Are LCC in LaLa Land?

[clarion]

Of course you'll be in conflict with the bus as you rejoin the carriageway.  Maybe not the first couple who have to stop start past the pedestrians, but the bus has to move off eventually, so someone will get caught.

How is it different from pedestrians crossing the road?  Two ways:

Firstly, how many pedestrians want to cross the road immediately?  Call it 50%.  Well, 100% have to cross from the stop island to the pavement, so that's worse.

Secondly, how many pedestrians fail to look when they step into the road?  A few, perhaps, but the presence of big metal vehicles which can hurt them focusses their minds.  That will not be the same when it's a) just a bike coming, and b) it's on the pavement anyway.

A much easier adaptation is what's seen on CS7, where the bus lane is widened at stops to let cyclists overtake properly.

[mattc]

I feel about cycle lanes much the same way others do about helmets, there are reasonable grounds for believing that using them encourages enforcement.

The other day I was riding over a near empty Chiswick Bridge (an outer London bridge over the Thames) in full Willesden regalia when I was flagged down by a passing Community Police Support person who advised me to use the shared use paths "for my safety" (which in fact, I often do, but mainly to avoid red traffic lights at the main junction onto the bridge, but thats a different story).

 I thanked him for his concern and suggested that whilst it may be appropriate to advise young and inexperienced riders to use the path he might want to consider whether it was appropriate to (pause to suck in stomach, stiffen sinews and declaim with the full majesty that my Willesden jersey endows) flag down club cyclists such as myself who ride thousands and thousands of miles a years to offer this advice, and if he did whether his advice was likely to be appreciated. He acknowledged the answer to both questions was probably "no". I just thank god I was wearing a helmet...

Chapeau  . I never thought I'd appreciate any text ending with that sentence.

[Ham]

And here's some research as reported in road.cc http://road.cc/content/news/97020-changes-road-design-could-improve-safety-cyclists

[jane]

The properly designed lanes are segregated, so they just pass the bus stop and come up alongside the bus lane again, still segregated. 

So no conflict with the bus at any point.

[Cudzoziemiec]

To me, the bus stop lane looks horrible. I'd far prefer to be on the road, checking the bus isn't going to cut me up as it pulls into the stop and ready to merge into the main traffic to overtake it while it's stopped, rather than dodging haphazard pedestrians, kids, sticks, prams and dogs. But if I were a timid potterer occasionally reaching the dizzy speed of 9mph and not at all confident that drivers would notice me, I guess I'd take the high risk of a low speed pedestrian tumble over the low risk of a high speed car bang.

But what would I like to see if I was a bus passenger? I guess I'd rather be able to step straight onto the pavement without having to think about bikes there and without having to look for the special flat crossing over the bike lane, especially if I were old, slow, had luggage, pram, kids or even was... timid.

[Bledlow]

... every segregated lane comes to a junction, where cyclists - experienced or novice - are invariably dumped into a bad place in the traffic, and just expected to cope.

LCC have completely lost the plot in promoting the utterly stupid lane diversions around bus stops which will put us in conflict with pedestrians before putting us into conflict with the bus again as it moves off and blanks off the re-entry point, or with the following traffic.  Ridiculous and unworkable, serving only to make us more unpopular than we are.  Grrreat!

1) It ain't necessarily so. Certainly not true in the Netherlands & Denmark, & I recently (May) participated in trials at TRL of junctions which didn't do that, paid for by Transport for London because they're investigating putting 'em in.

2) That's bloody silly of LCC. My most recent TRL trial was of just such a lane, & the near universal opinion of those who tried it was that a good old-fashioned layby bus stop is better & safer, & if you have the space for the silly lane, you have space for the layby bus stop.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Layby bus stop: bearing in mind these things are not only for bike users, never mind cyclists, layby bus stops do have the disadvantage that the bus has to rejoin the traffic flow. With an in-lane stop, the bus is already there and doesn't have to wait for a suitable gap, thus speeding up bus journeys and contributing in a small way to the de-assumptioning that car is always much, much quicker. Mind you, the best way to speed up bus journeys, other than in places like London which have the Oyster card, would be to stop the driver selling tickets.

[teethgrinder]

Mind you, the best way to speed up bus journeys, other than in places like London which have the Oyster card, would be to stop the driver selling tickets.

I wonder if having free for all busses would reduce congestion and improve transport time for everyone, to an extent that it would save our economy enough money to fund it.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Well, it would be good business for the people who mend bus suspension!

[clarion]

Layby bus stop: bearing in mind these things are not only for bike users, never mind cyclists, layby bus stops do have the disadvantage that the bus has to rejoin the traffic flow. With an in-lane stop, the bus is already there and doesn't have to wait for a suitable gap, thus speeding up bus journeys and contributing in a small way to the de-assumptioning that car is always much, much quicker. Mind you, the best way to speed up bus journeys, other than in places like London which have the Oyster card, would be to stop the driver selling tickets.

Which is why the CS7 solution actually works

[AndyMorris]

I nominate Biggsy for mayor of London please.

I second

[Cudzoziemiec]

Layby bus stop: bearing in mind these things are not only for bike users, never mind cyclists, layby bus stops do have the disadvantage that the bus has to rejoin the traffic flow. With an in-lane stop, the bus is already there and doesn't have to wait for a suitable gap, thus speeding up bus journeys and contributing in a small way to the de-assumptioning that car is always much, much quicker. Mind you, the best way to speed up bus journeys, other than in places like London which have the Oyster card, would be to stop the driver selling tickets.

Which is why the CS7 solution actually works

If it looks like I imagine it to, then I'd expect it to work well for the bus and for the cyclists in the bus lane and to be better for pedestrians than a layby stop, as the pavement won't narrow just where it's busiest, but it won't do anything for the 'cyclists' on the pavement.

[AndyMorris]

And here's some research as reported in road.cc http://road.cc/content/news/97020-changes-road-design-could-improve-safety-cyclists

From the link

Intersections and junctions should be redesigned to trigger cyclist behaviours, rather than leaving decision making up to the individual judgement of the cyclist. They recommended removing the decision making process entirely, or at least moving it to an earlier point in the approach.

What a load of patronising crap
please no.

[citoyen]

It's not made clear that "people will still be able to cycle wherever they choose".  It sounds more like all roads over a certain size will become "motorways" and cycles will be more excluded: either by some kind of legal sanction or de facto by the increasingly dangerous "car only" roads.

The irony is that Westminster is currently moving towards this situation *without* provision for cyclists.

Look at the southbound carriageway from Parliament Square to Westminster Bridge, for example, which was recently redesigned to "improve" traffic flow (ie make it faster) for vehicles turning onto the Embankment, but consequently made it much more dangerous for those of us on bikes who want to head south over the bridge. Even as a confident, experienced Lycra-clad urban road warrior, I have altered my route to avoid this junction - ie the de facto exclusion you fear segregation will introduce is here already, but without any of the benefits of segregation.

And this kind of motorcentric junction redesign isn't an unfortunate quirk, it's a deliberate policy. It's not LCC who are in La-La Land.

[Bledlow]

The properly designed lanes are segregated, so they just pass the bus stop and come up alongside the bus lane again, still segregated. 

So no conflict with the bus at any point.

Loads of conflict with bus passengers, though, & the bus stop hides bikes & some bus passengers from each other. Even with the exceptionally well-behaved cyclists & passengers disembarking from a parked TRL bus, there were a few suddenbrake moments   in the trial I did.

The trial recognised that in real life, bus passengers will not confine themselves to the portion of the bike lane raised to pavement level. It didn't have random pedestrians walking in the bike lane, though, which is pretty well guaranteed.

[citoyen]

We simply don't have that culture in the UK, and I don't see how road space can be allocated away from private motor traffic without it.

Local news had a piece about Brighton yesterday. They polled a bunch of residents on whether the Green council had been doing a good job and the resounding answer was no - largely disgruntlement about the 20mph limits and parking restrictions - while the transport and environmental experts felt that measured objectively, these changes had improved the city.

The problem is the narrow perspective of individuals. You need to impose the changes on them for their own good, whether they see it or not.

Unfortunately, while we have the likes of the entirely self-centred Eric Pickles in government, the will of the individual will always be seen as trumping the good of the majority, even where the will of the individual is self-defeating due to irresolvable conflict with the will of other individuals.

[matthew]

The properly designed lanes are segregated, so they just pass the bus stop and come up alongside the bus lane again, still segregated. 

So no conflict with the bus at any point.

Jane, having ridden through the mock up of this configuration at the TRL trials it's got substantial flaws. The main one is how the cycle lane rejoins the road after the bus stop. OK if the intent is that the lane remains segregated by a kerb this doesn't occur but from the evaluation questions asked that is not how TFL currently plan to implement it. But if the intent is to rejoin the carriageway then the cyclist in the lane has no visibility of the indicator on the bus (assuming it is used) and is in front / to the left of the bus when the drivers attention is understandably focussed on his right hand mirrors.

As a concept I can understand why it is attractive to the highways engineers but in practice it exchanges the interaction of one bus and multiple cyclists for the interaction of multiple cyclists and multiple pedestrians and at least buses are moderately predictable. However during the trial the worst run through the facility I had was when there were no pedestrians and I was the lead cyclist so at my natural pace for the down hill set up, hitting the ramp where the peds are intended to cross at 20mph (100 rpm) on my fixie was uncomfortable to say the least.

Its not a great solution to the problem of enabling a bus to stop and pull away in the presence of a stream of cyclists, where accessing a bus lay-by is considered to difficult to either pull in through the stream of cyclists or out through the cyclists. However I can't think of a better one than bus lay-bys and appropriate driver and cyclist training such that cyclists let buses out and don't go up the inside of a slowing bus cycle lane or no cycle lane. The worst option is the normal cycle lane that just disappears into the bus stop marking and reappears on the far side.

Of course if the intent is a fully segregated cycle lane that never interacts with the motor traffic and the intent of this design is to provide pedestrian access to the bus then this is a good way forward but that is not how the questions at the trial were indicating the layout would be used.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Kim: You've probably seen some examples of space being taken away from motor vehicles during your time in Bristol, but you wouldn't have recognised it cos it happened before your arrival (I don't know when you were here, so guessing). Queen Sq used to have a dual-carriageway running diagonally through it from the '30s until the early '90s, and where the fountains are now in the centre used to be a gyratory system (and of course, going way back, it was all parking for ships...).

Edit: Wiki says they started thinking of closing or at least reducing the traffic volume on the dc through Queen Sq way back in the 1960s!

[Charlotte]

The properly designed lanes are segregated, so they just pass the bus stop and come up alongside the bus lane again, still segregated. 

So no conflict with the bus at any point.

If I encountered such a horrendous bit of civil engineering, I'd be out in lane two avoiding it altogether like anyone else with the slightest bit of sense.

[marcusjb]

The properly designed lanes are segregated, so they just pass the bus stop and come up alongside the bus lane again, still segregated. 

So no conflict with the bus at any point.

If I encountered such a horrendous bit of civil engineering, I'd be out in lane two avoiding it altogether like anyone else with the slightest bit of sense.

See you there. 

I am really not sure what issue it is trying to address or what is either behind us in that picture, or what is beyond the bus - have we left the road to join the blue path, or were we on a segregated blue path all the time?

I've no idea where they plan to create such carbuncles, but the volume of cyclists in many parts of West London make the whole concept terrifying.  The potential for interface with bus passengers is huge - pedestrians lose their ability to look or think when they simply have to get that bus, large numbers of cyclists are very focussed on reaching their destination as quickly as possible and won't be interested in letting bus passengers cross the blue path.

[jsabine]

The properly designed lanes are segregated, so they just pass the bus stop and come up alongside the bus lane again, still segregated. 

So no conflict with the bus at any point.

If I encountered such a horrendous bit of civil engineering, I'd be out in lane two avoiding it altogether like anyone else with the slightest bit of sense.

See you there. 

I am really not sure what issue it is trying to address or what is either behind us in that picture, or what is beyond the bus - have we left the road to join the blue path, or were we on a segregated blue path all the time?

We're on a segregated blue path all the time, with a dirty great kerb doing the segregation. Good luck in getting to lane two unless you're good at bunny-hopping (or unless you've had the prescience to be out there all the time).

I've no idea where they plan to create such carbuncles, but the volume of cyclists in many parts of West London make the whole concept terrifying.  The potential for interface with bus passengers is huge - pedestrians lose their ability to look or think when they simply have to get that bus, large numbers of cyclists are very focussed on reaching their destination as quickly as possible and won't be interested in letting bus passengers cross the blue path.

I think 'terrifying' probably overstates the matter, but it's definitely the kind of thing that makes it look as though we're heading for two-tier bike provision as condemned above. That lane's probably quite attractive at 8 or 10 mph - at 12 or 15, not so much.

[marcusjb]

We're on a segregated blue path all the time, with a dirty great kerb doing the segregation. Good luck in getting to lane two unless you're good at bunny-hopping (or unless you've had the prescience to be out there all the time).

Mathew above suggests we rejoin the carriageway after we've undertaken the bus - is this not the case then?

[jsabine]

We're on a segregated blue path all the time, with a dirty great kerb doing the segregation. Good luck in getting to lane two unless you're good at bunny-hopping (or unless you've had the prescience to be out there all the time).

Mathew above suggests we rejoin the carriageway after we've undertaken the bus - is this not the case then?

On re-reading Matthew's post, dunno ... He's taken part in the trials, I haven't: I was commenting from a position that combined ignorance with a vague memory of a (probably TFL) diagram showing a birdseye view with a segregated line before and after.

It does strike me that the idea of rejoining the carriageway immediately after the bus is most charitably described as fucking stupid.

[marcusjb]

We're on a segregated blue path all the time, with a dirty great kerb doing the segregation. Good luck in getting to lane two unless you're good at bunny-hopping (or unless you've had the prescience to be out there all the time).

Mathew above suggests we rejoin the carriageway after we've undertaken the bus - is this not the case then?

On re-reading Matthew's post, dunno ... He's taken part in the trials, I haven't: I was commenting from a position that combined ignorance with a vague memory of a (probably TFL) diagram showing a birdseye view with a segregated line before and after.

It does strike me that the idea of rejoining the carriageway immediately after the bus is most charitably described as fucking stupid.

So do you know whether we have been on that blue path or the carriageway BEFORE this picture? 

[Cudzoziemiec]

I found this video <a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/2Pvhkx0153k&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/2Pvhkx0153k&rel=1</a> of how they actually do it in Dutchland. It is a little different from both the TRL trial and the LCC design, in that there is no rejoining the carriageway - it's a totally segregated lane - and there is no ramp, the cycle lane stays flat and is separated from the pavement and stop by a low kerb with a lowered section for wheelchairs, prams, etc. None of the bus stops in the vid look particularly busy, but at the end you see one with a barrier, which seems to acknowledge that passengers do get in the way of the bikes - and they've decided to prioritise the bikes.

Charlotte would not like it all and I'm not sure I would either! But Charlotte isn't there - what really strikes me is not the bus infrastructure but the cyclists' behaviour, they are all riding at about the same speed, on similar bikes, slowly and a bit randomly. I think your average London commuter would be like a boy racer in a crowd of Reliant Robins. Which brings me to my next thought:

It's all very well putting this infrastructure in for cyclists and it can address the issues of perceived safety, lack of confidence and similar which put many would-be bike commuters off. You can also import box bikes and omafiets to address the problems of practicality, allowing you to ride in normal clothes, transport kids to school and shopping home and so on. The Netherlands has a similar climate so we know that needn't be a problem and even the hills aren't going to feature too much in London. But there still remains the problem of commute lengths, which will become more of a problem at the slower speeds this infrastructure will compel. If we're trying to get a society that uses bikes (as opposed to a cycling culture, which we already have thanks to Wiggins and Wiggle) because they're a sensible way of getting to school, work, a night out, then we come up against the problem of that society being unconsciously/undeliberately ordered around people being able to get long distances at high speeds. We may only be starting 50 years after the Dutch, but we have a hundred years of catching up to do. And as the vid shows, even there plenty of people find it more convenient to use a bus or a car.