Gary Mason death junction: Sutton council shrug their shoulders

Just over one year ago, my first ever post on this blog was about the death of Gary Mason, who was hit by a van at a poorly-designed junction in January 2011. Sutton Borough Council, the local authority responsible for this deadly design, have decided that their roads aren’t in any way responsible for this tragic incident, and there’s no need to change the junction. I disagree.

Let’s recap.

It was early on a dark winter morning when Mason was struck by a van driven by Piero Zanelli, who was travelling north along Woodcote Road and turning right into Sandy Lane South.

It isn’t known whether Mason was on his bike turning right at the junction (i.e. about to turn north along Woodcote Road), or if he was crossing on foot while pushing his bike.

The junction at the location of the accident is dreadfully designed. In the image below we can see my rough diagram of what happened.

Drivers turning right should follow the green line, but it’s easier to cut the corner along the red line. Approximate location of Gary Mason shown. (Photo: Google Maps)

We can see the path which vehicle drivers should follow in green. But as the whole junction is one huge swathe of tarmac with only paint for guidance, there is nothing to stop a driver from following the desire line and cutting the corner. (Why is the striped area not a raised island?)

Here is another view, from above:

The same junction, but from above. Green line is legal path, red line is common short cut. Yellow star shows approximate location of collision. (Photo: Bing Maps)

So what is Sutton council’s response to the death of a human being, for which their road layout is clearly responsible? Surely any idiot can see that this design is dangerous?

“The Metropolitan Traffic Police and the Council’s traffic engineer carried out a joint inspection of the site soon after the accident and have assessed the site in relation to the accident you have mentioned in your email. I can confirm that no highway related factors have been identified by the inspection as being a contributory factor in relation to the said accident.”

That’s right. London’s finest have looked at this and somehow decided that there’s nothing which can be done to make this junction safer. (And people wonder why traffic engineers are so often lambasted on blogs like these? I know they’re not all bad, but honestly, I’d love to meet the traffic engineer who decided that this junction is just tickety-boo.)

This FoI response makes me so fucking angry. Here’s a highway authority ignoring a man’s death on their roads, for reasons I can only hazard a guess at. Are they not human? Don’t they have loved ones? Can they not empathise with Mason’s family? Do they never cross a dangerous road on foot?

Danger in the design

While I can’t excuse Zanelli’s driving, I can’t honestly condemn him either. People take their cues from their environment. We’ll never get 100% of people to follow all the rules all the time. To err is human, and so is taking a short cut. If following the desire line is “common at the junction“, then surely it’s easier to change the junction than the entire population. A simple raised island would do the job.

I’d be amazed if many drivers turning from Woodcote Road into Sandy Lane South follow the painted markings (unless there are cars turning right from Sandy Lane onto Woodcote Road, which would prevent the short cut manoeuvre). I expect that the red line is followed thousands of times a day, by a significant proportion of drivers. (Zanelli even admitted cutting the corner “eight times out of ten” if he thought the road was clear. Yet despite this clear admission of failure to follow driving rules, he was not prosecuted.)

Road design should be clear and explicit to prevent dangerous manoeuvres. The road design here is vague and permissive, with nothing to prevent people from taking a dangerous short cut.

Wider perspective

There’s a wider traffic engineering issue here too. Where was Zanelli going? If he had business on Sandy Lane or the streets around it then fair enough, but I suspect that most drivers turning right here are using the residential street as a short cut and a rat run, to avoid the junction of Woodcote Road and Stafford Road. Why do we allow what should be quiet, living streets to be used as main through-routes for thousands of motor vehicles?

Zoom out and you’ll see that Woodmansterne Lane and Sandy Lane can be used to avoid two junctions and knock half a mile off the route through the area. Why are these minor roads available to people who are merely passing through? What’s the point of those orange and green roads if not to carry the through-traffic? Why are Sutton council fiddling around the edges of the dangerous Woodmansterne Lane/Woodcote Green junction, rather than closing them to through-traffic altogether?

In conclusion: Nothing.

This incident has all the ingredients of the UK’s failed road safety mixed together. Dangerous junctions, excessive speed, rat running, poor planning, and the failure of the justice system after the event.

It seems that the official word is that Gary Mason’s death is just one of those things, nobody’s fault, nothing to be learned, nothing to be changed. Chalk it up to chance.

The only lesson seems to be that everyone should just drive everywhere all the time – in short, the UK’s roads policy since the 1950s.

Nothing to see here. Just fill your tank up and move along.

 

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Update: Thanks to Charles Martin for his comment which reveals that Sutton are finally considering some changes to both this junction and the one further north (only two and a half years, impressive!). They’re far milder than I’d like (these minor roads remain open to through traffic, and there’s awful-for-cycling road narrowing) but they’re a small improvement on the current situation at least. Take a look for yourself (PDF).

The imbalance of traffic (Or: This Westminster crap – I saw it coming)

It’s not that I’m some kind of mystical psychic – anyone who heard Councillor Edward Argar speak at the Living Streets event in March must have known that Westminster council’s plan for cycling would be dire.

Other bloggers have covered the plans already – As Easy As Riding A Bike, Cyclists In The City, and Rachel Aldred – so I will let you read their scrutiny of the document (key phrase: “where feasible”). I had already half-written this post after the Living Streets event, and now seems like a good time to finish it.

Cllr Argar is the cabinet member for transport at Westminster Council. For those of you unfamiliar with local London politics, just know that the capital is a disjointed mess of territorial factions.

As Westminster lies physically at the centre of London, Cllr Argar is in a position of influence and power, and the decisions he makes will affect not only those who live and work in his patch of London, but also the huge number of people who have no option but to pass through the exhaust-choked hell hole.

I’m sure Cllr Argar will go far, a seat in the Commons isn’t out of the question. To me, he seemed like the stereotypical smooth-talking career politician who smiles as he tells you what you want to hear, while really meaning the opposite. He reminded me of Tony Blair.

Many things he said were pure motor-centrism, lightly dressed in eco-friendly terms. He even trotted out the bullshit “narrow streets” excuse as if it bore any relation to reality. (See this and this on As Easy As Riding A Bike if you think Cllr Argar is correct.)

Another annoying phrase of his was “we need to maintain the traffic balance”. This suggests that Cllr Argar thinks Westminster already has some kind of “traffic balance” rather than the total motor dominance which they have been planning and engineering for decades. This is clearly just a way of saying ‘Westminster ♥ Cars’ while sounding like he wants to embrace cycling.

“The balance of traffic” as seen by Westminster council. They could have this on their wall for all I know.

This belief that the current system is normal and natural (and that any change is an unfair aberration which mustn’t affect the human right of rich people to drive absolutely everywhere) is one of the fundamental stumbling blocks which campaigners for better streets frequently face.

It’s clearly nonsense. The current road system was created by people in thrall to the motor car, to encourage more driving. It intentionally marginalises anybody using any non-motorised method of travel. For Cllr Argar to suggest that Westminster’s streets are designed with any sort of balance is preposterous, and I expect he knows it is.

London’s left ventricle is blocked but the hospital won’t operate

When the topic of parking in Soho came up, Cllr Argar spoke of residents parking cars outside their homes as if that’s a reasonable thing to do. IN SOHO! For those of you who haven’t visited London’s famous Soho, it’s an area of narrow streets full of cafés, bars and sex shops. It’s packed with tourists on foot, yet the council thinks it’s some kind of fundamental right for the few (no doubt wealthy) people who live there and own some huge 4×4 to park it on the street outside.

Who the hell needs a car in Soho? This is a neighbourhood slap bang in the centre of one of the world’s great cities, pretty much everything you could want is within walking distance 24 hours a day, anything else is just a short bus or tube ride away (Soho is surrounded by bus routes and London Underground stations in all directions) and there’s no shortage of taxis around there either. In short it’s the type of location which most people can only dream of, and with fantastic transport links too – and yet it’s seen as acceptable to own and keep a car there. Why is this?

Westminster’s streets are too narrow for cycling, apparently, but they’re wide enough for huge fucking Jeeps. (Photo: Google Maps)

If you are able-bodied, live in Soho and keep a car there, you are a selfish bastard and I hate you. If you want to keep a car outside you should have moved somewhere else instead. There’s plenty of houses with driveways in Doncaster.

But I must reserve most of my ire for Cllr Argar and his fume-loving cronies. Why do they encourage keeping cars in the very centre of London? (Though to be fair to Westminster, even usually slightly-friendlier-to-cycling Camden is pandering to central London car owners, too.)

Surely the vast majority of Soho residents don’t keep a car on the street, and almost all visitors will arrive on foot. So why give such prime land to a lazy over-privileged minority, when the bulk of residents, visitors and business owners would benefit from reclaiming the streets for humans?

I was Dick Whittington’s cat

When I moved from the suburbs of the Motorway City of the 1970s (aka Leeds) to central London, I was pleased to be selling my car. It was a burden lifted from my shoulders. No more MOT, no more insurance, no more VED, no more parking charges, no more servicing, no more wondering if the mechanic is a cowboy, no more worrying about car thieves. I was moving somewhere which has buses running all day and night, somewhere with fast trains to the furthest reaches of the city and beyond, somewhere a car would be more hassle and cost than benefit. And then some workmen came and installed two dozen blue bikes over the road – heaven! Who would want to own a car here?

The councils could help more people feel this way. I can’t imagine that many people who live in Soho stay there for decades. Why couldn’t Westminster council say “no new parking permits will be issued”? That way, anybody moving to the area knows that they can’t keep a car on the street there, and must either pay to keep it on private property or live without a car (the horror!).

The council could even say to existing residents “all parking permits will be invalid in three years’ time” – that would give people plenty of time to sell their car, or move elsewhere if owning a car is that important to them.

I can’t see landlords losing out, as flats in Soho must so incredibly in demand that there would be plenty of people willing to live there car-free.

So why does Cllr Argar talk of these Soho car owners’ right to park as if it’s inalienable?

So let me say this now: Pedestrianise Soho!

While I’m on the subject…

I might as well mention that Westminster seems to have more than its fair share of junctions without any pedestrian light phase – so there are always cars coming from somewhere, and people on foot are expected to run across the road with their fingers crossed.

Who designed this? Why is this acceptable in 2013? How on earth do people who can’t run tackle these streets? This is motor-centric design in a nutshell, the physical manifestation of the 1950s vehicular wet dream.

Is this the “balance of traffic” which Cllr Argar is so keen to retain?

I’ve no idea how people with impaired mobility cross here. Also, nice stopping, dickwad! (Photo: Google Maps)

Westminster aren’t the only highways authority who do this, but for a council which is in charge of an area packed with tourists wandering on foot, this type of design feels criminal, death and injury waiting to happen.

As children we’re all taught to wait for the green man, but if we put this into practice here we’d be waiting forever.

(Also, look how wide that street is!)

 

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P.S. I hope nobody minds, but I just read this comment on Cyclists in the City’s post about Westminster’s plans for cycling and I think it’s relevant and so well-put that it’s worth repeating here:

Jim 6 May 2013 15:24

I don’t see it as all that contradictory, as there’s a certain crazed consistency to Westminster’s approach here. The target of 5% mode share is laughably low, but the only way to ensure cycling remains so unpopular in a place where its speed and low cost give it such an advantage over other modes of road transport is to have strongly anti-cycling street design and overall transport policies – which pretty much describes the strategy as a whole. If you understand that they’re planning to fail, then it starts to make lots of sense.

Having said that, they’re obviously hoping that TfL will come up with something high-quality enough on a couple of main roads to fool some people into thinking that Westminster really is a ‘national leader in cycling provision’, without Westminster itself having to do anything to earn it. And if that happens, cycling numbers will continue to grow in Westminster while the streets they control remain as dangerous as ever. Which means that casualties will continue to rise.

I hope Andrew Gilligan and TfL don’t fall for it: Westminster have to change, or the Mayor’s cycling vision won’t succeed.