UK Report Studies Infrastructure and Cycling Safety

Britain's Transportation Department just released a report which brings together all the existing data on cycliing infrastructure in the UK. It also says that it will take decades of sustained investment to achieve a functional urban cycle network across the country and a willingness to prioritise cycle traffic. The report also warns that piecemeal implementation of cycling infrastructure "is unlikely to be satisfactory".

Slowing down traffic, particularly at intersections, is identified as having the biggest likely impact on reducing cycling casualties with vehicle collisions, and also points out that this would also reduce casualties for all road users. Suggested methods of achieving this include physical traffic calming, redesigning urban streets in both their appearance and the way they are designed to be used by pedestrians and the wider use of 20mph speed limits.


However it is what the report has to say about other aspects of Britain's cycling infrastructure that will give food for thought to all sides in the debate on how best to provide the right environment for cycling in Britain and around the world. According to the report's authors there is little evidence for the safety benefits of cycle lanes, or advanced stop lines; and while segregated cycle lanes can offer greater safety to cyclists the points at which they connect with the road network can be so dangerous that they negate the safety benefit of segregation.

• ASL - limited data, but limited evidence of benefit particularly associated with junctions. Notwithstanding this lack of evidence, ASLs may provide a priority for cyclists and might be applicable where there are heavy flows of right-turning cyclists.
• Cycle lanes - There is little evidence in the UK that marked cycle lanes provide a safety benefit, although they may achieve other objectives. This lack of evident benefit may, however, represent a lack of quality and continuity in implementation. There is also extremely limited experimentation with, and no reported studies of, kerbed cycle lanes in the UK.
• Segregated Cycle lanes – Providing segregated networks may reduce risk to cyclists in general, although evidence suggests that the points at which segregated networks intersect with highways can be relatively high-risk, sometimes of sufficient magnitude to offset any safety benefits of removing cyclists from the carriageway. However may be applicable particularly in rural settings.

Measures suggested as effective for improving safety at junctions include cycle pre-signals, continuing cycling lanes across junctions, raised cycle lanes at intersections, installing traffic signals at major roundabouts, and changing the design of roundabouts to slow traffic and to change the turning geometry to a sharper angle as on European roundabouts (thus eliminating the driver's blindspot). All of these measures have says the report had a measureable effect on improving safety for cyclists in other European countries most notably the Netherlands.

Interestingly while the report can seemingly find evidence for the safety benefits for cycle lanes in other European countries it finds little evidence for their effectiveness in Britain -  as the report notes "a lack of quality" may be a factor in that. Perhaps Britain's best know network of urban cycle lanes London's Barclays Cycle Superhighways is currently the focus of much criticism with poor implementation and the failure to heed safety advice.

The report also has interesting things to say about the design and implementation of both traffic calming measures and cycling infrastructure. While the authors say that traffic calming in general is beneficial to cyclists, they also advise road designers to be aware that features such as road narrowing and speed bumps have the potential for creating additional conflict between cyclists and other road users. Those designing infrastructure for cyclists also need to ensure that it meets cyclists needs otherwise warns the report it risks making a problem worse not better.

The report can be downloaded from here on the Department for Transport website.

Very Cool "Spoke Art"

If you're looking for an awesome way to add a little flair to your bicycle, you might want to consider this.

Katy Beveridge has tricked the eyes of thousands with her YouTube video, The Bicycle Animation, which depicts some of her most creative creations: bicycle wheel zoetropes. These spinning flip-book-like effects seem to produce moving images as the bikes gain speed.

A zoetrope is a series of still images that, when viewed in rapid succession, create the illusion of motion.

While this type of illusion isn't brand new (the graphic designer and animator credits predecessors David Wilson and Tim Wheatley in the video's description), the project itself is pretty unique in its application. The video took a few weeks to get right, and a few test shoots were uploaded to Katy's YouTube channel some weeks before the short production.

Activists Use Trash to Make Bike Lanes in Toronto

I have been keeping up with the tragic death of Jenna Morrison, a 38 year old pregnant mom squished under the wheels of a truck turning right in Toronto a few weeks ago. Her death has led many to question why there are not separated bike lanes; the usual response from the politicians and the engineers is that there isn't enough room, that you cannot give bikes their own lanes without taking something away from cars, and they don't do that in Toronto.

Two bike activists, James Schwartz of the Urban Country and Dave Meslin of the Toronto Bike Union, set out to demonstrate that this wasn't true. They went to the intersection where Jenna was crushed and built their own bike lane with recycled twigs, cups and general trash (the painted bikes were installed by other guerrilla activists earlier).

Here is a truck turning before the bike lane was installed; note that the painted bikes are pretty meaningless in their supposed message of sharing the road. The truck is going right over them.

And when there is a lane, just a little bit of garbage on the road in this case? The trucks all go around it, no trouble at all. Dave Meslin writes:

Would cars and trucks respect the lines? Is there enough room for a large truck to make a wide turn without impeding on the bike lane? Can all vehicles – bikes, cars and trucks – share this intersection safely with proper markings? Sadly, the answer is yes – on all counts. Too late for Jenna. But not too late for this to be a wake-up call. Bike lanes save lives. They create a safe space, they keep motor vehicles away from bikes, and most importantly, they raise awareness of all road users – that they are sharing space with others.

Even UPS drivers, who believe that bike lanes exist for their convenience, (at least for parking) drove the few extra feet to avoid the bike lane. All evidence that it is time that the traffic engineers got on a bike and started thinking about what they can do to reduce the carnage on the roads.

More at The Urban Country and the Mez Dispenser

B-Cycle is Coming to Baltimore

Baltimore is a significant step closer to introducing bike sharing, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has announced. The Board of Estimates approved a negotiating agreement between the City and B-Cycle, the company with bike shares in Denver, Chicago and eight other cities. Mayor Rawlings-Blake presents bike sharing as the latest in a series of efforts to promote alternate forms of transportation in Baltimore.

The plan is to install 250 bikes in 30 stations around the city next summer or fall. The system will work like most major bike shares- the first half hour is free, after that the user pays an increased fare for every hour or half hour. B-Cycle will raise the estimated $1.2m to build the infrastructure, so the City will pay next to nothing.

Mayor Rawlings-Blake has also introduced the Charm City Circulator, a fleet of hybrid-electric, free shuttle buses, welcomed ZipCar to Baltimore, installed electric car charging stations and increased the number of bike lanes.

Amsterdam's Cycling Culture

When you think of Amsterdam, one of the first images to spring to mind is the bicycle. The Dutch capital is a city where everybody seems to owns one, and the sight and sound of scores of cyclists whizzing up and down streets is something many take with them when they leave.

The video below explores the culture of bike riding in what's considered by many to be the cycling capital of the world. Paying a visit to the world's largest cycle parking lot, Kona's Mitchell Scott speaks to a few of the people who leave their bikes in the 10,000-capacity, multi-storey building. On the agenda is what makes riding in the city so special and how bikes are passed down through the generations.

Occupy Movement-Portlandia Style With Bike Swarm

Alexis Madrigal writes in the Atlantic, that the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York is best seen as an API (application programming interface) for a global movement, Portland has added a typically Portlandia twist to its Occupy activities. As police began to move in to evict Portland's encampment early Sunday morning, November 13, a swarm of bicycles continually encircled the two park areas, to serve, one organizer said:

"as another thing the police have to focus on, and a huge booster for the crowd."

Now, with actions such as occupying the New York Stock Exchange and the Brooklyn Bridge planned for November 17 in New York, Portland plans to occupy corporate banks in the city. And another bike swarm will be along for the ride.

A bike swarm, or large collection of bikes rolling along together in civil disobedience activities, is not an original Portland concept. In fact, says co-organizer Katherine Ball, she learned about bike swarms when at the Copenhagen COP-15 climate meetings in December of 2009.

At an event called the Bike Bloc, a group of activists lead by The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination put together a couple of bike-related strategies for civil disobedience. The first, the swarm, was simply a group of cyclists who, cycling together, attempted to circle around an area of protest in an organized fashion in order to provide diversion.

Another tactic was to create tall, easily erected platforms for a few people to rise above a crowd and relay information about what was happening ahead and behind to the middle of a group. At the Occupy Portland November 13 eviction, the bike swarm consisted of between 50 and 100 cyclists, circling around the two downtown parks where the encampments were being dismantled by police. Swarm co-organizer, Dan Kaufman of CrankMyChain, noted that bikes were just another means of demonstration.

As an individual swarmer commented at the BikePortland.org web site coverage of the event:

"When there is a massive show of intimidating armed force against unarmed citizens who are doing nothing worse than congregating in a large number, you have to be on the side of the unarmed people. You just do." - Daniel R. Miller

At some point during the eviction, police stopped the swarm from advancing, but no major clash between the swarm and police was reported.

In tomorrow's Swarm the Bank event, Katherine Ball said she hopes to have a swarm at least as big as the one that supported the eviction proceedings.

"Portland is the U.S. biking city, so it just makes sense that bikes are a part of Occupy here."

The Battle Over Bike Lanes Hits the Press

Something happens when you put architecture and urban design critics on bikes; the tone of the articles change, they become almost poetic. Below are articles excerpts from New York and Toronto, which are in the middle of the battle of the bike lanes. The war on the car in New York and the war on the bike in Toronto, and architecture critic Michael Kimmelman writes a lovely piece about the Pleasures of life in the slow lane. He describes the aesthetic possibilities:

I don’t mean they’re great to look at. I mean that for users they offer a different way of taking in the city, its streets and architecture, the fine-grained fabric of its neighborhoods. Decades ago the architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown wrote about how we see cities differently at different speeds. Las Vegas was their example, and they wrote about driving versus walking (skipping over the bicycle). But the point stands. On a bike time bends. Space expands and contracts.

He concludes his ride, and his story, in Central Park:

Aesthetics aside, the bike lanes are about urban livability and about encouraging the sort of street culture that, as Jacobs reminded us, a healthy and democratic city depends on. The Central Park Lake was an echo of the Hudson at the start of the day, bringing the trip full cycle. This was the only way to travel.

It would be nice if this elegy brought out the best in readers, but alas, it just brought out the usual comments:

Too many cyclists are nuts and indifferent to the rules of road that they are supposed to follow. I hope that when King Bloomberg finally leaves office, he'll take Khan and her bike lanes with him.

another wrote:

Bloomberg has become an object of derision for many, if not most, New Yorkers, for having forced his will down our throats for far too long. If the opinion polls are accurate, the majority apparently can't wait to see him go, and, as one poster said, take Kahn with him.

Which is exactly what happened in Toronto; The suburban hordes rose up and elected Rob Ford, who famously has said about cyclists who get killed: "In the end of the day, it's their own fault." He has been pulling up bike lanes all over town. Elected on a platform of cutting spending, he is in fact spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to put things back the way they were before the bike riding pinkos messed it up. A lot of people have buyers' remorse these days, as this bull in a china shop is breaking everything that people love in Toronto, from libraries to museums. Former urban issues reporter and now book reviewer John Barber writes about the the war on the bike with its nastiness and vitriol, in the Globe and Mail.

The more bicycling becomes the “right thing to do,” it seems, the more that doing it becomes a dangerous provocation. Everybody is angry. Half the people who say “Good for you” at the sight of a bike helmet actually mean, “Bully for you, you planet-saving prig.” And once behind the wheel, they get their revenge.
That's one reason I rarely wear a helmet any more, which is bound to be the second thing newscasters will mention in the event that my legs are crushed under the wheels of a 12-tonne truck. When the Toronto Sun begins referring to cyclists as “helmet heads,” de-personalizing individuals to make them easier to hate, the uniform becomes uncomfortable.

He concludes:

Are there more idiots than ever riding bicycles in Toronto? It's undeniable. But God does not distribute His idiots disproportionately, according to their choice of transportation. And idiots on bicycles are largely harmless. The truly dangerous idiots – the ones Toronto is unaccountably willing to tolerate, given its disgraceful traffic safety record – are the ones driving.
As annoying as the proliferation of idiots on bicycles may be – both to motorists and to other cyclists who get lumped together with them – it should be seen for what it is: a simple function of more bicycles. A good thing.
Or not, if you prefer. Because in the end, morality doesn't matter. Bicycles will continue to swarm the city in ever-greater numbers. They are inevitable because they are useful.

And of course, the letters to the editor think otherwise:

All downtown cyclists should be required to pass a licensing test, just like motorists, and wear a vest with a license number on it over their clothes, just like motorists must display licence plates on their car.

Finally, just to back up John Barber's point, Joe Peach at This Big City actually documents the environmental benefits that make cycling so inevitable. They include

Embodied Energy, The amount of energy required to produce a bicycle is tiny compared to many other forms of transport. A 7.2kg road bicycle with a carbon frame uses 11,546,658,000 Joules of energy during its production compared to 118,284,466,000 for a ‘generic car’ produced in America in 2008.

Air quality A bicycle’s environmental sustainability is about more than just low embodied energy. If enough people switch from polluting transport modes to a bicycle – a zero emission form of transport when in use – there is potential for reduced carbon emissions and improved air quality in our cities.


Noise pollution Pollution is about more than just emissions. Noise levels in cities can also be considered a pollutant, with associated long term health risks.

Add to the fact that every person on a bike is one less person in a car or on an overcrowded transit system that costs those taxpaying drivers a bundle to subsidize, it is pretty surprising that there is so much antagonism.