least two outside lobbies who are doing everything they can to keep cycling at the very bottom of the hierarchy or road users.

But Darlington cannot simply "demonstrate" to the rest of the country what can be done. We also need central government support to get further up that hierarchy. Depressingly predictable, then, that our leaders failed to see the connection between the recent petition to 10 Downing Street (to give cyclists and pedestrians priority over motorists at minor road junctions) and their "new orthodoxy in transport planning", the hierarchy of road users. RIP Joined Up Thinking.

Cyclists and Disabled Unite (NE Edit)

An slightly edited version of the letter Richard sent to the Northern Echo was printed in today's paper.

You can read Richard's original letter: Cyclists and Disabled Unite and the leter as printed in the Northern Echo.

Cyclists and Disabled Unite

Today's Northern Echo has a letter in its Hear All Sides section from Gordon Pybus, chair of Darlington Association on Disability. Here is the Cycling Campaign's reply:

Dear HAS,

What a pity that Gordon Pybus, of all people, encourages prejudice. His letter (HAS 15th Feb) damns all cyclists as “a real danger to pedestrians”, before demanding that we use a cycle route of his imagination (“there is a cycle path around the ring road”) instead of the Pedestrian Heart.

I leave the question of Tim Stahl’s evidence that cyclists usually come off worse in collisions with pedestrians to him – he did work for many years in the Memorial Hospital’s A&E after all. But public evidence does show where cyclists get hospitalized – the ring road, where 45 cyclists have been seriously injured since 1988, and one killed. “I believe that motorists provide a real danger to cyclists” is a phrase that has all the backing of cold statistics, but not all motorists are dangerous, nor should they be banned from the ring road.

Gordon calls for cyclists to “be in the correct setting”. Well, we wholeheartedly agree. Please let’s look more closely at the bicycle as a unique form of transport, and not as some kind of “motor vehicle without a motor”. “Correct settings” are finally appearing here and there in the town, designed with cycling in mind, and not by the bizarre visions of car driving traffic engineers.

But even these “correct settings” are not going to segregate us from disabled pedestrians. Cycle paths are actually very pleasant surfaces for wheelchairs, and I see no reason why they should not be used as such. As Darlington Cycling Campaign continually stresses, we want to encourage responsible, considerate cycling in the Pedestrian Heart. It really is time to wake up to the fact that there are many ordinary citizens in Darlington who also cycle, and do not wish any harm on others.

But there is another reason for encouraging cycling in the town – to make our environment and our people healthier. Because Darlington is a Cycling Demonstration Town, we now have a unique chance to make a collective difference by making cycling safe, attractive and convenient to people who currently drive their car on short journeys (how many town centre pedestrians arrive by car, I wonder?) . That is why cycling needs to become less of a war of attrition with the motorist, and more a pleasant way to get from A to B.

So come on Gordon, stop building walls between us and chasing us back on to the roads. Sign up for the Cycling Symposium (http://cyclingsymposium.blogspot.com/) on March 17th and join other good-willed people in trying to make that vision a reality.

Richard Grassick
Chair, Darlington Cycling Campaign

THE bike slowly wobbles along St Cuthbert's Way, past the magistrates' court and police station.

It clings nervously to the kerb as huge buses, lorries, and vans zoom past it.

The bike reaches Victoria Road roundabout, near Feethams, and comes to an uncertain stop.
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As the cyclist waits to turn right, the truck in front spits fumes over him. The cars behind rev menacingly.

This is cycling on Darlington's ring road - intimidating and unpleasant.

A feature article, Saddled with traffic - or dodging the pedestrians by Owen Amos appeared in today's Northern Echo on page 11, and is available online.

Northern Echo Feature on Cycling in Darlo Saturday

The Northern Echo are due to run a feature about cycling in Darlington this coming Saturday, 10th February. Journo Owen Amos came out with members of the Cycling Campaign to get an idea of what it is like cycling around the town from the cyclist's point of view. We took him on and off road to try to explain the difference between the macho, assertive cycling required on main roads, and the relatively leisurely cycling possible on quiet roads and cycle paths.

The pic shows DCC member Tim Stahl (right) briefing Owen Amos after our cycle ride. The Pedestrian Heart issue is likely to loom large.

Update: The feature article, Saddled with traffic - or dodging the pedestrians appeared in today's Northern Echo on page 11, and is available online.

The City That Never Walks

In The City That Never Walks, Robert Sullivan discusses the changes that some American cities are making to encourage their residents to walk or cycle, rather than taking the car:

places like downtown Albuquerque, where one-way streets have become more pedestrian-friendly two-way streets, and car lanes are replaced by bike lanes, with bike racks everywhere

Some of the schemes listed are already taking place in Darlington, but lots are not.

* a walkable town centre
* purposely limited parking
* a new bus plaza that is part of a mass transit renaissance
* an urban walking and biking trail [linking] neighbourhoods
* charges drivers a fee to enter the core business area
* police sting operations arrest speeding drivers
* replaced parking spaces near a subway station with rows of bike racks
* some traffic lights are programmed to change for approaching buses

We have the Pedestrian Heart, but what of some of the other schemes?

Someone needing to travel between Bishop Auckland or Newton Aycliffe and Darlington for work or education has very little choice but to drive. Should Darlington not be pushing for changes to the train timetable?

Any new scheme in the centre of town seems to need more car parking. When the TK Maxx building was built on the Crown Street car park, why did it need the car park addition? When the Commercial Street development takes place, will the multi-storey car park built near Gladstone Street increase traffic in that area? What will this do to the residents' health and lifestyles?

Some work is being done to increase the number of off-road walking and cycling tracks around the town, but could more be done? I can almost get from my house to the town centre without touching a main road. Almost. Whatever way I go, I end up having to make the last part of the journey on North Road or Haughton Road. We need these last missing links putting into place.

We could go even further than that, it is possible to link Hurworth village into the Riverside Path/McMullen Road cycle path that gives an off-road link to the town centre and both Further Education colleges, but part of the route is along a muddy bridleway. Imagine being able to ride from Hurworth to the town centre without having to use a main road. It's possible.

I've seen speed cameras on North Road recently, but not as often as I've seen speeding cars. I've seen traffic wardens, but I see a lot more illegally parked cars, vans and trucks. I see buses sat in queues of traffic, and cyclists on the pavement because they've been hounded off the roads by bad driving and too many cars. I hear of people driving to Northallerton, Teesside or Tesco to shop, because it's so hard and unpleasant to get into the town centre.

Anything put forward as an idea to kerb car use is "branded as anti-car, and thus anti-personal freedom". Increasing parking charges or a bringing in a congestion charge or road toll is seen as yet another tax on the motorist.

But as matters now stand, the pedestrian [and cyclist] is taxed every day: by delays and emissions [...]. Though we think of it as a luxury, the car taxes us, and with it we tax others.

So, let's see some of the car parking spaces in Abbots Yard or Skinnergate replaced with bike racks. Let's see some pressure on the train operators to make their timetable useable and useful. Let's see a crackdown on irresponsible driving before a crackdown on irresponsible cycling. Let's see buses given more priority at more junctions. Let's see some effort put in to try and create the missing last sections of the cycle network. Let's see a blanket 20MPH speed limit across the town.

Let's stop 'taxing' our pedestrians and cyclists and let's make Darlington a real Sustainable Transport Town.

Saving 50p could cost someone's life

The Northern Echo website carries a story about car drivers parking on and blocking pavements, and the danger this causes, Saving 50p could cost someone's life.

This, and cars going through amber lights, is one of my current pet hates. We're back to pushing a single pushchair, but when we had a double buggy our way was frequently blocked by cars with two wheels on the path. I see it as one more example of drivers putting cars before people.