Bicycles on the Pier – Vintage Postcard of Deal, Kent
If you aren’t doing anything on Saturday 18th August, why not pop down to the South Coast of England as I’ve decided to lead a Seaside infrastructure Safari and you’re all welcome. Yes, even you.
It will be a very leisurely run between Worthing and Brighton, stopping frequently for chats about infrastructure of different qualities and, weather permitting, we can stop for a picnic midway on the beach and a drink or two afterwards. There is a high probability that it will run from Worthing to Brighton as opposed to vice versa due to the strong chance of a prevailing tailwind straight off the sea which, as I find on the daily commute, makes an 11-12 mile jaunt between two seaside resorts a little more pleasant. There shall be a Twitter Hashtag available for those in more distant lands that wish to follow us in spirit and all pictures and data shall be added to the wonderful Cycling Embassy of Great Britain Wiki as well as CycleStreets.
I intend to show you some of the interesting facilities that I face (or could face if I was a bit more into Masochism) on a day-to-day basis such as this, this and this as well as some gems such as this, this and the ultimate Grand Finale – the wonderfully progressive (if slightly flawed) diamond that is this. I am currently working on a map for you to link to which will be available shortly as the route is pretty simple with lots of talking points and genuinely nice sights. It’s a cycle ride by the sea – what’s not to like?! It will also go up on the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain website.
The reason I’m letting you know early is because, if you are a campaigner, Sustrans Ranger, Local Councillor etc in the Brighton [& Hove] & Worthing areas and would like to help talk us through various bits of infrastructure and how they came to be, please contact me and we can sort out the timetable of the route. If you can’t make it, but would like me to read anything out, please also get in touch. My contact details are at the bottom of the About page, and it would be lovely to hear from you, especially if you’d just like to come along of course.
Finally, I sometimes read out the questions at a quiz held occasionally at a pub in Worthing as I have a beautiful speaking voice. Apparently. However, last week I was tasked with compiling the questions. I would like the George Cross as I dropped this nugget into the General Knowledge round…
Although ‘Road Tax’ is still used as a colloquialism, it was in fact abolished in 1937. Which famous politician abolished it?
(For more details on the answer to that question, I wrote here and of course Carlton Reid is custodian of this gem of a website).
Because I was dressed like ‘one of them’, which is funnily enough how I look when on a bicycle, it was simply an interesting talking point as opposed to me being manhandled into a Wicker Man in the pub garden (it would have been outside because, despite the obvious Health & Safety hazard, you also can’t smoke inside a British public premises anymore).
The Daily Mail unveiled it’s simple Manifesto addressing cyclists, gypsies and crime.
And finally finally, the family car was taken away for its annual MOT test earlier this week. Despite the car being 10 years old, the startled mechanic informed us that not only did it pass with no complaints but the emissions tests came out far better than newer cars. Probably because it barely gets used.
Norman Baker MP at the grand opening telling the one about two nuns riding down a cobbled street. Maybe. A passing aeroplane made it difficult to hear.
…and the two posts I wrote during the construction period are here and here.
Below is the Old Shoreham Road stood close to the Dyke Road Junction looking west whilst the path was in construction
An old Old Shoreham Road looking West
And this is how it looks now…
As you can see in the new photo above, the line markings have been painted except the centre line. I have been reliably informed that the line will not be painted immediately as part of a road safety trial to see if traffic speed drops as a result. You will also note that the cycle lane starts away from the Dyke Road junction. I assume this is because the original purpose was to link the schools and colleges and BHASVIC to the right so, job done. Below are a couple of photos of Chanctonbury Road with its bit of cycle permeability
…and this it now…
Junction with Chanctonbury Road, now with shared use area
Stone setts announce (albeit vaguely) that we are entering a shared use area. This to me poses problems, especially when you consider the Belisha Beacons indicating the zebra crossing just ahead.
On the plus side, the central ‘holding pen’ with guard railings has been removed which is a definite improvement. However, cyclists are going to have to negotiate around the Belisha Beacons and pedestrians are going to be needlessly on guard as they cross the road. I personally would have extended the zebra crossing across a cycle path that I would have continued right through. That way there is no ambiguity or confusion, particularly for partially sighted pedestrians. The tree marked the edge of the old carriageway anyway – I assume that the designers wanted to give the feeling of widening the pavement at this point but in doing so they may have increased the potential for conflict.
The radii at junctions have been tightened considerably to slow traffic making left turns reducing further the chance of a collision.
Stencils were made to get the message of continuity across in a fun, graffiti way in lieu of coloured paint. These were spray painted on the approach to each side turning, presumably because people on bicycles need a little bit of time to adjust to not being treated as second-rate citizens. Cars I encountered waiting to pull out all waited patiently behind the ‘give way’ markings.
Not quite Banksy but a good way to get the priority message acrossMy Brompton as a guide to path width. And it’s all for bicycles.
Another criticism of the cycle path is the way it becomes shared use on a railway bridge, as illustrated in the picture below, just beyond the tree. Even here however, space has been taken from the main carriageway to keep the shared use area as wide as possible and, with the sight lines so good, it just requires a little common courtesy, which should be mandatory in an area where people live and go to school anyway.
Cycle Lane rejoins the road as a mandatory bike lane before junctions
One of the particularly interesting features of this scheme is the new phase on the traffic lights installed on the two main junctions. There is an auxiliary bicycle light that turns green a few seconds before the main lights to give cyclists a head start
I think it’s an attempt to replicate the this type of light seen below, which I photographed on the David Hembrow Study Tour in Assen and Groningen last September..
In Assen, cyclists and pedestrians are given their own separate phase as opposed to optimistic head starts. I assume there had to be compromise in the British version so as not to impede on ‘traffic flow’ (although that is conjecture). It will take a while for British cyclists (and motorists for that matter) to adjust to even this simple change in signalling but it is an improvement from just an Advanced Stop Line. My slight concern is – does it really give a more nervous cyclist time to make a right turn before motor traffic comes steaming through in the opposite direction? In the interests of infrastructure nerdism and the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain, I filmed the lights in action, just for you.
Overall, I personally think this is an excellent, progressive scheme. It is not perfect – there are problems as outlined throughout this post (as usual with a British scheme it’s the conflict points) but these can be remedied. At least they didn’t build a narrower track which would then cost a prohibitive fortune to widen. Cycling along this facility, just for a short while, it almost felt as if the Netherlands or Denmark has infiltrated this little part of the South Coast and this was also reflected by the variety of people I saw using it including parents with young children which was encouraging. The width of the vast majority of the track means that, unbelievably [for Britain] people can ride side by side to chat, casting my mind back to seeing groups of Dutch children and young adults cycling to school and college in social groups (always important) or groups of elderly people out for a mid-morning ride to the shops and a natter. To me, this is a crucial element of making the bicycle look inviting to the masses as opposed to part of a heads down specialised sporting rat race it often becomes here.
I cycled London Cycle Superhighway 2 (Bow to Aldgate) in its entirety on Tuesday evening on my way back from a presentation in Stratford. It just felt like optimistically placed blue paint allied to a too narrow segregated path and confusing lights at Bow Roundabout. At no point did it feel as though any attempt had been made to improve the lot of cyclists at all in terms of comfort or safety on what is still a hysterically busy thoroughfare. It was like eating a McDonalds Big Mac Meal – a lot of money had been spent on branding and advertising but after trying it, I was left still feeling hungry. However, the Brighton & Hove scheme has actually taken considerable space from motorised traffic. They have made the bicycle look like an inviting mode of transport that is taken seriously. To be fair, it’s obviously nowhere near as long as the Cycle Superhighway, but it doesn’t give itself an undeserved grandiose name either.
The Old Shoreham Road should be an easy win, being the former A27 but it has been many years in the formulation and execution. I have to doff my hat (in lieu of a helmet) to those who had the determination to see it through. I now incorporate this into my commute (which is now an almost totally segregated route within the Brighton & Hove city boundary).
On that note, I’m thinking of doing an Infrastructure safari on a Saturday in July covering this and other Brighton schemes followed by the ride that I would normally take as my commute followed by a ride around the best and worst of my adopted home town of Worthing. Here is a picture taken from my commute this evening..
Looking toward Worthing Pier
If you’re interested, do let me know. Just bring suntan lotion and money for a pint of beer and 99 ice cream (with flake).
Last Tuesday morning, I put on my Cycling Embassy of Great Britain approved attire (just a regular suit for a regular activity) and attended the Annual All-Party Parliamentary Bike Ride, which is now in its twelfth year and is a prelude to Bike Week. Despite the wretched weather, there was a respectable turn out of MP’s (also in Cycling Embassy of Great Britain approved attire) including Norman Baker again (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport).
After the ride, we assembled in the Houses of Parliament to listen as Mr Baker spoke about how wonderful cycling is and took questions (I recorded it for YouTube and it should be going out shortly if you can contain your excitement). One of the key points he made was that cycle campaigners should not be afraid to approach Government Departments other than transport. This, in a way, makes sense; after all riding a bicycle is healthy so the Department for Health should be actively promoting it, it could get kids to school so the Department for Education should be actively promoting it and it is good for the economy where high quality infrastructure would bring rewards both locally and nationally to the exchequer so the Treasury should be actively promoting it. The problem is that we are pretty hopeless at the ‘high-quality infrastructure’ bit – the very thing that has been proven to have success overseas in getting the masses on their bicycles with increased subjective safety. So I guess that brings us back to the Department for Transport, who should be actively promoting it.
Cycling has always been about ‘Localism’ and ‘Big Society’ with local campaigners and activists that have been bashing their heads against the wall of local democracy for years (and for free). This, for me is where the problem lies; it’s all well and good giving local authorities ‘the right tools’ with devolved powers, but what if they don’t know what to do with them (or don’t even want to know). It’s like giving a group of primary school children ‘the right tools’ to design Britain’s successor to Trident – many will be keen as mustard and will give it their best shot. The results they come up with, whilst thankfully not feasible, will be all the more wonderful as a result and fascinating.
…and then it comes back down and blows everything up, Daddy. Next week we’re redesigning Bow Roundabout to give it lots of pretty lights….
The results that local authorities come up with for bicycles are usually far from wonderful and although we’d be fascinated to know how they arrived at their conclusions, local campaigners are usually locked out. It’s as though they are left staring through the railings at some sort of nightmare-ish Willy Wonka factory churning out pointless pavement conversions. Except their Council Tax helped pay for the nightmare.
Where ‘Transport’ and ‘Sustainable Transport’ collide (Worthing, West Sussex)
What’s worse is that when Councils across the land started to make austerity cuts, we didn’t need a crystal ball to predict that the position of Cycling Officer would be the first to go thereby cutting what is usually the only gateway between local campaign groups and the local authority. Worse still is that many councillors are actively hostile towards the humble bicycle, who view it as a symbol of non-aspiration to ferry the great unwashed along the gutter or an imposition to progress in their local area (particularly to the golf club). After all, bike parking doesn’t bring in parking fees, the most consistent issue in any local newspaper. In many cases, asking a Council to organise a consistent quality cycling policy is a bit like asking Nick Griffin to organise the Notting Hill Carnival.
I’m certainly not against localism. There are Local Authorities that are trying at the very least to understand the bicycle and just what a bewilderingly diverse mode of getting about their patch it is. But I personally believe that there has to be stronger guidance from Central Government in terms of consistent infrastructure standards, policy and funding which is at best piecemeal and often utterly soul-destroying for local campaigners. I still cannot fathom why ‘Transport’ and ‘Sustainable Transport’ are still treated as separate entities – We build a major road scheme and then apply the sustainable bits at the side or as an afterthought, which is why it needs to be integral to the Department for Transport, as opposed to a quango whose flame can be snuffed out as easily as Cycling England.
Everyone, from Local Authorities that haven’t yet realised the real benefits of the bicycle from more energised workforce & schoolchildren, better local business and increased tourism (or ‘Localism’) to local campaign groups (or ‘Big Society’) deserve far better than this.
The Lo Fidelity Bicycle Club 
