#LDNCycleSafari Goes Solo: Over To Enfield - Part 1

Although I worked some four day weeks over the summer and I combined the August bank holiday with an industry event (online), I haven't had a whole week off work since March, so it was nice to pack up the day-job laptop this week to put that right.

I had booked this week off some months back with a vague hope to get away with my family for a couple of days if things got better; but with the country still in the grip of the pandemic it just wasn't going to happen. As I'm not particularly enamoured to seek out the crowds for entertainment under normal circumstances, I had a look at the weather forecast and decided to get out on my cycle once again - a simple act which has been good for my own state of mind these past months.

I had been meaning to get over to the London Borough of Enfield to take a look at the work undertaken as part of their Mini-Holland project (rebadged as Cycle Enfield) for ages and so with a few days off and a nice day forecast, I headed out early on Monday morning for what was going to be the longest ride of 2020 at around 65km and the journey to my destination provided a bit of interest.

My route took me through lots of places I have already written about this year; the Moby Dick junction, the Redbridge LTNs (sadly now being ripped out), and the Redbridge and Green Man roundabouts - plenty of retracing my tracks. I arrived at Whipps Cross in Waltham Forest to the sun peaking above the suburbs and despite being early on a half-term day, the infrastructure was of course already in use because it forms part of a network;

For the most part, my trip had been mainly off-carriageway, but the smooth cycle tracks of Lea Bridge Road were a welcome respite from the shared-paths and side roads of the A12. I continued west to the Markhouse Road junction where I sneaked through a right turn in a single cycle green stage (it's a bit tight on the northwest corner). There was no time for a local safari, I had some distance to travel, so I carried on north and then west again along Forest Road between the reservoirs, pausing to get a photograph of the lightly protected cycle lanes.

Crossing the River Lea, Waltham Forest turned into Haringey as Forest Road turned into Ferry Lane. The Waltham Forest lightly protected cycle lanes had become cycle tracks before the border and it was nice to see them continue into Haringey;

The works at Ferry Lane consist of an ashphalt cycle track with a concrete flag footway. Both are at the same level with no demarcation other than the change in materials. The large kerb in the photograph above is a containment kerb being used to protect a substandard parapet on the bridge. At the junction with Bream Close, people walking and cycling have a large junction to cross which, despite having cycle logos, looks like somewhere that drivers are invited to dominate.

Apart from Bream Close, the layout is OK but blink and you'll miss it because you're dropped back into the carriageway into an advanced stop line at the junction with Jarrow Road/ Mill Mead Road. Sadly, this 250m of street is more of a farewell to Waltham Forest than a welcome to Haringey because between here and Enfield, there wasn't a whole lot to write home about. Here's a little video of the border country;

I found a bit of lightly protected cycle lane on CS1 at Philip Lane, but wands and mini-orcas are not intended to be used on advisory cycle lanes because drivers are allowed into them (and I find mini-orcas to be too small to be of much use);

I also found a bit of lightly protected cycle lane on the A109 Bounds Green Road;

However, it was another attempt to use light protection with advisory lanes and besides, the main junctions had no protection all. This sort of layout isn't going to get people flocking to cycle here;

A little further west, the advisory lanes had been widened up to 2 metres which at least is the desirable minimum width set out in LTN1/20 and shows that the space for cycling exists - this could very easily be upgraded to a mandatory cycle lane with wands or bolt down kerb units.

My trek across the east and north of London continued a little longer to Bounds Green Station where I turned into Brownlow Road and then stopped at Maidstone Road. Now, I was still in Haringey (although I didn't appreciate it at the time), but there was a tantalising sign of things to come;

I had reached the Bowes Low Traffic Neighbourhood - or Quieter Neighbourhood in the local interpretation. The Bowes Primary Area Quieter Neighbourhood (with the Bowes Primary School to the west) to give it its proper name is an area bounded by the A406 North Circular Road to the north and west, the Haringey boundary to the south and the A105 Green Lanes to the east. Here is a map of the scheme available on the council's website; 

Brownlow Road is not yet part of the scheme, but Enfield is currently in discussions with Transport for London and Haringey around making changes to Brownlow Road. The project itself has come from public engagement work undertaken in 2019, but accelerated using the experimental process as a response to Covid-19.

Maidstone Road has a modal filter at its eastern junction with Warwick Road which is just inside the Enfield boundary, thus giving residents in the Haringey side a stake in the LTN;

Enfield has used the common planters and bollards approach as we've seen in plenty of other places, although the planters are robustly fixed to the carriageway with additional bolt-down plastic kerb units to really try and resist the criminal damage we have seen in other LTN schemes;

Near the borough boundary on Warwick Road itself, there's another filter which is camera-enforced to allow emergency vehicle access to the area from the A109 Bounds Green Road, repurposing an existing width restriction;

I had a quick cycle around the western side of the scheme, pausing for a look at the filter at York Road where it meets Brownlow Road - the same kind of arrangement;

Enfield has cheekily used it's own version of the "road open" signs that have spread across the country on its planters to give a website link to the council's consultation hub and with some clear Enfield/ Streetspace branding.

I still had lots to see and so I didn't get around the whole LTN, but there isn't much else to add - if you carefully filter a set of residential streets, they will end up being very quiet, even with a regional motorway running nearby (because that's what the A406 essentially is). 

The scheme is nicely done, there has been lots of engagement, there is lots of information on the council's website (including a great set of FAQs) and the council is speaking with people to try and make it even better. Next, I headed north on Brownlow Road to have a quick look at another LTN, but that will be the starting point for next week's post.

The Moby Dick junction: You'll Have A Whale Of A Time (You Won't)

Continuing the theme of looking at things from my cycle, I thought that this week, we'd have a look at one of the most awful junctions I regularly travel through: The Moby Dick.

I mean, there's a huge amount of competition out there, but this ranks as one of the most people unfriendly messes in my corner of London. It's the junction of the A12 Eastern Avenue with the A1112 Whalebone Lane North. The A12 is a long-distance trunk road (and through road) which runs between the approach to the Blackwall Tunnel in East London and Lowestoft in Suffolk (broken by a section of the A14, south of Ipswich in Suffolk). The A1112 is also a through road which runs from just south of Hainault down to Becontree Heath, cutting through a number of neighbourhoods, including Chadwell Heath.

Whalebone Lane takes its name from a pair of whale bones which were used to mark a tollgate on the Romford Road for a couple of hundred of years before being moved to Whalebone House in Chadwell Heath in the 1930s. On the north side of the junction, there is a residential tower block called Highfield House and there is a photograph in the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham's archives which shows the Moby Dick junction in 1967;

As you can see, the junction is a large roundabout with the view south across the A12 towards Chadwell Heath. The squat building next to the roundabout is the Moby Dick pub which continues the whaling theme, although it was built in the 20th Century (I can't find out exactly when, but it appears on a 1963/64 map along with the roundabout). You can just see the subway on the right (the western side of the junction) which goes under the A12. Interestingly, a map from 1951 shows the roundabout as an oval with this section of the A12 dating back to the mid-1920s as the Romford-Ilford bypass.

The junction was signalised at some point in the late 20th Century - I've had a dig around and I can't find when, but because I've known the junction as a driver since the early 1990s, it will be either the 1970s or 1980s!

The modern junction (well, 40 to 50 years old) is vast, with dedicated left turn slip roads from each arm, 3 lanes on each approach and exit of the A12 arms, separate right turn lanes from the A12 in each direction and 3 lanes on each Whalebone Lane North approach.

For walking, there's the subway under the western side of the A12 through which cycling is banned and we have the obligatory staggered barriers to defeat mobility scooter users.

The subway itself is narrow and has a minimum headroom. With the poor visibility at the portals, the level of social safety in this 1960s relic is especially poor.

Other than that, there is no other help for people walking and cycling to cross. Not even dropped kerbs through the junction. On the north side of the A12, there isn't a footway, other than a short section feeding a bus stop. 

The south side has a shared-use path on the eastern side of the junction, whereas on the western side of the junction your guess is as good as mine, but I at least will cycle on the path rather than mix with 50mph traffic regardless of the actual designation.

The photograph above is on the south side of the junction looking west over towards the Moby Dick pub. This is the desire line for people walking and cycling west, except there is no help to cross and you can see the crash barrier on in the distance (protecting the subway) which means you couldn't cross here anyway. The first opportunity to cross is just south of the junction, but this means dashing across traffic leaving the junction and multiple lanes joining. The photograph below is this first crossing opportunity where the crash barrier ends.

The video below shows me crossing the junction from west to east at this location where I have to find gaps in traffic and use the traffic islands for protection.

The first formal crossing of Whalebone Lane is some 285m south of where I took this photograph which is about a 7 minute walk there and back or for someone cycling, you could drop into the carriageway and cycle south, then turn right into the adjacent residential estate and then cycle north to pick up East Road and then Warren Terrace, the latter being a filtered service road running parallel to the A12 (below), although the first couple of side streets (or through the pub's car park) means a right turn across two lanes of oncoming traffic.

The filter on Warren Terrace to the west of the

Moby Dick junction. Often useless as it's regularly

abused by people blocking it with their cars.

If you are cycling south, there is a dropped kerb to join Whalebone Lane North from the shared-use path about 120m south of where I took the photograph above with a twin on the other side for people cycling north. Of course, if you are cycling north you can't cross at the junction to head east on the shared-use path.

The photograph above is me standing on the southbound dropped kerb into Whalebone Lane North and the photograph below is the view across the road to the northbound dropped kerb for the transition from carriageway to shared-use path. In theory, someone on a cycle could cross the road here, but it's three lanes of traffic (two of which are northbound towards the junction).

Whalebone Lane North is part of the (now largely unsupported) London Cycling Network (route 57) which connects Dagenham Dock station to the south with Hainault Country Park to the north, although I would say none of the roads on the route are safe for mass cycling, other than maybe the patchwork of cycle tracks at the northern end. In terms of road space, driving is put way above walking and cycling.

What we have here is nearly a century of failure to think about anyone other than people driving, whether that was the original oval roundabout, the round roundabout, the dingy subway, or the signalisation of the junction in more recent times. Transport for London has been in charge of the junction for 20 years of that time and yet nothing has changed.

Even in the fading light of Autumn, there are people

around trying to cross the southern arm of the junction.

In terms of the technicalities of helping people to cross, the A12 arms would be challenging without some major kerb realignments to provide refuge space within the junction - as a trunk road, a single stage crossing is really not going to be taken seriously in the UK. The crossing of Whalebone Lane North is a different matter and it could be done with relative ease.

The image above shows three toucan crossings. The crossings on the slip roads are standalone and would simply operate independently and in many cases, people would just crossing in a traffic gap. The central crossing would operate when the A12 traffic was in operation (walk with traffic as it is known), but when there is no right turning traffic from the A12. The little orange area on the left is a small bridge over the subway ramp.

The way the junction is currently set up has a stage where westbound A12 traffic runs, including the right turn for drivers heading north. The next stage has the right turns stopping and the eastbound A12 running. This should be a decent gap within which to run the crossing (subject to design of course). The next stage has the westbound A12 stopping with the eastbound continuing with the right turn for southbound drivers coming in.

A Mayoral Question was asked by Umesh Desai AM in January of this year regarding the ability of people to cross Whalebone Lane North at the junction. TfL's answer maybe has a glimmer of hope, but not much;

Transport for London (TfL) is aware of the severance issues posed by this junction, and is already working with the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham to improve north-south accessibility for cyclists across the A12 between Marks Gate and Chadwell Heath. While there are no existing plans for new signalised crossings over Whalebone Lane North, I have asked TfL to look at whether crossings might be feasible as part of its Healthy Streets investment programme.

Of course with Covid hitting TfL's finances, it's doubtful whether this will ever become a priority in the short to medium term. It's not an isolated site because many of the A12 side roads are hard to cross because they lack walking/ cycling signals. But it's one of the worst and I bet there are hundreds like this all over the UK. We always seem to have money for expanding main road networks, yet things like the basic ability to cross a road simply doesn't register.

More Low Traffic Suburbs

It's simply wonderful to see Low Traffic Neighbourhoods spreading across the UK, although at least in my part of the world, I wish I did't have to cycle quite to far to find one. Hot on the heels of the LTNs in Redbridge starting to be rolled out, another interesting scheme is running.

In the first cross-authority scheme I am aware of (please let me know if I am wrong here), the London Boroughs of Newham and Waltham Forest have joined forces to create two new LTNs straddling their boundary. The Maryland and Odessa LTNs remove the ability for drivers to cut through a large residential areas which contains some nice suprises.

As with my trip through Redbridge's schemes, these new LTNs actually make Quiteway 6 nice to use and on this side of the A406 North Circular Road, it significantly improves its utility for both short local trips and longer distances for people wanting to head further east and west. Of course, being partly in Waltham Forest, there is now more opportunity for access by cycle to the north and vice versa. One issue which still remains is the Q6 route is not signed, an issue I noted back in June.

This isn't a Covid-related project, it has been in the planning for well over a year, but the pandemic has seen the prioritisation of Transport for London's Street Space programme which has funded this project in the immediate term with the project going live at the end of the Summer using the experimental process.

The image below is from the consultation website set up for the project which creates the Marylane LTN in the west (to the north of Maryland Crossrail station) and a larger area, Odessa, in the east.

To the south, both LTNs are bounded by Forest Lane (which connects the A114 Woodgrange Road (which connects to the A12 at the Green Man roundabout much further north) and the A118 Romford Road (via Grove Road). To the north, we have Cann Hall Road and Crownfield Road (which perform a distributor function). 

To the east, there is the A114 Woodgrange Road itself (with a section of the A114 Woodford road) and to the west, we have the A112 Leyton Road. Between the two areas, Leytonstone Road runs north to south. The eastern boundary is a little less defined as there is already a little bit of filtering there, with Dames Road running north-south through the edge (it's a bus route).

The boundary between the two boroughs runs along the very northern edge of the Maryland LTN and, maybe, through the northern third of Odessa. The cooperation was vital to create a logical scheme and for the user, they frankly don't really care who is in charge of the streets as the walk and roll through them. The other point of note is that in many cases, the filters are within the LTNs rather than on the edge which allows drivers to enter and exit without having to perform three point turns (the reversing part of which is a safety risk) - this isn't the case everywhere because of local contexts.

Wonderfully, Waltham Forest is planning a third and fourth LTN in the area to the north of these two which nicely fill in a gap which wasn't covered by the borough's original Mini-Holland project - the South Leytonstone project.

My entrance to the area came from the east via Capel Road (part of Q6) which has recently had a new cycle track opened at it western end which really makes a welcome change from the eastern end of the street where you have to mix with traffic and parked vehicles and it was nice to see families out and about using it (below);

Crossing Woodford Road using the parallel zebra crossing into Brownlow Road isn't great because the interface between the Capel Road cycle track and the approach to the crossing is via a kerb which really isn't flush (below_; I also found that both on my outbound and homeward legs of my trip, drivers really didn't want to stop. You've also got to swing across the junction of Browlow Road with Woodford Road which is an awkward layout.

Beyond the filter between Brownlow Road and Anna Neagle Close, there's Dames Road and after crossing it into Bignold Road, I was in one of the traffic cells of the Odessa LTN. The first filter I saw was on Station Road, just south of the junction with Clinton Road (below);

It's the now familiar timber planter and in this case the central bollard is for emergency access. The "no motor vehicles" traffic signs are cleverly fixed into the planters which means no additional footway clutter. The next one I saw was on Field Road, just north of Dean Street (below) which was an all planter affair;

This is a great location because it has made the area around a cluster of shops lovely and quiet - this is ripe for some public realm improvements assuming the scheme stays. Dean Street is a narrow residential street with one-way for motor traffic and two-way for cycling which keeps it all nice and permeable for active travel. Next was Odessa Road, north of Cemetary Road with planters and emergency access bollards (below);

A little further north on Odessa Road, I found another filter which is on the Waltham Forest side, just north of the junction with Huddlestone Road. This time, the filter was a couple of planters with the restriction enforced by camera (below). I assume this is for emergency access because just beyond is a different traffic cell and an series of streets subject existing to one-way control.

This cell at the northern limit of the scheme is really quite annoying because I wanted to head west, but the next two side streets before Cann Hall Road are one-way east. Rather than backtracking, I went to Cann Hall Road and turned west. I think Waltham Forest needs to review this and either make the streets 2-way for all traffic or 2-way for cycling. 

Cann Hall Road was actually very quiet for a Saturday morning and the Mini-Holland continuous footway treatments had made it to the south of the borough (below);

Back into the western part of Odessa was another cell with a much larger filter in Blenheim Road between Ramsey Road and Borthwick Road and my first spot of a road open to people sign (below);

To the south of the filter, the streets don't connect with roads, just a series of existing alleyway paths which aren't suitable for cycling. I went through and found Janson Road where I headed back east and zig-zagged to Ash Road, just south of Buxton Road (below);

I then turned into Buxton Road and headed west again. Buxton Road is one-way for general traffic and 2-way for cycle traffic. The last time I was here (as this is the unsigned Q6 route) I wrote;

The route does pass Maryland Primary School which is useful, but I really cannot see why the one-way is necessary - I can see a safety issue with drivers knowing they don't have other drivers coming towards them. The wider area needs filtering in my view.

Well, it's certainly filtered now, although if the LTN stays, the street could revert back to two-way for all traffic. At the western end of Buxton Road, the Q6 road crosses Leytonstone Road on a parallel zebra crossing (which again, some drivers didn't fancy stopping at) into Henniker Road and the Maryland LTN. The photograph below shows the eastern end of Henniker Road looking back over the crossing to Buxton Road.

I cycled west along Henniker Road and then turned off the Q6 route into Community Road and left again into Maryland Road and another filter. This one has an emergency access bollard (below);

Just east of Falmouth Street, Maryland Road becomes one-way for general traffic heading east with cycling remaining 2-way. At the end of Maryland Road it was a case of finding a gap in the traffic on Leytonstone Road to cross into Bow Street and the last filter of the day marking a return to the Odessa side of the scheme (below - looking back at Leytonstone Road);

This is another small traffic cell which essentially cuts out the junction of Leytonstone Road and Forest Lane, the latter of which I turned left onto in order to start my trundle back east and home. Forest Lane runs north of the mainline railway corridor (Crossrail and Greater Anglia). It's a soulless place to cycle with it's speed cushions and the entire southern side fronted by a concrete plank fence topped with barbed wire to keep people off the railway - it wasn't busy with traffic which was a small mercy.

I didn't get round to all of the filters, but the the cells I cycled through were largely traffic-free. I did see plenty of people out walking (certainly the Waltham Forest experience has been that LTNs are good for walking) and a few people cycling around. Even the main road I cycled on weren't particularly busy, although when I left the area just before 10:00, I guess it was still quite early for some people.

The one think I did notice (even more than I did with the Redbridge schemes) was just how many of the streets had been traffic calmed with road humps. I have had a quick look and I reckon that there are over 150 humps across the two LTNs with maybe 10% being speed tables (across whole junctions). 

It's hard to estimate how much they all would have cost, but with them, the weight limits on many side streets (to stop lorry drivers cutting through), other bits of traffic calming and the various one-way schemes must surely outstrip the cost of the LTNs by many, many times. And yet all of this is essentially a failure when measured against the impact of an extensive filtering scheme.

The final interesting thing about this scheme is that because the experimental process is being used, additional filters are being added to the LTNs based on initial feedback. This is a great example of the process in action and I really hope the scheme gets the public support it deserves.

I'll leave you with a video of the scheme;

Seeking Refuge

Pedestrian refuges can be a bit Marmite to some people, but they remain a useful tool in our streets toolbox and if used appropriately they can be useful from a sustainable safety point of view, as well as improving subjective safety for people on foot.

In legislative terms, refuges are permitted as "safety provisions" and are authorised under S68(1) of the Highways Act 1980;

A highway authority may, in relation to a highway maintainable at the public expense by them which consists of or comprises a made-up carriageway, construct and maintain works in that carriageway for providing places of refuge for the protection of pedestrians crossing the carriageway.

In the practical sense, the design and materials to be used in constructing refuges are not universally set out, but if we are to ensure that they are fully accessible, then as a minimum, we should be seeing dropped kerbs being provided on the footways either side of them as well as the refuges themselves (either dropped kerbs, or more commonly the pedestrian area being flush with the carriageway) along with the correct style of tactile paving being used.

The layout most often seen around the UK uses two islands separated by a gap into which tactile paving is laid (although not always as you'll see below) and where people stand while waiting to negotiate the next crossing stage. The photograph below shows the typical arrangement although in this case it's a shared-use path crossing.

The correct choice of tactile paving will rely on the crossing circumstances, but the general requirements are set out in the national guidance which is for a buff blister paving for uncontrolled situations and red blister paving for controlled situations (zebra crossings and signalised crossings with a green man).

With controlled crossings, care should be taken when using tactile paving. Zebra crossings with a refuge are treated as two separate crossings legally and so (red) tactile paving is required on the refuge as shown on the side road zebra crossing in the photograph below.

Where the refuge is being used within a signalised situation with a green man (crossing or junction), then tactile paving should not be used on the refuge as the crossing will be single stage under signals as shown on the photograph below. The push buttons you can see are simply there for anyone who wants to cross in a traffic gap or gets caught and needs help for the second half. Crossing on the green man should be long enough to cross in one stage.

Of course, if we really want to be pedantic, we could say that the example above is not a pedestrian refuge, it is a space protected by two traffic islands which are primarily there to protect the traffic signals. Of course, it would be ignoble of me to be quite that pedantic.

If there is no green man within a signalised arrangement (which will be a junction), then tactile paving is required (but not red) because this is treated as an uncontrolled crossing point. The photograph below shows this situation, although the designer chose light grey tactile paving rather than standard buff.

One other feature about the use of tactile paving which is worth mentioning is that on wide refuges, we don't place it over the whole crossing area. For a refuge greater than 2m in depth (from the point of view of a person crossing), we actually provide two strips 800mm deep. The guidance doesn't explain why, but maybe it's about limiting the amount of blister paving which can be uncomfortable for some people to walk on or to explain to visually impaired people that the refuge is a larger size. 800mm is used so people don't step over the line of tactiles.

Of course, the next question is when is a refuge large enough to no longer be a refuge? Well, there's no firm figure, but I would say once we get to about 4m, then we can probably start talking and pedestrian islands such as this one over Hampstead Road at its junction with Euston Road in Central London which is about 5.7m wide;

In this case, it's definitely a pedestrian island because it comprises two distinct and separately controlled signalised crossings. Of course this could technically mean that a zebra crossing with a large refuge is actually a pedestrian island. Sometimes we even get a multiway crossing which definitely launches from a pedestrian island such as this three-way arrangement.

Actually, it probably doesn't matter too much. The sustainable safety point is that refuges help people cross a road in more than one part and if used appropriately, this means only crossing one traffic direction and one traffic lane at a time so someone is not having to think too much about traffic from two directions. 

The implication of this is that pedestrian refuges should be at least 2m deep (from the point of view of someone crossing) so that people with buggies or pushing a wheelchair can fully fit. Of course, many  pedestrian refuges are less than 2m deep and even down to 1.2m (the operational minimum to add keep left arrow bollards which are not too close to a kerb); but this won't be enough in many cases in terms of providing enough protection. 

This will be a judgement call for the designer, but perhaps we should be moving to a zebra crossing as a solution (but cost often plays a part in the consideration). 

The photograph above shows an example of a shallow crossing depth. Maybe this would not feel safe without slow moving traffic, but if you were crossing from right to left here on a straight through zebra crossing rather than a pedestrian refuge like this, would you be confident that drivers coming the other way would see you and stop? Context is everything and as a rule of thumb, I would be wary of providing pedestrian refuges where traffic speeds are over 35mph and where there are heavy traffic flows (OK, heavy is subjective).

It's because of the risk of being "masked" that I would be very wary about using pedestrian refuges where people have to cross more than one lane to get to them. If one of the lanes has slow moving or stationary traffic, then someone being invited to cross by a driver may not be able to see or be seen by other drivers in a moving lane. The photograph below has a single lane to cross in the first half, but the second half is a free for all for drivers and really hard to cross;

The photograph below shows just how awful it is. Imaging trying to cross here with a child in a buggy with some slow moving traffic, but others cutting through on the far side (left hand side on the image below);

The example below has two lanes to cross on each side of the refuge. You can see how slow moving traffic in one lane might mask someone. On the right hand side of the photograph, two lanes need to be crossed with traffic leaving a roundabout at speed.

In terms of materials, most pedestrian refuges will be constructed from standard concrete kerbs and concrete tactile paving. I prefer to use concrete infill rather than asphalt because the lighter colour of the concrete helps make the pedestrian refuge a little more conspicuous to drivers (light coloured block paving does the same job). 

I would also use keep left arrow bollards. There are regulations on when the keep left arrow sign should be lit, but the use of internally illuminated bollards can help spill a little light onto the feature. Keep left arrows are not a legal requirement, but in most cases, they are a sensible addition. 

Some older refuges are formed with steel "D rings" (above) which are bolted to the carriageway and filled with concrete or asphalt. Because pedestrian refuges are in the middle of the road and some drivers cannot manage to pass them without hitting them, the metal ends up getting bent which means sharp edges for tyres (below). In my experience, you could guarantee it would be a bus driver who managed to find a sharp edge with their tyre. Of course, some layouts are very tight and the odd scrape is inevitable.

There are manufacturers who produce bolt-down rubber island units and together with stick down tactile paving, the refuges can be installed fairly quickly. Of course, you'll still need to installed dropped kerbs and tactile paving on each footway.

One other issue to mention is that of mixing people cycling with pedestrian refuges. As you can see in this clip, there isn't really enough space for drivers to overtake cyclists passing this pedestrian refuge and so people cycling just end up being cut up.

Even if the pedestrian refuge were to be wider (and the lane narrower) to make the lack of space absolutely clear, some drivers will still try to cut in. The issue in general here is that if a road is busy enough to warrant a refuge to help people cross, then people cycling should probably be protected physically. 

LTN 1/20 Cycle Infrastructure Design suggests that lane widths of between 3.1m and 3.9m should be avoided, but I would want to see more (especially where there are lots of HGVs and buses) to give people cycling plenty of space. Of course this then means that people on foot have a longer crossing distance. 

The other issue to watch out for is where cycle traffic is going to be filtering in a lane along the inside of slow moving traffic. Like the masking issue mentioned above, there is a risk of someone invited to cross by a driver masking an oncoming cyclist. The person cycling has a responsibility to watch for people walking, but perhaps a controlled crossing might be of help in this situation;

Finally, if a refuge is to be provided for people cycling to cross a road, then it should be at least 3m in depth (from the point of view of the rider) so that all kinds of cycle can cross. If the refuge is for cycles only or shared, then give way markings should be provided unless it's a parallel zebra crossing (below) or a signalised arrangement;

I'll leave you this week with a refuge in Malmö, Sweden. It's actually where a walking and cycling route crosses a distributor road, so don't let the road cyclist fool you. 

It's a great design as the road layout forces people driving to slow down and makes crossing in two parts really easy. I might even go as far as saying, it's a baron among refuges.