I was in Birmingham recently for the excellent Cycle City Expo where hundreds of cycling campaigners, road engineers, and local councils came together to think about really getting Britain cycling. There was a palpable atmosphere that t...
I was in Birmingham recently for the excellent Cycle City Expo where hundreds of cycling campaigners, road engineers, and local councils came together to think about really getting Britain cycling. There was a palpable atmosphere that the new age of the bicycle was well on its way, and indeed that "something" will need to be done on our streets to help accommodate it. But just what should be done is still very much up for debate, and this was brought home to me by a conversation I had with an engineer there who was exasperated with cycling campaigners."You cyclists don't know what you want!" the engineer exclaimed. His outburst came as a shock to me. I'd been telling him about the latest design trend for road narrowing schemes that is sweeping our capital. I'd told him that such a scheme had taken place on the Bethnal Green Road and provoked an incredible reaction from people who ride the road everyday, and that in Westminster plans to narrow the carriageway on Haymarket had people who ride that road every day up in arms. I explained my view was that road narrowing puts people on bikes at a disadvantage, cutting their ability to get ahead of stationary traffic, bringing them closer together with heavy moving traffic and leading to dangerous overtakes by drivers who don't realise that cyclists are supposed to take the lane, or worse, just grow reckless and impatient. I told him that I thought plenty of cyclists hated such schemes and would do anything they could to avoid any such future projects being implemented on busy roads and key cycle corridors. Many people have told me they feel intimidated and bullied by motorised traffic when they are brought closer together by road narrowing, and recounted horror stories of road aggression, near misses and uncomfortably close passes. That's when the engineer started to sigh and scratch his head and look at me in an exasperated way. Road narrowing on London's Strand. No room for error here."Don't you see?" he began to explain, "Cyclists have been asking for road narrowing schemes for years. And now they are being built, you are telling me that cyclists hate them. You cyclists don't know what you want!" I couldn't quite believe what I was hearing, so I asked the engineer to explain further. He agreed, on the condition that I kept his identity confidential so as not to prejudice some bicycle-friendly measures he is currently working on with a London council"I've worked on a road narrowing scheme before. The client, the Council, wanted to turn an A-road in to a more people friendly street, most particularly with regards to accommodating all of the cyclists, who in recent years had become the majority of the traffic on this particular stretch. The road is also a bus corridor, and busy with lots of pedestrians. A shopping centre had been built on the road recently and there was a big pot of Section 106 money set aside for streetscape improvements. There was enough space to build really good cycle tracks, and increase the width of the pavements for pedestrians, as well as to accommodate pull-ins for the buses and loading bays for the shops. At first I thought that would be the best option to build; something for everyone. But the local cycling campaigners disagreed."My heart sank at the words "local cycle campaigners"; whilst I know there are hundreds of highly committed individuals up and down the country doing outstanding work, sadly amongst their number there is still a highly vocal minority wedded to some very strange ideologies regarding how best to provide for cyclists."The local cycling campaign drew our attention to the Hierarchy for Provision. It's a Department for Transport standard, you must have heard of it?" quizzed the engineer. Indeed, I had. The "Hierarchy of Provision" can be found in the DfT's briefing LTN 2/08 Cycle Infrastructure Design [PDF] It is also the foundation guide for all of the CTC's approach to campaigning and the basis of their recent