My Continuing Adventures In Time & Space

Where did the last 15 years go? It's a question which has been playing on my mind a great deal for the last few months and now I am at the end of an event I have been waiting a long time for.

Friday was my last day working as a local authority engineer and this weekend feels like I have walked away from a massive storm. I am currently in a calm place as I have left so much stress behind but I am anticipating with some trepidation Monday morning as I start my first day working as a consulting engineer. The post has been created for me and so I hope I can measure up to the incredible faith that has been put in my abilities.

My second local authority stint has been incredibly rewarding and for better or worse, it has been the making of me as an engineer. I am one of those irritating people who have been fortunate to wander along in their careers with little direction and yet finding something good to do. This time has been no exception because I was introduced to my new company by someone I knew on social media and then met during the day job - they are owed some pints!

I'm also about to start my 25th year as a civil engineer which (with any luck when it comes to a sensible retirement age) means I'm over half way through my career. That also feels very weird. But, the next challenge awaits and the big news is that I will be specialising in walking and cycling design which has given me the most satisfaction in recent years.

Sadly, the job I have left just got too frustrating in recent times as I spent less time engineering more time servicing an increasingly bureaucratic system which had no time for active travel or anything remotely radical which didn't service the car-sick status-quo. It was time to move on, it just took a while to admit it.

My last actual piece of work was a report looking at an area of 1km radius which took in six schools and proposed a 20mph speed limit and filtering across the area which went to ward councillors who are looking to visit Waltham Forest, so I might have sown a seed for the future.

Last Thursday was my last cycle commute to work and the route I took is a metaphor for how far we have to go in the UK with just a short section of decent cycling provision bookended by shared paths and having to mix with traffic. I filmed by commute and I will leave you with a video of something I loved and hated in equal amounts, because it was not exactly Amsterdam, but it was a reliable journey time.

Open The Rotherhithe Tunnel To People

It's a London-centric post this week given the continuing controversy about Thames Crossings in East London.

We have had Sadiq Khan clash with Caroline Russell who asked the Mayor on Thursday why he is continuing with the Silvertown Tunnel which will lock the scheme in for the next Mayor and of course sits uncomfortably with climate change and London's chronic pollution problem;

Then on Friday, it was announced that work on the Canary Wharf to Rotherhithe walking and cycling bridge was being put on hold.

The bridge appears in the Mayor's Transport Strategy (MTS - see where I have circled in purple below), Walking Action Plan, Cycling Action Plan and the Draft London Plan.

The London Plan and the MTS are the key London development policies and so the bridge is (was) a very important strategic link supporting housing and employment growth both sides of the river.

TfL's Strategic Cycling Analysis recognises the crossing is needed (in terms of latent demand), so there is a compelling case in policy and demand terms for it. Personally, I think it's quite disgraceful that walking and cycling is not being taken as London's first priority, but then you'd have guessed that. Halting work is because of TfL's financial problems making it hard for the organisation to spend funding now developing the scheme, plus the cost of construction, whereas the Silvertown Tunnel is a private finance scheme which will be paid for through tolls later.

Current talk is for a ferry service to be developed, although details are vague and unless a ferry is free, runs 24/7 and is fully accessible to all types of cycle, it's simply not going to cut the same mustard as a fixed link would. The bridge's engineering is complex because of the need to maintain river navigation and its length, so yes, it is a significant investment for London.

Even a ferry service is going to be costly and it will take some years to develop because of the need to plan and build the terminals as well as procuring the ferries. A ferry service will also have significant revenue costs for its life which does make it ripe for charging which sends the wrong message.

So, what else can be done. Well, my immediate reaction is to repurpose the 111 year old Rotherhithe Tunnel which is essentially on a bit of a managed decline with a 20mph speed limit, a 2 tonne weight limit, a 2m height restriction and a 2m width restriction. The venerable tunnel was never designed for the punishing levels of motor traffic thrown at it over the years and so perhaps it could see its dotage as a crossing for people?

TfL is about to start work on Cycleway 4 which will connect Tower Bridge and Greenwich. Interestingly, the route goes through the Rotherhithe Roundabout which is the southern connection for the tunnel;

So, I'm thinking that a new cycleway is taken through the Rotherhithe Tunnel because where it pops up on the north side, it is close to Cycleway 3 (I'm using the new terminology) - in fact Cycleway 3 currently passes over the northern approach at St James's Gardens;

It wouldn't take much civil engineering to connect the Rotherhithe Link to CW3 with CW3 skirting the north of Canary Wharf. CW3 will be intersected by the north-south Hackney to the Isle of Dogs route which is being planned which also intersects with CW2. I think a map might help;

CW2 in green, CW3 in purple, CW4 in red, Hackney to Isle of Dogs in Orange and Rotherhithe Link in pink. There are some other routes in the area and I haven't shown the full lengths of the CW routes either.

So, what about the motor traffic? The DfT traffic data for the Rotherhithe Tunnel was 30,618 vehicles per day in 2018 (down from 37,520 in 2003 when it was busiest). Astonishingly, 142 brave souls a day cycle through because, yes, you are allowed to cycle and walk through the tunnel if you like to be gassed by fumes! Of the daily flow around 6,000 vehicles per day are light goods vehicles.

This is the rub, what to do with 30,000 vehicles? Perhaps a quid pro quo for the Silvertown Tunnel is that Rotherhithe is taken out of use and motor traffic has to use the new capacity to the east. Perhaps we need to accept busier roads in the area, although long term it is probable that there will be traffic evaporation as is usually the case. Perhaps we need to be bold and trial a closure for a few months and deploy some decent traffic monitoring.

Perhaps we could add an electric shuttle bus fleet to create a new public transport link that doesn't exist now, although the buses would have to be small and lightweight such as this type I saw in Deventer in the Netherlands;

We simply cannot continue as we are in this city and we have to start pushing private car trips out in a more radical way. If we don't have the funding for large infrastructure schemes, then we need to modernise what we have and that means walking and cycling first.

Traffic Signal Pie: The Long Wait

So this week, I was inspired by Brian Deegan to go and time how long it took to get a green man/ cycle at a 2-stage toucan crossing I use twice a day.

To be honest, it wasn't quite as bad as it might have been with a 45 second wait for the first half and a 25 second wait for the second half;

For those who are interested, the location is here. The interesting thing about the crossing is it was one of the things that enabled me to start cycling to work in 2011 because it just used to be a pair of dropped kerbs on each side;

The provision of a signalised crossing along with shared-path widening and the adding of a 2-stage toucan at another junction all worked to make my trip easier. It's all far from perfect, but it makes the journey possible. I digress.

The problem with my regular crossing is that the length of time it takes to get a green leads to a couple of scenarios because of the traffic flow on the road it crosses. On one side of the crossing, it's a bit harder to see the gap in traffic because of the speed of vehicles leaving the adjacent roundabout, but there is never slow moving traffic. 

On the other side, it's either absolutely deserted and so there is no need to wait for a green and sometimes it's pretty much stationary which leads to the quandary of crossing between two lines of traffic or push and wait for a green. Driver behaviour is variable with some leaving the crossing clear and some blocking it and with the risk of motorcyclists filtering between the two lanes. I often press the button and wait for a green so I am sure because it is often the case that one lane is moving and the other is not which means (depending where I am crossing from) that I am masked from drivers in the moving lane.

So, am I just a whinger? The journey usually takes a sedate 25 minutes and if it takes a couple of minutes to cross, so what? Am I more important than the drivers I am stopping to cross the road? The thing about traffic signals is that they are not a safety device, they are a traffic (in the widest sense) management tool. They are used to help people cross or join the main traffic flow whether on foot, cycle or in a car. They work if everyone obeys the rules, but the outcome can be catastrophic if someone doesn't (with the risk being higher from drivers of motor vehicles).

There is more detail in the guidance (LTN 2/95), but essentially, where traffic speeds are lower (85th percentile being under 35mph), then the green man/ cycle can be set to come in quickly (although the 20 to 30 seconds advice is still too long, it can and should be quicker). With higher traffic speeds, then the crossing will need speed detection.

On a 30mph road, needing speed detection admits there is a speeding issue and so speeding is rewarded by the crossing controller ensuring that approach speeds aren't too high. Speed detection can actually help reduce the time for a green man/ cycle of course when approach speeds are low and it is safe to bring in the crossing stage nice an early. Speed detection used to comprise of loops cut into the road and physically connected to the crossing controller which is very costly, but the technology is now allowing wireless detection which is far cheaper.

If we have the crossing connected to an area traffic control system (such as SCOOT), then waiting times might be even worse because the green man/ cycle is only coming in when it's not going to affect journey reliability time for drivers which is being monitored across an area. Certainly, my regular toucan is connected to SCOOT which is part of the reason it takes ages to get a green.

If someone is going to using a signalised crossing on a busy road, then the stream of drivers is going to be stopped at some point anyway, so wouldn't it make sense for the crossings to actually change quickly? the flip side of them not changing quickly is partly drivers seeing a red signal but nobody crossing (making red light jumping tempting) and partly people crossing because they are fed up with waiting and possibly not finding a safe gap (especially with children and older people having trouble assessing traffic speed).

It's also about respecting those travelling under their own steam and realising that their effort is significant in comparison to those driving. It's about time we started getting our priorities right.

Judd Street & Midland Road

Between helping out with design workshops at the London Cycling Campaign's "Campaigner's Conference" yesterday, I had time to nip out to look at the newly remodelled junction of Euston Road/ Judd Street & Midland Road in Camden.

So yes, another post from London, but it's not an area I know terribly well and the layout is something which can be copied (mostly). Euston Road is part of the A501 which itself is part of the Inner London Ring Road and so an important motor traffic route which in theory should be more useful than the adjacent areas for through traffic. In practice, it's less clear cut, but at least where it is met by Judd Street and Midland Road, things have changed.

Midland Road runs up the western side of St Pancras International station and forms part of the road network which serves the station and the wider area. It is an important location for taxis picking up people from the station, but it is now a part of a cycle route north to Camden Town which at one point itself connects to Royal College Street - in other words, a cycling grid is starting to form.

To the south, we have Judd Street which connects to Tavistock Place which is another part of the local cycling grid and so connecting the areas north and south of Euston Road opens up all sorts of possibility for utility cycling trips.

Before the current changes, Midland Road was a southbound one-way street which flared out to 4 traffic lanes approaching Euston Road and one simply couldn't use it to cycle north (below).

Judd Street was open to all classes of traffic, although one couldn't turn right onto Euston Road. From what I understand, it was pretty busy and it is notable that the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) has its London office near the junction.

The new layout for Midland Road provides one-way stepped cycle tracks for each direction which change to island-protected cycle tracks approaching Euston Road;

As is becoming frustratingly common with UK cycle tracks, we have a vertical upstand on the kerb between the cycle track and footway, although at least it is low enough not to be clipped by pedals;

The old taxi rank layout has been kept and so there is a curious southbound arrangement with taxis on the nearside in a taxi lane and a cycle track next to it. This is because passengers will be getting in and out of taxis - it probably makes sense for the location, although taxi drivers waiting to move along did tend to stand on the cycle track while chatting.

At the exit to the taxi rank, drivers give way to people cycling and they should be able to see people coming, although having a conflict point isn't ideal;

About half way along the street there is a large zebra crossing providing access to between the Francis Crick Institute and the station as well as a floating bus stop. As can be seen below, there is a bus stand, then the zebra crossing and in the distance the bus stop.

The bus stand is poorly positioned because when it is in use, a parked bus will obscure the approach to the crossing for drivers and my view is that it should be pulled much further back and the island between the taxi lane/ cycle track and main carriageway made wider to help slow drivers down.

The zebra crossing itself is extremely wide, although I am not that convinced it needs to be. There is a risk in my view that a driver approaching may be concentrating on the area closest to them and miss someone crossing at the far end. The crossing stripes are paved in light grey and dark grey paving blocks which for my mind simply doesn't provide enough contrast between the black and white normally associated with zebras. A sufficiently contrasting carriageway surface is OK for the black stripes, but the white stripes need to be white (below). In addition, there are no "tails" to the crossing to help visually impaired people walking along the footway locate the crossing.

The taxi lane and cycle tracks are also paved within the limits of the zebra crossing and although they are installed with a grout, I predict they will fail on the main running carriageway which takes bus traffic (below).

Personally, I'd have liked to see red, machine-laid asphalt cycle tracks and ordinary asphalt for motor traffic, although the taxi lane paved in the blocks might have been a good idea given the amount of diesel sticking to them which would have destroyed asphalt. Hybrid taxis cannot come quick enough. One other little touch on the taxi lane is some raised blocks to provide a bit of traffic calming (below).

My criticisms to one side, it is still a good scheme and even on a Saturday afternoon it was being used which is as good enough verdict for quality if you ask me!

Heading southbound on Midland Road, a sign (aimed at drivers) explains that the ahead movement is for cycle traffic;

Approaching Euston Road (below), the cycle track gains an island for protection and the level drops down to that of the adjacent carriageway;

As is now the norm, we get a full-sized cycle signal for people approaching the junction and a low-level signal for those at the stop line; the green for people cycling runs with the pedestrian crossings over Euston Road;

For cyclists turning left or right there is a stop line on Euston Road just after the junction to control the conflict with people crossing - the main desire will be between Midland Road and Judd Street, so it's a reasonable compromise; plus Euston Road is pretty hostile for cycling so only the fit and the brave will be turning off;

Across Euston Road, we have Judd Street which is essentially now a narrow little junction for cycling. The view below is from Judd Street looking north and you can just see a driver thinking they are on a cycle;

It would seem that the very clear signage isn't quite enough for some people (below) and it would be solved with a couple of fire-brigade flexible bollards or traffic cameras (which keeps easy access for all emergency vehicles). Mind you, the "no entry, except cycles" isn't the sign I'd have used as it is generally for contraflow cycling on one-way streets; the "no motor vehicles" sign would have been better.

The yellow lines in the photograph above aren't quite right, they should stop at the red lines (for Transport for London's red route on Euston Road) and not go across the cycles-only junction. But, it's a small point.

The traffic signals again have a full-sized and low level signal and for left and right turns, we have the same stop lines because cycles go with pedestrians crossing (as explained above).

The cycle green is quite short and many pedestrians crossing Euston Road will only be able to make half the crossing in a single stage because priority is given to Euston Road.

There is a pedestrian crossing over Judd Street (as there is over Midland Road), although people tended to cross when they wanted which is largely fine. There is an issue with the tactile paving in that RNIB wanted the standard red for controlled crossings after it was put in as light grey. Dark grey has been installed which gives some contrast, but being near RNIB's office I cannot understand why red wasn't used. 

The photograph above also shows a little cycle symbol with a right turn arrow. This is because right turns from Euston Road are two stage so one would pull off the main drag to wait by the cycle symbol before crossing ahead with the next green stage.

One issue which I have since been made aware of is that there is no left turn from Euston Road into Judd Street because because the traffic signals show ahead only and the green on Euston Road runs at the same time as the pedestrian crossing over Judd Street as can be seen from this still from footage shot by Sea of Change Film;

As you can see the main traffic signal and supplementary arrow is for the ahead movement (westbound on Euston Road) and this shows green at the same time as the pedestrian crossing over Judd Street (both circled green). The guy circled red is using the footway to turn left into Judd Street.

There is a need for the left turn and most sensible people will realise that they are disobeying the rules and do so carefully, but someone not behaving is at a high risk of hitting someone on the crossing using the green man. This needs looking at and will be tricky given how the signals are set up. It's the same on the other side where one cannot turn left on a cycle from Euston Road into Midland Road.

I'll leave you with a short video of the 2-stage right turn from Euston Road into Judd Street;

A-Road Engineering

I am probably stating the bleeding obvious, but the type of highway design one sees on trunk roads has no business going anywhere near a town centre.

For some reason, though, we see high-speed layouts plucked from a rural A-road and dumped in our urban places. The approach is partly a legacy from how people used to design urban roads, partly how casualty-reduction schemes are designed, partly because the wrong people are working on the wrong schemes and partly because of the reference materials for design.

Today, my family and I headed off to the coast and as usual, I couldn't switch my brain off from engineering (I don't even bother trying) and the A133 between Colchester and Clacton-on-Sea got me thinking. Look at this layout;

There is nothing unremarkable about this layout, it's standard. A National speed limit and sensibly, right turning drivers are separated out from those who will be travelling faster. Right turners complete their turn in two parts in a controlled way - move into the right turn lane and then when there is a gap, turn into the side road. The layout is popularly known as a "right turn pocket".

Guess what, we are not the only ones to do this, here's a similar type of road in the Netherlands;

It's a very similar layout to what we see in the UK and it follows the same principle of separating people moving at different speeds. The A133 goes right into Clacton, but we still see hints of the big A-road design approach;

Anyone familiar with the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges and Chapter 5 of the Traffic Signs Manual (below) will be familiar with this type of treatment;

The town section of the A133 shown above has been like it for years and while it echoes the rural A-road design, it's very much in an urban place and my gut feeling it is less about separating right turners from a high speed road design context, but probably more likely as a response to addressing right turning collisions.

This type of standard treatment is still taught on "road safety" courses and it is used everywhere. When someone relatively inexperienced has been put through a standard road safety course and been shown Chapter 5, I think it is pretty certain that this layout will be picked off the shelf to deal with right turning collisions. It is also used for traffic flow reasons to get the right turners out of the way of other drivers.

In the urban context, we have people walking and cycling. Notwithstanding the fact that if we have urban streets with high levels of traffic, we should be separating cycling; the right turn pocket makes it harder for cycling. For example, the lane width is being squeezed and with a right turning vehicle in the pocket or with refuge/ traffic islands, we get a pinch point for cyclists;

As you can see, when the right turn pocket is in use, a cyclist has to get through a long pinch point. The pedestrian crossing ahead is single stage and doesn't necessarily need the island.

We often do find pedestrian refuges associated with right turn pockets as they help define the space for the various traffic lanes, but they help people cross the road in two halves which creates a conflict between walking and cycling.

Turning right from side streets is also made harder as one has to now cross three lanes of traffic and in my example, right turns have been banned - probably because the right turn is is busy and right turns out would block the main road and there is actually a signalised alternative on a parallel street.

So what is my answer? Well, by all means, keep the A-road engineering out on the rural A-roads, but when we get into the urban realm, we need to change our approach. Putting walking and cycling to one side, a very good way of managing right turning conflicts is to use a combination of filtered permeability and traffic signals.

If we manage right turns into a filtered area with traffic signals, we can let drivers out of the same filtered area without controls. This works because losing the rat-running traffic actually means fewer people turning into the filtered area in the first place (so less chance of holding up other drivers) and with fewer drivers leaving the same area, less interactions with main road traffic;

The image above shows a couple of urban A-roads in green and residential streets in grey. The junction to the bottom right is a filtered cycles only access (to stop drivers avoiding the roundabout). The middle junction on the north-south road is signalised to manage right turns into the filtered estate and the other two junctions are no entry from the north-south road (with a cycles exception). As with many of our urban problems, we need to look at how the network is operating first and then design from there.