Blackfriars new design

The problems around Blackfriars have been going on for a while.

Now the LCC has come out with a new design, which many people have blogged about already:



By British standards, it is quite remarkable that a campaigning organisation has felt the need to put itself out there so visibly in order to try to influence for the better. They've achieved a good amount of publicity. This is all commendable.

The poor design originating with Transport for London.

The design they've come up with appears on the face of it to be quite good. Cyclists are kept from most conflict situations (watch the animations). This is of course "just" a first draft from a campaigning organisation, not a "professional" design from the local government in London. However, it is a lot better for cyclists and pedestrians than the equivalent from Transport for London.

Critique
Junctions are critical, and LCC's design could do these better. I have a few comments which perhaps could feed into the process:

• Given how much space there is around these roads, why have cycle-lanes right next to the other traffic ?
• Left turning cyclists are required to make too sharp turns and are not adequately protected from left turning motorists. Why not use some of the "cool café culture" area for left turning cyclists ?
• Why a two stage right turn ?
• Advanced stop lines / bike boxes should not be part of an improved layout ? They're no longer a part of modern design here. If people feel a need to ride on the road instead of in the cycle-lanes then the design has failed.
• Why can't cyclists turn left on red, and in some instances also go straight on red ?

Also a few details are missing (or perhaps I've simply not seen them). For instance, how wide are the lanes ?

The LCC recently held a poll in which the majority of their membership voted for a proposal called "Go Dutch". The language of the proposal was unfortunately rather woolly, suggesting for instance that only "main roads" should be targeted for segregated infrastructure, and that these should be rolled out rather slowly. What's more, it illustrated this with something far removed from best practice. The response from members seemed to suggest that the membership knew exactly what they wanted, and that they have something altogether more "Dutch" in mind than what the LCC was proposing.

This new design also has been described in some quarters as being "Dutch" in style. However, modern Dutch infrastructure doesn't really look like this. The LCC's proposal looks not entirely different to how some Dutch provision might have looked 30 years ago. There was a lot to like about 30 year old Dutch cycling infrastructure, so this isn't entirely a bad thing. However, in the second decade of the 21st century, I really think that London should be copying 21st century solutions and not looking quite so far backward.

Actually, my criticisms are relatively slight. Overall, I support this design. It's far from perfect, but it's a huge improvement on what was proposed by TfL.

The real criticism
All that is above is minor criticism compared with what Transport for London deserve. How on earth did this situation ever arise ? This fight should never have been necessary because nothing as ludicrous as the original TfL plan should ever have been proposed by TfL.

In a modern city, the proposed design from the LCC should look pedestrian. Maybe it should even look old-fashioned. However, Londoners are describing it as "ambitious" and "visionary". The reason why they see it as such is that TfL has let Londoners down. How did London get to be so backwards in its thinking ? Why is TfL still designing and building new infrastructure with a 1960s mindset ?

Works at Blackfriars should mean new excellent infrastructure to link up with existing excellent infrastructure. What is being faced is perhaps managing to build modern infrastructure here, but due to decades of inaction, it won't link up seamlessly with what is around the corner, and across the rest of the city, because everything else is of prehistoric design.

If the LCC plan, or something based on it, goes ahead, this could be a new dawn for infrastructure design in the UK. But please, in future, let's see British engineers and planners taking an interest in what has already been achieved in the Netherlands and not trying to reinvent the wheel.

The banner reads "Cyclepath must stay - where it is now."
The Fietsersbond was previously known as ENFB

A surprising precedent
There is actually a good precedent to all this debate over the Blackfriars area, and some readers may be surprised to find out that this earlier fight was over a bridge in a very similar situation in Amsterdam.

It's perhaps a good omen that the campaigners won and that conditions are now good.

The Berlagebrug in Amsterdam was built in 1932 but didn't receive cycle lanes until 1982. In 1984 they were threatened with removal and the Fietsersbond had to fight to retain a decent level of cycle access over the bridge.

The bridge now looks like this:

Grotere kaart weergeven
The cycle-paths are narrower and not as well separated from the road as would be ideal, but they link with proper segregated cycle-paths at the end:

Grotere kaart weergeven

Mark made this great video about the Berlagebrug to go with this blog post. Perhaps a little inspiration for those fighting at Blackfriars:
And finally...
If you're in London, go on the flash-ride at 5:45 pm Wednesday 12th October 2011.

Space under and over bridges

This is one of the very first photos of infrastructure which I took in the Netherlands, back in 2001. Coming from the UK, I was amazed at the allocation of space under the bridge. Two arches are for bikes and pedestrians, only the arch in the middle is for cars.

I used that photo in a recent article for the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain, and it made me think of other examples. It's not rare that cyclists are treated well under and over bridges in the Netherlands. Sometimes there isn't a lot of space, but the need to keep cyclists safe isn't ignored.

Here are some other examples:

A few km north of here on a road connecting a village to a small town. Drivers have to negotiate a gap big enough for just one car at a time, while cyclists have a bidirectional cyclepath.

A main route into Groningen passes under a motorway. Here the cycle paths on both sides of the road are well apart from the motor vehicles.

This example appeared in a recent post about noise, but it is also an example of where a cycle path is well separated from a road under a bridge.

Another recent photo from a holiday a couple of weeks ago. On this bridge in a small fishing village near the coast motorists have to negotiate for the one car width space on the road while cyclists have a degree of separation.

I found the existing way over this bridge, a narrow service road to the left of the main lanes, safe enough when I rode across there a few years ago. However it wasn't considered to be good enough and therefore a new separate cycle bridge was built alongside the main bridge.

Is this common ?
Such consideration for cyclists at bridges is the norm in the Netherlands. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of examples of this type of thing. I doubt anyone has ever counted them. Here are six more examples just from my commuting route on or under bridges with widely varying traffic levels:

Grotere kaart weergeven


Grotere kaart weergeven


Grotere kaart weergeven

There's nothing unusual or difficult about this. Bridges don't have to cause problems for cyclists whether they're going over or under a bridge.

Why is this important ?
Any bridge, or any other point, which causes a problem and makes people feel unsafe forms another small barrier to cycling. This reduction in subjective safety causes a slight reduction in the number of people who are willing to cycle. Lots of bad examples add up so that the majority would eventually not feel safe cycling anywhere, because the chance of coming across such a thing is great.

And then there's Blackfriars...
So what's going on in London ? Why is one bridge, Blackfriars, causing such an enormous amount of trouble. Why are Transport for London planning to make conditions worse for cyclists on this bridge when the city is in theory trying to encourage people to cycle ? Why are so many people having to protest about it in order to try to prevent this degradation of standards ?

For most people considering cycling, a bridge which doesn't feel safe to cross by bike may as well not exist at all. This should be in the minds of planners at all times. It's not impossible to do. It's not difficult to do. The Netherlands provides examples across the whole country, at junctions large and small, with high and low volumes of traffic.

Many London bloggers have written about this issue. They're quite rightly outraged. You can find in-depth Blackfriars coverage, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Also in my later post about the problems at Blackfriars, including a Dutch example.