Turbogate: Bedford and beyond

It’s difficult to know where to start when writing about the Bedford turbo-roundabout and everything that surrounds it. The whole scandal – and it does deserve that word – goes well beyond that one scheme, extends through the cycle campaign industry, right up to the government.

At one end of the scale, the finished Bedford turbo-roundabout has been scrutinised and has come up sorely lacking, and clearly falls into the “farcility” category that the CTC is apparently so keen to reject.

For a full picture of what we got for our £490,000 you can read this PDF report written by John Meudell (former CTC National Council member for the South East) and Graham Smith (who now holds that same role). It contains lots of photographs, so you can see for yourself how poor it really is.

Suffice to say, it’s not a glowing report: “Arrangement of cycle crossings maximises possibility of conflict between cyclist and pedestrian” … “Elimination of raised lane divider does not deter lane changing, undermining safety benefits” … “Cyclist trapped onto transition kerb” … “Incompetent!”

Remember, this is from a design approved by Sustrans, Cyclenation, British Cycling and CTC. It looks like the worst kind of “fiddly pavement conversion” to me.

The hype around this dreadful scheme is so intense that Patrick Lingwood was nominated for a “Smarter Travel Professional of the Year” award, which makes me truly despair, as one of the boasts of this so-called cycling scheme is that it has made journeys by motor vehicle much more convenient.

Lingwood is also giving talks about how great it is, as is Alasdair Massie who is proud of a similarly poor design on Perne Road in Cambridge (see here, here and here for more about Massie’s folly).

The level of delusion is massive. At 20 minutes 45 seconds into the presentation, Lingwood excitedly speaks of “children cycling across a very busy road” while the photo clearly shows a family who have dismounted and are walking across the road. Is this wilful blindness or blatant lying?

“Children cycling across a very busy road” says Lingwood. Surely walking with a bike doesn’t count as cycling? Also, the central waiting area looks narrow to me. (Source: this PDF)

So nearly half a million pounds of public money intended for cycling was spent on a design where people feel it’s necessary to stop cycling in order to use it, but the man responsible considers this a success. Great work there, Pat. Nice emperor’s new clothes you’re wearing.

(As an aside, Lingwood also reveals that what gave the Motorcycle Action Group so much clout was that they have “friends in high places” – I assume this means that MAG head and former MP Lembit Opik was friendly with his fellow Lib Dems in governmental transport roles, and called in a favour.)

The bigger picture

But then at the other end of the scale, there’s the questionable way in which the Department for Transport funded this scheme. Why does cycling infrastructure receive such small amounts of occasional investment? Why are such tight timescales placed on these projects? Why was the money given to a charity to distribute, which then passed responsibility to an unaccountable group of individuals who rubber-stamped such poor designs?

Does the DfT fund motorways in this manner?

The Bedford turbo isn’t the only dubious project that was funded as part of this programme. Highlights include:

• the Itchen/Central Bridge junction in Southampton which didn’t even manage a fortnight without claiming its first victim
• the Richmond Hill roundabout in Bournemouth with its ‘innovative’ use of painted lanes and stop boxes
• the Park Road/Burghley Square roundabout in Peterborough shown here after having £160,000 of Cycle Safety Fund money spent on it
• as mentioned earlier, the atrocious Perne Road roundabout designed by Lingwood’s frequent co-presenter Alasdair Massie, which also claimed its first victim within days of opening

Perne Road roundabout in Cambridge. £360,000 was wasted on this project, an incompetent design by Alasdair Massie, who was warned of the dangers years before. (Photo: Chris Rand)

I don’t have time to go through all of them, but were there any – with the possible exception of the short length of cycleway on Baldwin Street in Bristol – which could be considered money well spent?

But with such a ridiculous funding model – limited funds, short timescales, etc. – perhaps failure was built-in from the start. I can understand the view that that CTC, Cyclenation and co. were right to make the best of a bad situation, but I still feel it would be best to reject these hopeless crumbs outright. Getting involved with such dubious projects lends them a legitimacy they don’t deserve, and gives the campaigns a reputation for approving rubbish.

It seems that the whole episode is a good example of Britain’s failure to treat cycling as a proper mode of transport, and of how the major cycling campaigns are complicit in this cycle.

Every year or so, the DfT finds some loose change down the back of the sofa and throws it at the craven cycling lobby who then write a press release about what a great step forward it is and how the government is finally starting to take cycling seriously. Cycle campaigners are then sated for another year, until they’re given some more crumbs to shut them up again.

It’s the same story, time and time again. Crap is built, excuses are made, then a year or two later more crumbs are announced under a new name, and we all rinse and repeat.

Berlin’s cycling rate versus reality

Dieser Artikel wurde auch auf Deutsch veröffentlicht.
This article has also been published on my German blog.

Apparently the area of Berlin in which I live had a cycling modal share of 17% in 2008 and it is now above 20%.

By comparison, Rotterdam has a cycling share somewhere around 26%, reportedly the lowest modal share of any city in the Netherlands, and yet this part of Berlin doesn’t feel anywhere near it in terms of cycling rate.

It’s difficult to compare different transport statistics, as different cities and countries use different methods. I’ve heard that Berlin measures cycling numbers on one day in the height of summer, and I can believe that. There’s no way that Berlin’s cycling rate is anywhere near Rotterdam’s, even in the centre.

I’m sure you could find some streets or bridges in Berlin where people travelling by bike make up a huge proportion of rush hour traffic, as you can in London, but that’s not what modal share is. The modal share is averaged out over the entire year and includes all journeys – it’s not just a measure of bike commuters on one popular street in the middle of summer.

Commuting share for cycling is usually approximately double the actual modal share. This is probably because people commute alone along routes which they’re very familiar with, and they have learned to cope with the unpleasant parts. There’s also a feeling of ‘safety in numbers’ which comes from a lot of other people travelling by bike at the same time. Making journeys at other times to unknown areas with less confident or adventurous cyclists isn’t the same thing.

The weather also has an effect on cycling rates, especially when infrastructure is poor. In the summer when the weather is bright and the roads are dry, you can just jump on your bike and go. In the winter the roads may be wet and slippy, and in the dark it’s harder to see and be seen, and you might wear a hood which will restrict your vision. These extra factors tip the balance from cycling being an okay option to it feeling dangerous and uninviting.

But where the infrastructure is good, the factors above have less importance. For example, when the cycle routes are surfaced in smooth asphalt, slipping in the rain isn’t a worry. On good cycle infrastructure you don’t need to constantly look behind you, so a hood isn’t an impedance.

Winter cycling in Berlin

I filmed the video clip below on Tuesday the 3rd of February at 5pm, on one of the main north-bound cycle routes out of the city centre. This is somewhere that even in winter you would expect to see a great number of people on bikes.

Schönhauser Allee is quite an interesting street when it comes to modal share, because it’s a main artery which has five streams of transport on it.

• It has a raised U-Bahn (metro) line running along the centre of the street.
• It has tram lines, one in each direction.
• It allows motor vehicles and parking, in both directions.
• It has a protected cycleway, one on each side of the road.
• It has wide footways, in both directions.

So you can watch this video and estimate the modal share for yourself. You can see the U-Bahn trains running in the top-left corner. You can see the trams. You can count all the motor vehicles, and you can count the tiny number of people on bikes.

That’s right. There’s hardly anyone on bikes, at all. On one of the main roads, at rush hour, in what is apparently the 12th best city for cycling in the world.

Compare this with cycling levels – and the conditions which enable them, despite the major roadworks at the time – in this video of Utrecht by Mark Wagenbuur:

It was filmed in April, so the weather would have been a little warmer, but even so it’s clear that the levels of cycling in Utrecht are on an entirely different scale, not just a few percentage points away.

Even in the summer, I doubt the genuine modal share for cycling in Berlin rises much above 15% overall – which is shockingly low for a mostly flat city where almost everyone is within a 30 minute bike ride into the centre.

Anyway, now it’s summer and Berlin is a much nicer place to cycle, I can go out and not be the only person on a bike, surrounded by cars. It can be very pleasant, on the right routes. But let’s not mistake that for modal share.