REMOVING POP-UP CYCLE LANE UNLAWFUL - declares High Court

 

GOOD news for Cycling UK.  The High Court has declared that Conservative controlled West Sussex County Council did unlawfully remove the Pop Up cycle lane in Shoreham by Sea over one year ago.

Casting around the on-line news sites for this story I spotted this which says it all, from Rowan Smith, lead solicitor from the Leigh Day law firm telling Sussex Live:

 “This is a massive legal, as well as campaigning, victory that will benefit cyclists in West Sussex and across the country.

"Cycling UK has achieved a big win in upholding statutory guidance to embed more climate-friendly travel, which it hopes will contribute to a greener post-pandemic recovery.

"Such great news comes in the wake of the Government setting up Active Travel England, a new body with powers to rank local authorities on the quality of cycling provision in their areas.”

The one photograph I saw of the cycle lane in question revealed a thin miserable strip of tarmac of minimal width, marked out with stick up poles on the tarmac which looked to be too close for comfort.  They could have taken another couple of feet from the bloody motors, if you ask me.

Notwithstanding that, the Shoreham lane had proved very popular with cyclists.

During its short lifetime it was used for 30,000 cycle trips, serving five schools along its length. 

Then it was gone.  And the battle began to hold the council to account.

It took Cycling UK 11 months of legal argument before the council finally agreed to an out of court settlement.

West Sussex had ignored the statutory guidance for installing temporary Pop Up cycle lanes.

It had only been in place a month, from the end of September 2020, before its fate was sealed as a result of complaints from drivers. This allowed no  time for it to bed in,  nor to evaluate any possible problems.

Cycling UK forked out huge sums to fight their case, supported by the Cyclists’ Defence Fund contributed to by the membership.

But this is a bitter sweet victory as the council spokesman says there’s no chance the temporary cycle lane will be put back.

The new facility, so hurriedly ripped out, was paid for out of £700,000 worth of

Government funding provided to help a number of local transport initiatives. 

The Pop Up cycle lane was part of a national Active Travel campaign (active being the operative word for getting about under your own steam).

The initiative was born out of the realisation that people may be reluctant to use public transport during the pandemic. The Pop-up cycle lanes were installed across the country as quick-fix measure to encourage people to cycle who otherwise might be deterred at the thought of mixing with traffic. There was an option to make them permanent, if they worked.

Shockingly, it seems one council member was responsible for taking out the cycle lane, 

apparently going against the advice of the council’s scrutinizing committee.

You wonder how this is possible.

What surprised Cycling UK then was the way the council attempted to brush off the issues they alone were responsible for.  Their spokesman was full of spin and bluster, suggesting that they only “settled the case so as to avoid further costs to the public purse”.   

The declaration that West Sussex Council acted unlawfully came with an order against the council for costs. Dollimore explained on Cycling UK’s website that the council’s unlawful action has barred them from receiving any more government funding for transport planning. They must also pay Cycling UK’s £25,000 costs.

Dollimore took a look “behind the spin” and on his Cycling UK blog explains what’s happened and what it means.

Link here https://www.cyclinguk.org/blog/unlawful-decisions-removing-cycle-lanes-what-does-it-all-mean

 Alarmingly, Cycling UK say West Sussex are one of many councils to rip out cycle lanes.

“We don’t have the capacity to challenge every decision councils make which we don’t agree with. But, in the last 18 months, too many councils have removed cycle lanes and other active travel schemes without allowing them time to bed in, without adequate evaluation, and with scant regard to the relevant statutory guidance. The decision in Shoreham was a classic example of this, so we took this case to court to shine a light on this issue, and to send a message to other councils.”

This begs the question, if councils are in breach of government statutory guidance, why is it not the government bringing councils to book. Why do they leave it to Cycling UK?

Boardman's 'quiet' revolution

 

FORMER Olympic Champion Chris Boardman has promised a “quiet revolution” to take back the roads from cars and get people cycling and walking in his new role as head of Active Travel England (ATE), he told The Guardian’s Peter  Walker.

Oops. Mind your language when mentioning cars, Mr Boardman, in case the petrol heads get wind of this!

If we dare allow ourselves to dream a for moment, could Boardman’s enterprise be the game changer for cycling as transport?

The signs of change are already there with the revised Highway Code calling for drivers to be prepared to give way and give space to vulnerable road users.

I can think of no better person to lead this latest initiative to get cycling as transport firmly established in the minds of planners who need to be dragged screaming and kicking into the 21^st century.

It is only right that the young, the old and the in-between, can feel safer on the roads when cycling those many shorts trips instead of always driving them.

Three cyclists and 100s of cars in Bristol

If the Olympic champion can do for other towns and cities what his publicly acclaimed Bee network for walkers and cyclists promises to do for Manchester - once and if it’s finished - dare we  hope government will at last provide the £billions necessary to make the roads safer?

Inadequate funding, that’s the issue. For although the £millions being awarded for various cycling initiatives do some good, it will take £billions to get to the heart of the matter.

But still less than the £27bn earmarked for road improvements!

As head of Active Travel England Boardman will award funding for cycling and walking schemes and also look keep a beady eye on design.

Crucially, ATE is a statutory consultee and their remit extends beyond roads to big developments to make sure planners design in access on foot and by bike, not just by car.

Councils risk losing funding for substandard schemes, which will include bikes lanes distinguished only by a painted line, or if they delay work.

Boardman’s organisation will inspect work in progress and annual reports will rank councils performance in the same manner as Ofsted with schools.

Boardman says they will offer to help in design and also judge it. He will have the power to say the work is not good enough!

That will be interesting for him, given that many engineers know bugger all about designing roads with cyclists in mind. And it was an engineer who told me that!

Boardman says it is essential motor traffic no longer is allowed to dominate local roads, a situation made worse by rat runs identified by satnav.

Add to that the ubiquitous school run where parents feel pressured to drive their kids to school because the roads are unsafe, thereby making them even less safe!

We must hope that no one sees this as an anti-car crusade, particularly the Daily Mail and the Daily Express usually so quick to defend the so called rights of the roads lobby.

The last guy to try reducing this unhealthy dependency on cars was Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott in the 1990s with his proposals for an integrated transport policy. His boss, Tony Blair, considered this a vote loser.

He stripped Prescott of his transport brief and binned his proposals and all was right in their world.

Surely we have moved on, and want to encourage cycling and walking instead of always driving. Most journeys we make are five miles and less, ideal for cycling.

 “This is about enabling, and encouraging once you have the safe space,” says Boardman.  “The message is: this is for people doing normal things in normal clothes, just having the choice of not having to do it in a car. And it’s in all our interests to face up to that.”

 “We have a finite amount of space, and there’s over 20bn more miles being driven around homes than there was a decade ago,” Boardman said. “We’ve co-opted local streets to soak up traffic that roads were never designed for. It’s not going to be easy to unpick, but it’s really worth it.”

 “Kids don’t have a choice to drive – they have to be driven. And these are their roads and streets, too, and they have the right to use them.”

Boardman, previously commissioner for Transport for Greater Manchester, was first motivated to work for safer cycling upon the realisation that the roads around his home were too unsafe for his daughter to cycle to the park 500 metres away! 

Royce Road junction on a section of
Manchester's Bee Network for cyclists and pedestrians.

He suffered personal tragedy when his mother was killed by a driver while he was campaigning for safer cycling.

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Reality Cheque

Cycling development is routinely underfunded by government writing piddling cheques for amounts which fall well below what they know is required for the grand schemes necessary to promote the bike as transport. 

Or schemes are given nothing at all, as was the case with the national cycling strategy launched by the Conservatives in 1996.

The Secretary of State for Transport, Sir George Young, himself a cyclist, said the strategy didn’t need money because any costs would be incorporated within the roads budget generally. That was all very well and as it should be for new schemes.

But crucially, the so called strategy took no account of costs to redesign the existing roads and junctions  laid out without thought of how cyclists and pedestrians were to manage. Some have since been adapted, but many are most unsatisfactory.

It took a Labour government to put a bit of flesh on the strategy in 2005, creating Cycling England with the paltry sum of £5m.

Nevertheless Cycling England was brilliant.  Their cycling advocates Christian Wolmer the transport journalist and John Grimshaw of Sustrans, the father of National Cycle and Walking Network, identified and worked with nearly 30 towns to help create small but impressive cycling schemes. A cycle lane here, hire bikes there.  They proved that if you provide for cycling more people will cycle.

And then a decade ago the Conservatives killed the initiative stone dead.

We must hope that Boardman’s ATE does not go the same way. It’s been a long haul to move cycling up the agenda.

I am reminded of the Friends of Earth’s campaign “Reclaim the Roads” back in the mid-1970s. I still have their manifesto on how England should improve road conditions for cycling. A huge cycling demonstration was held in Trafalgar Square, and I joined thousands of cyclists to ride to Downing Street, where the report was delivered to Number 10.  I naively thought that cycling’s time had come. Nothing happened.

The report probably went into the shredder.

That was 50 years ago.

We’re no nearer calming the roads now than we were then.

Over to you, Mr Boardman, save us from the *Petrol Heads.

*Petrol Heads. This species probably evolved in the late 1950s as car ownership grew in popularity and led the government to believe they needed to provide as many roads as possible to satisfy this desire to drive everywhere.

This led to the government commissioning the Buchanan Report in 1963. It was all about cars, nothing about trains, bikes, buses, walking. All about cars.

Buchanan presented plans to have motorways carved into the heart of every town and city. London would be encircled with a series of huge ring roads.

Plans were abandoned when it was realised tens of thousands of homes in London alone would be demolished and city centres destroyed. But not before work had begun in various cities – if your town has a huge highway that suddenly comes to an end, that’s probably the mark of the Buchanan Report before it was halted.

For more on Buchanan read Christian Wolmar’s transport perspective Are Trams Socialist? Why Britain has no Transport Policy).

You will be alarmed.

Then pray Boardman succeeds in his quest.

 

 

A few pictures because words fail me

 In order of appearance,

the crow which fell down

the chimney; 

memories of an open door in summer; 

getting a few miles in

indoors;

and this sign greeting

gents as they leave a 

urinal.

New for old

New Hitachi Azuma express operating on the London-Edinburgh route of the LNER. Steam, meanwhile, still making an appearance, as in this shot at Redhill.
 

The car is no longer king of the road under government's new safety rules to benefit cyclists

 

MAJOR changes in the Highway Code announced this month should end the hostile road environment where motor vehicles charge about with impunity expecting pedestrians, cyclists  and horse riders to make way.

Now the greater weight of responsibility for safety is to rest on the shoulders of drivers to look out for vulnerable road users and take greater care in overtaking and turning and on the approach to crossings.

Shifting the greater responsibility to drivers recognizes at last the disproportionate consequences caused in collisions between a ton weight of metal and the flesh and blood pedestrian, cyclist, motor cyclist and horse and rider.

For even when driven carefully, the high tempo of traffic, greater power and acceleration poses a threat to cyclists who might feel safer taking their chance riding through the lion enclosure of a safari park.

The changes ought to lead to a general slowing down of traffic!  But best not count on it on roads specifically designed to be taken speedily in vehicles designed to go ever quicker.

Those shaved corners have also contributed to the unease of pedestrians, as vehicles need hardly slow down when making a turn.

Although there has been a largely positive response from the cycling and motoring organisations to the changes, the concern is how will they be conveyed to the public who only read the Highway Code in preparation for taking a driving test?

It's not exactly a best seller!

Britain’s national cycling organisation, Cycling UK campaigned for these changes and now is urging the government to ensure the British public get the message, saying “now is the time to right the misunderstanding on our roads.”

Duncan Dollimore, Cycling UK’s head of campaigns said:

“Cycling UK is concerned the forthcoming improvements to road safety outlined in the latest revision of the Highway Code, which will benefit everyone, are not being communicated through official channels. In a month’s time, our Highway Code should change for the better, but these changes will be of limited benefit if the public aren’t aware of them.”

Just as drivers will have a greater responsibility to look for people cycling, walking or riding a horse, so too will cyclists have a greater responsibility to look out for pedestrians on pavements and shared paths.

Some key amendments to benefit cyclists in the new Highway Code include:

Ok, although this illustration has the guys driving on the "wrong side", it illustrates the point - drivers must give a wide berth when overtaking cyclists. 

·          Clearer guidance for drivers overtaking cyclists,  giving them at least 1.5m.

·          Guidance on how drivers and passengers can prevent ‘car-dooring’ cyclists by using the Dutch Reach – Which means if the door is on your left reaching for it with your right arm, so making you turn, the easier to look behind!  And of course, the left arm if the door is on your right.

·          At non-signalised junctions drivers must be prepared to give way to pedestrians and cyclists and so prevent “left-hook” collisions, bringing Britain in line with similar laws on the European continent.

Dollimore says when passed, the Highway Code update will include a new hierarchy of road user. For the first time in Britain the law will recognise that those who pose the greatest risk on our roads to others have a higher level of responsibility. This means someone cycling will have greater responsibility to look out for people walking – including on shared paths - and waiting to cross, while someone driving would have greater responsibility to look out for people cycling, walking or riding a horse.

Cycling UK are right to be concerned that people will actually take the trouble to read up on these vitally important changes which otherwise have the potential to lead to confusion among road users who are not briefed.

Leaflets explaining the changes need to be placed under windscreen wipers of every parked vehicle and/or, posted to every address in the land.

Currently, drivers are only required to give way when someone steps onto a crossing, while pedestrians are told they shouldn’t start to cross until vehicles on the road have stopped.

This will now change, drivers seeing a pedestrian waiting must be prepared to give way to allow them to cross.

The updated Code will also give cyclists priority at junctions when travelling straight ahead, as well as issue guidance on safe passing distances and speeds.

The changes are part of a new cycling and walking strategy  unveiled by Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, who was due to announce  a £338million package to boost both across the country. 

Announcing the changes,  Schapps said:

“Millions of us have found over the past year how cycling and walking are great ways to stay fit, ease congestion on the roads and do your bit for the environment.

“As we build back greener from the pandemic, we’re determined to keep that trend going by making active travel easier and safer for everyone.”

..................................................................................................................................................

As I understand it, the rules of the Highway Code are advisory which means a person won’t face prosecution for not complying with them.

However, if the highway code is used in court to establish liability in the event of an accident under the Road Traffic Act, and you are found to be at fault as a result of not complying with the Highway Code, you may face charges. 

We left the club champion struggling on the annual holly run

Do cycling clubs still hold an annual holly run at Christmas? I recall the Merseyside Wheelers Sunday club run list included a holly run each December in the so-called Swinging Sixties! 

Not much holly left for this school outing -
the Merseyside Wheelers have taken the best cuts.

                                                                

Looking back now, we learn the Sixties was a period of huge change in Britain, with a new individualism and appetite to live in a more liberal permissive society. Indeed, and at barbers shops everywhere men, after the obligatory short and back sides, would find the hairdresser bending to their ear to discreetly ask: “Anything for the weekend, sir?” 

As with most step changes in history, they are not always apparent at the time and it is left to sociologists – or academics with an ‘ology of some sort or another – to tell us some years later what the hell had being going on back then. 

It was the time of the Beatles who rocked the world with their chart topping memorable songs and music. They rode this wave of change and became famous! Oh, yeah, those lads. “Love me do”, was that one of their songs? Liked their stuff, still do. I remember they went past our house in a van, once, before they became famous. 

The Sixties was also a time when people began to stand up for their civil and employment rights. As for us cyclists our world revolved around club runs and races, bit of jazz or rock at the weekends. And on one Sunday each year we expressed our entrepreneurial skills by sourcing our own holly in the wild, instead of helping the local economy by buying it from the local shops! 

To reach the secret place where the holly grew wild meant cycling from Liverpool across the Wirral and across the North Wales border, a round trip of some 40 miles. Who was on that ride with me? Eddie Richards was there. I remember we all ganged up him on the way home, led him a merry dance. Certainly Dickhead Dave Davis was there (that was Eddie's cruel choice of name for Dave, on account of him often being the brunt of his dry wit). And he was the ringleader.  Maybe Tony T-bone Walsh and Steve Six-guns Sixsmith were also on that run.  

On  those runs to Wales we’d meet at the Pier Head landing stage, to take the ferry for a bracing 15-minute sail  across the Mersey to Birkenhead Woodside. I would be wearing my winter gear of choice on bitter cold days,  blanket-lined army combat jacket and winter weight training bottoms, narrow fitting with a zip from just below the knee to the ankle. And a woolly hat. 

Leaving the ferry we’d set off down the main road towards Chester, in seven miles swinging a right, direction North Wales for elevenses at the Eureka café at Two Mills. Off again, via Queensferry (a small town, not a boat) to cross the bridge over the River Dee into North Wales where  snow lay in the fields – although the roads were clear. 

My memory is a bit sketchy now. Did we take the climb to Hawarden, then down through Fairy Dell on the Wrexham road? Or did we climb the Ewloe, and take the road towards Mold? When I Googled the map for this area last week the road junctions had changed beyond recognition.  Huge roundabouts at what were simple road junctions in my day. Must ask a local how they manage. Perhaps Tony Bell will fill me in. 

Anyway, not far along which ever road we took we joined a disused railway line on an embankment. Checking the internet for information, I’m pretty certain this old railway line was part of the Buckley Railway laid during the 19th century, serving brick works and other industries. The line linked directly to Connah’s Quay on the River Dee four miles away and it included some very steep gradients. 

Who did this? No one owned up.

It closed in 1966, and the track was lifted…just in time for our holly run. We all rode along the old track bed, on the lookout for holly bushes laden with red berries to take home, to complete our Christmas decorations.  There was plenty to go round. I used a small junior hacksaw to cut some branches, and with stout string lashed them across the top of my saddle bag for the ride home. 

A snowball fight delayed departure by a good 20 minutes, including five minutes to recover someone’s bike buried under the white stuff. No one owned up to doing that! We must have a cut a strange sight on the ride home as light faded – a convoy of holly bushes moving slowly. 

Eddie called out he was stopping to adjust his load which was blocking his rear lamp. Do you remember cycle lamps back then? Bloody awful Ever Ready’s and Pifco junk which would fly off the lamp brackets and if they didn’t do that, they would often flicker and go out. I’ll catch you up, Eddie called out. 

He was doing so quite nicely, was about 10 lengths short of regaining the back of the club run, but that’s as far he got the first time. It was all Davis’s fault. He was on the front, but looking back to check on Eddie’s progress, watching for the beam of his front lamp on the pitch black road. Eddie had a few too many beers the night before and wasn’t firing on all cylinders. 

We waited until he was almost on, then Davis accelerated our group, pulling us, all laughing, well clear, cutting our esteemed club mate adrift. When Eddie had vanished backwards into the blackness we eased off. And when he began to close again the pace lifted and he got no closer, the red lights of the club run just ahead of him, dancing out of his reach. 

Again the pace dropped to allow him almost to get on, when we accelerated hard once more. An angry shout from behind revealed he had twigged what was going on. “You frigging bastards…you frigging shitheads…..” 

His cries carried across the empty fields and we all laughed mercilessly and kept on riding. Another torrent of abuse came out of the darkness until at last we relented. Eddie clawed his way back on, whereupon he let us know what he thought us, of Davis in particular, who he just knew to be the ring leader. 

And he issued a stark warning, a threat. Just wait, come April, you’ll see, when I’ll be fully fit, I will tear your frigging legs off. Alright, Eddie, it was just a laugh! When that day in April came he wasn’t fooling. He half-wheeled us all to death, he did, burned us all off, one by one. 

He was, after all, a three times winner of the Liverpool and District TTA Championship.

COP 26 - cycling protestors gatecrash climate change conference

 

HG Wells, the English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian once famously said: “Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”

Clearly this concept was not understood by the politicians, transport planners or engineers at COP26.

 

CHRISTMAS is coming

The goose is getting fat

And COP26 fell rather flat

So what happened at COP 26 last month, the Glasgow International Climate Change conference?

What exactly was achieved at a conference seeking a pact among nations to cut pollution to avert the worst of climate change. 

Did it give us cause to  celebrate this Christmas?

Well, it was a mish mash of “blah blah” compromise (as Sweden’s Greta Thunberg, the inspirational climate activist, put it) and it didn’t go far enough.

In the end too few countries committed to reducing their outpouring of pollution, which would have enabled the world to limit warming to the “safe” limit of 1.5 degrees, based on the pre-industrial levels.

That’s it in a nutshell. Keep calm and carry on fouling your beds that was the message.

However there was a little success on the cycling front, to the effect that cycling is now to be included in the Climate Change Transport Lexicon, under “Active Travel”, which recognises the contribution cycling and walking can make.

 But only after sustained campaigning culminating in  massive protest from cyclists on the streets of Glasgow.

The mere fact that the plonkers at COP26 had overlooked cycling and walking in their climate change transport equation shows, once again,

thinking bike simply doesn’t come easily to transport planners.

Instead, the whole world was be saved by the electric car and that’s it. 

e in the COP26 transport declaration

Even before COP began, Cycling UK had warned that cycling had been excluded from the agenda at the COP in favour of discussion on electric vehicles and charging points.

Jim Densham of Cycling UK tried to put a positive spin on the outcome.

 

“Cycling should have been included from the start, but instead of looking back at COP26 as "Blah, blah, blah – car, car, car", let’s celebrate a success won by thousands of cyclists who campaigned together with the overwhelming positive message that "This machine fights climate change", said  Densham.

Meanwhile, we can take comfort in the fact that in European countries like Denmark, cycling is at the heart of transport policy.

I was reminded of this after watching a recent TV documentary about railway architecture which included a look at the futuristic Metro station at *Orientkaj at Copenhagen harbour, which opened in March 2020.

Broad cycle lanes leading to  Orientkaj station in Copenhagen.

What struck me was when the Danish spokesman talked about access to the Orientkaj station, cycling was the first thing he mentioned, before buses, trams and cars. 

And behind him, clearly visible running directly towards the new station  could be seen two very wide cycling lanes, each about the width of two cars! Planned and executed from the outset, not squeezed in as an afterthought, as so often happens in the UK, if we’re lucky!

 

* Orientkaj station is “anchored by bold concrete claws onto the Copenhagen harbour”. It is designed as a glass, concrete, and aluminium box commanding panoramic views over the Orientkaj dock. The brutal outside appearance is contrasted with “detailing inside, from the lighting to the material palette”. In other words, a warm and attractive place.