Going Dutch

The LCC’s new “Go Dutch” campaign is all about getting cyclists the space they require on the roads to keep safe. But should we copy the Dutch?

The Dutch appear to be decades ahead of us in terms of cycling and they made drastic changes to their towns. They demolished buildings*, created laws and ultimately changed mentalities. The Netherlands was certainly not built-in a day.

I can’t see buildings coming down to make roads bigger let alone cycle ways in London and certainly not with our current modal share. Whilst our commuting modal share is at points very high, over all, our modal share is still below 2%. Can we take space from other parts of our road network? I can’t see it personally, pavements are small enough as it is, the roads can barely cope with the traffic volumes we have and the bus lanes are already a god send for cyclists, even if you do have to share them with taxi drivers.

Before anything can happen to change cycling in this country, we need changes in the law and changes in mentality, these are not things which can happen over night. Strict liability and more realistic punishments against drivers who endanger vulnerable road users is required! Only then will we have a chance to increase the numbers of people cycling and our safety.

Should we copy the Dutch? Well it has worked for them, and others, why not us?

I posted several weeks ago about the changes that Chicago is making and why we can’t do it. Would it be easier to compare ourselves to the changes they are making? Who knows…

One thing that really sticks out to me, is the side banner on the LCC Go Dutch webpage.
The image is right next to the main body text and is juxtaposed with the header. Does an image of a cyclist riding in the gutter link well with ‘clear space for cycling on main roads’?
This brings into the picture another issue, we should be campaigning about the mentality that people have towards us and not about the space we have on main roads, I need to feel safe all the time and I can’t take main roads everywhere!

*The buildings where demolished to make way for bigger roads, roads for cars.

Edit: Some content has been re-written since publishing, I made a mistake in reference to the video and misunderstood a few things. Thanks to @vigilantecycle and @amsterdamized for pointing me in the right direction.

Cycling for Everyone – A brief history of Dutch Cycling and a look into the future

The Dutch Cycling Embassy has recently released a video about how cycling in the Netherlands is more than just people on bikes and the history behind it.

Delays at crossings in the United Kingdom

This is a response to David Hembrow’s post ‘Delays at traffic light controlled crossings’

Crossing roads in the UK as a pedestrian or as a cyclist is generally a pain! The roads really are aimed at the traffic traveling along it. Pedestrians are often forced to wait a substantial amount of time after they have pushed the button to cross the road and even then, you might not have much time to cross.

For example, the video below shows the traffic light sequence at hyde park corner, plenty of cyclists and pedestrians use this daily.

As we can see from the video, pedestrians and cyclists have 6 seconds on green to cross, 8 seconds of no light and 82 seconds of red light. Pushing the button actually has no effect at this junction as the phase is designated and is based on the traffic light sequence on constitution hill.

David Hembrow shows us what it could be like!

As David says in his post. The delay caused to motorists for this ‘priority’ to pedestrians and cyclists is actually very minimal.

I cycled the route for the up coming Barclays Cycle Superhighway Route 8 that will be launched in July. Work is being done on the route at the moment but it takes advantage of some already in place facilities. These facilities include several traffic light controlled crossings and the time you have to wait at these is very different to what cyclists and pedestrians expect in the Netherlands.

The first crossing is a 24 second wait. No so bad but could be better. The second crossing however is appalling, we waited nearly 50 seconds but nothing. And we both decided it was best if we cycled across the junction whilst no traffic was coming.

This act of crossing whilst traffic isn’t coming is actually very common in the United Kingdom. Because pedestrians are often forced to wait a large amount of time to wait. This actually has a repercussion on the traffic using the road. As the crossing request from the pedestrian is not cancelled, the lights will change at some point and there may not be anyone there to cross, so vehicles have to stop for nothing.

This also has an effect on cyclists when these types of crossings are involved with building off-road routes, they become a pain to use as they can take several times longer to travel a set distance when comparing it to using the road.

For example the Vauxhall Gyratory has an off-road cycle path that goes all the way round, but again pedestrians and cyclists are forced to wait long traffic light phases. I can cycle around the gyratory and leave the exit i want in under 30 seconds but using the off-road route takes over 5 minutes in the test run I did! [The video is 1min 47 seconds long and is sped up by a factor of 4.]

With crossings like these, off-road cycling routes are hardly appealing to cyclists. I personally know that I would, and do, prefer to cycle on the road where I can get to my destination in a reasonable time!