Effective road and traffic management

Written evidence from the Cambridge Cycling Campaign (EMT 13)

Our main points are:

• When defining the term traffic, all traffic should be considered, including pedestrian and bicycle traffic as well as motorised vehicles of varying sizes.

• Fear of cycling in traffic significantly reduces the mode share of cycling.

• A prolonged and significant investment in cycling infrastructure in urban and suburban areas can significantly reduce congestion in these area.

• Bicycling is a suitable transport mode for urban and suburban journeys of up to at least 10 km. Infrastructure that supports such movements must be considered in all road schemes.

• Prohibition of motor vehicle parking in mandatory cycle lanes is currently not properly enforced. Enforcement is essential if cyclists using such lanes in urban and suburban areas are to be confident about their own safety.

• When a collision occurs between a motor vehicle and a bicycle, the driver of the motor vehicle should be made liable on the grounds that they are operating a much more dangerous machine which they should control.

Introduction to Cambridge Cycling Campaign

Cambridge Cycling Campaign is a charity that provides a voice for cyclists in Cambridge and the surrounding area. We lobby for better and more convenient conditions for cycling, safer roads, and more people on bikes. We work closely with the local transport authority, Cambridgeshire County Council, and the local city and district councils to ensure that the views of knowledgeable cyclists is considered during transportation improvements.

Cambridge has approximately 40,000 regular bicycle riders in the area, with mode share of towards cycling increasing while that for cars within the city centre has been decreasing. This has also been associated with significant investment in cycling in the area, and restraint for private motor vehicles. For example, a journey that would take just 5 minutes on a bicycle can take 15 minutes in a car, without considering the time required to park the vehicle. Bicycle journeys from most surrounding villages are faster than bus services and car journeys in rush hours. The recently improving bicycle infrastructure has therefore been encouraging drivers out of motor vehicles and into the cycle lanes. Limited city-centre car parking facilities and an excellent park and ride system also encourages modal shifts from private motor vehicles. Cambridge has five multi-storey car parks in the town centre, two of which have a complete floor dedicated to bicycle parking. The only way to valet park a vehicle in Cambridge is to cycle to the Grand Arcade bicycle park and use the valet bicycle parking facilities. Cambridge railway station has approximately 1,000 cyclists using either the limited cycle parking facilities or who transport their bicycle on a train to their destination, a significant share of all passengers arriving at the station.

The Committee has asked for a number of points to be considered in this memorandum:

• the extent to which the Government and local authorities should intervene to alleviate congestion and the best means of doing so;

• the extent to which road user culture and behaviour undermines effective traffic

management, including the relevance to today’s road users of the Highway Code;

• intelligent traffic management schemes, such as the scheme which has operated on the M42, and their impact on congestion and journey times;

• the effectiveness of legislative provisions for road management under the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991 and the Traffic Management Act 2004; and

• the impact of bus lanes and other aspects of road layout.

These points will be considered below:

The extent to which the Government and local authorities should intervene to alleviate congestion and the best means of doing so

Many other counties, most notably the Netherlands, Denmark, Northwestern Germany, but also Finland and Sweden, have both significant investment in bicycle infrastructure and high modal shares for bicycles. Denmark for example has a 35% modal share for bicycle traffic into Copenhagen. It should also be noted that Denmark has the least traffic congestion. It is our hypothesis that these two pieces of information are connected. Safe bicycle infrastructure, as typified by the Dutch and Danish infrastructure models, enable direct routing of bicycle traffic through urban areas while minimising conflicts with motorised vehicles. This will be a recurring theme through this memorandum.

We also will suggest that removing motorised vehicle traffic lanes and replacing them with cycle lanes will actually alleviate congestion. An example of this in Cambridge would be the Hills Road railway bridge. A few years back, this was a four lane road with pedestrian footpaths on either side. Bicycles were expected to cycle up the inclines with the motor vehicles that were legally able to travel at 30 mph. During recent road works, an experimental scheme was implemented to remove one of the traffic lanes in each direction on the upward slope and replace that lane with a cycle lane. The safety for bicycles using the bridge significantly increased and the scheme caused no traffic congestion. This scheme is currently being engineered into the completed bridge structure.

It is therefore suggested that space within the road environment should be taken away from motorised road vehicles and reallocating this space to bicycles will allow the latent demand for efficient and simple bicycle journeys. This could be done by narrowing traffic lanes and reallocating that space to cycleways, which also has a additional benefit of slowing traffic speeds. This could also be done by building dedicated segregated cycleways physically separated from fast flowing traffic. An example of this would be the cycleway alongside the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway which has already significantly improved the safety of children safely cycling to school, avoiding the dangerous A14 interchange at Histon that has no provision for cyclists crossing. However it should be cautioned that only high quality infrastructure will enable this benefit. Low quality cycling infrastructure, including very narrow cycle lanes, cycle lanes that lose priority to parked cars, or to crossing traffic at junctions is mostly a waste of money. For example, the Jane Coston cycle bridge from Milton to Cambridge, across the A14 has a segregated cycleway from the bridge to the Cambridge Science Park that has priority over side junctions including industrial facilities with significant heavy goods vehicle traffic. Unfortunately, this is still let down by a single older junction that gives priority to a car-park for an office building over the cycleway.

It should also be noted that just building new high quality cycleways will not increase bicycle modal share without other investment in associated facilities. These include bicycle parking, at least on par with the spaces available for motorised vehicles and in high pedestrian trafficked areas. These should therefore be placed as close to the entrance to shops as possible, and not around the back of the store where bicycle theft would be more likely.

Bicycle parking should also be of high quality with Sheffield stands or similar placed sufficiently far apart from each other, and sufficiently far away from walls and roadways that pedestrians can pass safely and bicycles can be manoeuvred into position quickly. New housing should have space for parking bicycles, preferably as close to the front door as possible. Other buildings should also have minimum bicycle parking requirements. For example, doctors offices and hospitals.

Research has shown that people who regularly exercise, for example by bicycling to and from school or work, can significantly increase not only their productivity but can also reduce the number of days they are sick. Building cycling infrastructure also has very good cost benefit ratios. For example, the Cambridgeshire Transport Innovation Bid estimated the cost benefits for building the proposed bicycle infrastructure as returning £6 to the local community for each £1 that was spent. The early Cycling Demonstration Town results also show significant benefits. These benefits comes from increased health, increased productivity and reduced traffic congestion in the area.

The extent to which road user culture and behaviour undermines effective traffic management, including the relevance to today’s road users of the Highway Code;

At the moment, when a bicycle hits a car the bicycle rider will typically come of worse whilst the car driver will typically have no injuries. A car driver today accepts that they hold no liability if they hit a bicycle. Various campaigns suggest that bicycle riders pay no road tax and therefore should not be on the road, even though there is no such thing as a road tax today. We believe that consideration should be made for 'Strict Liability', to be introduced to UK law. This could have significant beneficial changes to the behaviour of the average motorised vehicle drivers, especially when operating these vehicles near bicycles. This would also have a similar behavioural change for bicycle riders being aware of their operating risk when near pedestrians. If this consideration is ignored, then bicycles will be further marginalised and the traffic builds up thereby reducing the perceived safety of using the bicycle and therefore reducing the modal share of bicycling. This will only therefore increase traffic congestion that no level of traffic management would be able to prevent.

We believe that the fact that the Highway Code is written by the Driving Standards Agency places the emphasis towards only motor vehicles within this publication. We would therefore suggest that the Highway Code be moved to a different agency or government department to remove such bias.

Intelligent traffic management schemes, such as the scheme which has operated on the M42, and their impact on congestion and journey times;

The A14 average speed cameras has been a great success in reducing the traffic problems on this section of road. However, in previous years, this road has had so much traffic use it because for some locations it is the only way of accessing the settlement. For example, Bar Hill is a village just north of Cambridge, within easy bicycling distance from Cambridge. It is only accessible by a six lane wide high-speed section of the Trans-European-Network called the E24, known locally as the A14. This section of road therefore provides part of the strategic network for both north-south traffic as well as east-west traffic. Interestingly there is provision for cycling along this section of road. At each junction there is a bicycle by-pass, requiring a bicycle rider to stop, wait for a gap in the traffic, and then cycle through the junction before returning to the inside lane of this three lane road with a 70 mph speed limit.

Unsurprisingly there is very little bicycle traffic from this village, even though thousands of people bicycle from similar villages in other locations where bicycle infrastructure exists. This section of the A14 also has significant traffic congestion and therefore journey time issues. A significant reduction in motorised traffic trips could be achieved if a high quality cycleway was constructed between this village and Cambridge. Other similar roads in the area would also benefit from parallel high quality cycleways; for example the A10 both north and south of Cambridge.

It is therefore suggested that no major road scheme be designed or built without high quality "non-motorised user" routes, including cycleways parallel to the route, and cycleways at all crossings. These crossings should not just be a non-signalized junction where cyclists are expected to dismount, walk their bike across a stream of high speed traffic. As an absolute minimum, rights of way that have been severed should be restored by use of such high quality safe crossings.

The impact of bus lanes and other aspects of road layout.

Bus lanes are an expensive allocation of road-space, sometimes at the detriment of other road users. For example, the installation of a bus lane in Milton Road, Cambridge, removed cycle lanes from both sides of the road. For example, in Cambridge, more people travel by bicycle than travel by bus, yet there are significant lengths of bus lane that have been built.

Unfortunately where bus lanes have been built, bicycles are expected to share this lane with the bus. For some bus lanes where significant numbers of buses use the lanes as well as bicycles, the buses cannot overtake the bicycles safely when the car traffic in the associated traffic lanes is stopped. Therefore buses are either forced to move at the speed of the bicycles, or they risk overtaking the bicycles too closely. It is therefore suggested that where bus lanes are built, separate bicycle lanes also be provided such that overtaking buses cannot impact on the perceived safety of the people using bicycles.

Bicycle lanes that just end, typically at the most dangerous locations, are a significant problem for an urban bicycle rider. Bicycle lanes and cycleways must be continuous to be effective. An example of this would be at Histon Road on the approach to the town centre of Cambridge. In some sections there is a very wide carriageway with a narrow cycleway along the side. This only helps to encourages cars to travel faster than the 30 mph speed limit, and a speed camera is located at this location because of poor road design. As cars approach the junction with Gilbert Road, two general traffic lanes are provided and the cycle lane disappears. Bicycles are obviously considered to be unimportant at this location.

Unfortunately, most bicycle crashes between motor vehicles and bicycles occur at junctions, in exactly the locations where bicycle infrastructure if provided just disappears. It is likely that these two facts are connected. It should also be noted that the right turn only lane at this junction has very few traffic movements, and therefore the road space could be easily reallocated to provide a cycle lane through this junction. It is therefore suggested that continuous coloured surfaces be provided through all junctions. This would clearly provide virtual bike lanes through junctions, i.e. something that emphasises the possible presence of bikes.

Another problem with traffic junctions is that most road traffic engineers attempt to increase the volume of motorised vehicles through junctions, because of the fear of traffic congestion. This will actually only increase traffic congestion as there is no alternative being provided. If the benefits of cycling are considered, then the number of people moving through the junction should be optimised, and not necessarily the number of motor vehicles. Bicycles take up significantly less space, and can move through an urban environment quicker than any other form of transport, public or private. They should therefore be given equal or greater consideration when designing road layouts and traffic signal timings.

It should be noted that each time a cyclist to forced to stop at a side junction or toucan crossing, they waste energy that is the equivalent to extending it by 100 metres. For example, a journey of 2 km that has just ten junctions that must be stopped at would use the equivalent energy required for a 3 km journey.

For example, along Kings Hedges Road there is a two lane road, and a guided bus route and a high quality cycleway. Unfortunately, at each of the entrances to the development to the north of the cycleway, the bicycle users are expected to come to a complete stop and press a button to activate a toucan crossing. This is because the road traffic that is entering the development is given a green light continuously except when a guided bus is crossing or a pedestrian or cyclist has activated the toucan crossing, or when turning traffic from the opposite direction is active. This significantly reduces the volume of people that this junction can cope with. The two-way shared use pedestrian and cycleway at this location is over 4 metres wide and could have a capacity significantly larger than the parallel roadway, yet is constrained by the traffic signal timings. The hierarchy of provision for bicycles suggests that reducing motor traffic speeds and volumes are the first two actions that should be taken to encourage cycling, yet junctions are designed to speed motor traffic through and hinder the movement of people using bicycles.

We believe that innovative junction signal timings could be trialled that for example have alternate cycle and pedestrian movements and car movements using a technology called allways-green. Toucan crossings should automatically detect approaching bicycles and change the lights in time for that bicycle to cross the roadway. Car drivers would not accept having to press a button to get the traffic lights to change, yet bicycle riders are expected to do so.

Wider bicycle infrastructure should be provided where possible. For example, most access to the commons in Cambridge when using a bicycle is through a narrow cattle grid and this causes bicycle traffic congestion. A new scheme to provide a dual bicycle-cattle grid has just been trialled, and this has significantly reduced this traffic congestion at a critical point.

We therefore make the following recommendations:

1. Bicycles be considered part of the solution for traffic congestion.

2. Road space should be taken away from motorised road vehicles and reallocated to bicycles.

3. Minimum cycle-parking standards, as used in Cambridge, should be adopted nationally.

4. 'Operating Risk' or 'Strict Liability' be applied to motorised vehicles impact on bicycles and pedestrians.

5. Major road schemes should be designed and built with high quality "non-motorised user" routes, including cycleways parallel to the route, and cycleways at all crossings.

6. Along with bus lanes, separate bicycle lanes should also be provided such that overtaking buses cannot impact on the perceived safety of the people using bicycles.

7. No overtaking within lane rules could be introduced that forbid the overtaking of nonmotorized vehicles within a single lane.

8. Continuous coloured surfaces be provided through all junctions.

9. Innovative junction signal timings be used to increase the number of people moving through a junction, and not the number of vehicles.

10. Toucan crossings should automatically detect approaching bicycles, with sufficient time to avoid slowing the cyclist.

11. High quality cycleways should be built to reduce traffic congestion for both motorised vehicles and bicycles.

We enclose links to three of our main publications: Cycling 2020, Cycling in New Developments, and Cycle Parking Guide.

http://www.camcycle.org.uk/planning/guidance/newdevelopments/

http://www.camcycle.org.uk/cycling2020/

http://www.camcycle.org.uk/resources/cycleparking/guide/

January 2011