A little while ago, I went for a lunchtime stroll with the always cheery and knowledgable Mark Strong (Professional transport Consultant who tweets at @ibikebrighton). My day job is just round the corner from a new cycle path being constructed in Brighton & Hove and, being unashamed cycle infrastructure nerds, we decided to check it out (I’m going to be 40 this November). Firstly, I’ll show you the plans that formed the consultation.
Here is the Eastern (Brighton) end – BHASVIC is the abbreviation of Brighton, Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College
And now the Western (Hove) end
You will note that the ‘Scheduled Junction Improvements’ were missing. Junction solutions are the eternal Holy Grail to British Engineers – Like trying to find a Wetherspoons pub that doesn’t contain someone with an opinion on UK immigration laws. However, it must be reiterated that these were consultation documents so too much detail would have created the Devil indeed.
Here is the artists impression..
I like the impressions above because, unlike other artists impressions I’ve seen, there’s a decent amount of honesty here; the pictures aren’t afraid to contain cars and the width of the cycle path in the diagram is set at 1.5m (which is actually the bare minimum you will encounter and not often). It also doesn’t try to deceive by suddenly showing billions of cyclists and pedestrians, a developing ‘cafe culture’ or a water trough for unicorns.
Old Shoreham Road was the original main east-west thoroughfare for Brighton & Hove until a new bypass was built to the north (A27) demoting the Old Shoreham Road to the A270. Being Britain, no effort was made to reduce traffic flow and as a result, as you head further west, it remains a nasty urban dual carriageway before rejoining the new A27 at Southwick. This means that congestion (particularly at peak) is high, especially with the infamous school run that bedevils all British conurbations. This road might be considered an ‘easy win’ in infrastructure terms being wide, as former trunk roads are. Some [‘expert’ British] cyclists might say that this was an excuse to have no infrastructure at all but, from experience, motorists tended to drive this section of road in an ethereal, vague, ‘wait a moment. Are you sure those brownies contained just chocolate’ way, particularly when it splits again to two lanes for a junction with no need to widen the approach.
This new cycle path is an attempt by the Council to link schools and colleges along the route with the now infamous segregated route on The Drive (where an attempt by the Council to rip it out was made a wee while ago) which links the seafront (NCN2) to the South Downs (I’ve always loved this website about cycling the South Downs Way – well worth a look).
Another remarkable thing about this scheme is that the Council went for a complete instead of partial road closure to speed up the works programme. As you can imagine, the local newspaper comments pages were full of fire and brimstone. I was able to complete my ‘I-Spy Book of Anti-Bicycle Bullshit’ with wondrous ease with such cheeky and rib-tickling gems as ‘why are we wasting taxpayers money?’ (Despite Sustrans putting up £330,000), ‘they are a menace’, ‘I nearly got knocked over by one this morning’, ‘they don’t pay road tax’ etc etc. Really, if these people went for a bike ride to go and buy their Vehicle Excise Duty and poured as much creative vitriol commenting on similar stories involving motorists where people and objects actually do get hit, often with graver consequences, they might realise why ‘they’ do it so much. Here is a plan of what happened next..
Anyway, back to this lunchtime stroll (Heading west from the Dyke Road junction)
Above is where Chanctonbury Road meets Old Shoreham Road. There is already bicycle permeability here. With bollards as standard.
Setting out. At this point, the cycle path is 1.75m
Above is where the cycle path meets a junction to a residential street. Very tight radii to prevent fast cornering. Cyclists will have priority.
Above is a bridge where the road narrows and the cycle path and pavement merge to become shared use. The width of the path at this point is 2.34m. My primary concern is the fact that cyclists speed will be above average as they head down the hill. However, the sight lines are very good and space has been taken away from the main carriageway even at this point.
Work hasn’t started yet on the other side but significant space has been taken from the main carriageway.
Above are two pictures of a junction treatment. There is just a simple bicycle symbol and no other indication that it is a cycle path running across the face. The junction is on a gradient so the kerb is flush for cyclists using the cycle path and is elevated from the main carriageway. Whilst Mark and I were discussing the junction a car pulled out turning left and drove over the raised kerb to cut the corner. Oh well, it’s his suspension.
As usual trees become before people in Britain. As you can see however, there is ample room for Mark.
At this point the path is 2.4m. Bear in mind this is with flow and not bi-directional (I have seen bidirectional cycle lanes this width and narrower in Britain). You can even start to imagine young students riding side by side here when it’s completed.
I think there is much to applaud here. I have said before that when you look at a Dutch streetscape, it tells you exactly what local and national Government thinks of the bicycle as a transport mode – and exactly the same for a British streetscape too with narrow in-the-gutter-where-you-belong cycle paths, circuitous routes, vague signage and a constant feeling for the end-user that the designer and Government clearly hate them.
This scheme however has taken a lion share of space from motorists as opposed to pedestrians and sends out a subliminal message ‘we take the bicycle seriously here’.
I shall update you with more pictures as things progress, focussing on the other bete noir of British designers, ‘The Bus Stop’, as well as junctions as I would love to see what solutions they have in mind. Below is a picture of a junction I took in Assen last September whilst on the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain Study Tour. It shows a separate bicycle green phase in all directions (and bicycle riders making a right turn don’t even need to enter the junction). Just a hint.
Which reminds me. For those that still think they can comment on Dutch Infrastructure from Google Streetview, David Hembrow apparently still has places on his Study Tour for May. I severely advise anyone involved in infrastructure design and policy implementation to go and see how it could and should be done.
The Lo Fidelity Bicycle Club 
Radinden Manor Road junction looks a bit hairy (large radius, >6m width), and double-yellows sweeping round the corner is poor. Priority is not clear.
Agreed Richard, this would give me a fright, why can’t they just stop the double yellows and put elephant feet across it?
I agree with both of you. It can only look as though it’s giving continuity of travel to motor vehicles.
Apparently feedback has already gone back to the engineers and the project isn’t completed yet (altohugh that’s worth double checking). A lot of bicycle riders are using the road now it is closed to through traffic despite it being a building site in places. I suppose the happy upshot is more eyes going past at a more relaxed pace to give lots of feedback 🙂
Elephant feet now need special permission (which would probably be refused). Simplest is probably to mark a “cycle lane” across (and getting rid of the DYs would be good practice).
One little conundrum: the edge of the cycle track is probably unusable at junctions because of the hump. There should also be hump triangles painted, which will intrude in the cycle space. So it’s a bit unclear where the “cycle lane” marking should go. The Dutch tend to set the track back by 350mm for this reason. We’d have to set back slightly more because there’s a limit on the hump gradient. The Danes don’t set back at all, they just continue the kerbs across, and make it all flush (ish), without a hump.
It does look, from Jim’s account, as if the local authority is making a sincere attempt to do the job properly. Perhaps they haven’t got everything right but hopefully comments which get back to the council will acknowledge their efforts and be supportive/constructive? Do we want to sound like the Judean People’s Liberation Front?
Thanks for the comment Paul. I will be doing a update later on this evening (I have to edit the films I took first as I have ridden the Dutch bike over some of the nearly completed sections)
The main thrust of the article was that considerable space has been taken from motor vehicles and it’s one of those rare schemes in this country where the bicycle looks as though it has a serious presence, not just in the streetscape but also in the minds of the local authority. The problems/issues that have been raised such as double yellow lines can easily be sorted. A cycle path that’s too narrow can’t.
Please can you package the whole thing up and post it to North Tyneside Council, who still think a 1.1m wide, two-way (no, really) route is the optimal solution.