It’s been three weeks since the funding for ‘Space for People’ was awarded to Glasgow City Council. As part of this we have a new addition in the heart of our city that includes cycle infrastructure. The pavement has been extended on Gordon St and Argyle St at Glasgow Central Station. To create this space there has been a change to road lanes going Westbound, with both becoming contraflow cycle lanes.
This should be great news and we are very happy that cycling access has been maintained, as contraflow lanes already on eastern sections of these streets.
However, we are disappointed that these new lanes’ are below the national required minimum width, being 1.45 meters at its widest and much narrower along most of them. There is also no segregation, with these also being busy streets, Gordon St being a taxi rank for Central Station and Argyle St being a part of the bus route.
The Argyle St section is the worst, it’s dimly lit and has a surface which can only be described as the surface of the moon, with bumps and craters that would intimidate cyclists of any ability.
Its effective width is narrowed by the extremely damaged kerb slabs making the lane less than 1 metre, and add in the fact that you will have oncoming buses coming towards you with so little room, it means that this situation means there is no chance of forgiveness if a mistake or course correction to avoid the worst parts of the surface was made! Here we have the experience (via twitter) of someone who tried to cycle on it:
We brought this immediately to the attention of Cllr Anna Richardson via email, and she responded promptly informing us that:
“1. Resurfacing works will take place to improve the road condition on this lane.
2. Soft segregation will be ordered and installed as soon as possible. I can’t give exact details of what form this will take at this stage”
We are glad that this issue is to be sorted soon, but we are disappointed that these issues occurred at all and were not resolved before the lane was installed.
We hope to not see issues like this again. GoBike are very supportive of the council and their Space For People programme and want them to act quickly, but to not make a situation worse for those walking, wheeling or cycling in the process.
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