4 News
LTT621 03 May - 16 May 2013
Lee Baker reports on the launch of the Get Britain Cycling report at the LTT-supported Cycle City Expo held in Birmingham last week
Fivefold budget increase called for to provide 10% of trips by bike CYCLING
by Lee Baker
A PARLIAMENTARY inquiry has urged the Prime Minister to get behind a national cycling action plan backed up with a fivefold rise in spending in England. The All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group says that a cycling budget of at least £10 per person per year is needed over several decades – compared to £2 in England outside the capital – if Britain is to reap the "massive economic benefits" enjoyed by Dutch cities. It concludes that Britain can by 2025 increase cycle use to 10% of all journeys from two per cent today. The report, written by Professor Phil Goodwin, says that there is "nothing in the nature of the British temperament which makes it impossible to see substantial double figures of mode share"; pointing out that cycling in the Netherlands showed a long-term decline as car ownership increased before this trend was reversed through pro-active policies. To achieve a similar shift in
Professor Phil Goodwin and Philip Darnton launching the report at Cycle City Expo in Birmingham last week
Britain, the report says that both higher budgets and better design are needed. It says the London mayor is already planning to increase spending to £14 per person per year and the Cycling Demonstration Towns spent £14£17 per person per year. The idea is that the extra spending would be made possible by re-prioritising existing transport budgets. The report recommends: substantial reallocations of road space, with segregated lanes on 40mph+ roads “important” and on 30mph roads “desirable” and on higher-speed routes vital; separate traffic signals for cyclists;
overhauling existing design guidance to reflect continental best practice; enforcement of driving or parking in mandatory cycle lanes and amending the law so driving that causes danger is not dismissed as 'carelessness'; and special highway maintenance policies for cycling facilities. The drive to increase the proportion of trips undertaken by bike – rising to 25% of all trips by 2050 – also requires leadership and so should be overseen by a Government national cycling champion responsible for delivering a cross-departmental cycling action plan, the cross-party com-
mittee concludes. Goodwin says in a foreword to the report that the transport profession of his generation "has grown up thinking that cycling, though worthy, is of small significance... we were wrong. In 2011 there were in total more peakperiod cyclists than cars crossing the Thames by six great bridges – an astonishing demonstration of the contribution already made by cycling to traffic flow in the city". Roger Geffen, policy & campaigns director at cycling lobby group CTC, said it was the most important week in cycling politics for 15 years. “We welcome this cross-party consensus on the value of cycling. We now want the same cross-party consensus on long-term investment in cycling that we have seen agreed in order to deliver HS2.” However Councillor James McKay, Birmingham’s cabinet member for green, safe and smart city, who opened the Cycle City Expo, told LTT: “I’d love a bigger cycling budget, but we haven’t got access to £20m a year.” The Cycle City Ambition bid could provide £10m (see below, left).
Cycle City Ambition bids in: Any city can become a Birmingham plans revolution Cycle City, says AECOM CYCLING
BIRMINGHAM CITY Council submitted a bid to the DfT this week for £17 million of the Cycle City Ambition grant to turn “a city built for the car” into a ‘cycle city’. Cycling in Birmingham has increased by 75% since 2005 but at 1.7% cycling’s modal share of journeys in the city remains at below the average for Britain of 2%. Councillor James McKay, told the Expo delegates: “It might not have computed, seeing the words ‘cycling’ and ‘Birmingham’ together. Think of Birmingham, you think of the spaghetti junction.” The city’s bid for £17 million follows Atkins’ drawing up of a cycling strategy for the city, which Adrian Lord, director at Atkins, said focused on tackling the lack of permeability for cyclists caused by one-way streets and road junctions. “There are roads where you need greater segregation, and some roads are wide enough to put in segregated facilities.”
Birmingham says with £22.9m, including match funding, it would deliver 115km of new cycling routes and improvements to 95km of existing routes, focusing on infrastructure within a 20-minute cycle time of the city centre. Chris Tunstall, Birmingham City Council’s interim director for sustainability, transport and partnerships, told LTT: “The message is, ‘if Birmingham can do this, any city can’.” The DfT said in guidance for the £30m grant that it expects to award this to up to three City Deal authorities; £20m to one larger city and the rest to two of the 20 smaller City Deal authorities (LTT 22 Feb). Birmingham will face competition from other first wave Core Cities including from Transport for Greater Manchester, which has bid for £20m for its ‘Velocity 2025’ strategy to build seven strategic ‘spokes’ or cycleways, segregated from traffic where possible, in order to increase cycling by 300% by 2025.
CYCLING
ANY CITY can become a cycling city but only if action is taken to increase the popularity of the bicycle as a mode of transport, according to AECOM. Mike Harris, landscape architect at AECOM, told delegates at Cycle City Expo how cities known for being car-dominated across the world were increasing cycling. “Portland, Oregon, is going gangbusters on building cycleways and has got eight per cent of people cycling. If a sprawling US city can do it, then a city like Birmingham here in the UK can do it. But people have to want to cycle.” Harris said attitudes to cycling had been turned around in the car-dominated city of Sydney in his native Australia. A ‘no excuses’ zone map showing the areas that were a 20-minute bike ride from the city centre produced by AECOM for the City of Sydney was used to promote cycling as a quicker, cheaper transport mode.
#cyclecityexpo John Dales
@johnstreetdales
Lilli Matson says TfL grappling with the conundrum of promoting cycling in the context of trad traffic modelling approaches. 25 Apr 13
James Gleave @jamesgleave1
@johnstreetdales strange, considering their own model predicts and has recorded reducing traffic levels. 25 Apr 13
John Dales
@johnstreetdales
@jamesgleave1 Yet Roads Task Force still seems to be believing DfT traffic growth forecasts, ignoring both history & peak car. 25 Apr 13
TransportXtra
@TransportXtra
Phil Goodwin says more of transport budget should go on cycling so there are no new demands on nation's finances. What will get the chop? 25 Apr 13
WandsLS
@WandsLS
@TransportXtra Makes sense to fund the best value for money schemes - so reallocate funds from road projects to walking & cycling… 25 Apr 13
Swanky Cyclist
@UrbaneCommuter
@WandsLS @TransportXtra Suggest SEMMMS for me, would ya? £290m for a short bit of dual cabbageway no one would miss. 25 Apr 13
Sprawling cities can become cycling cities: Mike Harris
Harris also referred to a ‘no losers’ approach to win residents support for new cycleways by not removing car parking spaces. Elsewhere at the conference, Carlton Reid, executive editor, Bikebiz, said that the UK could learn from past experience. “World-class cycling infrastruture” in the new town of Stevenage with end-to-end segregation had failed to promote cycling because the city “also made it convenient for motorists to get around”.
David Arditti
@VoleOSpeed
Matson chillingly tells us that the Treasury don’t understand the economic case for what TfL are doing. Battle for money. #cyclecityexpo 25 Apr 13
John Dales
@johnstreetdales
At #cyclecityexpo, @philippank says his oppo from another national paper
See video interviews with
TransportXtra.com/ltt
News 5
London’s cycling commissioner admits TfL infrastructure mistakes CYCLING
by Lee Baker
THE CYCLING Commissioner for London, Andrew Gilligan, has acknowledged that some Cycle Superhighway sections are “little more than blue paint” and they need to be upgraded or diverted to provide adequate facilities. Gilligan, speaking to LTT at the Cycle City Expo, echoed the criticism made of the superhighways by cyclists when they were first introduced (LTT 25 Sep 09). He acknowledged: “Not all the cycle infrastructure that’s been put in has been met with satisfaction from cyclists. A lot of the Cycle Superhighways in particular.” He said the problem was that they were on the Transport for London Road Network, which “has to fulfil so many purposes, they are compromised”. They would only remain on the TLRN if they can meet the criteria of “adequacy,” he said. “We will reroute some of them, with
Andrew Gilligan talks strategy with LTT’s Lee Baker
agreement from the boroughs.” He confided that he “would remove Cycle Superhighway Eight altogether if I could”. He was speaking as London TravelWatch raised concerns about the mayor’s cycling vision, including the loss of bus priority and conflict between cyclists and pedestrians accessing bus stops. Gilligan also revealed that he was seeking changes to the Cycle Superhighway Five as proposed, including diverting it away from the proposed route of Vauxhall
Bridge Road on the TLRN if an alternative can be found. He said the CS3 route was successful because it used borough roads. To implement the mayor’s cycling vision, “the main task will be getting political agreement from the roadowners,” he said. Gillian was confident that the boroughs would support new, diverted and extended Cycle Superhighways on their roads. Westminster City Council had been “incredibly good” with a new draft cycling strategy “more
ambitious than ours”. Gilligan told delegates that segregation was not always necessary, highlighting that the borough with the highest rates of cycling, Hackney, does not rely on this. He said that the fact that there had only been a 1% growth in cycling in 2012 compared to double digits the year before may have been down, in part, to “the all consuming focus on safety putting people off” despite the fact “it is far safer than it was.” The commissioner also said he wanted to “minimise” studies for schemes. “I do not want to see another CRISP (Cycle Route Implementation and Stakeholder Plan) survey in my life. We know where people want to cycle.” “It’s a political process,” he said. He was convincing “the Tory councillors who had never got on a bike in their life” of the need for schemes, he said, by telling them that if more people cycle, “they’ll have less competition for a parking space”.
Leeds cycle hub half full End cycling ‘design freeand making a loss for-all’ says Birmingham CYCLING
THE CYCLE hub at Leeds rail is making a loss, with capacity no higher than 50% at peak times, according to Evans Cycles, which runs the operation. Leeds CyclePoint, which can store 300 bikes, was opened in August 2010 with funding from Abellio. Mark Brown, head of Ride2Work at Evans Cycles, said that the operation had failed to achieve its aim of breaking even. Speaking at Cycle City, he said the hub’s income only just
covered rent and rates paid to Abellio. The hub – which offers cycle parking, hire, maintenance, servicing and sales – has two full-time members of staff. A third of customers cycling into Leeds were not rail users while there had been little demand for cycle hire, said Brown. “Leeds station gets 25 million passengers a year – that’s a lot of footfall. But the problem is most passengers are arriving rather than leaving.”
Tunnel closures legacy sought CYCLING
A BIRMINGHAM business district is to use this summer’s closure of the A38 tunnels to encourage cycling. Rod Black, associate, Mode Transport, told the Cycle City Expo that the Colmore Business District hopes to get a ten per cent reduction in car use during the planned closure of the Queensway tunnels for their refurbishment. The tunnels are being closed for six weeks instead
of more protracted night-time and weekend closures to reduce the cost (LTT 9 Nov 12). The district’s 35,000 employees are being encouraged to explore alternatives to car travel during the closures. A website promoting alternatives, brumtunnels.co.uk, is to be launched. Black said: “The Olympics showed what can be achieved by talking to businesses. We want a sustainable travel legacy impact from these closures.”
CYCLING
BIRMINGHAM CITY Council has urged an end to a cycling “design free-for all” in response to the Get Britain Cycling report recommendation for revised design guidance. Councillor James McKay, Birmingham cabinet member for green, safe and smart city, said: “You wouldn’t say ‘design a motorway however you want’. Why do we allow that for cycling infrastructure? It goes against the grain of Government thinking... but they need to get a grip.” Councillor McKay said he would “go further” than the Get Britain Cycling recommendation to prevent further funds being wasted on ineffective cycling infrastructure. The report recommends that the DfT revise existing design guidance to reflect “continental best practice for cycle-friendly design”. The local council’s call for national prescription was supported by consultants AECOM. Kate Morris, director, transportation, speaking to LTT at the Cycle City Expo, said: “Conformity of design provides a strong message
Councillor James McKay wants more prescription
to the user on the facilities they can expect wherever they cycle and provides the benchmark for developers as to the standards expected.” Roger Geffen, campaigns and policy director at CTC, also welcomed McKay’s intervention. “Local authorities themselves are not crying out to do things differently everywhere. They are saying ‘we want some consistency please’ on how you design different types of major junctions, different types of street. There are templates from which they could draw.”
LEE BAKER Comment
THE BUZZ at the Cycle City Expo event was tangible, with early 500 registered delegates all wanting a role in ‘getting Britain cycling’ The challenge, however, will be to translate this enthusiasm into concrete action. Cycling has come a long way, with transport professionals admitting their mistake at not taking it seriously and The Times campaigning hard on the issue. But much remains the same. The DfT is still wedded to appraisal methods that, factoring in delays to vehicular traffic, may not justify spending on segregated facilities on busy roads that the Get Britain Cycling report recommends. One answer is to reform the appraisals. Professor Phil Goodwin told me that, if health benefits are captured, “the BCRs for cycling schemes are very much greater that for many major infrastructure schemes, even using traditional appraisal methods”. Furthermore, not assuming “inexorable rises” in traffic are inevitable will also strengthen the case, he added. The other answer is to reduce the role of appraisals. Mike Harris, landscape architect, AECOM, said that in Copenhagen they do not work out the cost/benefit ratios of schemes. “They plan their networks based on logic,” Harris added. Andrew Gilligan, the London mayor’s cycling commissioner, meanwhile, told me that appraisals have “become reasons not to do things” and in addition dismissed the need for further surveys. The vision for a nation where cycling is a mainstream mode of transport seemed selfevident to delegates. But is it self-evident how to implement this, as the commissioner suggests? With a drive for standardised design as well, what role for the profession? Asked if there is a role for transport planners, Gilligan said: “We still need to model the traffic impacts of schemes carefully.” There is more to it than that, of course. The fact that the cycling commissioner is a journalist speaks of the need for the ‘softer’ skills of communication and persuasion required for implementation. Transport officers and consultants have a role in making that case too. lee.baker@landor.co.uk