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Poorly positioned traffic islands (Google StreetView)Danger to cyclists is built into roads, says West Yorks councillor
Dangerous conflict between cyclists and drivers is built into the design of roads, says a West Yorkshire councillor and cycling campaigner. Martyn Bolt says his long-standing fear that highway engineers were not designing in line with current practice for road safety were confirmed this week at a symposium in London.
Former Mayor of Kirklees, Martyn Bolt has also served as that council's cabinet me ver for highways and been a board member of the Integrated Transport Authority for West Yorkshire (now the transport committee of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority). For some years he has been pointing out that the design of some roads puts vulnerable road users in danger.
Bolts says that his view was supported by cycling and road safety practitioners from across the country at a Public Policy Exchange Symposium in Westminster last week, titled Towards a Cycling Revolution. promoting Cycling & Improving Road Safety for Cyclists. An example was discussed where highway engineers place advance stop lines (ASL) at junctions, along with a narrow feeder lane running along the nearside of the road.
The practice of leading cyclists down the left side of stationary traffic has been linked to several deaths in London as riders placed in the path of turning trucks have been crushed under their wheels.
The National Standard of Cycle training highlights the dangers riders face moving up the left and advocates using the offside of slow moving or stationary traffic, as this is where most drivers would look before moving off.
"But still," says Bolt, "narrow feeder lanes are painted onto the roads in West Yorkshire."
He hopes local authorities spending West Yorkshire's recent £30 million windfall cycling funding will use it to build high-standard infrastructure.
Bolt says: “Primarily new routes should have the five core principles mentioned in Government guidance and adopted by London and other forward-thinking authorities.
“As the standards clearly say, the only way this money will be well spent in the long run is to build high quality wide routes suited for all users, make sure no artificial barriers are built on the routes and on which users can maintain travel times equal to other routes.”
On-road facilities need to avoid putting cyclists in danger too, says Bolt.
“Highways engineers should consider the position a rider may take on the road and not place highway ‘furniture’ in such a place as it puts them in danger. Installing road islands to narrow a lane or feed traffic a certain way can have dangerous implications for cyclists,“ he says.
"For over a year I have been asking Kirklees Highways to look at the A616, a popular route to Holmfirth & the Peak District for cyclists and part of last year’s Tour de France route.
"Riders cycling towards Huddersfield at Berry Brow will be positioning themselves for the left hand bend, and frequently get drivers passing close by who have to swerve inwards to avoid the islands, causing cyclists to take evasive action.
"As we are supposed to be encouraging families and commuters to cycle I wonder how these things pass a risk assessment?
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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36 comments
I have the misfortune of using the section of road in question on my daily commute and it is a death trap. This morning, an idiot overtook me with inches to spare - close enough for me to touch his car by just lifting my right hand from handlebars and moving it about 6 inches - and then delivered a mouthful of abuse and threats from his car window. Close passes happen to me probably once a week.
The main problem is that there is a mandatory cycle lane on the 40mph approach to the traffic island shown in the picture, which then ends just before the traffic island as the road changes to a 30mph. The footway on the left has been designated as shared-use and I imagine the intention is that cyclists will dive off the main road at a narrow angle, hoping the dropped kerb won't take them down, and then continue on the footway. The fact that the footway is probably only about 1 metre wide and has no indication regarding where cyclists are supposed to regain the carriageway is immaterial. The fact that there is someone's garage that opens directly onto the footway is also immaterial, as is the fact that there is a telephone junction box which is often being repaired.
Just round the corner shown in the picture is another traffic island which has an even kerb-to-island narrower gap than the first.
Coming the other way, as it passes the traffic island, the road has an approx. 1m wide cycle lane and an approx. 2.5m to 3.0m wide all-traffic lane - yet another invitation to be passed far too closely.
The whole area is a death trap, and typical of what our Council does for us.
Not naive, but tragically misinformed about the role of the Mayor in most councils that have a non mayoral executive model of governance.
And on the basis of your ignorance you gave a monumental slagging to someone who is doing his best in complicated circumstances that you don't understand.
How proud you must be.
"Martyn Bolt has also served as that council's cabinet member for highways and been a board member of the Integrated Transport Authority for West Yorkshire"
You're absolutely sure that a person who would describe himself as holding these posts, when doing HIS BEST, cannot stop the council he serves on from building death traps?
So the highways designers/engineers are just allowed to build infrastructure as dangerous as they like, and elected representatives have no say? Not even the cabinet member for highways?
Why does the cabinet even have a member for highways if the post holds no power over how highways are built?
Those circumstances must be amazingly complicated if the person in charge has no say in what happens.
So the danger to cyclists is from the roads? OK when they put gravel down at the bottom of Coldharbour Lane, I can see the road as being dangerous but normally it is unusual for a road to injure a cyclist/pedestrian/horse rider.
Roads don't kill cyclists. OK, cycle lanes that actively encourage cyclists to put themselves in the blind spots of HGVs (which many do) aren't ideal. But is it not up to all road users to use whatever they are presented with in a safe and considerate manner?
Roads don't kill people. People kill people.
I can sort of see why they've built that on the A1 with the next slip road in sight; but given the tyre marks on the pavement it's not stopping people driving across it!
Perhaps a bit shorter with a cycle space left on the main road and a few good bollards on the edge of the pavement would have been a better idea. But then emerging vehicles would probably still encroach on the lane by not stopping behind the give way markings (that would need moving back).
Although looking back down the road, the hard shoulder turns into a slip road first. That whole bit looks very poor from a cyclist point of view.
Might be worth reporting the location to http://collideosco.pe
I have one near me on a dual carriageway that's frequently used by cyclists on the hard shoulder - it's the fastest route between some local towns and isn't always busy. A pavement has been extended right out to the carriageway cutting off the hard shoulder. Cyclists are forced onto the carriageway to get round it. See it here http://goo.gl/b5ctS5
"How do these things pass a risk assessment?"
The potential for hazards are probably being assessed by the same plonkers that don't consider the state of the roads in Yorkshire sufficiently serious enough to have them attended to for the Tour of Yorkshire.
It's no secret that cyclists, horse riders and pedestrians (but mostly cyclists) are used as free, moving traffic calming. It only works if drivers have the patience to slow down at traffic islands and other pinch points, instead of trying to squeeze through the non-existent gap (and I had a non-blue light Ambulance do that to me in a London park yesterday).
On this topic I sometimes think maybe traffic engineers need to take a course in moral philosophy - with particular emphasis on Kant's strictures about treating people as ends-in-themselves rather than using them as a means-to-an-end.
Personally it's rare for me to use ASLs not that Birmingham has all that many.
I feel much safer waiting behind the last bus/lorry at the lights, cars behind can clearly see me so they're not an issue and I know that the bigger vehicles aren't a threat to me. Plus there's the added benefit of less wind resistance when pulling away and being able to zoom down the Hagley road at 25mph because of it.
Do not understand why people are so desperate to get in front of the buses at the lights, go over the stop line and put themselves in more danger.
The only place where I used to go over the stop line was a junction where that stop-line was set so far back from the junction itself that I used to be worried that I wouldn't be able to cover that distance and get across before the lights changed back.
Then one day I saw an articulated lorry attempt to negotiate the turn and realised why the stop line was so far back and why crossing it probably wasn't a good idea (though partly I can't help thinking maybe such lorries should take a different route).
As someone who regularly rides along "europe's busiest bus route" I am well aware of the potentially hazardous siren-song of the ASL, but at the same time I assure you that I can pull away from the lights a lot quicker than a double decker (which also has much better visibility than a high-cabbed-lorry). So I'd rather get myself out in front, especially since I know the light phases pretty well. This gives me some clear road (until I catch the next lot of buses), instead of being clogged up between high-sided motor traffic which is pulling in and out every few metres.
As a general question, if you don't have a bicycle lane leading to the ASL on the left hand side what do you do? Are you highlighting locations that have a left turn traffic lane that creates the conflict (where traffic could continue straight as well) or all approaches to ASLs.
If you removed the approach lane entirley I think you will still have riders approaching on the left, even if you have a patch of green in the middle.
It would be good to see some analysis of the collisons involving left turning trucks to find out the behaviour of rider and driver.
"He hopes local authorities spending West Yorkshire's recent £30 million windfall cycling funding will use it to build high-standard infrastructure."
yup , trips to various european countries in hired limo's to the airport , first class flights and hotels, conference halls and lunches with very nice presentations then dinners out in the evening discussing how to best way to spend the 17,000quid left after surveys , consultations and management fee's and finally decide on some white paint lane that leads out of one town and then ends right in the middle of a busy 'A' road - all allegedly of course.
Video of this pinchpoint.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k3IcB4TmKf6Q7calPp1
Wide angled lens makes things look further away.
@HarrogateSpa
Your point is interesting.
The concern I have, is that infrastructure design is still being commissioned and executed with this flaw (the left hand feeder into the ASL).
A road 1/2 mile from my house in London NW1 has just been resurfaced and repainted with exactly the same markings as before.
Its a long green strip with a bicycle symbol, inviting law-abiding cyclists to position themselves according to the road marking.
Especially, when you consider there is NO legal requirement for a bicycle-safety test before taking a cycle onto the highway, which means cyclists without road craft or safety training are relying on the visual cues presented to them during their journey.
Why the hell has no one realized this could directly be responsible for leading inexperienced cyclists into RTC situations which will lead to their death, or serious injury?
How many more people have to die, before this design is found to be defective, and stricken from infrastructure design.
The Netherlands seems to do just fine without a legal bicycle safety test...
(or High Vis, or any discussion on Helmets)
Road design is much more important, as is Motorist training (Which in general is rather poor in UK, which in turn is not surprising considering you can pass driving test without ever taking professional lessons)
What NL does have is strict liability on the more dangerous users (Motorists).
Martyn Bolt is both a roadie and an everyday cyclist. His father in law is Brian Robinson, the first Briton to finish the Tour de France.
It's not going to be news to anyone that left hand filter lanes to ASZ boxes are a daft idea, but it's still worth a councillor pointing it out, in case it might result in changes to the design.
"He hopes local authorities spending West Yorkshire's recent £30 million windfall cycling funding will use it to build high-standard infrastructure."
It won't be.
In West Yorkshire, cycle paths along the route of main roads rarely get planned at all, and in the very much rarer occasions that they are built, are built to shockingly poor standards.
As I write, a cycle "superhighway" is being built from the centre of Bradford to Leeds, across the centre of Leeds to the east of the city. Part way along the plan it stops, turns into a death-trap "shared space" disaster and then after a few hundred metres of throwing bikes under the wheels of lorries, resumes its normal character of a mixture of segregated path and mere lines of paint.
The council have been unable to come up with any justification that is both believable AND viable for doing this. The usual crap is trotted out... "The road is too narrow" etc.
These people have evidently deliberately ignored every single Danish and Dutch cycle design publication ever printed.
What kind of idiot plans a long-distance path, but puts a cyclist-killing trap in the middle, so that everyone is funneled through it?
This is the kind of stupidity that is still being planned and built. Mr Bolt's allegedly positive, helpful cycle-friendly attitude has had zero effect on the planners in West Yorkshire.
Bizarrely, as a former Mayor of Kirklees, cabinet member for highways and board member of the Integrated Transport Authority, supposedly pointing out that the design of some roads puts vulnerable road users in danger, he seems to have had no influence at all, ever, on the bafflingly shite designs of cycle facilities, nor has he managed to get any attention paid to cycling needs at the planning stage of almost any work done on any road anywhere in the county.
The discovery that anyone at all involved with highways in West Yorkshire was ever in any way pro-cycling is an astonishing discovery. I rather suspect that actually Mr Bolt is making up his alleged pro-cycling stance and supposed "heroic campaign". Either that or he is just as record-breakingly incompetent as everyone involved in highways almost everywhere else in the UK.
Certainly he should be called out on his attempt to credit himself with being a friend of the cyclist.
Sorry Mr Bolt, this kind of bullshit is not fooling us. It won't wash.
Severs1966 clearly fails to understand the difference between having influenced of which there are many examples and the current regime failing to take account
Perhaps road.cc will have the archive of me leaving the limo and using my bike when I was Mayor last year as again proof that I get on my bike whenever I can!
Also pleased that you have made an astonishing discovery that I am pro cycling Happy to have you as a rider on www.bcrc.co.uk which I have organised for many years so you can see what is put into cycling
You are also correct that bullshit doesn't fool those who know their subject
www.bcrc.co.uk "3 UK website does not exist or is no longer available"
Please explain...
"... bullshit doesn't fool those who know their subject. . ."
I'm calling out Severs1966 for being an ar$e of biblical proportions.
If you're going to lay into someone, make sure you Google them first.
As a well known club cyclist and for being Secretary of the Dave Raynor Fund I suspect he's friendly with quite a few cyclists.
An apology might be in order Mr Severs.
Martyn Bolt is the CTC councillor for Yorkshire, long term Ravensthorpe CC member and all round cycling nut.
IF he was ineffective at getting things done in Kirklees it is more likely to be as a result of the massive budget cuts that the council faced, and still faces, not because he isn't keen and knowledgeable on cycling.
So my only criticism of Martyn is that he is a tory!
OK, I accept that point. Perhaps Mr Bolt has exerted influence for countless years, and the regimes in power at those times just failed to take account. I suppose I am naive in expecting a Mayor to be able to exert influence that will actually affect the outcome. I had previously imagined that a person who would have held all the posts listed would have had the power to make the regimes in question "take account". Yes, that was naive of me.
I'd love to know what www.bcrc.co.uk is. The link doesn't seem to work for me.
This is a valid point, and in the interests of not being an arse to anyone without justification, I would like to apologise for stating that Mr Bolt cannot be pro-cycling. It CERTAINLY wasn't my intent to belittle the Dave Raynor Fund; I hope that does not appear to be the case.
Have I failed to make the point I was intending to? That in West Yorkshire, the "facilities" for ordinary bike riders (not club cyclists, which I am too, but ordinary people on bikes) are so hopeless that the assertions of a local politician, regardless of how dedicated a club roadie they might be, in the context of being such a supposedly strenuous defender of the lot of the bike rider, is flabbergasting. A pro-bike senior member of the council? In an area so awful for riding in? How can this be?
Budget cuts are not an excuse for roads that persist in being hostile in design and build, for decades, to their most vulnerable users. I am sure that budget cuts make council work in general more difficult, but do they explain a complete anti-cycling orientation of road design and build since the 1970s? Does it cost so much extra to get the road design right before the build phase starts? Is the point that budget cuts are the reason why Mr Bolt's pro-cycling input has never manifested itself on the roads? Is that a good enough reason, on its own? Or are there other reasons, and what are they?
I am now actually even more amazed than when I made the comment in the first place. Yes, I failed to look Mr Bolt up. But now that I know that a senior member of the local CTC and Ravensthorpe CC (being facts that must surely confirm a pro-cycling stance) served in a very senior position on the council for a long time, I am even more disappointed to reflect on how rubbish the provision is for bike riders on roads in the area.
I apologise for framing the comment as such an ad hominem attack, given this. I apologise to Mr Bolt, as suggested by other commenters.
Instead, I find myself weighed down by the discovery that, to "over-write" the pro-cycling push from such a person in authority, the rest of Kirklees council much be REALLY savagely anti-cycling. A bit like Leeds, where there is one pro-cycling councillor and the entire council apart from him continue to pay no heed whatsoever to cycling needs at the design phase of most road rebuilds.
Unless there is a better explanation? Would Mr Bolt care to explain?
No further comments from either mr Bolt or his defenders? Surely someone will explain how Kirklees Council have manage to completely ignore Mr Bolt's pro-cycling stance all these years?
No?
I suspect that I wasn't, therefore, being an arse "of biblical proportions" after all. Instead, I suspect that Mr Bolt's pro-cycling gushings seem to be entirely extra-curricular after all.
Unless there is any evidence at all to the contrary?
I therefore put it to everyone that I was being an arse of merely pamphlet proportions.
What a bizarre intervention. As a councillor, he doesn't design road schemes. That's left to the professionals. Even as Exec member, he wouldn't have been responsible for signing off schemes, just the programme. The fact that he's learned, and is now commenting deserves better than your response....
"The National Standard of Cycle training highlights the dangers riders face moving up the left and advocates using the offside of slow moving or stationary traffic, as this is where most drivers would look before moving off."
I've said this here before. No doubt it comes from many years of powered two-wheeling in many countries to understand this, but IMO, if you feel the need to overtake slower traffic on a bicycle, then DO overtake and do NOT undertake unless there is a protected lane.
In many cases, I just hold back. There's no need to place myself in a dangerous situation for no gain. If traffic is really jammed up, I filter to the front and proceed. Yes, you run the risk of being "out there" when the light changes, but get in line (you are a vehicle) and move to the left as you proceed.
These "pinch points" as in the photo above are even on high-speed roads like the rural A4. 60 mph limit with most Audis going 80. It's not pleasant to be approaching one of these "safety islands" at 12mph, with a 56mph HGV bearing down on you and hear the brakes come on full power as the driver realises the idiots who designed the road did not leave adequate room for a bicycle and an HGV. Just unforgivable.
A friend of mine is a DVSA driving examiner and swears this is true ...
One day a woman of about thirty presented herself for her first test and, as they were driving along a quiet stretch of road, he asked her what she did for a living. She told him she was a traffic engineer.
I'm not quite sure how to take that story!
Is it supposed to be a good or a bad thing that someone who designs roads doesn't see them exclusively from the driving-seat of a motorised vehicle? Surely the problem at the moment is that traffic engineers think entirely as drivers and have little experience of cycling or even what its like regularly getting places on foot? (Though in the end they have to do what politicians want anyway)
I suppose it depends how this individual had been getting around till then. Sadly its probably wildly optimistic to hope she'd been a regular utility/commuting cyclist.
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