Cycle paths are "too expensive"

A few posts ago I pointed out that the Netherlands spends around 487 million euros per year on cycling infrastructure. That is what is spent in this country of 16 million people. The world's best cycling infrastructure costs: 30 euros per person per year.

It perhaps sounds like a lot - especially in these days of "austerity". British people, and those from the USA, Australia and other countries with little cycling, often claim that a lack of money is the reason why proper cycling infrastructure cannot be built. It's not true, of course. It's just one of many excuses.

By the standards of most government expenditure, this is actually not such a huge amount of money.

Britain's budget, just announced, is full of cuts to services. However, while 4 billion pounds has been cut from the transport budget, that still leaves 22 billion pounds allocated to transport.

There was no increase in the cost of fuel for motor vehicles. Such an increase may come later due to the rising cost of oil, but the British government is trying to minimise its effect on drivers by keeping the price of motor fuel down.

Meanwhile, cycling will be expected to continue on virtually no funding at all. Around 0.3% of the transport budget in the UK is spent on cycling. This continued under-investment is what has lead to the hostile environment for cyclists, and the bad safety record of cycling in the UK.

However, even now, investment in cycling should not be seen as a cost. Cycling has many benefits for society as a whole. If people cycle, this helps the economy by reducing the requirement to import oil and has many health benefits. Encouraging cycling is good economics. It's been shown that even in the UK, investing one pound in cycling brings four pounds of benefits.

In 1949, British people travelled 23.6 billion kilometres by bicycle vs. only 20.3 billion kilometres by car and taxi combined. In the Netherlands now, people cover about a tenth of the kilometres each year by bicycle that they cover by motor vehicle.

Instead of trying to keep the cost of motoring down, Britain's drivers could instead be helped by reducing their dependency on cars. British people were not always so dependent on cars. Rather, over the last 60 years the British public has been forced to drive for an increasing proportion of journeys due to there being few other good options (i.e. options which are attractive, offer direct journeys, have a high status and good subjective safety). If it were made easier for people to make a choice other than the private car, more could / would cycle.

Yes, I know people make other excuses, but mostly the concerns are simply about safe conditions for cycling. I've dealt with most of the common excuses before.

Of course, even when we're supposedly short of money, some things are immune to budget cuts. While there is "not enough money" for proper infrastructure, other more "important" things continue to have plenty of funding.

For instance, Britain may be heavily in debt, but the country is still keeping its nuclear deterrent, upgrading of which is expected to cost 65 billion pounds over the next few years.

I also recently learnt that Britain's adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost 20 billion pounds over the last 9 years. That amount is in addition to the usual defence budget (around 40 billion a year, and not being cut with the budget), and does not include either troops' salaries or care for the wounded. This alone comes to 37 pounds per person per year for that period - a larger amount than the Dutch spend on cycling infrastructure.

I'm not even slightly convinced that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are justified. In 2003 I marched in in London together with a million other people and all our voices were ignored. It's part of the reason I grew disillusioned with the UK. The reason given for starting the war in Iraq was bogus, and obviously so from the beginning, the cost in human lives has been enormous, and it seems that violence simply continues to escalate in Afghanistan. So what exactly is the point ?

If money is short, which is the best use of it ? Destroying another country's infrastructure and killing hundreds of thousands of people, storing up hate for the future, or building up ones own infrastructure and saving lives in the process ?

For more cycling, what Britain, and the other countries with little cycling, need is very simple. More decent quality cycle paths.

Update May 2014
Quite apart from all the wasted lives, resources and political good-will, we now know that the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost 30 billion pounds. i.e. enough to fund cycling at Dutch levels for at least 25 years. Well managed, that could have been enough to catch up with the Netherlands.

Of course, to talk about cycling as a cost at all is actually short-sighted. The Dutch have repeatedly shown that GOOD cycling infrastructure is cheaper to build than not to build. What's more, cycling has been shown again and again to have many positive effects both in society and even for business, all of which lead to cycling having an overall positive effect on the economy.

Britain isn't alone in spending more than it can afford on the military. I made a comparison of several countries a little while back.

Cycling infrastructure is cheaper to build than not to build, part two. Features "old, inferior" infrastructure

I read a story today about how the route between Eindhoven and Valkenswaard in the Netherlands was to be improved. Interestingly, the author of the story put the case that while the new cycle-path would cost €2-3 M, the benefits greatly outweighed the costs. He put the benefits at a value of €8 M due to saving of time for existing commuters and the likelihood that the new route would attract more people to cycle. More cycling means reduced emissions, cleaner air, health benefits to individuals, society as a whole and also to employers.

The old, inferior route between Eindhoven and Valkenswaard for cyclists. The photo, with that caption, generated quite a lot of discussion on Twitter. I rode here with my family on holiday in 2003.

As well as retweeting the link, I also posted the photo above to twitter as an example of what the new improved cycle-path will allow people to avoid riding along. The benefit of the new path comes in part due to a more direct route for some users, but with my eyes now adjusted to living "40 years in the future" compared with other nations, I can now see how this cycle-path is inferior to best Dutch practice. Things have moved on in the last ten years. There is better infrastructure than this almost everywhere near where we now live.

Andre Engels provided this map.
The new path in orange takes a
different route, better for commuters
to the High Tech Campus. This is
the route of a disused railway line

In 2003 this cycle-path impressed me enough to take photos specifically so that I could show them to campaigners in the UK as the sort of thing we should have been campaigning for, rather than the compromises which we were campaigning for. Overall, I'd still be as happy to ride there now as I was in 2003. It's not "bad" as such. However, this path is also not ideal in 2014 in the Netherlands. Expectations have increased and in order that people will want to cycle for a larger proportion of their journeys than they currently do, the quality of the experience has to be better than is offered by this cycle-path.

The old cycle-path is not quite wide enough and it's alongside a busy road so can be noisy. Junction designs along here are not ideal and at some points the cycle-path is a bit too close to the road for comfort. There are also some stops along the way which increase journey time. While the photo shows a point at which the cycle-path is bidirectional, further along there are single direction paths on both sides of the road. This requires that people cross the road. Once again, not ideal.

The new route will avoid the problems of the old and because it will exist in parallel with the old route it offers people more choices and makes more journeys attractive for cycling. Not only will the different alignment of the route offer shorter distances for some cyclists, it is also expected to result in higher average speeds due to the relative lack of interruptions and higher surface quality.

Standards are improving all the time
The Netherlands is not standing still. The rate of change and improvement to cycling infrastructure here is still beyond that of other countries which sometimes talk of "catching up". You can never catch up by starting from behind and doing less. Catching up will only happen as a result of out-spending and out-planning the Netherlands. Low aspirations and politicians delaying tactics and broken promises will never result in adequate progress. Make sure that "Going Dutch" isn't just a slogan.

It's important to campaign for the highest standards. If you ask for less, you'll certainly achieve less. Falling further behind is the inevitable result.

Just because something can be found in the Netherlands, that doesn't automatically mean it's best practice. On our study tours we not only demonstrate the best infrastructure which should be emulated but also point out why some infrastructure which may look impressive actually falls below the best standards. Our aim to to avoid inspiration being taken from the merely adequate and mistakes being made.

Only low quality infrastructure has a cost
Cycling infrastructure which is of such a quality that it can be used by the masses has a huge positive effect on the economy. This infrastructure doesn't have a cost to society but provides a benefit. It is only infrastructure which is of such low quality that it does not encourage mass cycling which places a burden on the economy.

In the Netherlands, cycling infrastructure is a fiscal measure. It saves the country money. There are many reasons why it makes no sense at all for any nation to view cycling infrastructure as "too expensive" to build.

The subject of cycling infrastructure being cheaper to build than not to build has been discussed before. Read part one.

The Netherlands sets the best example, but don't copy anything just because it is "Dutch"

While Germany is a genuine leader in renewable energy, and Danish design is known across the world, it is the Netherlands that should be looked to as the leader in cycling.

There is no "good enough". Everything
could be better.  Works on cycle-paths
are common in the Netherlands because
standards are improving. Dutch cycling
infrastructure is a moving target.

Observers from other countries with a far lower level of cycling often express an interest in Denmark or Germany because they are considered to offer a more "achievable" or "realistic" target to aim for. A cheaper solution is sometimes seen as an easier thing to emulate than the Dutch solution. It's true that those nations spend less, however they also achieve less. While the Netherlands continues to grow cycling from an already higher base (in 2011 the population cycled nearly 10% more than in 2010), Denmark is struggling against a long term decline in cycling and Germany has infrastructure which is unpopular with many of its cyclists. Are those good scenarios to aspire to ?

In the past, Assen had cycle-lanes in the
middle of the road. They're gone now.
Not a good idea. Don't copy this. The
traffic lights that they're waiting for
do not even exist any more. This street
is now much more pleasant.

Let's not even consider the absurdity of looking towards places which have achieved even less than Denmark and Germany, be they vocal cities in the UK or USA or elsewhere. What works for a minority cycling modal share and what works in a limited area with a demographic bubble are not necessarily what works for true majority cycling over an entire nation.

It makes no sense to campaign for something which isn't actually good enough. Campaigners should be inspired by the best of Dutch infrastructure and be wary of distraction by things which don't have a proven record of success.

Don't blindly trust the CROW manual

In reality you will struggle to find any
examples of a roundabout like this in
the Netherlands. Much safer designs exist.

The CROW Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic manual is as good a manual for cycling infrastructure design as exists. However it's not perfect. The manual tells you how to do a great many things, but it does say so much about which solutions are good solutions. For example, it rather glosses over the serious safety problems caused by "mixing lanes", and the section on them doesn't suggest much better solutions for similar junctions. The CROW manual can be used to justify many things which you would not expect a modern Dutch road layout to include.

Just because something is in CROW,
that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Unfortunately there sometimes seems to be a lack of "quality control" when people are inspired by what they see in other places, including what they see in the Netherlands. Not everything "Dutch" is equally good and equally worth emulating. Sometimes there are apparent "solutions" which seem easier to copy and these get too much attention. This isn't helped by the Dutch themselves occasionally forgetting about why they cycle and placing far too much emphasis on things which are less important or by their giving a lot of press to new ideas which are unproven or which in some cases simply don't work.

What's Dutch and should be ignored ?

I'm more impressed by traffic lights like
this one where cyclists never wait more
than 8 seconds for a green light and
where you don't have to stop at all.

Traffic lights which give cyclists priority when it rains have been in the news recently. This sounds lovely of course until you give it a little more thought. The article states that "The rain sensor did not lead to significantly longer waiting times for the non-cycling travellers, nor did it produce jams or stagnation". Now if the change in cycle timing benefits cyclists but does not cause a problem for other road users, then why do we not have that new timing all the time instead of only when it rains ? It's illogical in the extreme to do this, and as it costs an extra €10000 per traffic light, why bother when the same benefit can be found by reprogramming the lights permanently ? This is a gimmick which sounds good in a press-release but is otherwise quite silly.

Does the current situation in winter
look especially problematic ?

Another recent idea was heated cycle-paths. Again this initially sounds like a fine idea, until you realise that it is simply not practical. This idea is estimated to cost between €20K and €40K per km. However, the Netherlands has 35000 km of cycle-paths so it would cost a thousand billion euros to implement everywhere. Clearly this cannot ever happen. At best a very small percentage may be heated, perhaps outside the town hall, and the traditional way of clearing paths (which is already very successful) will have to continue anyway. What's more, the increased cost of maintenance and the energy required to warm the paths has not been accounted for. This is another gimmick which sounds good in a press-release but doesn't really translate into much on the ground.

Simple, old-fashioned and "not invented
here", but what Dutch roads need are
"Cat's Eyes" like British roads have had
for 80 years. Read about the inventor.
Due to being in the centre of roads,
they're not dangerous to cyclists on the
road. Note that smaller versions can
be used on cycle-paths without
causing danger to cyclists. 

A third example in recent months is the idea of roads which glow in the dark. This "designer" nonsense even won "Best Future Concept at the Dutch Design Awards". The resulting press-release was taken up by organisations around the world and it received a considerable amount of coverage. Did no-one think about how impractical this is ? It's really a daft idea. Dutch roads genuinely do have a problem with how visible they are after dark, but spreading a thin layer of rapidly worn away paint across the entire surface is not the way to deal with this. British roads have provided an example of a better solution for nearly 80 years ! Cat's Eyes are retroreflective devices found in vast numbers along Britain's roads and motorways. The very clever design of Cat's Eyes means that they retract to avoid damage so are resistant to being driven over by trucks and even snow-ploughs, and that they use this retraction to clean themselves. What's more, they've a proven history of success. Having driven on both Dutch and British roads and motorways after dark, I can state that it is quite unequivocally easier to do so in the UK because you can see so much better where you're going if the centre-line and sides of the road are fitted with Cats Eyes.

After this is commonplace perhaps it's
 time to ask for big bridges and tunnels

Often there is an over-emphasis on the most recently built exceptional pieces of infrastructure. To claim in a press-release that you will build the "longest", "tallest", "widest" or whatever of anything is of course a real crowd-pleaser. It guarantees free publicity even before the new thing exists. Cities which have built exceptional pieces of infrastructure often use them to hype themselves.

I have received email from Dutch architects and "creative engineers" asking for me to advertise for them by writing posts about their latest projects on this blog and I've been invited to events and other such things. However I am not interested in astro-turfing for such companies and you should be wary of reading articles which are the result of marketing campaigns. Until something has been finished, proven to work and has a long record of being cost-effective, it's not ready to be copied elsewhere.

Campaigners need to be wary of all of this. Publicity is not our aim. Cycling is our aim. Exceptional pieces of infrastructure can only ever make up a small percentage of the total and if given too much emphasis they distract attention from the important point that it is the very high standard of the infrastructure which goes everywhere and which everyone uses every-day for all their journeys which creates a high level of subjective safety and attracts people to cycling. Fancy bridges, tunnels or claims for the "longest" cycle-paths or whatever are nice to see and occasionally convenient to use, but they're icing on the cake, not the cake itself. I've occasionally covered exceptional pieces of infrastructure on this blog, but with warnings.

Students surveying Haren's "Shared
Space" and counting how often car
drivers don't give way to bikes

There is also the perennial favourite of "Shared Space" road layouts. Despite having failed as a concept here in the Netherlands, there being no new large "Shared Space" projects, these ideas keep being pushed with enthusiasm elsewhere, quite often by those who stand to gain from contracts for its implementation. Even here in the Netherlands they sometimes achieve design wins, even though we know that shared space is not really safe. These days, with an increase in interest in Dutch cycling infrastructure elsewhere, "Shared Space" is sometimes pushed on the grounds that it's "Dutch" and therefore must be good. However, in practice this is now barely a Dutch idea at all. While a Dutch invention and while such layouts had brief popularity here in the early 2000s, the problems with this "emperor's new clothes" manner of redesigning streets are now quite clear and few people would ask for this. Far fewer than 1% of the street layouts in the Netherlands are "Shared Space" and as a result they form just a few weak links in an otherwise very good network of infrastructure for cycling. The real way of civilizing city centre streets is to remove most of the cars from them. Compare a video of a street which was once shared space but is more pleasant now that motor vehicles have been removed with another showing how shared space is both dangerous and inconvenient for the vulnerable.

Turbo Roundabout. Can we really
expect children or adults in disability
scooters to cross safely here ?

Turbo Roundabouts are a Dutch innovation to keep motor vehicles moving. They're horrible for cyclists, causing danger and inconvenience and cyclists are never expected to use the road on a turbo-roundaout. Protests about infrastructure are rare in the Netherlands, but there have been protests against Turbo Roundabouts because even crossings at such roundabouts are not necessarily safe.

While Turbo Roundabouts are bad news for cyclists, let's also look closely at the other roundabouts often promoted by advocates of Dutch cycling infrastructure.
Over the last two decades many studies have investigated the safety of different roundabout designs (the link takes you to several of my articles about these studies with the results translated into English). Some of these large scale studies used data from hundreds of "roundabout years" to build up a comprehensive picture of which designs work best, and which cause injuries to Dutch cyclists. As a result of their use of such comprehensive data the results are not easy to dismiss, but unfortunately there's a lot of reading to do to understand them and as a result they have mostly been ignored in the Netherlands. Due to this, most Dutch experts still promote a roundabout design which unnecessarily hospitalizes hundreds of Dutch cyclists each year as being the best, and even "safest" practice. The dangerous design is even being promoted for adoption in other countries where motorists take less care around cyclists than is the case in the Netherlands. We also have roundabout designs which are exceptionally safe for cyclists but these are rarely promoted as examples.

This is the safe roundabout design.
It is much more tolerant of driver
mistakes and results in a far lower
rate of cyclist injuries.
Please read more about this design.

Please choose the safe roundabout design and when copying from it take care to copy the entire thing. I've seen several examples of engineers from other countries trying to pick some aspects of Dutch roundabout design but missing out others of greater importance, resulting in less than safe or convenient results. It's common for people to focus on the geometry. i.e. they see the difference in exit radii and the size of the island in the centre but miss out the cycle-paths. So far as cyclists are concerned, the cycle-paths are the fundamental reason why Dutch roundabout design works well. Miss them out and you do not have a "Dutch" roundabout.

While on the subject of large junctions, traffic light junctions in the Netherlands are not all created equal either. The best design of traffic light junction for cyclists is the simultaneous green design. This is not only extremely convenient but also has proven to be extremely safe and it fits almost any size of junction. Anything else compromises at least one of safety or convenience. Unfortunately, much discussion elsewhere is concentrated on the "Standard Dutch Junction" or the "Protected Intersection", both of which are versions of older and less successful designs.

There are several articles on this blog about those and other good / safe traffic light designs.

What's Dutch and often misunderstood ?

Wide cycle-path next to a 30 km/h road
This is necessary to preserve subjective
safety and direct cycle-routes

Lower speed limits are a good thing. The Dutch think so - and that's why more than a third of the total road network in the Netherlands has a 30 km/h or lower speed limit. However, research published in the Netherlands four years ago showed that merely lowering the speed limit was not nearly enough of an intervention to make roads safe.

Residential areas and villages should have speeds no higher than 30 km/h / 20 mph on their streets. However, even where there is such a low speed limit it is often necessary still to have separate cycling infrastructure, and low speed limits certainly don't remove the need for separate cycling infrastructure in other places.

Achieving safety requires removing cars or building separate infrastructure for bikes and of course junction design is important too.

It is worthwhile to campaign for lower default speed limits but lower speed limits should be viewed as just one of a number of tools to civilize the streets and their contribution should not be over-emphasized. The same goes for Strict Liability, the importance of which is often much over-stated in other countries and which is often misrepresented as meaning that drivers are taken to be responsible for all crashes which occur between bikes and cars. In fact, strict liability was introduced after the Netherlands already had an extensive cycling network and it is this network which makes cycling popular, pleasant and safe. Separating cyclists from motor vehicles as much as possible, building a dense network of cycling routes and making cycling routes shorter and more convenient than driving routes are all more important than either lower speed limits or strict liability. Separating bikes from cars has a much greater effect on subjective and actual safety than does changing the laws which apply to drivers.

A simple bollard prevents this bridge
from being used by drivers. However,
bollards should not be over-used. They
can be dangerous.

Unravelling of routes so that cyclists do not have to travel parallel with motorists can make it possible to segregate modes without specific cycling infrastructure. However, the resultant routes for cyclists should be the direct routes, not indirect routes which go "around the houses" in order that cyclists are merely kept out of the way of motorists.

In the Netherlands it is quite normal that drivers find themselves having to take a detour in order that residential areas can be pleasant places to live. Cycling routes can pass through residential areas, but...

An old street converted into a Woonerf
in Assen. They were also built as new
developments in the 1970s and 1980s.

Woonerven (or "living streets" - similarly, the living-room in a Dutch house is called a woonkamer) are residential streets in which people take precedence over motor vehicles. The concept was especially popular in the Netherlands in the 1970s and 1980s.

While woonerven provide for access by any means of transport, they should not be through routes by motor vehicle. What's more, they should also not be through routes by bicycle. Woonerven are not cycling facilities, they are intended to be pleasant places to live. This is not enhanced by having nose to tail commuters heading through these streets either in cars or on bikes.

If someone suggests that a woonerf should be a through route for bicycles, look out. Not only have they fundamentally misunderstood the concept of a woonerf, but they're probably proposing to send cyclists "around the houses" rather than provide the direct routes that cyclists need.

Older residential street recently
transformed to better accommodate
resident's cars. Note also the one way
sign, excluding cyclists. This civilizes
residential streets in older areas

From many peoples' interpretations of what the Dutch have done, you could come to the conclusion that many things are "anti-car" in this country, but it's not true. The Netherlands is a rich western nation in which people can easily afford to own cars if they want to, and this country does not make it difficult to own, drive or park the cars that people own.

New-build residential areas provide ample car parking so that ownership of cars doesn't cause problems for other residents. Many shops offer free parking. The city that we live in, Assen, has the cheapest car parking in the Netherlands. What's more, the roads are well maintained and well sign-posted. They're a pleasure to drive on.

That driving can be very convenient for some purposes, and that people like to own cars does not stop those same people from cycling if cycling is an attractive option. But for this effect to become reality, cycling must be a very attractive option people for people from all walks of life. There is nothing unique about the Dutch people which makes them ride bikes - they find it useful to do so because it has been made into an easy choice to make and that comes because the environment encourages cycling. The Dutch have successfully harnessed the enormous pent up enthusiasm for cycling that exists everywhere. The desirability of cycling results in people using their bikes even though commutes by car are subsidized by the Dutch government.

The first pedestrianized street in the world was built in Rotterdam in the Netherlands and there are now many pedestrianized zones across the country. However, unlike pedestrianized zones elsewhere which ban cycling these are usually easy to access by bicycle. However, note that these are generally not main bicycle routes. A main route through a shopping street could cause conflict. Similarly, shared use pedestrian/bicycle paths are not built because they also cause conflict. For the same reason, bus lanes are not combined with bicycle lanes.

Other things to be wary of

On holidays from the UK we went
past wind turbines and formed the
impression that there was a lot of
renewable energy here. Not really. For
that you do need to go to Germany.

Be wary of "holiday opinions". Holidays in other countries are not remotely like living there for a period of years and they often lead to people having a view of their holiday destination which doesn't fit reality. To understand another country you have to live there for years and put some effort into understanding how things are in your new home.

Note that Dutch commentators speaking about the Netherlands are equally unlikely to understand differences between their country and others unless they have lived for many years in other countries and spent the time to study those differences while they were there. The significance of the everyday and mundane things which are taken for granted by cyclists in the Netherlands can easily be forgotten. Dutch commentators are as likely as those from elsewhere to place an over-emphasis on the new and spectacular, particularly if this shows their country in a positive light. Also note that most Dutch people have no real understanding of the problems facing cyclists in other countries because they have not experienced them. After he read comments about "dooring" in youtube comments, I had to explain carefully to one Dutch bicycle blogger what this meant because despite cycling since he was a child he had never experienced it himself. There can also be problems with language, and that's not just restricted to bloggers. Even the Fietsberaad sometimes publishes documents in English which don't mean the same as their Dutch equivalents.

Original London "Superhighway"
illustration with miniature
cyclist. The result of compromise
before negotiation.  Remember
past hype and promises made but
not always kept. Celebrate actual
results, not announcements in
press releases. Cycle lanes
similar to this can be found in
the Netherlands, but they're not
good here either.

Dutch people have told me that the Netherlands suffers from all sorts of problems, such as particularly high unemployment, a high violent crime rate, a terrible problem with litter, mass obesity, particularly terrible economic problems. They also often think that mopeds are a huge problem for cyclists, though they're actually a non-issue in most circumstances. If you're close to even a small problem it can seem like a big problem. I've also been told that cycling is far more pleasant in the UK because of a supposedly more extensive British network of traffic free paths, which of course doesn't actually exist. The hyped initial promises for London's "superhighways" resulted in some Dutch media sources suggesting that the Netherlands could soon fall behind, which of course didn't happen. Why do people believe these things ? Without the perspective of seeing how other people live by living as they live it's difficult to be objective.

Cycle-chic style pictures and videos of peak time cycling (I made them myself way back in the days before youtube had HD) look nice but do not really teach us anything. When emphasis is on the young and pretty then the impression is given that they are the cycling demographic we should aim for. When wider demographics are featured they tell you nothing about why it is that older or younger people cycle or about how often they are seen doing so. Videos of masses of people cycling are of no real use without an explanation of why. The result is often to simply reinforce the irrational beliefs about Dutch cycling that many people already hold, and this can be read in the comments.

Junctions commonly known as the
"Copenhagen left" design were tried in
NL 30 years ago but are no longer built

Not really Dutch at all
Not all things proposed as "Dutch" in other countries are actually Dutch at all. Two stage turns are an example of an inferior junction design of a type no longer built in the Netherlands, linked with fatalities in Copenhagen, yet copied as a "good" example of "Dutch" design in the UK.

These were built up to about 30 years ago in the Netherlands, but I've not seen one of these for more than ten years. A reader sent the location of the junction in the photo on the right. There's a reason why these went out of fashion - it's because they're unsafe and inconvenient.

While junctions like this might have been "Dutch" in the past, it seems a bit unfair to still blame the Dutch for them now when almost all have been replaced.

Solaroad update November 2014

Solar panels on our roof. They get lots
of sunshine and work extremely well
because they are almost never shaded
in this location.

Solar panels are a wonderful technology. They are a reliable source of clean energy which should be adopted more widely. I believe in solar energy enough that I put my money where why mouth is and installed solar panels on our own home. However note what this "belief" is based upon. I didn't do this just because of a fanciful idea that this was "green" but only after I had done all the maths and worked out that panels in this location would generate enough electricity that they would definitely pay back both economically and environmentally.

In the UK we lived in a house where the roof faced the wrong way. I did the maths then and worked out that we couldn't expect a reliably positive return from solar panels on our roof because it faced in the wrong way. As a result, when we went house hunting for our current home we looked only at houses with south facing roofs specifically so that we could install solar panels and have them pay their install cost back. Bad locations make no sense at all with solar panels. Due to the cost (both environmental and monetary) of the panels, it makes absolutely no sense at all to install them in locations where they cannot work. Doing so is not in any way good for the environment, but actually negative because the environmental cost of producing and installing the panels will never be earned back during the life-span of the panels.

A cycle-path with solar panels in it has recently been opened in Krommenie near Amsterdam. This has been receiving a lot of press due to a vast campaign of hype. This is a completely ludicrous idea. Solar panels are a marginal technology. They are only economically and environmentally viable when mounted facing the sun, in a place where there is no shade at all and where they won't be damaged so will have a long life allowing them to continue operating for their payback period. South facing (Northern Hemisphere) roofs are an excellent place for solar panels. A location underneath a road, with extra levels of glass above, not sloped to face the sun, with shade from trees, cyclists, leaves, grime etc. and at risk of damage from weather effects as well as snow-ploughs and other vehicles is anything other than an ideal location. Dust is a problem even for solar panels on a roof.

Minister Kamp opening a cycle-path
with solar panels under it. This is an
absolutely absurd idea. Do not copy it.
"Greenwash" will not rescue the earth,
it only adds to the problem of over-
consumption. Solar power is a very
good idea, but the panels have to
be placed correctly to achieve a
positive outcome from solar power.

It is impossible for solar panels placed under a road to ever pay back their cost of installation. The total environmental cost of building this "solaroad" will be higher than simply using asphalt on the cycle-path. It will certainly be higher than using asphalt on the cycle-path and placing the same solar panels in a more useful location.

Please try to ignore the hype. I'm sure the company who is pushing this idea will try very hard to sell it, but they are trading on people not being able to do the figures themselves and work out why this is a bad idea. The Dutch minister who opened the cycle-path is clearly confused. He has said that his "dream for the far future" is to be able to ride in cars driven by the power provided by the solar panels embedded in the roads along which they are driven. But he clearly does not understand the issues as his dream makes absolutely no sense at all. With any given solar panel technology you can always generate more electricity at a lower cost by putting the panels next to the road than by putting them under it and you're unlikely ever to get a positive return from panels in roads.

Note that no theoretical new technology can help this to make sense. There are limits to the efficiency of solar cells which current technology already approaches. Maximum output from any cell design is related to how much light hits the panels and starting by reducing the amount of light which hits the cells by burying them under a road is simply a ludicrous thing to do. These things could only be made to compete with solar panels placed in more sensible places by making the sun shine brighter, and even if that were possible it would still make more sense to put the panels next to the cycle-path rather than under it.

I started working out the numbers for SolaRoad, but someone else has beaten me to it and done a good job of explaining: click here for a brash, long but also very illuminating video which explains the figures.

Three years later, a video (now deleted) appeared on youtube demonstrating how that first solar cycle-path was already falling apart due to weather effects and wear. It also demonstrated that the output was incredibly low for the large number of panels used and the high cost. My predictions came true, as did those of other sensible people who saw from the outset that the best place to install solar panels is never, under any circumstances, under a road.

What's the harm in doing something else ? What's the harm with making a slow start ?
The problem with following the wrong path is that time is wasted while this happens. The suggestion that campaigners should work towards something other than what the Dutch have has been made since at least the 1970s. Surely forty years of trying things that don't actually work for furthering cycling is enough. It's time to stop falling behind and catch up as quickly as possible.

The Netherlands is ahead in cycling mainly because other countries have never really been in the race. It's much easier to make an excuse about the Dutch being 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 years ahead and therefore difficult to catch up with than it is to make genuine political and financial commitments which will last for decades, but that is what is required in order to make a proper start at catching up. No more broken promises.

Groningen still has some "advanced
stop lines" (bike boxes). It doesn't look
very different from the London photo,
but this isn't the best infrastructure in
Groningen. ASLs are not a good idea
either here or anywhere else. Don't
copy this, there are better examples.

Conclusion: Use good examples to make progress
Not all of the best ideas in all fields come from the Netherlands. Not all Dutch ideas are good. Not all Dutch people know why they cycle. Not all Dutch people how lucky they are to be able to cycle as they do, and of course not all the infrastructure in the Netherlands is perfect, nor was it all built recently to current standards and nor was everything built recently built to good standards. In short, the Netherlands is far from perfect.

However, if you're interested in improving cycling in your own country this is still the most successful nation by a considerable margin and therefore is also the single best place to look for inspiration. The problem is finding the genuinely good examples from which to be inspired rather than picking examples at random. Never aim low because by doing so you guarantee not to achieve a high cycling modal share, but how can you be sure that you're aiming for the best ?

The one and only "Hybrid" cycle-path in
Groningen, not properly separated from
the road. The primitive design survived
for decades in this location and works
because there's a parallel service road
behind the hedge on the right. Cars
don't make right turns in this location
and there's no reason for them to park
here because that happens beyond
the hedge on the right of the picture.
It's not generally applicable, and not
something to ask for elsewhere.

Campaigners with low aspirations for their own countries often seem to cling to inferior infrastructure in the Netherlands because they view it as "more achievable". However you have to see this in context. Examples of low quality infrastructure in the Netherlands are merely weaker points in a comprehensive network which is of high overall quality. The remaining examples of lesser infrastructure have typically survived where they are because in these locations they cause relatively few problems. However, infrastructure is constantly being upgraded (and occasionally downgraded) all across the country. This inferior infrastructure is under threat even where it works. If you refer to such infrastructure to form your standards, you run the risk of setting the standard for your best infrastructure to be equivalent to what has already been removed in the Netherlands. What was shown not to work well enough here will then be installed in places where it won't work well in your own country and having set a low standard you will be doomed always to achieve a lower cycling modal share than the Netherlands until the standard can be changed once again. If it's already taken forty years to set a standard, you need to get it right.

"Armadillos" or similar obstacles to the side of a cycle-lane
are not sufficient segregation. Don't copy this. It's Assen's
oldest cycle-path and will be upgraded.

There is no need to learn from the past mistakes of the Netherlands by repeating them. You can leapfrog over them and copy what really works. Do make use of the best examples. Make sure you ignore the less good examples.

The worst thing for campaigners to do is to hamper their own efforts by not setting a high enough standard for themselves and for the community that they live in. If you were planning a mission to the moon, would you go to NASA for advice, or would you prefer to take notice of what the Ugandan space programme had achieved on the grounds that it looks more affordable than NASA ?

Study Tours

We run regular study tours, both on dates which are open to anyone who wants to book individually as well as special tours for interested groups.

We take just three days to demonstrate and explain how cycling works in the Netherlands. Take advantage of our decades of experience of living, working and cycling in both the UK and the Netherlands.

Southend-on-Sea. Missed opportunities to create a better environment for cycling and walking.

I spent last weekend in Southend-on-Sea. My daughter and I went there for a short break at the sea-side. This was not a cycling holiday. We mainly walked around the town, and we enjoyed it. However I couldn't help but take photos and videos during our stay and to look up some facts and figures on our return. The result is below. Most of the points that I make could be made about many towns in the UK:

Cycling to the airport with my daughter
There are cycle-paths much like this
for the entire 18 km distance from
our home to Groningen airport.

How we got there
A few months ago we entered a competition at a "business contact day" and were lucky enough to win a pair of tickets for the very convenient flybe service direct from Groningen airport to London Southend Airport. Groningen airport is only 18 km from our home in Assen, easy cycling distance, so we travelled by bike to the airport on Friday to get the flight.

On arrival at Southend-on-Sea, the most straightforward way to travel to the town was by rail. The railway station is conveniently located opposite the airport terminal. It cost £2.90 per person to cover a distance of just over 2 miles (3 km).

A13 Queensway Urban Realm and Cycle improvements

"Cycle Improvements" ? Where ?
How much worse could it have been
before the improvements ?

Directly outside the railway station we came to one of the most confusing road layouts in the town. The huge Victoria Avenue / Queensway junction, recently renamed "Victoria Gateway" is the only place in Southend where an obvious claim had been made that it was improved specifically for cyclists.

The junction has a sign which lists organisations involved in providing funds and even has a couple of words of Dutch on it. But there is little if anything here to benefit cyclists. A short stretch of shared use pavement, a very slow toucan crossing and a couple of ASLs would seem to be all that cyclists are provided with here, though the road is enormous and very busy.

I made the following video, showing how its actually a huge empty space dominated by motor vehicles:



It being the parlance of present day planners, I can't help but imagine that this new design was sold with a promise that it would "create a place". But there is no "place" here which anyone wants to be in. What we actually have is a huge area of asphalt dedicated to motor vehicles alongside another huge anonymous concrete area which is dedicated to absolutely nothing at all. No-one stops here unless they have to. Everyone who you see here is desperate to get away as soon as they can. This is not a destination, it's merely an inconvenience on the way to a destination.

What this also is is a terrible missed opportunity. Rather than a genuine advance in infrastructure to encourage cycling, Southend built this. However, there's nothing here which comes even close to best practice with regard to cycling. It will take an awful lot more than this to truly turn Southend into a "Bike Friendly City".


A huge four lane wide Advanced Stop Line is as much as has been done for cyclists here. It apparently cost 7.5 million pounds to do this. Move this around to take a better look yourself or show a bigger map
This is claimed to be a "Shared Space", but there is clearly nothing remotely "shared" about it. The safety of this area has been questioned, and there are complaints that it is being "ruined" by skateboarders who use it because facilities specifically for them are distant. This conflict of uses could have been avoided by building a decent skate park nearby for a small fraction of the cost of this development. Rather, this is an example of wide pavement syndrome.

A drawing of what Victoria Gateway was supposed to look like according to the council. One car. Lots of people walking, Trees. Blue sky. It doesn't reflect the reality

Next day update: I predicted yesterday that someone would try to make out that this was "a place" and I was right. Further investigation reveals that none other than Sustrans now refer to this as a "pocket place". They've recently produced a newsletter about it, referring to the lighting installation which is to come.

A local blogger, Ria, already wrote about an interactive light show on the open concrete area and discusses the area further. She had "lazily dismissed it a few times during the day as it was slightly off-path from between Southend Victoria and the high street. And my small curiosity didn’t beg at me to take a few seconds detour from the fast-paced crowd to even ask" and said that "The Victoria Gateway doesn’t generate a lot of footfall as is. And why should it? Even without the skaters there, people have no reason for going beyond the short walk between Southend Victoria and the high street."

Ria is absolutely right ! This is not the sort of place that anyone would want to stop in, no matter how much money is spent on a lighting show. It's a desert in the middle of a large road junction. It's not a nice place to be and won't become a destination for anyone.

Also interesting to read Ria's views on the skateboarders: "Many even go so far as to complain, if not about the unruly appearance of Southend’s skaters loitering in the area, then with concerns of safety for the young skateboarders attempting tricks and falling off their skateboards so close to the traffic. You may complain about the skateboarding there, but you have to admit that they tend to keep to themselves and they seem to be the only ones utilising that vast area at all."

The idea that anywhere like this can become a vital "place" that people want to go to just because a huge amount of money has been spent on a new road surface is patently absurd.

Crossing the road
One of the other things that struck us as we walked from the railway station to our bed and breakfast was how long it took merely to cross the road in Southend.


Southend has a lot of traffic lights and pedestrians are required to wait behind them for a very long time before they can cross the road. The majority of the crossings have excessive waiting times for pedestrians. We often had to wait more than a minute to cross the road. By the sea-front we found just one example which was actually designed to prioritize walking, just like their equivalents in the Netherlands. Why aren't they all like this ?

Multi-stage crossings with railing cages in the middle were a common sight in Southend. These make progress slow for pedestrians, effectively increasing the length of journeys. They make driving more attractive than cycling.

When crossing times are so long, this greatly increases journey times by foot. It is the equivalent of making walking journeys several times longer, and for that reason long delays also make walking several times less attractive.

Where it's not convenient for drivers that pedestrians should be able to cross, Southend has erected barriers to prevent pedestrians from making efficient and direct journeys. We wanted to cross the road at this point but it was made impossible by railings so we had to keep walking and make a less direct journey. These are an artifact of 1960s road design to encourage driving. They are hostile to walking. Assen had railings just like this in the 1960s, but got rid of them decades ago, along with the through traffic which made them "necessary".

More railings at the corner of what seemed to be an excessively large junction. Not only are railings like this inconvenient for pedestrians, they also are dangerous for cyclists. who be squashed against them by larger vehicles.

Another road with no safe crossing. There are three lanes to cross here with an unusual layout. Islands which could have provided a small refuge and a little assistance to pedestrians have instead been given an uncomfortable surface to discourage pedestrians from standing on them.

Pedestrianized main shopping street

Pedestrianized street in Southend. This is a thriving area. People like to be where the motor vehicles are not.

Southend pedestrianized its main shopping street in the 1960s. That was relatively advanced thinking. The same street remains pedestrianized. Sadly, unlike many equivalent streets in the Netherlands, bicycles are excluded. This results in cyclists having to make longer journeys around the shopping street on roads which are busy with cars. Not only does that make journeys longer but it also makes them more stressful and more dangerous and this makes cycling less attractive.

This cyclist dismounted to cross the pedestrianized street. Previously Victoria Circus, this huge open space really ought to allow cycling as it provides an alternative route west-east to avoid the busy A13 junction shown above. All alternatives to riding across here are detours on busy roads.

Very small children rode scooters through the pedestrianized area, but even on such a safe machine and in a supposedly safe environment, parents feel that helmets are warranted.

At this point, the pedestrianized street is crossed by a road. Cars are given priority and pedestrians have to wait quite a long time to get a green light. Just as in other parts of the city, most people cross the road against a red light because waiting times are excessive. Note no cycling sign in the pedestrianized street. In Assen we have pedestrian priority signs instead or forms of street which exclude motor traffic but allow cycling.

Unfortunately, even this pedestrianized street is not entirely car free. Pedestrians are required to wait at a pelican crossing even when walking along their pedestrianized street in order to cross a fairly busy road taking cars across the pedestrianized area. That this doesn't really work successfully is illustrated by the existence of signs which warn that it's a "Pedestrian Accident Area". These signs at least show the true cause of danger, which is motor vehicles and not cyclists.

Just outside the pedestrianized street we're back to normal British road design, hostile to cyclists and pedestrians. The one modern innovation on this street is a charging point for electric vehicles, the fuel for which is subsidized by the local council (and local tax-payers). Cyclists have been forgotten about and many take to the pavement for the sake of their own safety.

Shared Space on the sea front
The sea front area is a "shared space". This changed in 2011, with the area being renamed "City Beach". A small sign requests that pedestrians, cyclists and drivers should "Share space".

Regular readers will know that I'm skeptical of the benefits of shared space. I've seen many shared spaces now, both in the Netherlands and in the UK and I've yet to see an example which is better than other possible arrangements. Claims for safety are unfounded, the needs of vulnerable road users are neglected. Nothing that I saw in Southend changed my view.

This area is adjacent to the quicker pedestrian crossing shown above. It has a 20 mph speed limit controlled by speed cameras and I think it's fair to say that the speed limit has actually made it relatively pleasant given the enormous flows of traffic here. However, the traffic is still a problem. If this is truly supposed to be a place for people travelling by foot or by bicycle then why is it still dominated by a continuous and heavy flow of through motor traffic 24 hours a day ?

The opportunity to fix the problem at source wasn't taken. As a result, there is little "sharing" going on. Drivers have a road to drive on, pedestrians have pavements. While the bravest cyclists ride on the road, others stick to the pavement.

In this "shared space" there's a very obvious distinction between the space for pedestrians and the space for motorists and it was quite obvious which of these areas most people on bikes thought was safer

A woman with children on the back of a tricycle provided another example of where most people feel safe to cycle .

This cyclist clearly found it more pleasant to make her journey on the pedestrian area than on the road "shared" with cars.

Redeveloping this short stretch of road cost 7.5 million pounds. There are claims that despite its high price, this was a "bodge job". According to a local paper, the fancy paving was supported by blocks of wood instead of a proper foundation and the new surface is already sinking. This has "affected the drainage and led to flooding".

Next day update: As is commonly the case with "Shared Space", this one needed to have pedestrian crossings retrofitted to it so that people could stop the traffic and cross the road. There has been at least one injury already on the pavement. You may also enjoy a local cyclist's video of "sharing" this road with drivers who overtake even at the speed limit.

NCN route 16
There is a Sustrans National Cycle Network route through Southend. This goes along the sea-front, using the pavement rather than the road through the "shared space" area. As is so often the case with these routes, it's not designed to allow efficient and safe cycling.

I only saw roughly a mile length of the route because we were walking, not cycling. But even in this short distance there were obvious problems. Under the pier, cyclists go into a blind corner. Further to the west it consists of a path which is far too narrow for safe bidirectional use and positioned so close to car parking that it creates a "dooring" problem.

There's plenty of space here for a cycle-path of sensible width for bidirectional use and to place that cycle-path further from the doors of legally parked cars. In this case, the passenger was actually standing on the other side of the car on the cycle-path as the cyclist passed. This isn't pleasant or safe for either party.

There's no problem due to a lack of space. I estimate that nearly 30 metres in width is available to be re-arranged, currently occupied by wide pavements on both sides of the road, the cycle-path, two lanes of traffic, two lanes of parked cars and a wide verge in the centre of the road. There is simple no reason for this cycle-path to be so narrow or positioned where it is.

While we were walking along the sea front we noticed something that seemed a little odd. People would occasionally ride bikes past us, and then within a few short minutes we'd see them return again. No-one seemed to be going very far at all. The explanation came when I looked at the map on return from our holiday:

It turns out that the other problem with the Sustrans NCN path is that is doesn't actually go anywhere.

This cycle-route is approximately 6 miles long along the sea front. Try to turn towards the city centre and you would instead find yourself riding either on a shared use path alongside, or on the enormous "Queensway" dual-carriageway, leading to the advanced stop line at the huge junction in the last section. Due to the central streets excluding bicycles, you can't usefully reach many of the shops by bike. There is no sign at all in this town of the dense grid of high quality cycle-paths required for a high cycling modal share.

None of Sustrans' suggested routes could have taken us so far as the airport on any quality of infrastructure.

Shared-use path alongside Queensway. This is actually one of the better bits as its reasonably wide, but there are obstacles even in the short distance between giving way to this side road and negotiating the crossings near the upcoming roundabout. In that distance we have to avoid posts in the shared use path, steer clear of blind corners and make sure we don't ride too close to the wall.

Next day update: The door zone route along the sea front is supposedly a "hybrid" path. This is a low quality design of cycle-path which exists in the UK only as the result of a misunderstanding in 2008 by Cambridge Cycling Campaign members. How on earth did Southend pick this up as a good example to try to copy ? If you're copying from the Netherlands, it's important to look for the best examples.

Cycle-lanes, contra-flows and filtered permeability
Southend's smaller streets offer some utility for cycling and here there is some good news for cyclists resulting from low cost measures. On-road contra-flow cycle-lanes and other filtered permeability improve the convenience of cycling. Unfortunately, it's not comprehensive and design standards are not high. It's not enough to create the comprehensive and subjectively safe network required for everyone to cycle.

By the sea-front, this contra-flow lane allows cyclists to descend one of the steepest hills in Southend  in a narrow lane against the direction of motor traffic, picking up considerable speed as they do so.

When those same cyclists get to the bottom of the hill at the new shared space area they have to enter this narrow chicane with hard kerbs and give way to cars. There's no useful straight on here, you must turn either left or right. A better junction could surely have been designed than this.

Southend has narrow cycle-lanes on some of the minor roads but they're often in "the door zone" like this one. Faced with such poor cycling infrastructure, cyclists will often use the pavements instead although those are not ideal either. Pavement cycling problems are usually in reality poor cycling infrastructure problems.

A contra-flow lane in a residential street. This is relatively usable because it creates a more direct route by bike.

Poor implementation (kerbs, between car-parking areas so risk of reversing cars) but useful none-the-less. Cycles can go in a straight line here while cars cannot. This idea, but very much more of it and very much more evolved, makes up a good part of the Dutch cycling network.

On-road cycle-lanes are rarely truly beneficial to cyclists. This cycle-lane creates an expectation that cyclists will dive to the kerb immediately after passing parked cars. At a junction, the kerb is the wrong place to be, even for a left turn.

This cycle-lane and ASL are simply not of any real utility. The feeder lane is short and narrow and the space between the central island and the kerb is not side enough to be shared safely between a motor vehicle and a cyclist. The overall environment here is hostile to cyclists, this follows from a corner with railings featured above.

Car parks
Car parks in Southend were full and overflowing with cars. This is something we're not used to seeing. A successful transport policy which convinces people to walk or cycle instead of drive greatly decreases the need for car parking. This can especially be seen in Dutch cities like Assen where car parks don't fill up despite low cost parking.

Southend has many car parks and every one of them that we saw seemed to be full during the day. When people have no real choice but to drive, they will do so almost regardless of the cost of parking. This enormous use of cars is part of what keeps the roads full of moving cars. A real alternative would take away the problems of trying to cope with such high car usage.

It's clear that the people of Southend have little alternative but to drive, and so driving is the main way that they travel around the town. It's a small town so journey lengths will in many cases be relatively short, but the alternatives to driving are not attractive enough to encourage people out of their cars.

Providing such a large number of car parking spaces is a huge cost for the town. All this driving also costs the people who live in the town. Good quality cycling infrastructure costs less to build than not to build, but for that to apply the quality level needs to be much higher than that of what I saw in Southend.

Return journey
On Sunday morning we walked back to the centre of Southend and took a bus to the airport. This was slightly less expensive than the train but took more time. If we'd set off by foot instead of waiting then we would have reached our destination sooner.

The bus journey took us the two miles back to the airport along roads which had almost no cycling infrastructure at all. This being Sunday morning there were a few recreational cyclists in evidence, riding on the roads, and we also saw one child riding on the pavement. There were a few very narrow on-road cycle-lanes and a few shared-use paths but nothing which added up to a useful network, nothing which would have made cycling to airport into a safe and pleasant experience.

Unfortunately, we didn't recognise the airport entrance as we went past it and the bus driver didn't automatically stop at the airport. We were dropped off at the side of the road a little further along and had to walk back to the airport. At this point we had to deal with walking near Southend airport. The entrance is guarded by a huge roundabout. This has no cycling facilities or assistance for anyone crossing the road:

The area immediately outside Southend Airport. Very hostile for cycling and walking. Larger map

On arrival in Groningen we found my daughter's boyfriend had ridden from Assen to meet us so we cycled 18 km back home together on cycle-paths which stretch the entire distance.

My daughter and her boyfriend. They rode hand in hand most of the way home. This photo was taken right outside Groningen airport (that's their wire fence). This is a unidirectional cycle-path, its the same on the other side of the road, and as it happens this is the worst quality stretch in the 18 km between the airport and our home in Assen. I'm not cherry-picking Dutch examples to make the comparison seem more convincing, this is genuinely as bad as it gets on this journey. The reason why an 18 km journey to the airport is easier to make by bike here than a 3 km journey is to make in Southend is that we have this infrastructure. It's that simple.

Southend Summary
So what is holding Southend back ? It's not the weather, it's not that journeys are long and it's not that it's a particularly hilly place either.

Local newspaper clipping.
The crash happened on a road
near the airport, not far from the
roundabout shown above. No
cycling infrastructure along
here. I hope she recovers.

There's plenty of evidence of suppressed demand for cycling in Southend, as there is elsewhere across the UK and other countries. You see it in such things as children riding scooters in the pedestrianized zone, people who go for short rides up and down the sea-front, the occasional teenager riding a BMX bike through the town, the mum who waits for a gap to cross the road, the occasional roadie who cycles in front of the bus until he's overtaken a bit sharply. You even see it in the frustrated faces of people looking for somewhere to put their cars in overloaded car-parks as well as when they reach into their pockets to pay for parking.

People don't need to be persuaded to cycle. They just need the infrastructure to change so that they are not continuously persuaded not to. While cycling means indirect journeys in the close company of motorized vehicles and is neither convenient nor safe, you can't just tell people to cycle and expect them to take it up as if they'd never thought of the idea themselves. What's needed is infrastructural change which enables people to ride bikes without feeling like they are in mortal danger as they do so.

Cycling doesn't have a training problem. It doesn't have a PR or marketing problem. What is being faced in the UK is an infrastructure problem. Southend, like many towns, actually demonstrates very well how infrastructure influences behaviour. Changes made in the 1960s resulted in the town which exists today and resulted in the traffic patterns which were planned for. Historical photos of Dutch towns in the 1960s look just like photos from the UK at the same time. However Dutch towns no longer look like that. They changed again in order to make cycling attractive once again. That is what resulted in the surge in cycling and Britain could do exactly the same thing.

Unfortunately British towns, including Southend, are not doing it. They are trying to change while also trying to stay the same, repeating the same errors as have been made elsewhere.

Southend local newspaper
is "cynical" about the
intentions of politicians

So what are they doing ? Southend-on-Sea borough council's website doesn't have very much to say about cycling, but what it does say emphasizes such things as "encouraging cycling across the wider community targeting groups and individuals [...] cycle training, working with employers to persuade employees to cycle to work, recycling bicycles, cycle routes and cycling events". The council's Cycle Southend website ("We've got it all!") talks about "helping you get on your bike [...] lessons on learn to ride, getting back in the saddle and fun themed guided rides." Their "Ideas In Motion" site has a few "ideas" for cycling and the Local Sustainable Transport Fund application says they will look at "Reducing traffic congestion, Working with public transport companies to improve information on times and tickets, Encouraging people to walk more, cycle or use public transport rather than using cars, Build on the success of the Cycle Southend, Encourage more use of electric vehicles." It also says that five million pounds is available to businesses to help them with this. Meanwhile, over on the "Bike Friendly Cities" website, Sustrans' claims to be helping Southend with "a cross border user group analysis, enabling local key stakeholder groups and an awareness campaign."

The motherlode of sustainability jargon is to be found on another council LSTF page which contains all these words: "The focus of the 2015/16 revenue programme will be to build seamlessly on the current LSTF programme, improving sustainable transport connectivity, thus enabling people to travel conveniently in and between the growth areas of the JAAP, Southend Central Area and east Southend development sites without reliance on the car. The programme comprises complimentary work streams delivered with established partners: Marketing, raising awareness, and information provision: through the development of a PTP smartphone application, targeted marketing for walking cycling and PT, and supporting a further social enterprise led Travel Hub, providing on-site Personalised Travel Planning (PTP), information and advice; Access to work and education: supporting employers and SMEs to embed workplace travel plans, providing PTP at workplaces, higher education establishments and Job Centres, and delivering “Learning in Motion”, a joint Sustrans/SBC programme embedding cycling in the curriculum with primary/secondary schools; Improving sustainable transport links: through wayfinding, and encouraging use of new walking and cycling routes". Wow.

An awful lot of organisations are involved in maintaining an awful lot of websites and producing an awful lot of paperwork. Unfortunately, it's all nonsense. No-one reads this stuff and decides to ride a bike on the back of it. The value of these words does not add up to the value of one metre of cycle-path (and one-metre on its own is not very useful at all).

It's very obvious why towns and cities like Southend are not making progress in cycling. They're doing a lot of talking and even spending quite a lot of money but they're simply not making the investment that they need to make in the things that they need to invest in. The path to world class results is simple: follow world class best practice. We'd be delighted to show you how.

Is cycling too expensive ?
From what I've been able to make out from a variety of sources, redevelopment of the two "Shared Space" areas, neither of which offer much in the way of benefits to cyclists, together cost around fifteen million pounds. These two schemes alone consumed enough money to have cycling at Dutch levels (€30 per person per year) for about four years in Southend.

Spent well, this money could have achieved a great deal. Unfortunately, Southend cyclists got nothing more than a few ASLs, a very slow toucan crossing and a short length of shared use path.

Southend spent enough money to pay for 100 km of cycle-path
like this. It would have been a good start towards the grid of
very good quality required for a high modal share. Instead,
local cyclists got a few ASLs, the slow toucan and shared
use paths.

To put that into some perspective, here in Assen, a very good quality very safe traffic light road junction cost the cycling budget less than 1/400th of that figure and half a mile of very high quality cycle-path cost about 1/100th of what was spent in Southend. i.e. Southend could have built 80 km of Assen quality cycle-path as well as all the junctions to join them up.

In any case, the only reason why cycling has a cost greater than its benefit in the UK is that the money is spent on a combination of building low quality (though sometimes very expensive) infrastructure and production of copious quantities of paperwork, neither of which achieve an increase in cycling. Good quality infrastructure which actually does result in more cycling pays for itself several times over.

Mistakes already made are difficult to reverse, but it's time to just get on with it. Don't wait another reminded meforty years to make a start. Copy from best practice to achieve world class results.

Next day update
Rachel Aldred reminded me that Southend received extra funding as a "Cycling Town". More examples of the results of this can be found here.

More updates
14 year old buy trapped under bus in shared space.

Geography of Southend
People often wonder if their geography makes their town uniquely unfit for cycling. This is not the case for Southend. Southend-on-Sea has a slightly smaller population than Groningen in the Netherlands. It's a very compact town, approximately half the size of either Assen or Groningen with a population density twice that of Groningen and roughly five times that of Assen. Such a small place should be ideal for cycling. Journeys within the town can only be over short distances. I haven't been able to find climate date for Southend, but given that other places nearby have mild weather we can expect this to be less extreme than these Dutch cities.

Southend does have some hills, particularly near the sea front, but they're not extreme. Roads mostly take routes along the hills and not directly up them. In any case, London Southend Airport, two miles inland is up the hill, but its only 17 m above sea level.

Cycling and walking facilities aside, we really enjoyed our weekend in Southend-on-Sea. In particular I must point out that The Railway Hotel must be one of the best pubs in the UK (excellent music, excellent food, excellent beer) and that The Keralam Restaurant does wonderful Southern Indian food. Both these places were recommended to us by very friendly and helpful local people.