Football-pitch junctions

We’re really not stuck for space, we’re just bad at slicing it up.

I was looking at a huge junction in London recently and was wondering if you could fit a full-sized football pitch in the space. (After all, it’s a measurement people seem to understand.)

It turns out, you quite often can (or very nearly). I superimposed an aerial shot of a major football team’s pitch onto various road junctions around the UK to see how much space was really available. Then I made them look nice and uploaded them here for your perusal.

If you’re not familiar with the scale here, have a look at these photos to get an idea of just how big this football pitch is.

 

Parliament Square, London. I find it amazing that you could fit TWO full-sized football pitches in here!

 

Holborn Circus, London. A notoriously dangerous junction which is currently undergoing redevelopment (though the redesign looks pretty crap to me).

 

Junction of Euston Road and Tottenham Court Road, London. Still called Euston Circus despite being bulldozed through in the 1960s or 70s, this area is currently subject to road-works where the car will remain king.

 

Picardy Place, Edinburgh.

 

Tollcross, Edinburgh. A junction which I hate, it’s some sort of 1960s town planner’s dream scheme. Awful to walk across, takes ages waiting at the many arms of this junction. I’ve never cycled there but I can’t imagine it’s much fun.

 

Kirkstall Road and Willow Road, Leeds. Recently remodelled, this area offers “provision for cyclists to use the new bus lane and enjoy a safer and easier ride“, as if that’s going to get people cycling. Duuuhhh, try again, Leeds City Council!

 

Hyde Park Corner, London. I know the island takes up much of this, but the fact that you can easily fit THREE full-sized football pitches in the area tells us that there’s literally room for improvement here.

 

And a new, late addition:

Currently the subject of fierce debate, the southern end of Leith Walk in Edinburgh.

 

Do you have any more suggestions of wide roads and junctions to try this on? Let me know in the comments and I might do a follow-up.

All satellite images from Google Maps.

Edinburgh’s highways department: stuck in the 1990s?

What the hell’s going on up there? I’m talking to you, Edinburgh!

With all the hoo-hah, pressure from the local cycling campaign and Pedal on Parliament, I was expecting Edinburgh council to get the message and produce some really great designs for Leith Walk. Instead, the “enhanced” design is full of ASLs, door-zone cycle paths and give way markings.

Next year Scotland will be voting on independence, yet the Scottish capital’s highway engineers remain staunchly loyal to the old-fashioned designs of the Department for Transport here in London.

Leith Walk in 2012. Now, shall we use that dead space in the middle of the road or shall we keep it? (Photo: Google Maps)

Now, I don’t live in Edinburgh – I haven’t even visited in a year – so maybe I should keep my big nose out. But I think any road scheme which expects people on bikes to overtake stopped buses or ride in a painted door-zone cycle lane will not attract people to use the bike. Modal shift will not occur when scary manoeuvres are designed in.

Myself and my partner – let’s call her Pavlov’s Dog – are good barometers for cycling. We really want to cycle more, as we really enjoy cycling! It really doesn’t take much to get us on our bikes. So when we look at a road and say “ugh, I wouldn’t ride there” then you can bet your bottom dollar that it’s not going to tempt anybody from their car.

Edinburgh council’s plans for Leith Walk are a good example of this. It fails our test.

The 1990s called, they want their road design back.

I did have some hope for this design, as there’s a cycle-path for travelling southbound (uphill). But it only exists for a section of the road, and don’t be expecting to get any momentum as you’ll have to give way at the junction with the minor road of Albert Street! It looks like the cycle path is right up against parked cars too, without any buffer space. So it’s in the door zone, and will be blocked every time someone wants to get in or out of their car.

So who is it for? Confident cyclists who make up the vast majority of bike users in the UK will just stick to the road anyway. Why would they use the cycle path if they have to give way constantly, as opposed to the road where they have priority at minor junctions? So it’s not for existing cyclists – they’re cycling anyway.

But it’s not for people like me, either. Even if I did use the short section of cycle path to go one way, my return journey would mean riding in the bus-and-taxi lane, or the advisory (not even solid-line) cycle lane. At some points on the route there isn’t even a cycle lane!

Yeah, this is going to get little Timmy riding to school. “Just take the lane, kiddo!”

There’s a pointless two-way cycle path at the southern end of Leith Walk which seems to fizzle out at both ends. I’m not sure what a bike user is meant to do if using this – cross the road and join the buses and taxis? If I was happy to do that, wouldn’t I be on the road already anyway?

And why have they kept the pointless central median strip? That’s valuable road-space! Why do vehicles have priority over pedestrians at minor junctions? It’s legal, apparently, for the pavement to continue across the junction. This should be the new standard which we demand.

This junction is so wide! Why is there only a puny advisory cycle lane heading north? And why all those give way markings on the cycle path?

So this design is a fudge which pleases nobody. It’s crap.

Looking at this plan, I suspect Edinburgh council is trying to do things on the cheap.

It should be rejected by anybody connected to cycling and walking groups.

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Edinburgh council may have some dreadful planners, but they have some top-notch PR people. Somehow they’ve managed to spin this design as giving priority to cyclists and pedestrians. Ha! Are we looking at the same plans here?

Greener Leith mysteriously “welcome” these second-rate plans, and Sustrans “strongly backs” them too. Oh, for fucks sake!

There is a public session to view the designs on Tuesday July the 23rd, from 2pm to 8pm, at McDonald Road Library. I suggest that anybody in Edinburgh who doesn’t feel that walking and cycling are the priority in this design (and they clearly aren’t) should go voice their concerns clearly.

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Mini-update: I’ve just been reading the “City Cycling Edinburgh” forum discussion about Leith Walk, and I found this insightful comment from ‘CalumCookable’:

“Leith Walk has got to be the widest street in Edinburgh – if we can’t achieve a piece of high-quality infrastructure here, then where can we achieve it? Edinburgh pretends to want to quintuple the rate of cycling in the city in less than 7 years – if it’s not possible to achieve a piece of high-quality infrastructure now, then when will it be?”

He’s quite right. This design proves that Edinburgh council’s plans to increase the cycling rate five-fold in seven years are a complete and utter lie.

I can’t understand why others on the forum are defending this design. It might be better than the previous version, but it’s still crap. Are people just too tired to argue any more? Will Edinburgh accept crumbs from the council’s table yet once more? If so, it looks like people in Edinburgh will still be going round in circles in another 35 years time.

History continues to repeat itself

In a recent post I pondered on the fact that cycling campaigners were saying the same stuff in 1978 that they’re still saying today. I find it quite depressing that cycle campaigners seem to be running around in circles, although that article did generate some very interesting comments from people who were there 30 years ago, discussing how they’d do things differently if they had their time again.

The focus of that post was newsletters published by Spokes, the Lothian Cycle Campaign. If their response to Edinburgh’s “Quality Bike Corridor” is anything to go by then they don’t seem to have learned anything at all:

“While Spokes very much welcomes the new corridor, we would have liked stronger measures, including further restrictions on parking in cycle lanes, trial of segregated sections where possible and resurfacing of the worn-out red lanes on The Mound.”

I actually feel a little bit sick reading that sycophantic, snivelling quote, with its ultra-mild criticism, as if they’re meekly asking “please sir, can I have some more?”

Let’s get one thing straight: the “Quality Bike Corridor” is shit. It really is absolute shit. (I know I have a reputation for swearing after writing that article, but I really only use it when necessary; this is one of those moments.)

Let’s have a look at this great new infrastructure:

(Video by Dave McCraw – also, see his updated video here.)

Remember, you have just watched footage of what Spokes “very much welcomes” as “progress towards achieving the aim of making Edinburgh a truly cycle friendly city”.

Their criticism is so very mild it’s almost non-existent. Their most daring request is for a “trial of segregated sections where possible.” Even here you’ll notice they’ve handed the council a get-out-of-jail-free card with the words “where possible”, which will come back to haunt us as “segregated cycle paths just aren’t possible here”.

Is this really what Spokes were hoping for when they started in 1977? Is this the result of 35 years campaign work?

I know that Spokes isn’t responsible for the actions of Edinburgh Council, but why do they “welcome” such crap infrastructure? Are cycle campaigners so starved of success that they’re willing to accept any crumbs that fall from the traffic planner’s table?

Well — like David Arditti — I don’t welcome it. Many local cyclists don’t welcome it, the great Kim Harding doesn’t welcome it, and the Lothian Cycling Campaign certainly shouldn’t be welcoming it. (Those who drive or walk along its length probably won’t even notice it.)

Instead of welcoming this sort of crap, they should be condemning it. They should be telling the local news that they asked for a protected cycle route that children and the elderly would be safe using, but that Edinburgh council went for the easy, dangerous, unappealing option instead. They should be saying that Edinburgh’s target of 10% cycling rate by 2020 will be missed by a mile if this is the sort of thing they’re installing. They should be telling the council that they reject this route completely, instead of slapping each other on the back and considering it a job well done.

It’s not just Spokes who think this sort of thing is great, either – according to the Times, the CTC “praised” it, albeit with the same quibbles about enforcement of car parking restrictions and so on.

Transport Minister Keith Brown says that “Edinburgh already has an admirable reputation on cycling” although when I visited in May 2012 I found it to be no better than any other UK city which has been following Whitehall’s guidelines for decades. It was the usual crap, multiple lanes for cars, narrow paths for pedestrians, and little or nothing for bikes. (While we’re on the subject, Edinburgh isn’t even a particularly pleasant city to walk around, thanks to years of car-centric planning. It should be one of the best cities in the world to visit, but it’s badly let down by its transport planners. I won’t even mention the trams…)

Edinburgh councillor Leslie Hinds, Transport Convenor, said that the “Quality Bike Corridor” will help to make “cycling as safe and appealing as we can to commuters and cyclists of all ages” and will “encourage even more people to take to two wheels.”

If this is how people view the kind of infrastructure shown in the video, then we might as well all give up now. Seriously. Forget the target of 10% by 2020, it’s not going to happen if this is your idea of “safe and appealing” cycling. Spokes might as well disband if this rubbish is something they “very much welcome”.

This so-called “Quality Bike Corridor” is not an example of the government supporting cycling or finally taking it seriously as a transport option. This is yet another example of the government paying lip-service to utility cycling, along with – and this is the saddest bit – yet another example of cycle campaigners lapping up the crumbs from the floor.

 

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Footnote:

I expect that Spokes do all kinds of wonderful stuff that I’m not even aware of. I’m sure they’re dedicated and working on the front line. What have I ever done? I sit here writing this stuff, I’m not out there on the street, etc.

But I couldn’t let this lie. The congratulatory tone grated on me when compared to Dave McCraw’s video and Kim Harding’s photos. As long as cycle campaigners continue to accept crap and say ‘thank you’ as if everything is fine, all we’ll ever be given is yet more crap.

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Another footnote, added on 20th November 2012:

Sigh.

So Edinburgh’s goal is 10% modal share for cycling by 2020.

Well funnily enough, in 2001, Edinburgh’s goal was 10% modal share for cycling… by 2010.

Which didn’t happen.

Is there an echo in here?

(Source: here, via here.)

 

Is this worth repeating again?

Cycling has been neglected by council policies for too long. Motor traffic has increased to such an extent that many people who would cycle now feel that the roads are too dangerous. Whilst millions of pounds have been spent on planning and providing for cars, nothing at all has been done to encourage what is the healthiest, most efficient and safest method of personal transport, apart from walking.

That paragraph sounded reasonable, didn’t it? The sort of thing you expect me to write? Well I didn’t write it. I was a foetus at the time – it’s from 1978.

That’s right, it’s over 34 years old. That means it’s almost exactly the same age as myself, which makes the depressed feelings I get from reading it particularly poignant. It is the opening paragraph of the first ever Spokes newsletter, which is published by the Lothian Cycle Campaign.

Let’s read some more, shall we? To keep it interesting, some of the following snippets are from 2012, taken from the news pages of cycle campaign websites (though I changed the years and locations, obviously). See if you can tell which are new and which are three decades old before you click on the link to the real source:

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AIMS OF THE RALLY
– To celebrate the great and continuing increase in cycle use.
– To publicise the benefits of bikes for individuals and the community.
– To demonstrate our concern at the appalling lack of provision for cyclists.
– To urge the Council to positively encourage cycling and start catering for cyclists’ needs.

Spokes issue 2, 1978, explains the aims of the Great 1978 Edinburgh & Lothian Bicycle Rally

 

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Politicians are beginning to wake up to facts such as the 1.1 million bikes sold in the UK in 1976 – compared to only 1.25 million new cars. They are beginning to wake up to the campaigns by groups like SPOKES all over Britain from Penzance to the Shetlands. This is true all over Europe. In West Germany 4 million bikes are sold yearly compared to 2.2 million cars.
…
In May the government transport spokesperson John Horam said in Parliament: “we have drawn the attention of local authorities to the desirability of making cycling safe and more convenient.”

Spokes issue 3, 1978

 

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1978 in Edinburgh and Lothian saw greatly increased public interest in cycling, and it saw a breakthrough in Council attitudes. With your active involvement the cyclists’ case is ripe for a real take-off in 1979.
…
Last June the SPOKES Events Group organised our first rally. 500 cyclists of all ages came together in a demonstration stretching the length of Princes Street, headed by Robin Cook MP and Councillors from three parties. … At our two election forums, MPs and Councillors were closely grilled by audiences of 50+ and 100+.
…
1979 also welcomes the new adult training group. Many people cycled when they were young but feel unsure in city traffic. The group will run training sessions on urban cycling.

Spokes issue 4, 1979

 

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The Regional Council will co-operate with the District Councils to implement schemes that will allow greater freedom of movement to pedestrians and cyclists, and encourage more people to walk and cycle for work and leisure journeys.

Taken from the Region’s Structure Plan (“which guides land use planning for the next 10 years”) in which Spokes had to lobby to get cycling mentioned at all (see issue 4)

 

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A mass pedal-powered procession will be held in central Edinburgh on Sunday May 13th. We are hoping for TV coverage and expecting double or treble the 500 bikes … which took part last year. The procession will be headed by MPs and Councillors, and this year roads will be CLOSED to TRAFFIC by the police for complete safety. … Please obey instructions from stewards and police.

Spokes issue 5, 1979. (Do those words describe the ride being co-opted by the authorities and neutralised?)

 

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Despite gloom and recession in the economy and cutbacks in almost every area of public and private expenditure, business is booming in Edinburgh’s bicycle trade.
…
The ‘Evening News’ recently pointed out that “Edinburgh, as many European cities did years ago, must learn to accommodate the bike” and that cyclists have been failed by “the car-dominated planning doctrines of the last two decades.”

Spokes issue 9, 1980

 

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GOVERNMENT ‘NO’ TO RAIL PLAINS
George Younger, Secretary of State for Scotland, has forbidden Lothian Region from buying Edinburgh’s disused rail network from British Rail. As reported in our last leaflet the Council had decided to purchase the lines for conversion into walk/cycleways … The decision to buy the lines had been unanimous (although the Conservative councillors on the Region want to build new roads on them…).

Spokes issue 11, 1981

 

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BIG BOOST FOR BIKES FROM LOTHIAN REGION
July 6th 1981 may well prove to be the day on which Lothian’s “paper” commitment to cyclists took a decisive turn towards coherent and concrete action. Councillors on the Highways Sub-Committee instructed officials to undertake public consultation on a city-wide network of cycle routes; to start on conversion of disused rail lines to walk/cycleways; and to enter the public consultation phase of the Middle Meadow Walk proposals.

Spokes issue 12, 1981

 

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Nine ‘Regional Cycling Officers’ have been appointed in England “to make sure that the needs of cyclists are fully considered when trunk roads are designed or improved… and to liaise with local authorities and other interests on cycling facilities.” Advice has been issued to local councils on the construction of cycle facilities, grants given for experimental facilities, and a Consultation Paper issued seeking comments from interested parties.

Spokes issue 13, 1982

 

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Two SPOKES members have been thrown off railway paths, on which cycling is permitted, by local police officers who were under the impression that cyclists were prohibited. Member Andrew Grant … has twice been asked to leave the Slateford/Balerno track, whilst another member received the same treatment on the Warriston/Leith path.
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It is difficult to blame the particular police officers involved – paths are everywhere, with cycling intended on some and not others, and no obvious way to tell which.

Spokes issue 21, 1984

 

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COUNCIL BACKPEDALS ON CYCLISTS??
Recent decisions and events cast doubt on the priority being given to provision for cyclists by the Regional Council. We have to expect the occasional negative decision and lost battle, but the present pattern causes greater concern about the importance being placed by the Council on getting safer routes for cyclists.
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Whilst SPOKES greatly welcomes new pedestrian areas, to remove the hazards and unpleasantness of motor traffic, we generally see no reason to ban pedal cycles too. Cyclists, who were never the problem in the first place, are forced onto busier roads, and denied access to the old areas.

Spokes issue 22, 1984

 

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I’m going to stop quoting there and reveal that I lied – all of the quotes above are from Spokes leaflets 30 years ago.

What I find depressing is that they could all have been written today. Change a place name, update the year, change “British Rail” to “National Rail”, and you could re-issue these articles on a rolling basis.

Thirty years later, why hasn’t anything changed? Why are we still running round in circles, fighting the same battles?

Back in the 1970s the good people of Spokes were complaining about exactly the same stuff we’re complaining about now: A roundabout was installed without any consideration for cyclists; A cycle route was closed with no alternative provided; The council have removed or banned cycle parking somewhere.

They also did the same things we’re still doing: Cycling is on the verge of booming; A mass cycle rally was held; Politicians have made promises to improve conditions and encourage cycling!

I’m not writing this to criticise Spokes (I know I’m normally slagging someone off here, but I’m really not today). If anything I feel sorry for the people involved back then, from this perspective at least. If only they knew that cycling levels in the UK would stagnate for most of the rest of their lives!

I wish I had a time machine and could go back to 1978 and show them a copy of the latest issue, just so they’d know that they’d be fighting the same battles repeatedly for the next 30 years. (And they thought the traffic was bad in 1978!) I’m sure that the most committed members would persevere anyway – if you believe in what you’re doing, to fight is important whether you win or lose – or maybe it would inspire them to try a new tactic (bribing councillors, political assassinations?). I’m sure some would just give up, and I wouldn’t blame them.

But the thing is, while I was back there in 1978, if these people in their flares and tank-tops were to ask me, the man from the future, “what can we do? How can we avoid Edinburgh becoming the car-sodden cycling nightmare you’ve shown us?” I wouldn’t know what to tell them (although I might mention about Jimmy Savile). It sounds like they did everything right. I would have done the same as they did.

They campaigned for safe, off-road routes. They arranged mass protests and got politicians involved. They kept pressure up on the authorities to enshrine in law words which should have had a concrete effect on the roads.

They knew that it’s not right to expect children to ride on busy roads. They knew that cycle casualties were increasing. They knew that a good cycle route is an uninterrupted one.

And yet… nothing. Well, almost nothing – there have been some victories along the way, after all. But overall, Edinburgh’s roads have been designed for the motor vehicle, and that alone. (At least the last time I was there in May this year, it was no better than any other city in the UK, with the standard DfT crap design we all know and hate.)

So, what would you tell the Spokes people of 1978? Keep going? Give up? Move out?

If someone from 34 years in the future appeared in front of you and told you that, in 2046, London Mayor Boris Johnson Junior was promising remedial action on the deadly Hyper Cycleways any day now, and that TfL were still insisting that Elephant & Castle is fine, and that the Department for Transport was finally about to test dedicated cycle traffic lights, what would you do? I’d probably start to cry.

And then I’d move to Holland.