COP26 – How you can raise your voice for cycling and climate change

You won’t have missed that COP26 is coming to town next week, complete with world leaders, cycle lane closures, dodgy diversions and huge demonstrations. There are many ways you can get involved to call for action – a few of these are highlighted below.

Find out more about cycling, climate action and COP26 on the Cycling UK COP26 webpages

Pedal on COP26 – 6 November – Pedal on Parliament have been doing immense work to organise and coordinate action for COP26 – see the PoP website for more details.

• Be part of the Cycling Bloc (sustainable transport) at the mass march on 6 November
• Join a feeder ride to the march – there are 7 rides starting from various locations around Glasgow bringing riders to Kelvingrove Park.

Petitions and online actions – take a simple online action to speak up for the climate

• Cycling UK – social media action – This online action enables you to send a message to your MSPs via twitter telling them that #ThisMachineFightsClimateChange. If you don’t have twitter there’s a guide to spreading the message via other social media.
• Climate Scotland – petition – An online action organised by a coalition of charities with a focus on the impacts of climate change on Scotland’s natural environment.  In the signing process, you can select a topic and say why this matters to you. For example, for many cyclists experiencing the beautiful countryside on a bike is important for mental as well as physical health. Select ‘Beautiful places’ to make this, or a similar point.
• OXFAM – petition – Ask the Prime Minister to take decisive action on climate change.

Events – So many events are happening during the 2 weeks of COP26

• COP26 Cycling Forum – Monday November 1st, 2-4pm, Gartnavel Hospital grounds – This rally will bring together people who have cycled to COP26 and cycling advocates in Glasgow and globally, amplifying voices and celebrating the potential of cycling as a climate solution. Register here for this event
• Climate Fringe – Find events to interest you led by civil society for civil society.
• People’s Summit – 7-10 November – a huge range of events on offer

Cycling by Design

Transport Scotland has published its long awaited Cycling by Design design guidance update. They don’t have a consultation on the published guidance but rather is welcoming feedback on the content of the document via e-mail to cyclingbydesign@transport.gov.scot

Government says this new document will be ‘updated regularly to take account of project experience and changes to the legal or design environment’ so its worth providing feedback based on your real-life experience of good and bad cycling infrastructure designs.

Cycling by Design is a long document and rightly includes invaluable technical guidance for designers and planners.

My analysis and thoughts below are intended to be a guide to the Cycling by Design (CbD) document and a look at the bigger picture, the themes and the use of the document rather than an attempt to assess whether all the design details are to the standard we would like to see. That’s a lengthy piece of work and we will be looking at this at Cycling UK so that we can provide feedback to Transport Scotland and provide support to campaigners.

Clarity of guidance and use of images are excellent in CbD. There’s good imagery showing the wide variety of cycles that should be designed for, and this does pervade the document in the design images.

Key messages for designers – There is an excellent summary on page 9 which condenses the guidance down to 12 key messages explaining how designers should approach the application of CbD. Unfortunately, the rest of the document doesn’t always fully reflect the same high level of expectation as contained in the key messages.

Application of the guidance – Throughout the document there are tables showing 3 levels of delivery in certain situation or applying to specific design factors (high, med and low). Transport Scotland wants designers to go for the high level. The High, Medium and Low Level of Service categories are similar approach to level of service in England’s LTN 1/20 which uses Green, Amber, Red categorisation. However, LTN 1/20 also has a “Critical” level below Red (Low level of service) which can be considered as “this is really bad do not do it”. CbD needs a similar ‘DO NOT DO THIS’ level, as there are many designs on our streets which are plainly dangerous.

Planning for Cycle Users – This section, from page 13, is good at explaining that cyclists are a varied bunch and can have differing capabilities – plus they have different needs to both motorists and pedestrians.

Assess demand for infrastructure comes under section 2.5 on the planning and delivery process. My concern is that guidance explaining the need to ‘estimate future travel patterns’ and that ‘data sources may not reflect the full potential for cycle user trips’ doesn’t convey the same weight as Key Message No. 1 on p9 which says ‘We must plan and design for mass cycling’. Using current estimates is unlikely to deliver the infrastructure we so desperately need for mass cycling.

Network planning – The section shows that our current active travel network plans at the local authority level are not up to scratch. One of the Principles on p21 is ‘coherence’ and is further described on page 30. However, without a proper network plan for each LA you can’t meet the design guidance standards. It shows an urgent need for a proper Scotland-wide network plan of dense urban networks, cycle lanes along major arterial routes and links between towns and cities.

Provision of appropriate facilities on p49 is a really good summary as to why it’s important to provide protection, separation and to enhance places. Cycling interaction with pedestrians is covered on page 53, and there’s a general ongoing principle of keeping cyclists and pedestrians apart wherever possible. This could be clearer and more up-front, especially the interaction with disabled people. The section on access control rightly explains the need to not include barriers which stop people in wheelchairs or adaptive cycles from accessing safe infrastructure.

Maintenance – A section about the maintenance of cycling infrastructure appears at the end of the section about cycle lanes. Maintenance and planning for maintenance and upkeep, e.g. snowploughing in winter, should be integral to design and delivery. I would like to see this promoted in the document and made more prominent under section 2 – Planning for Cycle Users.

Crossings and junctions – There are lengthy sections of geometric guidance for all types of cycle links, design guidance on crossings and on junctions. Some of these, especially, junctions will take some getting used to by cyclists and drivers.

There is a helpful section on trip end facilities, including guidance for cycle parking, bike hangars etc, as well as info on links with public transport.

Finally, there’s not much reference to the Sustainable Travel Hierarchy in the guidance. Designers and planners need to understand that this should impact on the investment and design decisions – i.e. cycling isn’t just an add on. This problem is compounded by this guidance only being focussed on cycling infrastructure rather than a holistic and all encompassing design guidance for our roads, new build developments and community spaces.

Summary of concerns

• The good emphasis on high levels of service in the introductory sections needs to be maintained throughout the document but the guidance also needs to be clear on what designs are unacceptable under any circumstances.
• The process for review of the designs needs greater clarity, especially how this differs in each circumstance. For example, Sustrans may be strict in reviewing Places for Everyone bid designs but councils may be less stringent in designs for new developments.
• There’s an urgent need for professional training for planners, designers, developers, those assessing designs, LA staff and others inc. Highway Safety Auditors, to apply the guidance appropriately, especially with current inadequate network planning in many places (see next point).
• Network planning needs to catch up with the improved design guidance and MUST aim for mass cycling, rather than current estimates of future need.
• The guidance stands alone as cycling guidance and apart from references to other guidance isn’t fully integrated with other design guidance and could lead to issues, such as problems for disabled people, being missed.

What’s wrong with this picture?(We’ll get back to that subliminal message later.) Take a close look at the junction.

Look at those geometric, perfectly sharp, 90 degree square corners. This is the epitome of a side road turning with tight radii. It gives pedestrians a short direct crossing. It requires drivers to slow right down to enter or leave the side turning, giving them time to look for people cycling past the junction, and making them less likely to left hook someone cycling on their nearside.

This is a cartoon version of a side road junction without traffic lights, but it’s not quite a fantasy. It’s the style of junction recommended by guidance such as Designing Streets (1), Scottish policy since 2010 (see pages 16 and 18), and by a 2020 Briefing Sheet (2) for professionals on street design standards badged by the Institution of Civil Engineers among others. Even Glasgow’s own Public Realm Design and Maintenance Guide (3) says this (p 42), “Junctions should be designed in order to both make people feel safe and actually be safe. …. Designers should therefore start with the tightest radii that they feel can be accommodated and not the most forgiving [for] motor traffic …”

This guidance is for streets generally (no special infrastructure for cycling) and it’s important for two reasons. The first is that there can never be protected cycle infrastructure on every street, so the design of ordinary streets and junctions must focus on safety for people cycling (and walking and wheeling). The second reason is that on streets where there is protected cycle infrastructure, junction design that requires low motor vehicle turning speeds supports the case for the cycleway to be continuous across side streets.

So what can we deduce from the choice of this ideal junction design to illustrate a council campaign? Is Glasgow committed to following the guidance, designing junctions for the safety of people cycling (and walking) and now moving on to reinforcing the message implicit in junction design with ads? Well – no.

Here’s a junction created in the last couple of years for new student accommodation on the Scotway House site between the Kelvin and Glasgow Harbour.

The road is Castlebank Street, right next to the Clydeside Expressway. There is nothing about it to encourage drivers to pay attention to their speed. The flaring trumpet mouth of the new service road invites drivers to swoop into or out of the turning, scattering people walking and cycling to and from the Riverside Museum. (As an aside, the green fingerposts along the footway give cycling times to various places, inviting cycling on the pavement, although there’s no indication that this is officially a shared surface, but that’s another story.)

Here’s another example. This is on Polmadie Road, it’s the entrance to a site repurposed with a brand new Starbucks.

This time the pavement has the appropriate signs for a shared cycling and walking surface, but look at the flared junction again. Drivers on their way to or from the M74 can just twitch a finger to turn in or out for their caffeine hit, barely moderating their speed or looking out for active travellers. Sadly, the next step here is quite likely to be the installation of railings to give people walking and cycling further to travel and still require them to cross the path of vehicles travelling too fast. When junctions are designed to be intrinsically safe, add-on ‘protective’ measures are not needed.

What’s going on? The council has plenty of great sounding policies about encouraging active travel. There’s no shortage of what looks like useful guidance on how to design streets that invite people to cycle or walk, and which feel safer for walking and cycling. Yet the same old dysfunctional, dangerous designs keep on being wheeled out. There’s no opportunity for public input when turnings like the Castlebank Street and Polmadie Road are created but campaigners have argued extensively for the design of safe side road junctions for cycle infrastructure on (for example) Sauchiehall Street, South City Way, St Andrew’s Drive and Byres Road. Responses from officials have included:

• The guidance applies only to new developments
• Refuse trucks have to be able to get round the corners
• Police advice is that what you want isn’t safe
• We could be sued if we do anything different from what’s established.

So here are suggestions – for officials (if you happen to read this) and for campaigners:

• Make it council policy that the guidance for new developments must be applied to every modification of existing streets
• Buy refuse trucks with rear-axle steering (or just be practical and accept that having to use part of the opposite carriageway is not a deal-breaker).
• Come clean about the precise source of this nebulous ‘police advice’ and, since it’s contradicting all the expert guidance, what the evidence is for it.
• Read the section at the back of Designing Streets about the risk of being sued (very slight).

And an extra one:

• Make road engineers accountable for prioritising the safety of foot and cycle traffic over the flow of motor vehicles.

It’s not as though there are no junctions in Glasgow with square corners. The older areas are full of them. Here’s one (in Hillhead) that has a good idea for stopping drivers cutting the corners.

Streets in urban areas aren’t motorways – drivers need to slow down before turning off the main road, not afterwards. The people with their hands on the wheel and their feet on the pedals need to have their brains fully applied to communicating their intentions to other road users through the way they signal, decelerate, brake and position their vehicles.

Going back to that bus ad, we might charitably see it as a sincere effort to alert drivers to the danger they pose at junctions to people cycling. Perhaps the intention is to create a safer environment for cycling so that more people will give it a go. It’s pretty much a disaster then that what most people’s brains will get from a passing glance is “Cyclists, injuries, 70%”. Clearly, a message on the side of a bus has to be in shorthand, but this one invites the inference that if you try cycling there’s a 70% chance you’ll be injured.

What about the usefulness of advertising as a way to change driver behaviour? Here’s what the Briefing Note (2) on street design standards has to say: “ Drivers drive according to the environment, including the width, and curvature of the road. Greater width, gentler curves, greater visibility lead to higher speeds, high-energy collisions and increased injury risk.” Driver behaviour at junctions is determined by the design of the junction, not by an ad on the side of a bus (if there’s evidence otherwise, let’s see it). The money spent on the bus campaign should have been directed at getting junction design that’s safer for people walking and cycling. And if the response to that is going to be that the funding for the ad campaign came out of a pot designated for “behaviour change”, getting designers to design good junctions is behaviour change too.

References

1. https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/corporate-report/2010/03/designing-streets-policy-statement-scotland/documents/0096540-pdf/0096540-pdf/govscot%3Adocument/0096540.pdf?forceDownload=true

2. https://www.udg.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/Briefing-Sheet-Street%20Design%20Standards%20-%20Published%202020-08.pdf

3. Glasgow Public Realm Design + Maintenance Guide Version 4.0 October 2020

https://www.glasgow.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=50702

If you haven’t caught our discussions so far you can catch up here:

and here:

We have now also had some discussions with Sustrans staff who have assured us that there will soon be a clear piece of published guidance on side streets, and now, just this week (six weeks after we emailed), we have had a response in from the council.

Further to your email dated 2^nd February, which I believe was subsequently discussed with Cllr Richardson, please find attached our response.
The Council’s primary design reference guide is Cycling by Design.  However, we are aware that this requires a refresh as it was introduced before we had many segregated cycle routes in Scotland.  Glasgow has been the pioneer in the installation of segregated cycle routes and also considers other design guidelines produced by TfL and Sustrans.  The concept designs for South City Way have been widely consulted on and a pilot was undertaken to show how the first section would look.  The current section is still under construction and all the lining and signing has not been completed for this section.
For our major cycle schemes we undertake a series of  Safety Audits where the designs are looked at by external safety auditors.  These are reviewed at:
·        Stage 1 – After preliminary design is complete
·        Stage 2 – After the detailed design is complete
·        Stage 3 – After Construction.  This is undertaken on site, where an external auditor, Police Scotland and members of the design team attend. The Audit Team will examine the scheme site during daylight and during the hours of darkness, so hazards particular to night operation can also be identified and the comments raised will also be highlighted to the audit team.  Any issues that have also been raised are also highlighted.
We will ensure that your comments are also highlighted as part of the Safety Audit review process and will consider your observations in a part of the design process in future schemes.
 
I trust this is of assistance.
 
Yours sincerely
 
Communication & Support Services
Neighbourhoods and Sustainability

We don’t feel that there is an awareness of the urgency we believe is required within this response and so have reiterated why.

Dear Communication and Support Services

Thank you for your response dated 18th March. There was no attachment to your email but we trust that the text below was the response you referred to.

We need to press on the urgency of a safety audit for the latest side street junctions on the South City Way, including those currently under construction. Presumably your procedures for major cycling schemes audits are new, and being that you admit that guidance in safely designing segregated cycling routes is lacking, we feel it is pressing that should safety be flagged up as an issue, as we and many of our members have done, that an urgent and intermediary safety audit is performed. It is clear that as it stands, there is going to be a collision at this junction soon, and we should be doing all that we can to prevent that. Not only that, but were this treated with the urgency we think it needs, a swift redesign that takes safety into account would prevent further danger being built into the rest of this major cycling scheme. We have after all, been promised that the SCW “will ensure safe cycling every inch of the way”. We also don’t believe that it is enough to leave the danger built in to SCW and only consider different designs for future schemes. If the audit outcomes are deemed as dangerous, could we suggest that the side streets have a lot of potential to be filtered from traffic.

We appreciate the limitations that come with the current Cycling by Design guide and believe that Sustrans are working on updated guidance for side streets. GoBike would encourage you to look further afield in the meantime though and would point out that while Glasgow certainly are indeed pioneering with regards to segregated cycle routes in Scotland, segregated cycling routes are most definitely not anything new in other nearby countries. Thank you also for considering our observations and links to other guides as a part of the future design process.

Can we please press again on the urgency of the need for an immediate safety audit and redesign. We are desperately aware that the safety of people on bikes is currently at risk on the South City Way and feel that a timely response that reflects the imminent danger is required.

It is clear that design guidance is desperately in need of a refresh. Not just from a safety perspective but also for the sake of other projects going into the ground. We are also finding other great new schemes are falling down in other areas such as the pedestrian crossing at the Avenues end at Charing Cross that we detailed in our last digest (section 3.3).

And it is also clear to us that if something dangerous is put into the ground, the danger needs to be rectified as a matter of priority. We hope that the council will hear our plea to look at this soon – we believe that the South City Way can create a wonderful space for cycling and want to ensure that it is fully safe and usable from the outset.

If you have any comments or issues with the side streets, please let the council know on sustainable.transport@glasgow.gov.uk . Our collective voice can help to add credence to the issue within the council.