Spingburn Road Crash

A few weeks back, a video was doing the rounds showing a driver turning right into a petrol station into the path of an oncoming ambulance on Springburn Road, Glasgow.

As you might expect, there was rounded condemnation of the driver, a 90 year old man who was reported for traffic offences. Fortunately, nobody was seriously hurt according to the news reports. And that's it. The minor outrage cycle moves on. Another day another crash. What is almost never discussed though is the factors leading up to the incident and so this week, I thought it might be interesting to explore this more.

The video I saw was posted on Twitter by @joe_yer99 and it's from this, I have taken some stills to go through the incident. The vehicles involved are that driven by the 90 year old man circled in blue and the ambulance circled in red. The first image below shows the driver in the outside lane of two on the southbound side of Springburn Road. The ambulance is coming towards him in the outside lane of the northbound side and the car driver is about to turn right into the petrol station.

A split second later and the ambulance driver has seen what is happening and they try to move left to avoid the car. We don't know if the car driver has even seen the ambulance (below).

The car driver carries on with their right turn and the ambulance driver cannot quite get round him in the space left (below).

There is a collision and the ambulance is deflected into the petrol station forecourt (below).

The ambulance driver has no more control and hits a lighting column which collapses on impact (below);

If you watch the footage, you may conclude that on balance, the car driver probably didn't see the ambulance, but the ambulance driver saw the car and it was their actions of braking and trying to avoid the collision which probably led to the outcome where nobody was badly hurt. I'd also say the lighting column also helped to take out some of the energy of the crash.

We might hear of the outcome of any charges brought against the driver of the car, although unless you are particularly following the case, it's just going to be chalked up to the statistics. 

One of the things people were discussing was why the 90 year old man was driving in the first place. Well, we know nothing of the man's circumstances, but I can generalise by saying that many people have few transport options and driving may well be the only way that someone can retain their independence. We have developed a transport poor society where many people feel that owning a car is the only way they can get about and once they stop driving, they find it really hard to travel for even basic day to day essentials.

Of course, I'm interested in the road network and layout, so let's have a little look at those. The A803 Springburn Road starts at the junction with the M8 just north of Glasgow and runs north to Springburn about 2km north. To the south of the M8 the A803 immediately joins the A8 Castle Street - a city street; motorway to city centre in a very short distance; although it isn't all grade separated, it's a bit of a mixed bag. To the north of Springburn, the A803 carries on northeast for nearly 30km to the edge of Falkirk. 

It's fair to say that it's a reasonably strategic route, although from the Falkirk area, there is a parallel motorway network, so maybe not as strategic as other A-roads, although from Springburn, it is the main routes into the city. 

One of the key design features of Springburn Road where the incident took place is the single carriageway 2+2 lane arrangement. In other words, there are two traffic lanes in each direction with the directions separated by a centre line. This starts at the Colston Road junction and continues for nearly 1km south to around the location of the incident. 

Typical layout of Springburn Road

As you can see in the image above, it's a hostile place to walk and if you can't dash across the four lanes, you'll have to find one of the two pelican crossings on this section of the road. One saving grace is the lack of central reserve means they are single stage crossings. This does make me smile as generally, designers would be itching for a crossing this wide to be a two-stage staggered affair!

Just north of the petrol station there is some widening and a right turn lane into a small retail park and by the petrol station, there is the start of some central hatching. This is because within about 70 metres south of the petrol station entrance, the 2+2 single carriageway arrangement becomes a dual carriageway with a grade separated junction. It is at this change point that the speed limit for the road goes from 30mph to 40mph.

You can see in the image above the location of the incident. The car driver was turning right into an access beyond the petrol station sign. Looking from the other direction (below), you can just make out a break in the hatching which is an attempt to provide a right turn pocket of sorts.

The bus stop in the image above has a twin on the other side of the road and it is accessed by the housing on the right by a footbridge (below).

What we have in effect is the incident site being in a location within the transition from a street (wide and multi-lane as it is) and a road (the dual carriageway), something where the visual cues to drivers are quickly changing and inviting speeds to increase.

Requiring drivers to turn right on a layout like this creates two risks. First, having to move into the outside lane while slowing down in a live lane to position for a right turn risks shunts and following drivers in the outside lane swerving left (because there will always be someone speeding and not paying attention); and there there's the right turns across two lanes of traffic which risk almost head-on collisions with drivers in the oncoming outside lane and T-bone collisions from the oncoming inside lane.

Turning right out of side streets and accesses on this road means having to cross two lanes of traffic to get to the outside lane in the direction one wishes to go and three lanes to the inside lane. A sustainable safety approach would break down these movements into easy to deal with bites or perhaps prevent them from being possible. Of course, seeking to ban a right turn into a petrol station (and many other premises) would have people up in arms about loss of business and could face a legal challenge.

I also have to mention cycling. It's not a road which entices people to cycle and the turn turn issues are even more risky. Where the road turns in the dual carriageway, few people would even attempt to cycle into Glasgow city centre and so other routes would have to be followed.

For traffic flow, there is a count point about 100m north of the petrol station with recent counts as follows;

Interestingly, the flow of around 18k to 20k is towards the upper end of what one might expect on an urban single carriageway A-road with one lane in each direction. This does rather suggest that the road is significantly under-capacity in use.

In terms of injury collisions, I have had a look at the road between the dual carriageway and the Colston Road junction. Between 2005 and 2018 (the latest I could obtain), there were 42 collisions recorded with three being serious (the rest slight). Here's the breakdown;

There are no pedestrian flow figures from the count data (people are simply not counted in these surveys), but as usual, those walking, cycling and riding motorcycles are over-represented in the data.

The 2+2 layout without a central reserve is a classic example of capacity being squeezed out of a road leading to risky layouts - capacity over safety. In this case, the layout isn't justified by the current traffic flows, although there would of course be a risk of queues if we took out a lane in each direction as people left the dual carriageway and arrived at the Colston Road junction.

It seems to me that there is opportunity for change. Perhaps the Colston Road junction could be a CYCLOPS junction as part of works to create better walking and cycling in the wider Springburn area. Coming south, one could see a cycle track each way and right turn points within a landscaped buffer, and towards the petrol station, maybe shared paths as we lose direct frontages which connect to a wider network (or equally keeping separate walking and cycling space depending on flows of people walking and cycling). Alternatively, there is space for bus lanes in each direction, although these are also space-hungry and don't deal with right turning issues, just reduce the risks a little.

The image above is roughly the current layout at the petrol station access. The right turn lane is little more than a break in the hatching. The image below is one possible reconfiguration;

The reconfiguration would allow drivers to turn right into the petrol station, but they would have to turn left out (which may create issues for some people). By here, cycling would be on the western side of the road because of where likely routes go towards the city. Of course, there are lots of different ways to chop up this space.

What this does show is that while there are clearly human reasons for the crash I described at the start, there has to be a serious claim that the road environment has to carry a significant amount of blame for the incident. But we never seem to get the media lifting the lid of this aspect of crashes.

Update

With thanks to Bummer for pointing me in the direction of the Glasgow Motorway Archive which gives some more historic insight of a road which was part of a 1980s road "improvement" scheme - the Springburn Expressway.

#LDNCycleSafari Goes Solo: A Trip To Thamesmead - Part 2

Last week, I visited Thamesmead in southeast London, a place I worked in the late 1990s/ early 2000s. My cycle around the town ended at Southmere Lake and so this week, I continue the journey.

Most of what you saw last week was on the Greenwich side of Thamesmead whereas this week, I'm just over the border in Bexley. This split between the two boroughs has always added a layer of complexity with two planning departments and two highways departments which certainly had very different approaches during my time there.

This week, I start proceedings back at the huge junction of Eastern Way and Carlyle Road. The photograph below is looking west along Bazalgette Way with the Southern Outfall Sewer embankment to the right (carrying The Ridgeway path on the top).

If you go about 1km east from here, you will find yourself at Crossness Sewage Treatment Works which deals with a huge part of the southeast London's sewage. The complex also houses the Crossness Engines housed in the original Crossness Pumping Station which pumped effluent into the Thames as the tide ebbed (way before anyone was living in the area). The sewer and pumping station were built under the supervision of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, my civil engineering hero.

I went under the junction and turned south onto Harrow Manorway (well the residential street called the same running next to the elevated road). This area again has housing (mainly low rise) from different decades with that flanking the main road being more recent additions (below).

Then to the south, this road joins the main section of Harrow Manorway as it drops down from the elevated junction with Eastern Way. Harrow Manorway runs south to Abbey Wood, which has recently had it's railway station improved as part of the Crossrail project (more on that in a bit). The Bexley/ Greenwhich border runs down the middle of Harrow Manorway for much of its length, although parts are fully in Bexley. 

In joining the main part of Harrow Manorway, people cycling are invited to join a shared-use path via a dropped kerb. This practice makes access awkward for people on 3 or more wheels as the gradients tip you to the right as you turn. From here, I really couldn't work out what was going on. I wanted to carry on south, but the street is gradually being refitted to gain with-flow cycle tracks.

Very quickly I found myself apparently on a footway with a with-flow cycle track coming towards me (above). Given the need to access The Ridgeway to cross the sewer and Eastern Way to get to the northern parts of Thamesmead, it seems that this has been completely missed. The development to the left is on what was Binsey Walk and fronts Southmere Lake - this is the original part of Thamesmead being redeveloped.

Just beyond the bus stop you can see above is a controlled crossing currently being built (of what type we don't know yet). What I will say is that it's a 2-stage staggered affair with a narrow island. It is also paved with footway and carriageway materials which are very similar and will be very hard for some people to pick out the difference on (below). I guarantee that this carriageway paving will fail from HGV and bus loading.

The road here was always a dual carriageway coming south from the Eastern Way junction, but these days, the left lane is for buses. I crossed the road using the incomplete crossing and headed south on the southbound cycle track (below).

The break in the cycle track is for a site access to the development by Southmere Lake. The kerbnerds will have already realised that the the corduroy paving used to show the footway and cycle track sides are wrong, they should be ladder and tram paving respectively - this mistake is repeated everywhere.

A little further south and we see the general arrangement for the southbound side of the redeveloped Harrow Manorway. Footway, planted buffer, cycle track and then carriageway (with bus lane then traffic lane). On the face of it, having the buffer between the footway and cycle track is a very odd choice. Below is a sketch of the current layout.

Even though the bus lane adds some buffer to cyclists from general traffic, the obvious layout would have been to have the buffer between the cycle track and carriageway with a forgiving kerb between the footway and cycle track which I have shown below, including some tweaking of bus lane and general lane widths to give 2.3m wide cycle tracks (an extra 0.5m on the current 1.8m). This area is has a 20mph speed limit which should have given licence to the designers to really squeeze traffic lanes.

Of course, the northbound cycle track doesn't have a buffer, this is because the central reserve needs space to provide staggered crossings!

A little further south is a roundabout forming the junction with Yarnton Way and Eynsham Drive. Yarnton Way is a dual carriageway from the original Thamesmead development which used to have footbridges crossing it between parts of the development. The road used to have 2 general traffic lanes in each direction, but over the years Bexley has changed this with cycle lanes, hatched buffers and on-street parking. Surface level crossings have been provided and with the current redevelopment, the bridges are being removed.

At the western end of Yarnton Way are very different, there's a 20mph speed limit and the road has been reconfigured. The roundabout largely keeps its pre-redevelopment footprint. The southbound approach has the makings of another two stage controlled crossing. As you can see from the photograph below, the cycle track has a wall to the left (that's 0.5m of useable width gone) and the bus lane has ended to give a two-traffic lane approach to the roundabout.

From the layout, it's likely that the pedestrian crossing just north of the roundabout will mean a stop line for cycle traffic where this could have been floating. However, this is a minor issue compared to how cyclists deal with the roundabout. Essentially, northbound and southbound cycle traffic have to go right into the side roads to use parallel zebra crossings which are completely off the desire lines.

The photograph above shows the cycle track disappearing off to the left into Yarnton Way. The cycle logo and arrow into the cycle track is part of the cycle route from Eynsham Drive. In essence, Eynsham Drive has cyclists mixing with traffic approaching the roundabout. A dropped kerb is provided to get onto the cycle track, but the crossing of Harrow Manorway is via a shared crossing. The red arrow shows a dropped kerb which allows people to either leave the cycle track in favour of the carriageway if they fancy merging with traffic on the roundabout, or maybe its for people finding themselves on the roundabout needing to bail. These dropped kerbs appear on the other three "sides" of the roundabout.

Continuing my journey south across the Yarnton Way arm of the roundabout required something like an 80 metre diversion to cross Yarnton Way via a two-stage parallel zebra crossing with each stage being across two lanes of motor traffic. Just to make it even more challenging, the entire area is again paved in similar materials to the point where even the road markings are hard to see (below).

The photograph below looks back at Harrow Manorway to show how far I have had to divert;

At least I was cycling, imagine having to make this ridiculous diversion on foot, most people won't walk 40 metres to this crossing and back, they will cross on the edge of the roundabout in a position where drivers won't expect to see them. Given the roundabout's geometry which invites high speed entries and exits with the multi-lane approaches, the 20mph speed limit looks more like wishful thinking that engineering.

After crossing Yarnton Way, I headed back to the roundabout to carry on south. Again, the cycle track becomes the buffer to the planting areas. A white line is also noticeable on the edge of the cycle track. I don't know if this is aimed at drivers or cyclists, but with the latter, it does risk people thinking it a mandatory cycle lane which would lead them to hit the kerb upstand between the carriageway and cycle track.

Just south of the roundabout is a two-stage toucan crossing (for the Yarnton Way to Eynsham Drive movement (which probably means the other crossings in the area will be signalised on Harrow Manorway). 

This next section of Harrow Manorway has been widened from a single carriageway to a dual carriageway with the bus lane plus traffic lane approach to the north. The widening comes on the eastern side from land associated with redevelopment. The new layout does include floating bus stops which are pretty decently laid out.

Next we have a roundabout junction with Lensbury Way and a large Sainsbury's (built on the site of the old Thamesmead Town offices). The southbound cycling movement through the junction is a bit of a mess, but it looks like the road will be closed and redeveloped in the future as a stopping up order for this has already been made.

To the north of the roundabout the road goes back to it's original single carriageway layout penned in by the Sainsbury's and existing housing. The cycle track gives up just before Overton Road which I can only conclude is simply unfinished rather than having been designed given how people cycling have to merge with traffic in the junction (below).

For cycling, there's then a gap for about 90 metres before a mandatory cycle lane appears. Highway space is tight in the approach and maybe further redevelopment will help, but when you realise the cycle lane starts on a recently refurbished bridge over the railway here, you have to ask why a painted lane and not a cycle track (below)?

What is positive though is that the bridge here now has footways (below). Under the bridge, we have Abbey Wood station which, thanks to Crossrail, is now way more accessible. The top of the bridge has a pair of bus stops which previously used to be a very lonely place requiring people to go back to ground level. 

The footways make it easy to access the station which has an entrance on the bridge with lifts for a decent interchange point (below).

The top of the bridge used to have large bus shelters. The one on the southbound side has been retained and repurposed for cycle parking. A new toucan crossing has been provided on top of the bridge for easier access by foot and cycle to interchange (below).

Heading north back towards the Eastern Way junction, we have the cycle lane which turns into a cycle track outside the Sainsbury's with dropped kerb (a scheme dating back to the Sainsbury's being built) and a cycle track around the roundabout from the same time, although everything has been repaved and the cycle track has lost its former Greenwich green colour (below).

Of course, the crossing of the access to the supermarket is more shared-use path with awkward turns. Designed for easy driving access to and from the large undercroft car park rather than anything elese.

North again and we're back to the dual carriageway. There's no planting buffer on this side, but again, fairly good floating bus stops are provided (below).

The Yarnton Way/ Eynsham Drive roundabout is poor for walking and cycling with, although the diversion into Eynsham Drive is a bit less at 30 metres. As you can see in the photograph below, westbound cycle traffic is dropped into the carriageway at the start of the crossing exit zig-zags.

Back onto Harrow Manorway, one of the few site road junctions has been designed for cyclists dropped back to carriageway level and despite the expensive paving, pedestrians don't get a continuous footway (below at Godstow Road).

Finally, I arrived back where I started and I was given a choice. Choose left to be reintroduced to the carriageway with parked cars right in front of you and potentially drivers leaving the main road via a slip road or right into a mandatory cycle lane which drops into the bus lane which then ends before the huge roundabout above Eastern Way (below).

I chose left and headed back to The Ridgeway to cross north. I found this whole part of the trip quite depressing. Despite the huge amount of money which has obviously been invested, the walking and cycling infrastructure plays second fiddle to driving and the new layout addresses none of the complexities to get from North Thamesmead (unless it's by bus). Maybe walking to Abbey Wood is a little far, but it should certainly be possible from Thamesmead North.

I am not sure who has led on the design work, but both Greenwich and Bexley must be involved as highway authorities and there should be agreements between the two and the developers, including Peabody which controls much of the land. The roundabout at Yarnton Way and Eynsham Drive should have been a signalised junction - there would have been space for decent walking and cycling with bus priority and the gap to Abbey Wood station is just odd. Sadly, we have now baked this in for another generation.

Once over Eastern Way, I carried on north back towards the Thames and the river path/ Quietway 14, only pausing to look at the separation of traffic between the Manorway Green route to the Thames and Crossways (below).

It was great going back to have a nose around and for the various faults and issues created over the decades, it is still pretty easy to cycle around. There are four key things which really need sorting out though;

• Create the missing walking and link between Thamesmead West/ Gallions Reach Urban Village and the town centre;

• Redesign access between the two sides of The Ridgeway around Carlyle Way and Harrow Manorway. I am not quite sure where and what the form this should take, but the current arrangement is lonely and not accessible to all.

• A really good wayfinding strategy is needed to help people reconnect with the area by cycle - not just signs, but other ways to help people get a mental map going of the ways round.

• Investment in maintenance including removing barriers.

There are loads of other things than need doing, but for me, these could help revitalise the cycling networks. One thing which will remain glaring though is that the Thamesmead always was and still is very easy to drive around which will mean walking and cycling can never be fully realised. The area was pretty cut off from public transport from the start and even with Abbey Wood being a bit easier to access, it still is cut off. 

I'll leave you this week with the second video of my tour back around the place I have a soft spot for.

#LDNCycleSafari Goes Solo: A Trip To Thamesmead - Part 1

In the late 1990s/ early 2000s, I worked in Thamesmead, Southeast London. It is the place where I was exposed to all sorts of interesting construction. It is also the place where I worked on a project which helped me become a chartered civil engineer, so I will always have fond memories of the place.

I haven't been back since 2004, but on a chilly Good Friday, I made a pilgrimage back to Thamesmead to see what has changed in the intervening years as well as what was as I remembered it. In this week's post, I will be looking at some of the old and in next week's, I shall be looking at some of the new.

Thamesmead straddles the modern London boroughs of Greenwhich and Bexley, but there is a long history of human activity in the area. For a few hundred years, it was part of the Royal Arsenal which was established on the Plumstead and Erith marshes.

My stint in the area was working for Thamesmead Town Ltd, a company set up by the London Residuary Body which was responsible for the disposal of the assets of the Greater London Council (GLC) which fell victim to being abolished by the Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. I'll explain some of the engineering as I go on, but looking back I really do think that the loss of the GLC was a huge loss for London and the UK as a whole in terms of innovation. But that's a story in its own right.

Thamesmead is probably most famous for the GLC-era development of what was essentially a new town - The Town of Tomorrow. It was meant to be a modern development of high density housing, schools, communitry facilities, open spaces, water and everything else people needed. The development welcomed its first residents in 1968 and at the time, people were vetted to make sure they would be able to afford to live there (it was going to be quite exclusive). 

Changes in social housing policy and approach meant that the original vision was short lived and the new development became what was known as a "sink estate"; a pretty derogatory euphemism for a place and its people gradually starved of investment of both financially and socially. The original part of the development is also infamous as providing the backdrop to some of the scenes in Stanley Kubrick's disturbing dystopic 1971 film "Clockwork Orange"; itself based on Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel. In many ways, this was a watershed moment for this short-lived Utopian vision for a new town in London.

The photograph above is Southmere Lake. One of the scenes from A Clockwork Orange was filmed beyond the Lakeside building with the orange hoarding at Binsey Walk. The lake and Lakeside building were also the backdrop for the 2009 - 2013 TV show, Misfits. Everything here is now boarded up and being redeveloped. 

Thamesmead has probably got examples of housing from each decade after the 1960s and 70s. My turn of the 21st Century experience there saw a mixture of houses and flats being built, but Thamesmead Town was there to facilitate development by remediating industrial land and building core infrastructure including roads, sewers and canals. The old Royal Arsenal lands are contaminated with all sorts of nasty chemicals from explosives manufacture and ancillary services, including the wonderfully named "Blue Billy", a byproduct of gasworks. 

One of the key pieces of work I was involved with was ground remediation which was the removal of the top layer of contaminated soil and replacement with a water-permeable membrane and clean sand. One of my schemes was Meadowford Close where I oversaw the remediation process and one one occasion ended up getting the Metropolitan Police bomb squad out to check something we dug up. It turned out to be old Royal Arsenal ordnance, but inactive thank goodness! In fact, most of the nasty stuff dug up on the site were home-grown weapons of mass destruction.

I also got involved with the completion of the new roads, footways and cycle tracks. There is some interesting walking and cycling networks in Thamesmead which reflect their eras, but sadly they haven't really reached their potential. I also got involved in building sections of canal. Thamesmead is built on reclaimed marsh which is protected by a river wall, itself being part of the London flood defence system of which the Thames Barrier is part.

The photograph above was taken in May 2000 of the walking and cycling bridge between Delisle Road and New Acres Road over one of the newer sections of canal in the area south of Gallions Reach Park which was originally called Gallions Reach Urban Village. There's a spine cycleway along here, which unfortunately ends at Barnham Drive (as seen today, below) which should have continued east through the site of the Thames Gateway Bridge to connect up with routes to Thamesmead Town Centre (I'll come back to this later).

The town has a canal system which links a series of large lakes. As well as providing amenity (including sports on the lakes), open space and ecology, the system is vital for fluvial flood prevention - in other words, it's not the Thames which is the main issue, its the water coming from the upstream catchments. 

The water level in the lakes and canals are at the same level as the general groundwater and in a flood event, the levels rise and it's that rise over the whole area of the water courses which provide flood storage. The canals are only 610mm deep (2 feet) and so easy to walk through (although I seem to remember that Southmere Lake is twice that depth for boating - I can't remember the details of the others). Obviously the hydrology isn't without complexity, but the storage above the general water level does mean water seeps into the ground beyond, but far slower than it being pumped out.

From memory, the original GLC design for the system was for a 1 in 205 year storm event which was well ahead of its time with roots in work Bilham did in the 1930s. I can't quite remember which year, but there was some extensive flooding around Plumstead when I worked in the area with Thamesmead having the odd canal path with some puddling - that's how good the system is.

The original canals had concrete walls and bases (although not watertight). More recently (well, 20 years ago), the canal system was still engineered, but this time in a more naturalistic way. The photograph above from August 2002 was taken from the southern tump of the "Twin Tumps" canal looking out to what is now Waterside Close - you can see the very shallow shelf for marginal plants. A tump is a little hill and in the case of the Twin Tumps, they are old Royal Arsenal structures each of two C-shaped earth bunds with the smaller 'c' back to front overlapping the larger 'C'. This arrangement was for sending explosions from stored ordance up rather than out.

Depending on the tides in the Thames, water is either stored in the Thamesmead system or discharged into into the river via suices or pumps. Lake 4 Pumping Station is shown in the photograph below and uses 4 Archimedes screw pumps. Recently upgraded, it can apparently shift 2.4 tonnes of water a second!

The original parts of the development also had habitable rooms from first floor level and some of the more contemporary developments had townhouses without living accommodation at ground floor (just garages and utility rooms). This was a second line of defence from flooding. The original parts of the development also had above ground walkways connecting buildings and blocks away from traffic which perhaps added to some of the social and security issues which blighted the estate.

Thamesmead has a network of large dual carriageways which looking back are completely over-capacity and create severance issues. There have been some alterations with bus lanes and surface level crossings, but they both remain a barrier and make it easy to drive around the area. They are part of a wider and incomplete network of roads. 

For example, the Thames Gateway Bridge (a revised and descoped version of the originally planned East London River Crossing - ELRiC) was part of earlier plans for network of motorway-style roads across and around London with a link connecting the A406 North Circular, south to the A2, but the work never got beyond Thamesmead. 

Where the walkways were built for the original parts of the development, slightly later phases carried on with grade separation, but with walking and cycling being taken under the roads, often next to the canals.

The photograph above is on the edge of the town centre, taking walking, cycling and a canal under Central Way. You can see the stepped arrangement keeping walking and cycling separate and the view through the underpass. The wall to the left of the footway in the photograph below is a sealed section of canal wall because the route is lower than the water level in the canal. This arrangement really has a Dutch feel to it.

On the other side of the underpass, the design changes to something more 80s where the footway and cycle track end up at the same level (below). The 80s to 00s saw development of the walking and cycling network like this. The earlier sections simply have a different surface (block paving for walking, green asphalt for cycling) with later sections having a tactile block between the two. 

What I think has happened is the underpasses were built with the original main roads with connections made as development progressed through the years. Unfortunately, the original vision seems to have been lost going forward.

A bit further south along this route is Hutchins Road where there's a typical shared area junction for walking and cycling (above), but it also hints that the walking and cycling networks do operate independently of the driving network as the left and right options here go through areas that cars cannot.

The local cycling network could do with some investment be quite a lot of it is both showing its age and also that separated infrastructure does last a very long time and is not hammered by constant traffic. From the Hutchins Road junction, I chose to turn left to head east which takes one through an area of open space. There is a wide section of shared use, but then the separate and stepped infrastructure returns with a bridge over a canal and an underpass beneath Bentham Road. 

This underpass (above) also has a the canal running under, but the walking and cycling route is above water level. Bentham Road in this case is taken over the bridge on a long hump which means the vehicles make the effort not the people walking and cycling. Because the bridge is piled, the carriageway either side is susceptible to settlement and 20 years ago there was work to reconstruct the approaches.

A little further on and we reach a junction outside Hawksmoor School. However, this is no ordinary junction because it is a cycle track junction with adjacent stepped footways (below).

It's a wonderful thing to see - a wonderfully safe environment from which to access the school, although the paths will feel lonely at some times of the day and night not helped by the housing to the west of the school facing away from the walking and cycling network.

A little further west and there is at least a sports court to entice some activity and the route carries on following the canal (which eventually links to Southmere Lake. A little further on and the route becomes shared as is passes in front of a local shopping parade at Claridge Way (below).

From here, I threaded my way onto some local streets which isn't always easy because the wayfinding fails a bit. I was looking to head south towards Southmere Lake, but that requires crossing the Southern Outfall Sewer which crosses the area from west to east in an embankment which also carries a greenway known as the Ridgeway. Eventually I worked out that I needed to access Poplar Place and a shared path beyond - the access wasn't clear because of a recent bit of redevelopment which could have treated the path far better rather.

I was aiming for the junction of Eastern Way and Carlyle Road, a huge and over-engineered grade separated junction through which a shared path runs to connect wth the Ridgeway and the earliest part of the Thamesmead development to the south of the Southern Outfall Sewer. This route through the junction is an incredibly lonely place to be because it is so tucked away from housing. Threading my way up and south took me to a bridge crossing Eastern Way, but at a lower level than the junction. It's an impressive piece of period architecture and engineering from the early 1970s.

This sort of brings me full circle as I started talking about the earliest part of Thamesmead built around Southmere Lake and I'm nearly back there with the walking and cycling route. This part of the journey will continue in another post, but now I want to head back over to the newer parts of the development to the west of the town centre.

The Thames Gateway Bridge project saw a corridor of land reserved for the construction and operation of the project to the west of Thamesmead town centre. Once complete, the long term plan included the connection of the canal and road system from the western part of the town centre to the town centre itself with the area under the bridge becoming part of a local open space. The bridge was cancelled by Mayor Johnson in 2008 and so it simply isn't clear what will happen to this piece of land.

The photograph above was taken from the top of Gallions Hill, a constructed landmark feature of Gallions Reach Park. The wooded area just beyond the more formal park contains the Tripcock Wetlands, a project I led the design on and which I used as part of my chartership submission. This project uses bioremediation to treat waste water from an adjacent engineered land fill site used to contain contaminated soils arising from the wider development, thus reducing the need to shift materials. I put out a thread on this project on Twitter. 

Anyhow, it is over this undevelopable area that the bridge was meant to rise from around the Western Way/ Central Way junction (below) to connect with a junction at Royal Docks Road on the north side. The yellow lines on the image below show the approximately extent of an originally planned toll plaza. Had the bridge been built, then I guess technology would have rendered the plaza obsolete.

Curiously, part of the junction on the north side has been built. There is a southbound slip road from the A1020 Royal Docks Road which has an odd stub looking towards the southern side of the Thames (below).

The slip road is then carried over the A1020 on a bridge which is way too wide for a one-way slip road (below). This is where the Thames Gateway Bridge would have ended, but it now leaves a curious piece of 20th Century urban infrastructure.

What this all means is that the western side of Thamesmead out to the Royal Arsenal neighbourhood is now pretty cut off from the town centre. Driving is easy along Western Way and Central Way, but walking and cycling only really have the river path which is now part of Quietway 14. In fact, in order to access the town centre, one must travel east beyond the town centre itself and then circle back via Linton Mead and Central Way. 

The photograph above is part of Quietway 14 along the Thames, recently upgraded - it used to have a long gravel section around Tripcock Point. The route is a trip through history with sections of an earlier vintage (below). In fact, this is all part of a the Thames flood defences - some were made accessible when built and some have been open up in more recent years.

The stub of Barnham Drive I mentioned earlier has a doppleganger on the other side of the Thames Gateway Bridge Corridor at, well, Barnham Drive. In fact, in connecting up, there would also be a walking and cycling spur to Newmarsh Road which already provides a quiet and mainly traffic-free route out to the east - it would have been via another underpass at Central Way, but unfortunately it has been buried in favour of a toucan crossing. Getting this underpass back into use and connecting up the route was another project I worked on, including the link to Pitfield Crescent.

The photograph above is the Central Way underpass in June 2000, shortly after we opened it up and had the water pumped out.

So, we're back again to the west of the town centre and the Gallions Reach Urban Village part of Thamesmead. There are walking and cycling routes running along the canal (below) between the stub of Barnham Drive and the river in the east (connecting to Q14) at Princess Alice Way.

One final curiosity this week is the roundabout junction of Merbury Road/ Warepoint Drive/ Miles Drive in the heart of the Gallions Reach Urban Village part of the development. Warepoint Drive and one arm of Merbury Road have cycle tracks. They are only on one side, it's not clear that that are two-way and to be honest, the roads are pretty quiet (below).

Where they meet the roundabout, an annular cycle track is provided and when you cycle, you're kind of led to go around clockwise. For the eastbound direction from Warepoint drive, this means you end up crossing 3 arms of the roundabout to continue on Merbury Road where crossing one arm and going anti-clockwise might make more sense (and I assume anyone who does cycle here regularly on the track does this).

The crossing points have small refuges (too small for most users), but we have a compact roundabout with an annular cycle track and tight geometry for traffic. Like lots of place around Thamesmead, if you half close your eyes on a sunny day, you can almost see the Dutch design principles!

I shall leave you this week with a video of my ride around Thamesmead.