Clerkenwell Road / Rosebury Avenue

Gray’s Inn Road, bottom left to top right; Theobalds Road, bottom right; Rosebury Avenue and Clerkenwell Road, left and right fork.

Mark commented on an observation that Richard Lewis of LCC made, an aside in his Street Talk last month.

is this street out here [Theobald’s Road] an appropriate location for that type of [segregated] infrastructure presumably segregation?. Or is it kind of a bit ‘I’m not sure?’ Is the volume of cyclists using this street enough to calm the motor traffic down, so that actually it becomes safe and inviting for cycling? Or do you think there should be dedicated infrastructure?’

It doesn’t look so terrible in the photo that Mark used, does it? All buses and taxis, outnumbered by cyclists. But I never got around to posting the footage I captured of the Theobalds Road / Grays Inn Road intersection for the Tour du Danger series last year, shot from outside the newsagents, where the bicycles are chained up and the folk are waiting to cross the road on the left of the photograph…

To really see what’s going on, though, you have to take a few steps back to reveal the conjoined intersection: the fork of Clerkenwell Road and Rosebury Avenue, which you can just see hints off, behind the newsagents in the photo, as YouTube user pgsmurray has done…

Safe and inviting? There’s a reason this junction was in the Tour du Danger. The relatively high volume of cyclists — coupled with the atrocious fast and confusing road design, signalling conflicts, and appalling road use discipline — puts this junction in London’s top ten for cyclist casualties. So much for safety in numbers.

Modal choice in London has generally been less about pulls and more about pushes: there isn’t a Londoner who doesn’t have some complaint about their commute, after all. Very little about getting around London, by any mode, is all that inviting. If a few more people are cycling along this road, it’s probably more about the push of an overcrowded Central Line, of paying to sit in jams going out of fashion with city centre workers, and of poor public transport options in Hackney. For a few — an unrepresentative few — the horrors of all the other options currently outweigh the horrors of cycling along this road. What happens when Crossrail opens, almost directly beneath these roads, and the pushes away from public transport are eased?

Building a policy of cycle safety and traffic calming on a high volume of cyclists on the road is a risky strategy: the volume can go down as well as up. And then you’re right back at the beginning again…

Country lane, Utrecht, evening

Where bicycles mix with cars — but very few of them, because the lane is only a through route for bicycles, and cars are sent the long way around on the main road. Something we could do more…

Nesciobrug, Saturday, lunchtime

Mark Wagenbuur recently wrote about Nesciobrug.

Groningen, Thursday, lunchtime

Not dissimilar to Oxford in demographics, student population, prosperity, ancient buildings and streetplans, public transport provision and big intercity roads, but with 60% of journeys being made on bicycles. There’s more about the city on A View From The Cycle Path…

Amsterdam, Monday 9am

As is regularly pointed out, cycling will never be an important mode of transport because it’s physically impossible to ride a bicycle to your important business meeting in a suit.

Utrecht, Friday 10am

Shot, it was later pointed out to me, from the world’s first bicycle path. (Since replaced with better routes.)

To prove that the Netherlands don’t get streets perfect, a traffic cop was waiting at these lights ticketing drivers and cyclists, but also telling pedestrians off for crossing empty streets against the red man — it’s the law here, bizarrely.

Some videos of London

I’m on the road, rails, and waves, so here, to fill in, are some videos that caught my eye on Londonist.

Driving through Old London, 1950s:

1920s London in colour:

And 24 Hours On Rivington Street, showing how a single motor vehicle will dominate a street full of people:

Metropolis II

I’m on the road, so here’s a video via Boing Boing:

Chris Burden also created The Flying Steamroller. In his early career he was crucified on a VW Beetle, and built the B-car.

Waiting for God

I stopped off at Ludgate Hill one morning in October, after reading this on Cyclists in the City:

…most of the elected politicians [in the square mile] don’t seem to care about cycling or walking.

What they do care about is this zebra crossing opposite St Paul’s on Ludgate Hill. Several times, I’ve heard City politicians and planners complain about this crossing and refer to it as a problem. Guess what the ‘problem’ is? Simple: the problem is that City politicians don’t like the fact they have to wait in their taxis in a queue of traffic while pedestrians have the extremely rare right of way.

And the only reason this crossing hasn’t been replaced by a traffic light is because the City planners think traffic lights in front of St Paul’s might be ugly and they can’t think of a better solution.

With God on our side…

Are we winning? Part 2

I’ve not had a moment to write anything this week.  Instead, here are some more videos, from monday morning between 8 and 8:15.

Southwark Bridge, between the bit of Cycle “Superhighway” 7 that is segregated (for the weak Bridge’s structural safety, not the cyclists’ safety) and the shared use street up to Cannon Street.  In Are we winning? I cited this as a river crossing where we should expect to see one of the largest number of cyclists:

And Millennium Bridge — my favourite river crossing (despite it having been built just a little bit too early for it to have occurred to them to include room for bicycles):

Perhaps I picked the wrong time — and certainly I picked the wrong part of the year — but in both cases the number of people powering themselves to work rather made me sad.  Especially so with the amount of yellow they were wearing.

If a truck is full of bikes, should it be in the bike lane?

Despite being fully up to date with the latest city driving rules, the Serco/Barclays hire bike relocaters are worrying the Evening Standard today:

Cyclist David Ellis, who was knocked over by a trailer used to transport the Mayor’s hire bikes between docking stations, today branded the vehicles “ludicrous”.

The photographer from Stoke Newington suffered cuts and bruising as well as injuries to his neck and hip after he was thrown from his bike and dragged under the trailer’s wheels while cycling with a friend in Theobald’s Road in Holborn on November 4.

(I wonder whether it was the same one that cheerfully honked along all the while that the october Critical Mass passed along Theobalds?)

Mr Ellis, 37, said the trailers were “a danger to cyclists” because they are wider than the electric vehicle towing them.

He called on the Mayor to improve safety among cycle hire scheme users by removing them and encouraging users to wear helmets.

I couldn’t agree more: it is simply common sense that users of electric vehicles should wear helmets, and the Standard are to be congratulated for the journalistic brilliance that produced this expert insight.

Millbank

I can’t quite put my finger on what it was that was different, but somehow this four-lane dual-carriageway felt like a more pleasant place to cycle along this evening…