The image of the Kingston’s telephone box blocking the footpath forcing
pedestrians to step into the path of cyclists is symbolic for all that is wrong
with the shit fest that is cycle planning in the UK.
Hopefully, Manchester’s Bee Lines will be an exception to the
rule, if the excellent Cyclops junction introduced recently is anything to go
by.
But by and large, there are far too many crap cycling lanes built in the UK. All manner of roadside
furniture and hazards including trees are left in place on cycle lanes around the country.
Kingston's £32m cycle scheme, with its telephone box and, worst
of all, the dangerous “bus stop cycle lanes”, could be a microcosm of what we could
end up with if ever the government does fund a national cycling policy.
I wonder if Cycling UK, those guardians of cyclists’ rights,
have challenged the misfits in Kingston, and looked into any of this?
I’ve had no response to my telephone calls and emails to their
campaign department and their magazine. This could be because staff are working from
home due to the pandemic. But if anything has been written about these issues
I’ve not seen it.
John Meudell’s report below concludes the sorry Kingston tale.
…………………………………..
As highlighted
previously, the choice of cycle infrastructure configuration in Kingston has made
it difficult to design junctions, bus stops, loading bays, etc., writes
Meudell.
The designs
adopted conspiring to create conflicts that otherwise wouldn’t exist.
And don’t talk to
me about lines-of-sight, which, as far as the highways engineers and designers
involved are concerned, don’t exist.
Let’s talk about
that phone box outside the University…..
Think about a
pedestrian walking towards the phone box, effectively blocking sight lines
around it? And what happens if a pedestrian
inadvertently pushes a baby buggy into the cycle lane without looking? It just takes a moments inattention on the
part of both pedestrian and cyclist.
And real
irony? Look closely and you’ll see the
phone box isn’t connected to anything…….
But the real
question is…how did cyclists and pedestrians end up with a (disconnected) phone
box blocking the footpath? And, given
its been there for more than a year now, why is it still there?
Bear in mind
that the cycle infrastructure in Kingston has its genesis in the award of £32m
from Transport for London in 2014 to improve safety and convenience for
cyclists. In the years immediately
following award, detail was added to routes planned under the Go Cycle
programme strap line.
Furthermore,
Kingston University has a major re-development under way adjacent to the phone
box (the new Town House and frontage) planning of which took place in
approximately the same time frame.
Developments
such as these have implications for utilities such as BT, a statutory
undertaker, all of whom would have been consulted in the early stages. And the phone box has been in that location
for many years, well before both developments were proposed.
The phone box in pre-cycle lane days
So, it’s not as
if any of the major players in the phone box fiasco, Royal Borough of Kingston
upon Thames, British Telecom and Kingston University didn’t have or were given
plenty of notice and had time to consider the implications.
All the major
players have been involved or consulted and/or interacted with at various
stages in the planning and development of these projects, both in general and
in detail, and arrangements for relocation of the phone box could easily have
been concluded well before work commenced.
So, it’s not as
if this is a communication problem.
Kingston have at
least £32m to spend on the Go Cycle programme and the University has spent
around £50m on development of the new Town House building and re-development of
the frontage of adjacent university buildings where the phone box is located.
So, it’s not as
if this is a money problem.
Even
worse, local politicians have (unhelpfully) got in on the action, using what is
a planning, design and engineering process issue, to score political points
rather than solve problems.
https://www.kingstonconservatives.com/kingstons-32million-cycle-lanes-being-mis-managed-by-libdems-%EF%BB%BF/
And
it’s most definitely not a political problem.
Most large organizations I have been
associated with have clear processes for development, design and construction
of capital projects, usually with decision “gates” to minimise (if not
eliminate) risks, be it financial, schedule and/or physical. Physical risks will not only include those to
their own staff but also construction workers, project users and the public at
large.
Not to do so would run not only the risks identified
above, but also consequential reputational risks that could seriously damage
the future health, if not existence, of the organization.
Design
input for the Kingston infrastructure projects would, or should, have included
information gleaned from safety audits at each stage of the process, part of
statutory obligations on highways authorities aimed at ensuring (and, dare I
say it, improving) the safety of those using the highway.
So
why is it none of the safety risks of the scheme; including junctions, bus
stops, loading bays and the phone box, were ever recognised, whether by the
designers or, perhaps more importantly, by safety auditors?
And,
even if they were recognised, why is it nobody could be bothered to do anything
about them?
The case of the phone box, as with all the
newly created hazards, demonstrates the failure of processes and the people and
organizations participating in them.
Given the amount of money that has been spent
on these projects, are any of these people and organizations involved going to voluntarily
admit that they cocked-up, let alone do anything meaningful to eliminate the
hazards…….?
Without a national regulator overseeing and
informing and assuring design and engineering processes and people,
accountability (or lack of) is a major, major, contributing factor.
So, will anything change, system-wise?
In
my experience that’s highly unlikely in Kingston, or the rest of the UK, even
if somebody (dare I say it) gets killed or seriously injured as result of crap
infrastructure.
………something that’s definitely not the case
in the Netherlands!
