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This article does two things. Firstly, it introduces the idea of “redundant carriageway“.

This is a simple idea, but an important one, and I know from feedback that people find it helpful when I’m first talking to them about what’s wrong with our streets.

Secondly, it explores how redundant carriageway width increases vehicle speeds rather than (as people are led to assume) increasing how much traffic a carriageway can carry.

The article starts with some pretty pictures of snowy streets. These show how much redundant carriageway exists on many streets.

Snowy pictures

I’m publishing this in April so these images will look unseasonal to many local readers – but this article isn’t about snow.

Snow often helps us to understand more about how vehicles use a section of street. And this can highlight that the space dedicated to moving vehicles is far bigger than it needs to be.

The images below show four places. I took them a year or two ago on a snowy walk in Edinburgh, returning for a second visit once the snow had gone.

The photos are in sets of three showing:

• the street without snow
• the street showing vehicle tracks in the snow
• an image showing where the vehicle tracks were, superimposed on the image without snow.

After each set of photos I’ve also added a roughly marked up satellite view of the junction from Google Maps (copyright as marked on the image) – and links to Google Streetview images. The red stars on the satellite images mark where the photos were taken.

Of course people might drive a little differently in the snow, and there may be fewer large vehicles out and about. But even taking this into account, the images show huge areas of carriageway that aren’t normally driven on, or even used for parking on. I call this ‘redundant carriageway‘. It’s carriageway, because it’s designed for driving on. It’s redundant carriageway because it’s not actually used for driving on at all – and often not really for any other purpose either.

Location one

(Junction of Strathearn Place and Greenhill Gardens, Edinburgh)

Notes: The carriageway areas to the right and left of the photo look like they might be used for parking, but they generally aren’t – you can see a marked parking space in the bottom left of the first photo – and the vehicles further away are in marked spaces like this. You might wonder what the carriageway space ahead of that parking area is used for. The answer is “generally, nothing”.

Links to full size images: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

There are very large areas here that are almost never used – not for driving, not for parking. They are serving no useful major purpose.

That’s not to say that nobody ever stops a vehicle here… perhaps the odd delivery van will use the space for a few minutes. And maybe the driver of the parked car in the left of the snowy image finds it easier to pull out of the space through the marked area. And of course there will be underground services (wires and pipes). But you get my point – it’s horribly wasteful for this to be carriageway space.

Here’s the second view of the same location, with the photographer standing roughly where the people with the red umbrella were in the first photo.

Links to full-size images: 1 / 2 / 3

If you’d like to investigate this area yourself, here are links to an aerial image from Google Maps, and images from Google Streetview.

Location 2

(Junction of Polwarth Terrace and Polwarth Grove, Edinburgh)

It can be seen that the main carriageway here, and the junction mouth, are far far wider than required. Note that we can only see the exit from the side road in this image. That’s incredibly wide, just on its own. But there’s a separate entrance to the side road on the other side of a small island. That’s so far away we can’t even see it in the image.

And don’t let these photos fool you – the side road here is a minor one, and it carries few vehicles.

Links to full-size images: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

If you’d like to investigate this area yourself, here are links to an aerial image from Google Maps, and images from Google Streetview.

Location 3

(Tiny unnamed cul-de-sac off Polwarth Grove, Edinburgh)

Behind the photographer (and just to their left), is an area which always has parked vehicles in it – the front of one vehicle is visible in the snowy picture. The very small entrance to the right is to a single residential property. What looks like a big road going off to the right is actually a very short cul-de-sac. You can see the furthest end of this cul-de-sac in the images.

Links to full-size images: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

If you’d like to investigate this area yourself, here are links to an aerial image from Google Maps, and images from Google Streetview.

Location 4

(Polwarth roundabout, Edinburgh)
It might be argued that people will drive differently when there’s no snow and they can see the white roundabout symbol. I’m not sure that they really do, but even if they did that doesn’t undermine the overall points I’m discussing. One way or another, there’s more carriageway here than required.

Links to full-size images: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

And here’s a second set of images of the same place, taken from a second viewpoint, standing slightly further away (the first images were taken beside the blue roundabout sign). Note the zig-zag lines prohibiting parking until the end of the white shop front – there is a zebra crossing behind the photographer.

Links to full-size images: 1 / 2 / 3

If you’d like to investigate this area yourself, here are links to an aerial image from Google Maps, and images from Google Streetview.

Have we learned a lie?

We’re used to hearing that space on our streets is carefully divided between strongly competing priorities.

We might want to add cycle tracks to a street. Or we might want wider pavements, or a bus lane? But we’re told that doing these things will have profound consequences for people’s ability to drive and park their motor vehicles. We’re told, or we believe, that there’s a careful and difficult balance going on, with space heavily contested – and that claiming more space for walking, wheeling and cycling will be unpopular with those who feel they need it to drive or park in.

So we’re told that we can’t expect things to change very quickly, and we’ll have to fight for every centimetre of space.

Now sometimes we do need to change streets in a way that does actually restrict traffic. And there will be opposition to any change. But what’s easy to miss is that an awful lot of what’s currently carriageway – designed for moving and maybe parking vehicles – isn’t really used for either purpose. And surely, if space is as deeply contested as we’ve come to understand, then our discovery that a whole lot of it is completely wasted is rather exciting?

Or to put this another way – walking, wheeling, cycling, and even space for stuff like bin storage, tends to be given the bare minimum space. But the space given over to vehicle use is decidedly baggy, providing not only what’s needed, but a whole lot of extra unnecessary space on top.

But the way our streets are laid out is so familiar that most people believe that there must be some logical reason for things looking like they look. Even those who are professionally involved tend to think that the habits and beliefs they base their work on, and the habits and beliefs of their colleagues and departments, must be backed up by some kind of evidence – when that simply isn’t true.

In many cases redundant carriageway isn’t at all useful, and it has problematic effects. We’ll discuss those later.

First, I want to show you how and where I look for redundant carriageway. Because it’s everywhere – and seeing it is part of understanding how we need to change our streets.

Identifying redundant carriageway

Below is something of a spotters guide to redundant carriageway. I explain how to see it at:

• junctions, at the end of lines of parked cars
• junctions with unnecessarily wide carriageway areas
• overly wide carriageways more generally
• urban dual-carriageways that are very short
• urban dual-carriageways that allow parking

Redundant carriageway near parked cars

First, let’s look at how the way we tend to park cars on the carriageway in Britain creates small areas of entirely redundant carriageway. We could see many of these in the snowy photographs.

Here is a drawing, in plan view, of a junction between residential streets. Parking is prohibited close to the corner.

This is a scale model of a real (and typical) junction in Doncaster, England. These are the kinds of residential streets where there are always cars parked.

To begin with, the small areas I want to highlight are at the end of each line of parking, just before the junction. People don’t normally drive on this piece of carriageway because the parked cars get in the way. I’ve marked these areas with hatching:

You can see these areas in the images from earlier. I’ve highlighted a couple of examples below:

Links to full-size images: 1 / 2

This is entirely redundant carriageway. The areas are small, and you might think them insignificant, but they add up and create something quite significant (and think about what it’s like to cross the road in the place pictured in the image above).

And this is just the start.

Unnecessarily wide junction space

There’s a second type of redundancy at a junction like this – areas of carriageway that are used for driving on, but which aren’t really needed.

Using the same drawing as above, I’ve now added further hatching to show this.

The new hatching roughly marks the extra areas of unnecessary carriageway (while the drawing itself is to scale, I’ve marked these areas only very roughly).

If this wasn’t carriageway people would still be able to turn in and out of this junction. They might need to slow down a bit – but remember that this is a junction between two residential streets where we’re almost certainly wanting people to slow down anyway.

Much of what can be seen in the snowy images is an indication of this kind of redundancy. There are great wide areas of carriageway that aren’t performing a useful function.

Before someone argues the following, I should say explicitly that there are limits, of course. A typical British local authority will want sufficient carriageway to allow large refuse vehicles through a junction. Good residential junction design has to walk a line between allowing occasional large vehicles, and the major disadvantages that arise from redundant carriageway. There’s more around this question in my articles on pedestrian-friendly junctions. The important point is this – the huge areas of redundant carriageway highlighted in the snowy images aren’t needed for large vehicles either. And overall, a civilised society HAS to find a means to engineer for an occasional large vehicle, without creating junctions like these.

For the moment, let’s move on…

Unnecessary carriageway width

Unnecessary/redundant carriageway isn’t only found at junctions. Here are two Google Streetview images of Shields Road in Glasgow.

Link to Streetview

Link to Streetview

Standing at the side of this street, it feels like it must be an important one, a “main” road of some kind of strategic value for through traffic. The width makes us think this. The central dashed white line makes us think this. But take a closer look at its location (Openstreetmap.org link) and you’ll see that the northern end is blocked to traffic. It’s fairly easy to see that while this may be of local usefulness, it’s not some major strategic highway through the city.

In terms of location, Shields Road is a residential street. Looking at the environment, it’s clear that we’d expect it to be carrying local traffic, and we’d probably want this to be at a low speed. It could be substantially narrower.

Here’s a simplified drawing of the current design, with widths to scale (at a non-specific location):

Link fo full-size image

If we want people to be driving below 20mph here, we definitely don’t need all of the extra carriageway width. We might debate exactly how much is redundant, but it would seem reasonable to take the necessary carriageway width from other nearby residential roads.

The very different design of the neighbouring McCulloch Street, suits our purpose, because the central carriageway area of this is so obvious, and because northbound traffic on Shields Road is directed straight into this anyway.

Link to Streetview

So taking the central area of McCulloch Street as demonstrating the width needed, let’s mark an equivalent width on the diagram representing Shields Road. That gives us this:

Link to full size image

In one way or another, the area marked with hatching is redundant carriageway. Some of it could be parking bays (as on McCulloch Street), but it’s only the central area we need as actual carriageway.

I’ll not get into exactly how Shields Road should be redesigned – that’s not the point today – but McCulloch Street certainly points to one possibility.

Short dual-carriageways/multi-lane roads

But we’re not done with the spotters guide yet, because my favourite place to spot redundant carriageway is on urban dual-carriageway arrangements (2×2 and other arrangements with extra lanes).

Some urban dual-carriageways do genuinely work as dual carriageways – for example something like this section of the A803 in Glasgow might do so.

But this is not the kind of road I’m thinking about.

One issue is where a dual-carriageway is only very short, or in only very short sections between junctions.

For example, here are a couple of good examples of short sections of dual-carriageway-like road. The first is the A814 in Helensburgh. The second is Potterow in Edinbugh. Note the incongruous 20mph sign in the first case, and the SLOW markings in the second – we’ll talk more about speed in a moment:

Link to Streetview image

Link to Streetview image (2008 image)

I don’t have any details on history of the Helensburgh example, but what feeds into one end of this section of dual-carriageway is an ordinary two-way inter-town road. What feeds into the other end is another ordinary two-way urban road. You can see this in the map below:

Link to map at Openstreetmap.org

It stands to reason that this can’t really carry any more traffic than the roads at either end of it. No doubt there are examples of people overtaking here, but all this overtaking will achieve is a slight juggling of the order of vehicles in the next traffic queue. It’s obvious that this isn’t long enough for lines of flowing traffic to emerge, with a “fast lane” and a “slow lane”, like you might see on a motorway.

The design of the road at Potterrow in Edinburgh arose as part of a drive toward the creation of much bigger roads in the city. There was to be an inner ring-road, creating a now-unimaginable degree of destruction in the city. Most of these bigger roads were never built – and this odd (rather lifeless) corner of the city offers a reminder of what could have been.

What these kinds of intervention left us with is super-short sections of road that look like they must be carrying lots of traffic, but which aren’t really carrying any more traffic than the much narrower roads around them.

Interestingly, in the Edinburgh case, more recent Google Streetview images show that the city has now removed a lane in each direction – without ill effect.

Link to Streetview image (2025 image)

Dual-carriageways with on-street parking

Last in this spotters guide… it’s worth looking out for dual-carriageway-like arrangements where there’s also on-street parking. The on-street parking is a tell-tale sign that the second lane makes no real sense and/or this parking makes sure that there can’t be two flowing lanes of traffic.

For example here’s Kingsway near Scotstoun Station, in Glasgow:

Link to Streetview image

You can see what people had in mind when this was designed. Even the name gives it away. And at first, you might think that this must be carrying more traffic than if it just had a single lane in each direction?

But there are many sections of this road that look more like the image below, with parked cars present:

Link to Streetview image

Here’s a second example. This is Peat Road in Glasgow:

Link to Streetview

If you watch driving behaviours on a road like this, you will not see a fast lane and a slow lane.

There might sometimes be overtaking, but in general people drive in a single line, perhaps swapping lanes to pass the parked cars, but with each driver roughly following the vehicle ahead.

So think for a moment about what we’re seeing here. Look at the huge amount of wasted space.

I’ve given the image of Kingsway to Google’s Gemini AI tool with a request to edit it to show only an ordinary two-way road, putting the parked vehicles into parking bays. It struggled to really understand – so don’t over-analyse the result. But this is sufficient to show what I want to show. The redesigned two-way street shown below would be able to carry just as much traffic as what’s currently there:

Link to full-size image

If you don’t believe me when I say that stuff like this is possible, and realistic, take a look at Dutch streets. Look for places (in urban areas) wide enough to have once been dual-carriageways. It’s difficult to find the older images on Google Streetview, because they’ve been making this kind of change for a long time.

There’s a nice example at Marnixlaan in Utrecht. Here are images from 2015 and 2023. Think about the speeds people will drive here, and what the redesign does to that.

Link to 2023 Streetiview image. Link to 2015 Streetview image.

Here are some other examples to take a look at. In each case, there’s been some kind of closure of one of the lanes:

• ‘t Goylaan, Utrecht (old Streetview – new Streetview)
• Eykmanlaan, Utrecht (old Streetview – new Streetview) – little has changed physically at this stage, but only one of the two lanes remains open to traffic
• Holysingel, Vlaardingen (old Streetview – new Streetview) – again there’s little changed here physically, but note that the older dashed white line has been replaced with a solid white line, and that there’s a sign indicating that the right lane is closed.

To see another more profound transformation, read about the changes that were made to Carnegiedreef in Utrecht back in 1980 in this Bicycle Dutch article (halfway down the article). There’s an excellent photo in the article showing the change here. And while perhaps the result isn’t exactly beautiful, its a lot nicer than what was there before, and it’s obvious that people are going to drive more slowly now that this isn’t a straight dual-carriageway.

Link to Google Streetview

So what do we get from these 2×2 dual-carriageway-like roads, if we’re not actually increasing the capacity of the road?

What we get is speed, even when we don’t want speed. So let’s talk about that…

Why redundant carriageway is a problem

The presence of redundant carriageway causes big problems, among which are the following:

• Redundant carriageway is wasted space.
• Redundant carriageway creates difficulties for pedestrians.
• Redundant carriageway leads to high vehicle speeds.

The first point is an obvious one.

Many British footways (i.e. pavements) are narrow and are blocked by lamp posts, signs, and bins. This isn’t just an irritation, these obstructions can make many streets impassable to people using wheelchairs and mobility scooters – and much more challenging for people who are blind or who have a visual impairment.

Even small piece of extra space can help to change this. Even if all we achieve by rearranging space is to provide space for bins, posts, signs, bicycle parking, or even a little bit of greenery – that’s already a huge step forwards.

For more on the second point, take a look at my articles on pedestrian-friendly priority junctions. There’s enough to say on that for a whole series of articles. Look at the snowy images again – think about how the redundant carriageway could be used to make it much easier and safer for people to cross the roads. Think about how different designs might slow turning vehicles and make pedestrians visible.

The third point probably needs an explanation – and it’s this I want to emphasise today.

When people look at a road with a wide carriageway – roads with redundant carriageway – they tend to assume that what they’re seeing is a road that is able to carry more traffic than if it were narrower. But often that’s just an illusion.

At the extremes, width does have an effect on capacity. Obviously an extra-narrow carriageway will prevent or reduce two-way vehicle movement. And there’s some interaction here with the number of wider vehicles using a carriageway. And, at the other extreme, if we build something as hugely significant as a motorway, then there may be an interaction between extra lanes and road capacity. And carriageway width/lane number for queuing at junctions does have an effect.

But outside those situations width doesn’t get us capacity. Wider roads, in urban spaces, don’t often carry more traffic. But what they do do is to encourage speed. I like to think of that as a rule of thumb… that adding width to an (urban) carriageway creates vehicle speed not increased capacity.

Which makes it all the stranger when we see signs on such roads encouraging slower speed (as in the snowy images)… because then what’s the point of them existing in the first place?

See also…

• An introduction to pedestrian-friendly priority junctions
• Read everything – New here? This is a suggested reading order.

Comments…

As ever, I welcome your comments. If you disagree with something I say then let me know. If you can help me explain my points then please do so. And read the comments of others to see what they think too.

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This is a description of what I think has changed in the current (2026) revision of the Transport Scotland document “Cycling by Design” (compared to the 2021 version). The article is directed at those who are already familiar with the document. It may also be of interest to a wider audience of people who want to understand:

• how continuous footways should be designed, and
• how cycle tracks and bus stops should (and should not) be combined.

This isn’t any kind of an introduction to Cycling by Design, continuous footways, or arrangements at bus stops – it’s really just a list of changes to this document, with notes about why these changes matter.

Links

Cycling by Design 2026 – NEW VERSION
(Cycling by Design 2021 – old version)

Introduction

Transport Scotland has published a new version of “Cycling by Design”, as an update to the 2021 version.

Many of the most significant changes that have been made are in direct response to the major piece of research that I led (from 2019-2024), working with colleagues at Living Streets, investigating the functioning of continuous footways and bus stops where there is a cycle track.

If you haven’t read these Living Streets research reports, don’t be put off by their length. Jump straight to the discussion sections (Section 8, Bus stop research / Section 8, continuous footway research) which are written carefully to provide coherent and accessible summaries of the work and our conclusions.

Praise where it’s due

Before getting into detail, I want to quickly offer Transport Scotland some simple praise.

When they published the 2021 version of Cycling by Design, Transport Scotland did so knowing that some aspects of the document weren’t perfect. In particular, there were questions related to bus stops and continuous footways. They promised to do further work on these issues, and that “Cycling by Design will be updated regularly to take account of project experience and changes to the legal or design environment“. Now they’ve actually followed through on that promise. They funded the research I mentioned above, and now they’ve incorporated much of the learning from that work into the new Cycling by Design. That’s quite unusual in the UK, where this kind of document can go very many years between updates.

Secondly, unlike the 2021 document, this 2026 version is available in a web page (html) format and not only as a pdf. That makes it much more accessible for anyone using a screen reader. And – bringing things into the 21st century – it also makes a document so very much easier to read on a small/smartphone screen.

Although to be clear, these changes shouldn’t be the end of the story. There is a great deal more work to be done – not least because Scotland (and the UK as a whole) lacks formal/effective documentation describing the changes we need to make to create decent streets for pedestrians. And some big questions remain about bus stop and continuous footway design – as we detailed in the research.

But for the moment, here’s what’s changed…

List of changes

I’m listing changes to the sections on bus stop and continuous footway design. Most other changes appear minor, but let me know if I’ve missed something that matters.

Bus stops (bus stop bypasses/floating bus stops)

There are some important changes of emphasis:

• Instead of starting with text about the challenges that cycle users face in interacting with buses, the document now begins by emphasising that it is desirable to put a cycle route somewhere away from bus users – if possible, provided core design principles can still be satisfied.
• The document immediately mentions that on one-way streets it is possible to keep the cycle track away from the bus stop.
• It no longer makes a big thing of cyclists overtaking or waiting behind buses, and talks instead about the coherence of the route for cycling, and the need to avoid cycle users being forced to mix with traffic (including buses).
• There’s now an explanation of the effects of the complexity of the environment (including level of use).

There are changes in respect of detail:

• There’s a specification of a maximum width of track to be crossed at the bus stop (3.10.5)
• A previous note about transitioning a cycle lane to a cycle track (which was probably built on the idea of getting people past stopped buses) appears to have been removed (old note 3.10.6)
• There’s a note about avoiding distractions to cyclists (3.10.6) “including excessive kerb heights, adjacent obstacles at handlebar height and track width variation within the bus stop bypass area”
• The 2.5% crossfall limit on the island is now “maximum” not “desirable maximum” (3.10.7), and there’s now a note about how to avoid excessive crossfall if using a high “boarder” kerb
• There is a note (3.10.9) about how someone turning left out a bus should find a crossing, and there’s a clear note about needing tactile paving (3.10.8)
• Note 3.10.10 specifies a need for coloured surfacing and contrast between the cycle track and pedestrian areas
• There’s a note to say that features designed to control speeds should be positioned before the point where cyclists need to be looking ahead at crossing passengers
• They’ve suggested “transverse bar markings” as markings on the cycle track (which I take to be a welcome but gentle recommendation against “SLOW” markings).

There are some more minor changes in the text on shared platform boarder designs:

• There’s a minor change of title (to the above “shared platform boarder”), which in the Living Streets report we recommended would remove some of the confusion about this kind of design (distinguishing it from the “continued kerbside track” designs commonly found in Copenhagen, which are quite different from designs being used here – and also from other “bus boader” designs that are used for completely different purposes).
• There’s a slight change of emphasis in specifying that people should not face a situation where they step off a bus into a cycle track.
• There’s a note that the surface of the shared platform boarder should be distinct from both footway and track.

Continuous footways/priority junctions

There are some changes in the background information about continuous footways:

• The introductory text includes a clear and useful statement that “They should only be used in situations where conditions are appropriate, driver expectations have been managed through network measures, and absolute priority for pedestrians can be clearly established. They are unsuitable and should not be used where mainline or side road speeds or turning volumes are excessive.“
• The document now names the area that appears as footway – but which drivers pass over – as “driveable space”
• There’s now a clear description of the need for the physical construction (not road markings etc) to make it clear that “footway conditions prevail.”

There are also some very important changes in respect of design detail:

• There is now a clear instruction that speeds on the driveable space should be significantly and physically constrained (i.e. by the infrastructure itself), to approximately walking pace.
• There is now a clear instruction that the driveable space should only allow one vehicle at a time (i.e. not simultaneous two-way movement). The drawn figures are amended accordingly.
• There is some clear encouragement to use Dutch-style entrance/exit kerbs. There’s a description of how these continue the edge of the main road (i.e. adding some clarity that there shouldn’t be a visible end to the carriageway).

There is also now a clear recommendation against the use of hybrid designs. The text (on p174) states that “Hybrid designs which incorporate aspects of continuous footways without providing absolutely clear indications of priority are not recommended.” There’s a clear statement that in this case “it is preferable to provide a more conventional priority junction which clearly indicates that pedestrians are required to cross the side road.” Elsewhere the text states that “speed control measures such as speed tables can be used at the crossing point, but these should not compromise the message to the pedestrian that a road is being crossed.“

There are some other finer details that have changed:

• It’s now recognised that continuous footways have a role at a network level, reducing – and responding to a reduction in – traffic on the side road. And there is now an instruction that these are for use in places where conditions on the side road are conducive to mixing cycling and motor vehicles (5.2.5)
• It is now slightly clearer that the ordinary footway appearance should continue across the driveable space (whereas previously there was more of an implication that a special surface might be a way to do things).
• It is now specified that give-way markings should not be used because of this compromising the message that the driveable space is to be treated as part of the footway.

There is also a small but really helpful addition in regard to how junctions work more widely for pedestrians. In section 5.2, there is a short discussion indicating that priority junction designs can help to prioritise pedestrians. The text says “It is essential that the needs of pedestrians are fully considered in the selection and design of appropriate priority junction layouts. The Highway Code states that vehicles should give way to pedestrians crossing or waiting to cross a road into which or from which they are turning. Effective design of priority junctions can support this message.“

Figure 5.1 helps to illustrate one aspect of design to support pedestrians, showing how build outs can help to provide a driver with more time to respond to a pedestrian crossing the end of the road they are exiting. The only other place I’ve seen this discussed is in what we said in the Living Streets report (Figure 16).

Additional thoughts (on continuous footways)

I’m really pleased to see the changes that this document brings in, in regard to continuous footway design.

I’m pleased to see the idea of “walking speed” being set as a clear objective for vehicle speed at the driveable space. I first proposed this as a useful rule of thumb in an article in 2019. I’m also really pleased to see the prescription that the driveable space should be narrowed so that (simultaneous) two-way movement is prevented.

Local authority officers have told me that they’re worried that these kinds of restriction (particularly the narrowing) will make it harder for them to install continuous footways, and that this will make it harder to install cycle tracks. If continuous footways were a guaranteed way to promote pedestrian priority this would be a real shame. But they really aren’t.

Our research for Living Streets evidenced that most “continuous footway” designs in the UK are failing to properly prioritise pedestrians. Even failing designs can have some positive effects, and our overall conclusion was that real continuous footways do have a place in future on UK streets. But poorer designs – which have been in the majority – are currently causing confusion and (in places) real risk to pedestrians. And these can be seen to exclude some disabled pedestrians, and most obviously blind and partially sighted people.

So the effects of our current situation have added significantly to the divide-and-rule taking place around cycling, and pedestrian needs. People have become convinced that improvements to support cycling come at the expense of pedestrians, and particularly at the expense of disabled pedestrians. That idea is now firmly held by very many people, and it’s holding back the changes we actually need to be put in place to support pedestrians, to improve how inclusive streets are (and to encourage cycling).

So these changes to Cycling by Design might temporarily mean that fewer continuous footways are installed for a while, and maybe even fewer cycle tracks. BUT importantly, if what is installed in future now works properly, and if it provides real evidence of the value (and inclusivity) of real continuous footways, then that will be a good thing. Overall, in the longer-term, that will lead to increasing support for change – better conditions for pedestrians AND better conditions for cycling.

Other changes

I’ll list other changes here as I note them:

• There’s a change in Table 3.2, which makes the difference in “level of service” provided by cycle lanes and cycle tracks clearer (as in image below)

See also…

• The work for Living Streets on bus stops and continuous footways
• My introduction to continuous footways (from 2018)
• My most popular article, “I want my street to be like this“, referencing Dutch design to show that alternatives are realistic – which shows real continuous footways in context.
• Read everything like a book – New here? This is a suggested reading order for all the articles on this site.

This article’s header image is a scale drawing of a real and very typical UK junction. It happens to be between two residential roads. In many ways it’s unremarkable. At the same time it provides a lovely illustration of how badly most junctions cater for pedestrians, and how ordinary this is. In this article I’m going to work through the many features and factors that make side-road junctions better or worse for pedestrians – covering all side road junctions and not only those in residential areas, but using this image as a starting point to illustrate the points I’m making. With some obvious exceptions, almost all the drawings in the article are variations on this image, based on the same overall street dimensions.

This article is one of a series from myself and Mark Philpotts on how side-road junctions should be designed to be safe and pedestrian-friendly. The first articles are Defining pedestrian-friendly junctions (from me) and What makes side road junctions pedestrian-friendly? (from Mark). We’d like to invite you to read articles from both of us because what we’re offering has arisen from an exciting collaboration, over many months, during which we’ve been able to combine our thinking, experience and approaches.

If you go looking for information on how to improve side road junctions for pedestrians, you’ll probably find information on dropped kerbs, tactile paving, and kerb corner radius (see below). Or you’ll find people talking about continuous footways or zebra crossing markings. But it’s difficult to find a full discussion of the full range of factors that have an effect.

This article is targeted at those wanting to think very carefully through how a full range of different factors and features create more or less pedestrian-friendly conditions. It provides something of a mini-manual, providing a lot of detail for those who need this. If you’re new to my writing and you want to start with something more motivational then try “I want my street to be like this”.

Article contents

• Introduction and background

Factors and features

• Volume of through traffic
• Vehicle approach speed
• Turning speed
• Size of turning vehicles
• Turning volumes
• Queues and movement complexity
• Visibility character and crossing distance
• Carriageway space and turning angles
• Obstruction character
• Step-free crossings
• Tactile paving / visual material contrast
• Dropped kerb gradient steepness
• Dropped kerb gradient direction
• Space above a dropped kerb

Other notes

• Crossing the major road & no-priority junctions
• About our work for MCC
• See also

Introduction and background

It’s worth me providing a quick explanation of kerb corner radius for those who aren’t familiar with the idea (informed professionals and engineers can skip this).

This diagram shows simple plan views of two different designs for the same side-road junction:

The two designs are identical, except for the shape of the kerb where it meets the side road.

The diagram below shows how the different kerb corner shapes can be described by giving the radius of a circle. In this case the corner radius measurement is 9.5 metres for the design on the left, and 3 metres for the design on the right. (This is modelled on a real British residential junction, with a very typical shape, but my measurement of the real junction was only very approximate, and the points I’m making are general ones rather than about this junction as such.)

(full size image)

It’s often understood that a smaller kerb corner radius has benefits at side-road junctions. For example, there is a well known diagram illustrating this in Part 2 of “Designing Streets”, which is copied from page 66 of “Manual for Streets“, which itself credits Devon County Council (providing no further details). I’ve recreated an equivalent diagram below.

(full size image)

But kerb corner radius is only one factor that can make a difference to pedestrians. Those tasked with improving conditions for pedestrians need to understand the effects of a very much wider range of other factors and features too.

Terminology and focus

To keep language simpler I’ve said that this article is about “side-road junctions”, but technically inclined readers might want to note that it applies to all “priority junctions” as I defined these in the first article in this series.

I talk about “footways”. By this I mean what the general public calls “the pavement”.

I use the words major and minor to distinguish between a road on which drivers have priority (“major”) and the road on which drivers are expected to give way (“minor”). At individual locations major and minor may not apply in a wider sense. Compare, for example, the relatively minor status of the “major” road on the left diagram compared to the relatively major role of the “minor” road on the right diagram.

(full size image)

This article primarily deals with what it takes to ensure good conditions for pedestrians crossing the end of the minor road. However it is important to note that in many places pedestrians are also likely to want to cross the major road, as indicated in the diagram below.

(full size image)

A properly pedestrian-friendly environment is one in which the need for pedestrians to cross in this secondary direction is also accommodated. There is a short section toward the end of the article where I introduce further ideas around these crossings of the major road.

Factors and features

This main section describes each feature/factor, in some detail, one by one.

I’ve added diagrams to help to explain each point. These don’t necessarily show good and bad designs, but just better and worse in regard to that one individual factor or feature.

Although I’ve divided the article up in this way, these factors and features are actually interconnected, and the combined effect of several factors/features can be more than the sum of their individual effects.

Volume of through traffic

(full size image)

The volume of traffic passing a junction (“through traffic”), remaining on the major road and not turning into the minor road, plays a part in setting conditions for people crossing the minor/side road.

• For safety, a pedestrian crossing the side road may need to judge which oncoming vehicles are likely to turn into the side road. When through-traffic is heavy this can become more difficult. While pedestrians may find it helpful when a driver indicates their turn, the absence of indication isn’t a reliable sign that crossing is safe.
• The volume of through traffic can also affect the behaviour of drivers. When volumes are higher, drivers may be more worried about holding up the driver of a vehicle waiting behind them. Drivers waiting to turn right (across an oncoming lane) may find it more difficult to find a gap in the oncoming traffic.
• If conditions make it more difficult for a driver to make progress they may choose riskier manoeuvres, for example accelerating hard to use a very small gap in oncoming traffic, heedless of any pedestrians present.
• For pedestrians relying on their hearing for crossing safely, the sound of through traffic can mask the sound of vehicles approaching from the minor road. They may have no means to predict whether vehicles heard approaching on the major road could turn into the minor road.

Vehicle approach speed

(full size image)

(Driver’s perspective)

The speed at which vehicles approach a junction – whether or not a driver is turning into or out of the minor/side road – influences conditions.

(See the next section for a description of the effects of the speed of a vehicle actually turning into or out from the minor road.)

From a driver’s perspective:

• Approach speed has an effect on a driver’s capacity to respond to everything that is happening ahead of them.
• Approach speed changes the risks a driver and their passengers face — both in terms of their speed if hitting something and the speed of another vehicle that hits theirs.
• When approach speeds are high, there is less time for a driver to notice pedestrians, judge their intentions, and decide how to respond (or assessments/responses need to be undertaken at a greater distance)
• Approach speed directly affects turning speed (if a driver turns in – see next section for a discussion of turning speed).

(Pedestrian’s perspective)

For pedestrians, the approach speeds of vehicles turning in or out of the side road, and those passing straight through on the major road, are both significant. From their perspective:

• Fast-approaching vehicles are intimidating.
• Higher speeds mean pedestrians must judge whether a driver will turn — perhaps from more than one direction — while vehicles are further from the junction.
• The faster vehicles approach, the shorter the time a pedestrian has to cross safely within a given traffic gap.

It is important to note that the abilities of different pedestrians will vary considerably in regard to skills in assessing approach speeds and its effects on their safety.

Turning speed

(full size image)

The speed at which drivers turn (in or out of the minor/side road) has an effect on conditions experienced by pedestrians.

Low turning speeds improve conditions because:

• If a driver/vehicle hits a pedestrian, any injury is less likely to be serious.
• Slower turns make the environment less intimidating.
• Both driver and pedestrian have more time to read each other’s intentions — and/or those cues are exchanged more easily because they are at much closer range.
• When vehicles must slow more to turn than to continue past the junction (on the major road) it becomes easier for pedestrians to recognise that a driver intends to turn.
• Drivers who are already travelling slowly are more inclined to let pedestrians cross, either by further slowing or stopping.

Size of turning vehicles

(full size image)

Vehicle size shapes conditions for both drivers and pedestrians.

• Larger vehicles often leave their drivers with reduced visibility, particularly of pedestrians (and others) close to the vehicle.
• The junction geometry needed to accommodate large vehicles — such as wider corners or extra turning space — can worsen conditions. Space provided for large vehicles tends to provide a junction that can be negotiated faster in smaller vehicles.

Here, it’s worth being explicit in saying that it can be a positive design decision to shape a junction so that drivers of occasional large vehicles need to negotiate passage with other street users, using the whole carriageway area.

Turning volumes

(full size image)

The number of vehicles turning in or out of a minor/side road strongly affects how safe and comfortable it is for pedestrians to cross.

• More turning traffic means more potential interactions, demanding greater focus and caution from pedestrians.
• More turning traffic means pedestrians may be forced to take bigger risks to cross in a reasonable time.

Queues and movement complexity

(full size image)

The presence of queuing traffic, and the complexity of vehicle movements, both affect conditions for pedestrians.

• Queuing vehicles add hazards of their own, especially for people trying to cross between them.
• Where multiple queues form, complexity and risk increase further.
• A need to negotiate queuing vehicles in one lane can make it substantially more difficult to deal with risks from moving vehicles in another, while at the same time complicating the task an oncoming driver faces in seeing pedestrians and understanding their intentions.
• Queuing vehicles create particularly challenging conditions for blind or partially sighted pedestrians, and anyone moving more slowly or using a wheelchair, mobility aid, or any other device that means they need more space.
• Queuing vehicles create particularly challenging conditions for those with lower eye/head height (including those using many wheeled mobility aids), who find it harder to see and be seen.

(full size image)

Movement complexity also arises from other factors.

• Conditions for pedestrians become more challenging as the number of vehicle approach directions increases.
• Conditions for pedestrians become more hazardous if they need to deal with traffic moving in multiple lanes.

Visibility character and crossing distance

(full size image)

Visibility between pedestrians, drivers, and vehicles affects behaviour in several ways:

• Drivers’ behaviours are shaped by what they can see of conflicting vehicles. They may drive more quickly when they can see that these are absent.
• Being able to see a pedestrian early, and to clearly identify their intention to cross, allows a driver to react more safely.
• Situations where drivers and pedestrians cannot see one another until the pedestrian has already begun crossing a carriageway, or a driver is already part-way through a turn, are particularly problematic, unless vehicles are at an extremely low speed. This reduces the ability of both to react safely, and substantially increases the risks a pedestrian is dealing with.
• Drivers who can clearly see that a particular person needs more time to cross may be more likely to adjust their behaviour accordingly.
• For pedestrians, clear lines of sight (for example, past parked vehicles and/or street furniture) make it easier to judge whether and when it is safe to cross.

The distance over which a pedestrian is exposed to moving vehicles is another factor. This is true whether they are crossing carriageway space or the “drivable space” at a continuous footway.

• A shorter crossing distance means less time spent in a place where they might encounter a vehicle.
• A shorter crossing time makes the task of judging safe gaps simpler.

Visibility and crossing distance can be closely related because designs that reduce crossing distance often improve visibility too, as shown in the diagrams below.

(NB: Marked distances in these diagrams are to scale, but are given only as informal examples to show the comparison between designs. Note that the crossing distance in the third diagram is around a third to a quarter of that in the first.)

(full sized image 1, image 2, image 3)

Design also has an effect on what can be called “visibility character”, by which we mean some aspects of what a junction looks like to those using it:

• Better conditions for pedestrians can arise where it is easy for a driver to distinguish which pedestrians are intending to cross from those remaining on the footway (i.e. the pavement) and turning in or out of the minor road.
• Where a pedestrian’s crossing distance seems shorter, drivers are likely to anticipate shorter delays.
• Where a design places a pedestrian ahead of a driver, even before they start to cross, the driver may behave better than where a design places them more at the periphery of the driver’s focus.

Carriageway space and turning angles

(full sized image 1, image 2)

The overall size of the carriageway space at a junction has a set of effects.

• A larger carriageway space allows passage by larger vehicles.
• A larger carriageway space allows faster speeds, for both turning vehicles and those passing without turning.

In addition to the specific points above, the size of the angle through which a vehicle must be turned has effects.

(full size image)

In particular:

• Drivers are likely to negotiate a turn more slowly when this is through a larger angle.

Obstruction character

It seems obvious that a driver negotiating the junction shown in this photo will be a little bit more careful because there are bollards at the edge of the carriageway, and because these appear quite substantial.

Drivers try to avoid damaging their vehicles. They are likely to drive more carefully and/or more slowly where there is a more obvious risk to their vehicle. This means that the presence AND character of objects at the edge of the path they intend to take can have an effect. Such objects might include:

• oncoming vehicles, particularly if they are larger or faster moving
• stationary, queuing or parked vehicles
• kerbs with an upstand (i.e. with a step rather than being flush with both carriageway and footway, with more effect likely for larger upstands, and those where the upstand is square in profile)
• objects at vehicle body height, particularly if these appear less forgiving (e.g. a bollard rather than a bush, or a substantial bollard rather than a lightweight one)

Step-free crossings

Some pedestrians need step-free crossing points.

Here “step-free” is shorthand for a situation in which there is no need to cross a kerb edge with more than a 6mm upstand (i.e. the sharp/vertical height change) – as defined in Inclusive Mobility (s4.11).

Step-free crossings can be provided by dropped kerbs, but also other arrangements. Key options are:

• dropped kerbs (with a ramp between footway and carriageway height),
• real continuous footways (NB – using the definition of real continuous footways introduced in my work for Living Streets here), and
• raised side road entry treatments that bring the carriageway to footway height at the crossing point.

There are also options that provide changes in height for both pedestrians and vehicles.

Note that it is important to understand the interaction between accessibility for those needing step-free options (e.g. using a wheelchair), and those for whom kerbs are key for navigation (e.g. navigating with a guide dog or long cane).

Tactile paving / visual material contrast

Blind and partially sighted pedestrians use tactile paving to aid navigation. At priority junctions it can fulfil at least three separate functions:

• For safety, providing a warning of a transition between footway and carriageway at a location where there is no kerb fulfilling that function. In regard to safety, it is important to note that tactile paving often does not indicate a safe crossing point.
• For directional guidance, providing information to those seeking to cross at the location marked by the tactile paving. It is important to understand that many struggle to use tactile paving alone for this second purpose, and that wider features (perhaps away from the paving location) can be more useful.
• Supporting wider navigation, for example by providing information to allow a pedestrian to know they have reached a particular point on their journey.

It is important to note that these functions are different, although interrelated. Some blind or partially sighted pedestrians may use tactile paving to identify the edge of a carriageway (or driveable space), but then choose to cross away from the point where the paving is provided. Other locations may be much safer, and many struggle to use tactile paving alone for directional guidance – wider features such as an ordinary kerb, and even the front/rear of a parked vehicle, are used by people to judge crossing direction where junction design makes this difficult. And tactile paving remains useful as a marker on a journey even if a junction arrangement allows a pedestrian to continue without fearing an interaction with a vehicle.

If a location is intended as a main crossing point for blind or partially sighted pedestrians then it is important that the line of the transition between tactile paving and carriageway is at ninety degrees to the direction they should travel (noting that most British arrangements fail in this respect).

Tactile paving is designed to try also to provide a visual/colour/tonal contrast to assist partially sighted pedestrians. Wider visual/colour/tonal contrast is also important. Consistent use of colour and material helps to define what is carriageway, footway, and space for cycling.

Note that designs that change materials and colours in other ways can make navigation by partially sighted pedestrians more challenging. We have seen this approach used to try to slow vehicle or cycling speeds or to mark a point where pedestrians might be crossing, but we know of no good evidence that this is effective – whereas the effects on partially sighted pedestrians are clear.

Dropped kerb gradient steepness

It is relatively well understood that the gradient at a dropped kerb should not be too steep – preferably be no steeper than 1 in 20. Details are provided in the documents “Inclusive Mobility” and “Guidance on the use of Tactile Paving Surfaces”.

This is not only important for those travelling up or down the ramp, but also because of the risk that a pedestrian meeting the ramp sideways is tipped over from/with their mobility aid.

When conditions are more slippery, for example through frost or ice, all pedestrians are affected by dropped kerb gradient steepness.

Dropped kerb gradient direction

(full size image)

The direction a dropped kerb slopes is important for lots of reasons.

Pedestrians who are using wheeled mobility aids (such as a wheelchair, mobility scooter or a device providing amplified mobility) tend to want to ascend/descend the ramp in line with its gradient. Devices differ, but reasons include that:

• It is easier to negotiate a gradient in this way, than when turned across it.
• There is a risk of falling over sideways.
• Gradient transitions (i.e. the top or bottom of the ramp) need to be negotiated straight on if all four wheels are to be kept on the ground, and to avoid stressing/damaging the device.

This means that good designs involve gradients that point in the direction of travel, from one dropped kerb to the opposite one.

Dropped kerb gradient can also be useful for blind or partially sighted pedestrians, offering a guide on the direction they need to travel across a carriageway. (Again, most British dropped kerbs fail in this respect)

Of course it becomes more complex to consider the effects of dropped kerb gradient when a junction is on a hill, but it helps if designers understand the interrelationships between different design elements and what this means for users.

Space above a dropped kerb

(full size image)

It is important that there is level space at the top of a dropped kerb, for a number of reasons.

• Such space allows crossing pedestrians to turn to align with the ramp’s gradient before descending it or to turn away from this after ascending it.
• Such space is important for those who are using mobility aids and who want to pass a dropped kerb, without travelling down the slope, without their mobility aid leaning to the side.
• Such a space is important for those pedestrians who want to pass the top of the dropped kerb because they find it difficult to walk across the slope direction, or because they find tactile paving painful to walk on.

Crossing the major road & no-priority junctions

To keep things simple, the focus of this article has been on what factors and features affect pedestrians crossing the minor road at a side-road/priority junction. Before I finish, it seems worth returning to a point made at the start of the article, where I noted that many pedestrians will want to cross a major road where it meets a minor road.

(full size image)

Of course, there are situations where a side road meets a major road that carries a large amount of traffic, or where vehicles are at higher speeds, and which has controlled crossings along its length. This might be a reasonable way to support pedestrians.

But often the “major” road does not have this status and there may be no controlled crossings, or the nearest may be too far away. In this case we need to anticipate/facilitate pedestrians wanting to cross the major road at a side-road junction.

As when considering crossings of the minor road, a design that facilitates crossings of the major road is going to rely on options that:

• set physical constraints on the speed of through traffic,
• ensure good visibility and reduce crossing distance,
• provide access to dropped kerbs or other step-free access.

Many of the factors and features we’ve already explored will help with this, and I’m not going to add much additional detail to what is already a long article.

However, it’s worth briefly touching on how junction geometry can be adapted to improve visibility and shorten crossing distances.

The diagram below should provide food for thought. In the “better” image, the footway is also built out into the major road. It can be seen that this:

• Can mean drivers have to turn even more tightly,
• Shortens crossing distance across the major road
• Further improves visibility between pedestrians and drivers,
• Moves the crossing point of the minor road more onto the pedestrian desire line,
• Improves visibility of oncoming vehicles for drivers turning out.

(full size image)

In the “even better” design the roads are now one-way, and this means that crossing distances can be much smaller, and carriageway space much reduced.

This starts to look a little bit like the design that Mark and I are defining as a no-priority junction.

The difference between this and a no-priority junction is that for the latter the geometry makes clear that all roads have equally low priority, and that no road is prioritised over another. And there are no give-way markings.

No-priority junctions (or something a bit like them) already exist on British streets, but they are relatively unusual and lack a commonly accepted name. And there is little or no support available to those wanting to know how to design them well.

This image shows an example no-priority junction. Note that this is a design for the exact same street as has been shown in most of the other diagrams in this article. The profound improvement for pedestrians here should be obvious.

In a future article either Mark or myself will explore the use and design of no-priority junctions. When well designed their use could play an important part in creating more pedestrian-friendly streets. But this particular article is already long enough.

In the meantime, it’s worth noting that the list of factors and features in this article can be interpreted most easily – for no-priority junctions – if all the roads are considered “minor” and if all drivers are considered as turning.

About our work for MCC

Mark and Robert have been helping Manchester City Council think about how side road junctions could be made better through design. The council wanted to build on the aspirations contained within the Manchester Active Travel Strategy in a practical and achievable way, as well as responding comprehensively to the design approach proposed in the Greater Manchester Streets for All Design Guide.

Past UK practice has created a legacy of side road junctions which largely don’t support the interests of people walking, wheeling and cycling. We believe MCC is leading the way by commissioning work that asked us to consider the problem, how it might be addressed in the short term, and how it might be resolved in the long term.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are those of the authors and not Manchester City Council.

See also

• My first article in this series: Defining pedestrian-friendly junctions
• Mark Philpotts’ article introducing this work: What makes side road junctions pedestrian-friendly?
• My popular article, “I want my street to be like this“, referencing Dutch design to show that alternative junction (and street) designs are realistic
• Read everything like a book – New here? This is a suggested reading order for all the articles on this site.

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This article is published in parallel with one from Mark Philpotts, which you can find on the City Infinity Blog here. We’d like to invite you to read both our articles, because what we’re offering here has arisen from an exciting collaboration, over many months, during which we’ve been able to combine our thinking, experience and approaches. There are also other articles in this series (find a list here).

Introduction

Lots of people have heard of safe systems approaches, systemic safety, or “Vision Zero”. Much of the UK is, in some way or other, signed up to following these.

I’ve written a full article to explain safe-systems approaches previously (Rethinking road safety), but I’ll repeat some key points here.

In contrast to traditional approaches to road safety, a genuine safe-systems approach – by definition – asks that the whole system is open to change. To anyone who can’t currently imagine streets working very differently to how they work now, this will sound idealistic – and they’ll assume that we don’t really mean changing things too much. They’ll assume that the whole system doesn’t really mean the whole system. But at its heart a safe-systems approach is anything but idealistic, and it really does question everything. It’s about real action in the real-world. It means moving beyond only making tweaks to road design, and iterative modifications to what we already have. It does include researching the human causes of collisions, and perhaps even clever (but broadly ineffective) campaigns to convince people to behave properly or be nice to one another. But an approach limited to these things isn’t a safe-systems approach at all. A real safe-systems approach also means being open to whatever changes to infrastructure, to how streets are built and organised, are required to make things safe.

Again, many will assume this idealism, but this article is about putting that theory into practice. Excitingly, it arises from a major piece of work, for a real UK city, that wants to know how to make its streets decent inclusive places for pedestrians – a city that’s choosing to actually grapple with what so many have signed up to without (perhaps) really meaning/understanding what they’re promising.

Around nine months ago, Mark Philpotts and I successfully bid for a piece of work for Manchester City Council (MCC). This asked us to translate all the conceptual ideas about safety and behaviour and pedestrian well-being and safe-systems into something solid that MCC can use to guide the design, and re-design, of priority junctions in the city (I’ll explain the meaning of “priority junctions” in a moment). It asked us to consider all priority junctions in the area, over both the short and the long-term, thinking what should happen immediately but also being precise over what should become standard designs over the coming decades.

It also asked us to consider a host of real-world issues, like what different junction arrangements could be used, exactly where each would fit in the overall system, what dimensions apply, and how they could standardise materials to aid maintenance.

This work, and the ideas and concepts that it’s founded on, are too complex to explain in one blog post, so today we’re starting with one idea that sits at its heart. It’s a simple idea, but we’ve been able to use this as a foundation, building a detailed new realistic vision for our urban streets on top of it.

Today, we’re introducing the idea of a pedestrian-friendly priority junction, defining a measurable standard that must be achieved for a priority junction to be considered pedestrian-friendly.

Here we’re using the title priority junction as a cover-all term for all the many junctions on our streets that aren’t controlled by traffic signals (traffic lights), and which aren’t roundabouts. That’s the majority of urban junctions. They get their name because at most of these (in the UK) vehicle priority is marked and/or signed, although in this work we’ve also considered alternatives where it isn’t – more on that later.

We’re proposing that, in the long-term, almost all urban junctions should meet this pedestrian-friendly standard, unless they’re controlled with signals or away from pedestrian routes (perhaps because these use a controlled crossing).

Change is needed

As I introduce our definition of pedestrian-friendly it helps to have a reminder of what we’re trying to achieve.

The British “Highway Code” specifies that drivers turning into or out from a side road should give way to people walking or wheeling across the end of that side road. Rule H2 (mirroring Rule 170) includes:

“…At a junction you should give way to pedestrians crossing or waiting to cross a road into which or from which you are turning…”

There has been a rule of this nature for a very long time. Here is the equivalent rule in a 1987 paper version (with a bonus image of the front cover, indicating its 60p price).

This rule is almost entirely ignored. Drivers ignore it. Pedestrians ignore it. You’d think that there would be pressure to revise the Code to reflect reality. But when the Highway Code was last revised this rule was instead strengthened to its current form. Do we think these words will have some magical, mysterious effect on real-word behaviour?

I think that the existence of this rule, and it being ignored, points to a startling reality. At one level, Britain really does want streets to be safe and navigable for pedestrians. The country has understood and defined the driver behaviour that is required to achieve this, but – even after many decades – simply hasn’t been able to work out a way to make people behave in the manner required.

The fact that these words seem idealistic points out to us how big the gap is between what’s required on our streets for them to be safe, and what we actually have going on on them just now.

This matches the way in which, to many, the words around safe-systems, systemic safety, and Vision Zero seem idealistic – and out of step with reality.

But when I consider these things I don’t see them as idealistic at all – but a simple matter of good engineering.

So the work Mark and I took on meant we had to ask some questions that many ignore. What if everyone was to stop pretending that our current system works even half-decently for pedestrians? What if everyone was to stop pretending that we’ll eventually persuade all the users of our streets to always be sufficiently careful? What if everyone was to stop pretending there will be a future where the enforcement of rules will make things safe? What if we actually mean it when we say that streets should be inclusive? What if we completely re-think what’s required of our system, in terms of how streets are built? What if, through design, we genuinely aim to create acceptable conditions for pedestrians, following the principles laid out as a safe-systems approach? What if we do as that approach demands, which is to change the system itself so that serious injury and death on our streets is no longer seen as the price we have to pay for mobility?

What would that mean for (unsignalised) junction design specifically? How would that design be applied city-wide, over many decades?

Defining pedestrian-friendly

Mark and I realised that if people are going to talk about all the various junction design options, while seeking genuinely decent conditions for pedestrians, we needed to be able to start to categorise and name junction designs.

The work we’ve done with MCC involves a suite of new and/or defining concepts, each of which deserves its own article. Today we’re describing one of these, which is the idea that there is such a thing as a pedestrian-friendly priority junction.

This is captured in the conceptual diagram that’s at the head of this article.

The blue wedge in this diagram depicts how conditions for pedestrians, at a priority junction, can vary from very good (the wide end of the blue wedge, at the left end of the diagram) to very bad (the point of the wedge, at the right end of the diagram).

Conceptually, the vertical dotted line separates “pedestrian-friendly priority junctions” (to the left of the line)…

…from “standard” priority junctions (to the right of the line).

Standard designs, to the right of the dotted line, are standard British practice, and (with some notable exceptions) very common worldwide.

Within the standard category, conditions for pedestrians are on a spectrum. At the better end (immediately to the right of the dotted line) are conditions that arise from a compromise between the needs of pedestrians and a desire to move vehicles through a junction efficiently. At the worse end, at the extreme right of the diagram, sit flow focused junctions. Flow-focused junctions are designed on the basis of promoting vehicle flow entirely at the expense of conditions for pedestrians.

We DEFINE pedestrian-friendly conditions to be those in which both the physical design of the junction, AND the speed, volume and character of vehicle use, mean that drivers are likely to obey the highway code rules H2 and 170, giving way to pedestrians crossing or intending to cross the end of the side road1.

The diagram indicates that compromise designs align with a situation in which drivers are unlikely to obey rules H2 and 170, and that flow-focused designs align with conditions where drivers are unable to obey these rules.

The purple wedge is a way to depict how the proportion of pedestrians who are excluded – who are prevented from using the street and particularly from crossing a side road – varies according to the quality of conditions. Conceptually, the point of the wedge indicates conditions in which no pedestrians are excluded, helping to define the minimum quality for pedestrian-friendly conditions.

The full diagram looks like this:

Wider considerations

Mark and I will discuss other details in further articles – because a whole set of questions arise when you take the idea of a pedestrian-friendly priority junction as a starting point.

For example, there’s a complex relationship between what’s needed in terms of local design and what’s needed in terms of highway network planning. A pedestrian friendly status isn’t determined only by the physical design of an individual junction, but also the presence of acceptable traffic conditions. Even an outstandingly good junction design will fail to reach a pedestrian-friendly status if too many vehicles are present, or if one of the roads carries vehicles at too high a speed.

This is kind of “chicken and egg” – which makes it a challenge to explain. We’d need to use pedestrian-friendly junction designs to create the conditions that we need to allow us to use pedestrian-friendly junction designs.

For anyone reading our articles and worrying that the junction designs we’re describing couldn’t just be dropped into our existing system, that’s kind of the point! This isn’t a tweak. Many have been searching for some junction design that magically creates pedestrian-friendly conditions locally, while allowing traffic to continue to move around exactly as before. So many of the failed experiments and non-standard approaches we can see on our streets have arisen from this kind of thinking. But such a design doesn’t exist. Read the report that I worked on for Living Streets on continuous footways2. This describes how new ideas for junction design have failed to prioritise pedestrians because they’ve been built around accommodating the exact same traffic in the exact same places as was previously present. The successful design of pedestrian-friendly junctions, and the successful design of a pedestrian-friendly network are intimately and inherently connected. Confusing and complicated, yes?

Then there’s a complication with the whole title priority junction, because its difficult to know what types of junction this covers. In the UK, we’ve become used to the idea that for unsignalised junctions we’ll normally need give-way markings. Yet in the past, junctions lacking give-way markings were much more common. Unmarked junctions are common elsewhere, and the Dutch system stands out as offering a radically different model to our own. Few outside the Netherlands know this, but (by design) on Dutch streets junctions lacking both traffic signals and give-way markings are by far the most common design.

In our work we have had to find a way to name the potential pedestrian-friendly priority junction arrangements – dividing these into three options. These are no-priority junctions, (real3) continuous footways, and marked priority pedestrian-friendly junctions. These each have a potential role to play, but their own disadvantages too, all of which we’re advising on.

But what do they look like?

So you may be asking, “what on earth would these pedestrian-friendly junctions look like?”. That’s really for another article, but just for the moment let me ask the same question back to you.

If – at least to begin with – we use normal design elements – kerbs and corners, paint markings, turning restrictions, road narrowing and the like – what would it take to design a junction where drivers will naturally obey rules H2 and 170 of the Highway Code?

It seems to me that many competent designers could come up with something that achieves this, if only they thought they’d be allowed to install it.

Here – for the moment – are a three small sketches that I’ll write more about another time.

The first image shows a situation which is anything but pedestrian-friendly. This is a scale drawing of a real-life British junction between what should be two quiet residential roads. In reality, despite their location, both roads are built in a way that allows for undesirable speeds. The junction design allows for much of this speed to be maintained as people turn in and out of the side road. Contrast the carriageway space available within the side road – which is barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass – with the huge area of carriageway obvious in the middle of the junction.

What if we really want to make a difference here? What if we want to create conditions that slow driving speeds more generally, and junctions that contribute to that? And what if we start to work with new principles for our network design, such as that residential street designs will cater only for local traffic?

If, for the moment, we don’t bother considering alternate arrangements like a no-priority junction or continuous footway – what if we simply changed the shape of things? What could we achieve? The second and third images above show some options.

I’ll not get into more detail just now, but ask yourself this; Would people drive differently at the redesigned junctions, and would these designs create a better environment for pedestrians? And, for those thinking about the challenges the use of these junctions would create for traffic movement, perhaps think about what changes would be necessary at the network level to allow for the wide use of these junctions?

About our work for MCC

Mark and Robert have been helping Manchester City Council think about how side road junctions could be made better through design. The council wanted to build on the aspirations contained within the Manchester Active Travel Strategy in a practical and achievable way, as well as responding comprehensively to the design approach proposed in the Greater Manchester Streets for All Design Guide.

Past UK practice has created a legacy of side road junctions which largely don’t support the interests of people walking, wheeling and cycling. We believe MCC is leading the way by commissioning work that asked us to consider the problem, how it might be addressed in the short term, and how it might be resolved in the long term.

Disclaimer

The views expressed here are those of the authors and not Manchester City Council.

Footnotes

1. Our work also covers junction arrangements in which there is no side-road, but rather a meeting of equally low-priority roads arranged so that none of these takes priority, and pedestrian-friendly is defined as conditions in which pedestrians are prioritised in their movement across all arms of the junction. ︎
2. I led a major piece of research (in employment for Living Streets) looking at continuous footways in Britain (https://www.livingstreets.org.uk/inclusivedesign). We noted the introduction of a wide variety of experimental junction designs, some inspired by foreign continuous footways, and many given this title. These lack essential design features found elsewhere, and that this situation creates real confusion. In some cases, despite the title “continuous footway”, it is entirely unclear whether the footway continues at all. In the absence of appropriate terminology, and to navigate this confusion, we coined the title real continuous footways to exclude these hybrids. ︎
3. Defined in the Living Streets report referenced above. ︎

See also

• The second article in this series, Factors in pedestrian-friendliness
• My article Rethinking road safety
• Some maps I made showing ‘just one year‘ of death and injury on UK streets.
• My most popular article, “I want my street to be like this“, referencing Dutch design to show that alternatives are realistic.
• Read everything like a book – New here? This is a suggested reading order for all the articles on this site.

Comments…

• I welcome comments, even if you want to tell me (politely and constructively) that you disagree with me. Scroll below to view what others have said.
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Introduction

Can you imagine how much more dangerous it would have been working in a factory 200 years ago, in comparison to what it’s like now (in the UK at least)?

Everything is far from perfect nowadays, but we all understand that many years ago industrial safety was seen very differently. We’ve heard about how many people were killed while building a famous bridge, or a tall building. We know that it was much more common for people in factories to lose arms or fingers.

Once upon a time we might have told a worker to be careful when using a dangerous piece of equipment (like in the photograph). We might have provided a bit of training, but that would have been all. If they were later hurt through their own carelessness we’d have considered it unfortunate, but not our fault. We’d have called this an accident.

And we’d perhaps have seen the world as unpredictable, and that sometimes a set of unfortunate events would happen to line up, with people getting hurt as a result. That might have made us sad, but we’d have talked about unfortunate tragedy.

We’d have seen these accidents, these deaths and injuries, simply as the price of progress, as a price worth paying for our way of life.

But in modern times – at least in developed countries – almost everyone can be pretty sure that they’ll not die or be seriously injured at work.

Nowadays we expect that if an employee dies or is badly injured, then the company that employed them will be in trouble. And if an unpredicted event means someone gets hurt we’ll want to know why it wasn’t predicted. There will be difficult questions asked. Investigations will be carried out. There may be major penalties or even criminal prosecutions.

Of course poor practice continues, and there are still bad employers, and there are dangerous jobs with good employers, and we still use dangerous equipment, but the point is that we think about this differently to 200 years ago.

Of course you know why I’m saying all of this.

Two hundred years ago, if I’d said that I really believed that I was working for a situation where nobody should be badly injured and nobody should die at work, people would have thought me overly idealistic. Now it seems like a very reasonable objective.

So here’s a really really big question:

If it doesn’t sound idealistic to say that I think that nobody should be seriously injured or killed at work… why then does it sound idealistic when I talk about what happens on the way to work? Why does it sound unrealistic to say “I genuinely think that nobody should be seriously injured or killed travelling to work?”

Why do we think about industrial safety and road safety so differently?

Systemic safety

This is a conversation about systemic safety – about making a system safe. We’re quite used to thinking in systemic terms (about a whole system) when we think about industrial safety, but it’s still an alien idea for most people when thinking about our roads. You may also hear the terms “systematic safety” or about a “safe systems approach”, or in connection to road traffic about “vision zero” or “road danger reduction” – and in the Netherlands there’s a policy called “Sustainable Safety” (“Duurzaam Veilig”).

Systemic safety means blaming injury or death on the system first, even if the person being injured was also at fault in some way. When someone is hurt we expect investigations and questions. We’ll want to know about causes. We’ll look at an overall working environment.

We expect a company, and the wider system, to plan for the fact that people will make mistakes, will be stupid or incompetent, will be impatient or selfish. We’ll expect the company to predict all but the most unlikely chains of events, and to mitigate against these events hurting people.

We’ll not just expect a company to try quite hard to keep people safe. Instead we’ll expect a company to do what it takes to keep people safe.

We did this with industrial safety. We can do the same on our streets – if we choose to.

So here’s another really big question:

If we REALLY want to completely prevent injury and death on our roads, while still allowing motor vehicle use, what would we have to change?

We’d need a bit of a revolution wouldn’t we? We’d not be thinking just about tweaking the existing system. We’d be thinking about fundamental reform of the whole system.

As far as I see it this idea of fundamental system reform is the starting point for understanding a systemic approach to safety on our roads and streets… knowing that we’re talking about doing what it takes, about CHANGING THE WHOLE SYSTEM… about creating a new system which isn’t just a bit better but which is genuinely as safe as possible.

So far so good, but if you’re new to this then please know that you’ll need to look very carefully to find properly good things to read if you want to find out more. You need to know that it’s very common to find that old-style road safety approaches have been relabelled, by old-style road safety professionals, using the new language of systemic safety, and particularly using the title ‘vision zero’.

It should also be said that systemic safety isn’t something new, and old-style systemic safety thinking is still influencing some of our current street design. This drives a vision of a world where pedestrians will be safe from traffic because we’ll all spend our lives on elevated walkways or in underground tunnels – kept apart from the traffic as much to facilitate traffic movement as for our safety.

So how to tell the difference? Well you’ll know that you’re dealing with a traditional safety approach, even if it’s given the title ‘vision zero’, if what you’re reading is mostly about:

• small iterative improvements to how major roads are designed,
• small iterative improvements to features like posts or crash barriers or vehicle construction to reduce injuries,
• speed limit changes,
• prosecuting people for poor behaviour, and
• information campaigns to ask people to follow the rules and to be careful.

To be clear, I’m not criticising any of the above pieces of work outright. I’m in no doubt that the many small but iterative improvements to road and vehicle design have made a huge difference to safety. If I ever have something bad happen while driving on a motorway I’ll be pleased to find my life saved by the design of the vehicle or the crash barrier. Each of these threads of work will play some part in a systemic safety approach BUT any work on safety which assumes that the basic system is already fit for purpose is, by definition, not a systemic safety approach.

Systemic safety – key ideas

So we’ve already covered at least three key ideas:

The system can be fundamentally changed – A systemic safety approach demands that we’re open to changing fundamental aspects of the system, not just to trying to improve the existing system little by little.

Injury or death indicates a faulty system – If injury or death occurs, even as a result of human error, it becomes important to question where the system failed, and TO CHANGE IT so that this isn’t repeated.

A good system deals with real human behaviour – People make mistakes, and they sometimes behave badly. A good system doesn’t assume good behaviour or a lack of mistakes, but instead prevents human mistakes or bad behaviour from causing severe injury or death.

On this last idea it’s worth saying that when thinking about systemic safety we may also ask whether individual people are at fault. Systemic safety doesn’t mean ignoring guilt or poor behaviour – it means asking what we need to change so that when people behave poorly this doesn’t cause severe injury or death.

Now let’s add two further key ideas:

No level of death is a price worth paying for the convenience of the majority – This is as simple as it sounds. Death on our roads isn’t ‘just one of those things’ – isn’t a price worth paying. We really GENUINELY need to be working to prevent it – like we work to prevent deaths at work. We genuinely need to DO WHAT IT TAKES not just to try very hard.

A good system decreases both injury frequency and injury severity – A systemic safety approach does not only try to reduce injury frequency, but also the severity of injuries.

Technical decisions are political acts

So the theory sounds great, but before we get too enthusiastic I think there’s a problem we need to notice. At least we need to notice this if we live in countries like the UK. And it’s convenient to add this here as one more key idea which defines a systemic safety approach:

Street and road design isn’t a neutral act. It’s not even possible to be neutral when we maintain a road or street. Even just keeping things as they are is a political act. Any street design provides advantage to some at the cost of disadvantage to others.

Here in the UK we make a big mistake. We consider road and street design as a technical matter. Those who have classes at university about it, pick up a manual about it, or read guidance about it, learn that they should follow (politically neutral) good practice. The problem is that much of this good practice isn’t politically neutral at all.

It might seem fair to argue that it’s the job of those with political roles to make policy – and that this shouldn’t be left to technicians. I’d agree.

What this means, in practice, is that those with political roles have to get involved in technicalities – and not just policy. These people can’t just decide that our policy is that our streets should be safe, or that they should be made friendly for walking and cycling – leaving the decisions about how to achieve this to the technicians. Because if the technicians continue to work within the basic ideas that they’ve been taught to apply, which their managers expect them to base their work on, which their jobs depend on following, then what they design or maintain will, broadly, continue to support the status quo.

This is another way in which ‘systemic safety’ demands that the whole system has to be open to change.

Are other countries working on this already?

This all sounds difficult – are there other countries already working on this whose efforts we might copy?

The two most interesting projects that I’m aware of are in the Netherlands, and in Sweden.

The Dutch policy is called ‘Sustainable Safety’ () and the Swedish approach is ‘Vision Zero’. This title is perhaps the best known, having been used internationally.

As regular readers will know, it’s Dutch practice that I’m most familiar with. I’ll explore details about this in the article ‘Rethinking road safety – Part 2’ where I’ll be asking whether we could copy Dutch policy and practice.

Conclusions

To summarise the arguments I’ve made in this article…

• A systemic safety approach is fundamentally different to a traditional safety approach. Thinking about how safety at work has changed over the last couple of hundred years reminds us that it isn’t silly idealism to try to work toward a situation where people no longer die on our roads.

• Systemic safety relies on the idea that we’re happy to change fundamental aspects of how our system works. Any work that assumes that the basic system is a sound one, is by definition not a systemic safety approach. When thinking about this we need to notice that old-style safety work is often labelled with the new language of systemic safety and ‘Vision Zero’.

• Real systemic safety/‘Vision Zero’ work might occasionally employ public information campaigns, but this is a tiny element. Real systemic safety work assumes that people make mistakes, and that they will always be careless, selfish, stupid, and simply human. While there may be a little bit of worth in telling people to behave nicely or to be careful, we know that this work is almost irrelevant in comparison to the wider systemic change that’s needed.

• We’ll never be able to deliver a systemic safety approach while we consider street design to be a technical matter, best left to technical experts. All street design, and even maintenance which preserves the status quo, is a political act. If we’re serious about this then those with political roles have to move beyond fluffy policy, getting involved in design decisions – in debating and deciding how our streets are going to work in more detailed terms if they are to become safe.

Footnote on language
(sustainable, systemic, systematic)

I’ve chosen to use the phrase ‘systemic safety’ – but others also write about ‘sustainable’ or ‘systematic’ safety – or about ‘safe systems approaches’. I’m pretty clear that the Swedish ‘Vision Zero’ approach, and the Dutch ‘Sustainable Safety’ policy, can both be described as systemic safety policies.

One of the most recent Dutch documents comments on the use of the word ‘sustainable’ in regard to the Dutch policy (coincidentally reminding us that we’re at least 35 years behind them in their thinking):

When the vision originated, the name ‘Sustainably Safe Road Traffic’ was derived from the Brundtland report of the United Nations (1987) on sustainable development, which was extremely relevant at the time. It was defined as ‘a development that meets the current demands without impeding the possibilities of future generations to fulfil their needs’. Sustainable Safety builds on this definition… …using what is also referred to as ‘inherently safe’ design… In the past, ‘inherently safe’ was not included in the name of the vision, even though it actually better expresses a system approach. Sustainable Safety has become a familiar ‘brand’ for traffic professionals…  …that, similar to the Swedish Vision Zero, is taken as an effective and professional way of improving road safety systematically.

The title ‘systematic safety’ is also quite helpful in some ways, but I use the phrase ‘systemic safety’ because I think it explicitly makes the link to the idea of a safe system.

See also

• Rethinking road safety – Part 2 [To be published soon]
• Some maps showing ‘just one year‘ of death and injury on UK streets.
• https://www.swov.nl/en/facts-figures/factsheet/sustainable-road-safety
• https://www.swov.nl/en/publications/swov?mfulltext=sustainable%20safety
• Read everything like a book – New here? This is a suggested reading order for all the articles on this site.

Comments…

• I welcome comments, even if you want to tell me (politely and constructively) that you disagree. Scroll below to view what others have said.
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I’ve been watching the behaviour of people driving through a junction in Edinburgh. In this article I’ll show you the junction, and I’ll demonstrate how most people break the rules here. That’s quite interesting to watch – but actually I’m not writing this article to criticise the rule-breaking. Later I’ll discuss why what we see here shows us that we need to be really careful when researching and analysing behaviours more generally – and how research about new infrastructure may sometimes end up being over-simplistic or misleading.

Here’s a photo of the junction….

…and here are links to the location on www.openstreetmap.org and on Google Streetview. The road layout looks like this (I’ve added arrows to indicate allowed traffic flow):

Most vehicles move through the junction as indicated here with red arrows.

The streets to the south (the bottom of these images) create a mini-gyratory system looping around a small green park.

The STOP signs are provided here because oncoming traffic (the longer red arrow above) can be on the ‘wrong’ side of the carriageway (as can be seen in the video below), and because visibility is limited.

The law is very clear about how people should drive when encountering a STOP sign, and I imagine lots of people know it well. You must physically stop your vehicle before proceeding, and then in addition you should ‘give way’ – not move on until you can do so without another driver having to change speed or direction. To quote:

“…every vehicle must stop before crossing the [wide white] line … and no vehicle must cross the … line… so as to be likely to endanger any person, or to cause the driver of another vehicle to change its speed or course…” (TSRGD 2016)

The Highway Code explains the same thing, but in easier language:

“You MUST stop behind the line at a junction with a ‘Stop’ sign and a solid white line across the road. Wait for a safe gap in the traffic before you move off.” (Highway code: Rule 171)

A video survey

The video below introduces the junction:

And this longer video shows an informal survey of behaviour here. I stood for 25 minutes (08:45-09:12, 16 Oct 2020) recording every vehicle which crossed the STOP line (I missed recording only 4 vehicles because of people walking across in front of the camera):

I count as follows:

• In total 72 people drove (motor) vehicles over the stop line.
• 64 of the 72 drove straight over the white line, some faster some slower.
• 6 of the 72 crawled through it very slowly (definitely without actually stopping, but some might argue that they were effectively stopped)
• 2 stopped fully, but on both occasions only because of a clear need to give way.

Analysis

Our first observation must be that almost nobody driving obeys the law here, and that only a small percentage of people come close. We might find amusement in noticing that even the driver of the police van (at 2:14 on the video) makes no pretence that they are stopping.

But what more can we conclude? What do our observations teach us? And why does it matter that we think carefully about this?

So let’s think…. are any of the following fair conclusions, and if so which, based only on this survey and not on any other knowledge? And which form of words is the fairest to explain accurately?

1. Drivers are irresponsible people.
2. Most drivers are irresponsible people.
3. All drivers break driving law.
4. Almost all drivers break driving law.
5. All drivers break some driving laws.
6. All drivers ignore laws about STOP signs.
7. Almost all drivers ignore some STOP signs.
8. STOP signs don’t work.
9. STOP signs don’t make people stop.
10. Almost all drivers ignore these STOP signs.
11. Almost all drivers break the law at these STOP signs.
12. Most people who drive here break the law at these STOP signs.
13. These STOP signs, at this location, don’t work.
14. These STOP signs, at this location, don’t make people who are driving here stop.
15. Some people drive through this junction dangerously.
16. Some additional measures might be required here if we want to prompt people to obey the STOP signs.
17. Some additional measures might be required here in order to prompt safer behaviours.
18. Some additional measures might be required here in order to make the junction safe.
19. Junctions with STOP signs are safe.
20. Junctions with STOP signs are dangerous.
21. This junction is safe.
22. This junction is dangerous.
23. This junction sometimes offers a rubbish experience for pedestrians.

But why does this matter?

I’m not asking this because I’m particularly interested in STOP signs.

I think that this matters because it teaches us a lot about how to do research about behaviour on our streets – and in particular it teaches us to be really careful at the moment when we look at research about new designs of infrastructure… things like bus stop bypasses (aka ‘floating’ bus stops) and continuous footway (if you’re not sure what a bus stop bypass/continuous footway is then please refer to the explanation at the foot of the article).

(I’m afraid that this is the section of this article where I get a bit more grumpy. Please know that I’m not commenting on any one piece of research, but some general tendencies I observe to exist – many of which aren’t the fault of actual researchers but of those who commission or interpret this research.)

Neither bus stop bypasses, nor continuous footway, are without issues, and they are both new designs to the UK. That makes people cautious. In theory that caution is a good thing.

IF we design these things badly they put people at risk. At bus stops there’s a risk of a collision between someone cycling and a pedestrian – with risks both from the collision and to people taking action to avoid one. If continuous footway is put in the wrong place, or if it’s badly designed, then it can create even bigger problems. At best poor designs create a form of ‘shared space’ where pedestrians have to negotiate with those driving by looking at them and waiting (hopefully) to be waved across. More often it creates something that looks a bit like footway, but which really works as a section of normal carriageway – increasing the chance that pedestrians walk (or wheel) straight out into the carriageway space when they really needed to behave more carefully. And bad examples of both can make things extremely difficult or impossible for someone with sight loss, someone who walks more slowly, or for those (like younger children) who are less able to negotiate a complex situation.

Inevitably, based on this caution, we end up wanting to study how people behave when faced with these designs in the UK.

But this is where we hit problems. What tends to happen is as follows:

• We see a design which is proven in another country – typically the Netherlands – and because people don’t really understand what makes the design work, or because they have to compromise to get it installed, we create a poor copy.
• Then we copy the poor copy, creating lots more poor copies.
• Although we’ve done something new, we use the old words to describe it – so ‘contiunous footway’ becomes to UK designers what they see in the UK, even if it’s completely different to what’s found in the Netherlands. And all sorts of new rules are created for bus stop bypasses, which lead to designs which are very different to what we’d find at a Dutch or Danish bus stop.
• Then – wanting to see if we’ve done a good job – someone commissions research, or someone who particularly likes or dislikes the design carries this out themselves. The research project looks at one of these designs, or maybe a few of them, probably with some cameras. The research asks really big bold questions like “is continuous footway safe?” – like I might have asked “do STOP signs make junctions safer?” before conducting my video survey.
• The research comes up with some observations. These might be quite careful and accurate.
• Either the researchers or people interpreting the research then try to answer the big bold questions – drawing conclusions which are far wider and which are presented as far stronger than is reasonable given the evidence.

In the last few years I’ve seen studies based on work at a tiny number of locations (often just one location), leading people (not necessarily the actual researchers) to make conclusions like:

• ‘Cyclists’ don’t stop at zebra crossings at bus stop bypasses.
• Bus stop bypasses are completely safe.
• Bus stop bypasses are really dangerous.
• In only 1 in 250 interactions between a pedestrian and someone driving on continuous footway does the pedestrian need to suddenly change their behaviour, so the risks involved with these designs are low.

My point, clearly, is that the behaviours of people cycling past bus stops will change radically, depending on countless DETAILS of the design of the bus stop, the cycle track, visibility, people’s behaviours, how busy the track is, how busy the bus stop is, how careful pedestrians are or are not being, what situations they’ve recently been dealing with, and so on. These design details are everything.

And the behaviours of people driving will change radically, depending on countless DETAILS of the design of whatever they are encountering as they turn into or out from a side road, how busy the roads are, how busy the footways are, whether the situation is a simple or a complex one, and on many many other factors.

Only fairly poor research will try to make conclusions about ALL bus stop bypasses, or ALL designs that continue a footway across the end of a side road based on a few observations of a few (often similar) designs.

Good research will make much more limited conclusions, and most importantly will focus lots of effort on trying to understand what design factors are relevant in each individual situation they study – looking far beyond minor details AND it will consider whether all the designs studied share the same faults.

The worst research will not just try to make conclusions about all examples of one type of intervention, but all ‘cyclists’ or all ‘drivers’ or all ‘pedestrians’ – almost as if each of these is made up of people not like the rest of us, following strange motivations, and exhibiting inexplicable behaviours.

Making research as intelligent as possible

So with that in mind let’s think very very carefully about what we can conclude from our video survey at the STOP signs. I think it’s probably fair to say that:

• the people driving through this junction, at this time of day, do not stop their vehicles according to the law; and
• a junction with STOP signs can sometimes fail to cause people driving to stop:

But then really, when we think about this, what we’ve observed is pretty much what we might expect. People who drive are just people, just as people who cycle, or pedestrians, are just people. And we all already know that in many situations people don’t stick to rules. In fact we know all of the following things don’t we:

People are just people

• Most people don’t stick to rules if they think the rules are silly, or unnecessary, unless there’s likely to be a penalty for breaking them.
• Many people stick more carefully to rules which other people think are important, particularly if that includes friends or colleagues.
• If people break a rule which they don’t think is important, and there is no penalty, they are more likely to break it again.
• If people see other people breaking the rules they are more likely to break the rules themselves.
• If people feel a rule puts them at a disadvantage for no good reason, or if it puts them at more risk than if they ignore it, they are much more likely to ignore it.
• People are more likely to ignore rules, despite them being sensible rules, if they can’t immediately see why the rule is sensible.
• People are sometimes selfish, and power corrupts, so that those who are more likely to cause injury than to be injured are more careless about rules set up to protect the more vulnerable party.
• People are impatient, imperfect, human, and therefore they sometimes do things which logically we’d expect them not to.

‘Drivers’ and ‘cyclists’ and ‘pedestrians’ and everyone else – we’re just people using a car, van, bicycle, or walking. There’s no mystery.

Unobvious detail matters

Which brings us back to the importance of much less obvious design details, and other factors. An example will illustrate:

People driving toward this ‘courtesy crossing’ in Kirkintilloch rarely stop to allow pedestrians to cross (there is no legal obligation to do so, but the crossing is intended to prompt this behaviour).

Why do you think that is? What can we conclude? Is grey a poor colour for this infrastructure? Are drivers bad people? Is it that courtesy crossings like this just don’t work well?

But hold on a moment – people driving toward this second courtesy crossing, also in Kirkintilloch, on the other hand do very often stop to allow pedestrians to cross.

What’s the difference? The second crossing is the same colour as the first, with the same design, in the same town, on the same road.

The truth is that – as far as I can tell – the colour isn’t the issue, nor the road category, the speed limit, the town, or many many many other factors. What’s different about the second location are other factors. People driving here have already encountered about four of these crossing points by the time they’ve reached this one – and they’ve had time to absorb the idea that they might need to behave differently. The carriageway doesn’t have a white dashed line dividing opposing lanes. There are other crossings like this one close together.

So we’ve learned, we think, a lot about courtesy crossings, but very little of it is about the materials, the colour, or ‘drivers’.

Returning to STOP signs one last time

Let’s look at the junction with the STOP signs one last time.

Based on the ideas above, and thinking more imaginatively, can we make some bigger guesses about what we see here:

• Perhaps people driving through this junction at this time of day are mostly people who have done so before, and they can’t see why it’s important to stop at the STOP signs.
• Based on that then it seems likely that truly dangerous situations rarely actually arise here, because if they were common more of the people who drive through the junction regularly would be being more careful.
• The actual risk of an incident might seem to justify the signs, perhaps because it’s rare but because the consequences could be serious, but people here don’t trust that the signs are telling them something like this.

Some of those thoughts are really interesting I think – and they provide us with lots of interesting ideas about what we might need to change at this specific junction.

None of these ideas are too difficult to check either – checking might be difficult, but it’s surely not impossible – at least if I’m doing a decent piece of research. I can visit the same site on different days to try to collect just a little evidence on how many people are regulars here. I could probably speak to the driver of the waste lorry seen in my first video – there’s a good chance they could be traced, that they drive here regularly, and it would be interesting to get their observations about the manoeuvre they undertook. I could find a very different junction with different STOP signs, and evaluate differences in behaviour.

Or even better, what about this: I could find a location with STOP signs where people do regularly stop, and look at the differences in design. Wouldn’t that be interesting. I might need to look to other countries, but that would surely be a properly valuable exercise?

Conclusions

So here’s what I’m asking for in a nutshell:

If you’re studying behaviour on our roads, or if you’re interpreting research that someone else has carried out, or if you’re reading research or interpretations for your own interest, please remember that:

• the people who are being observed are just people, whether they are walking, using a wheelchair, driving, cycling or jumping on a pogo stick;
• given the above, it might help to be careful about your language, particularly if you’re studying something contentious (the word ‘cyclist’ is a particularly difficult one in this context, given that there are many existing stereotypes suggesting ‘cyclists’ are somehow different from other people);
• behaviours will vary considerably between people, and according to all sorts of other complicated changeable factors like weather, time of year, and perhaps even day of the week, so record these, and study what this changes (if anything);
• when making conclusions be very clear that what influences behaviours will be a vast array of complicated factors, many of which are difficult to observe, and some of which may be far more significant than those you first thought to study;
• if the design idea that people want you to research is standard and common in other countries – particularly if it’s been well established for decades – then you really should include an evaluation of how the new designs you’re looking at in the UK compare to these, and note what behavioural differences you see.

So am I right? These are just my personal thoughts – ideas which arose watching this one junction, and looking at a limited number of pieces of research. Are you a researcher – let me know why I’m right, or wrong. Or are you someone with opinions about bus stops or continuous footway. Let me know if you think there are pieces of research which deal with the issues I’ve raised.

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Explanation: Bus stop bypass / continuous footway

A quick explanation for those who don’t know…

If we are going to support cycling in the UK (or other countries) then we’re going to need to solve a few obvious problems. These include two very obvious ones.

Continuous footway

When people are cycling on a cycle track beside a big road then they need to be able to keep going, just as anyone driving does, as they pass junctions with much smaller roads – where there are no traffic lights to control traffic.

To enable this at side roads, the smaller road can be redesigned so that it carries very little traffic, which moves slowly, and which is only going to or coming from local destinations. As a result the pavement (i.e. footway) of the bigger road can continue unbroken alongside the bigger road, over the end of the smaller side road. People driving into or from the side road do so over the pavement, and take an appropriate amount of care because it’s obvious that this is what they are doing. If designed properly having this continuous footway, rather than having the footway broke, is invaluable to pedestrians. A cycle track can also be effectively part of this continuation of the pavement/footway (being very separate, but associated).

See “Design Details 1” for more, or “Design Details 2” if you just want a few images.

Bus stop bypass

When people are cycling along a cycle track, which is beside a big road, and where this road has bus stops along it, then the cycle track needs to keep those cycling on it safe even near the bus stops. We can’t just insist that people cycle on the carriageway in among the other traffic at those locations – not if we want the cycle track to feel safe.

One key solution to this is to take the cycle track around the back of the bus stop – to build the bus stop between the cycle track and the carriageway. Thus the cycle track bypasses the bus stop on the carriageway. There are other solutions too, such as having people alight from the bus directly onto the cycle track (with appropriate laws and designs to support this).

For some examples of different designs dealing with this issue in Copenhagen see “Copenhagen bus stops“.

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See also…

• Read everything – New here? This is a suggested reading order.

Comments…

• I welcome comments, even if you want to tell me (politely and constructively) that you disagree, scroll below to view what others have said.
  If you landed here from a Twitter link on a mobile device you may need to press ‘Leave a comment’ below to see the comments on this article or you can reload the page to see them.

I’m a firm believer in the idea that social change can be facilitated by good questions – that good questions can be very powerful.

We can’t avoid traffic congestion in our towns and cities. We can’t build our way out of congestion. We know this.

So we accept that our towns and cities will experience congestion, here’s a really important question…

“Where is the best place for the congestion?”

I think that it’s very important that we ask this question, and that we demand that people responsible for our streets and roads answer it.

We know that one of the factors limiting how many people drive, and how many vehicles are using our roads, is the capacity of these roads, and the willingness for people to spend time in congestion. The idea that more and more people will try to drive, even after traffic stops moving completely, is nonsense. It’s nonsense that many people believe, but it’s nonsense all the same. There’s always a limit. Provided that there are alternatives, when traffic congestion gets bad enough people stop trying to drive. They may be prepared to move to a new home, or to change their job, to catch public transport, or to walk or cycle. If it takes 3 hours to drive somewhere and 30 minutes to catch the train, and costs are similar, then they catch the train. If it takes 1 hour to drive and 15 minutes to walk, and if it’s safe to walk, then they walk. There might be days when traffic stops moving – but in general the actual capacity of our roads is a key part of what sets the level of vehicle use.

But of course there are always places in the road network which clog up first – parts of the network which regularly are at capacity. And by ‘at capacity’ I don’t just mean that at those points the roads are allowing through the maximum amount of traffic that they can allow – but also that people are waiting for the maximum amount of time that they are prepared to wait there.

To politicians or authority officers, improving traffic flow at these points seems a popular thing to do. But these limiting points in our road network are important. The congestion here is helping to prevent congestion elsewhere. If we allow more traffic here then the congestion has to move to other places instead. Even if we’ve increased the overall capacity of the network and traffic moves more smoothly for a couple of years, we still don’t win. It’ll soon be just as congested as it was, just with more vehicles, in different places to before.

So back to my question. If congestion is going to exist then where do we want it?

Should congestion be on an urban road outside a school, or in a shopping area, or in the centre of our town or city?

Or do we want it to be on a road away from people? And can we actively use congestion in one place to manage traffic flow somewhere else?

Many of those who are professionally employed in building or managing our roads and streets have been indoctrinated into the belief that they should at all times be working toward improving traffic flow. And they may never have thought about this question – which is why I think it’s such a good one to ask.

The myth of achievable flow

Back in the 1930’s or 40’s (or thereabouts) the world at large seems to have bought the dream of ‘automobility’ – the idea that a good life of the future would be based on door to door motorised private transport. In a world where few people had cars it would have been so easy to fall into the trap – becoming a believer – imagining a future of luxury where what sometimes feels like the tedious journey to work was exciting, quick, and effortless.

Surprisingly nobody seems to have been capable of doing the maths – looking at the size of vehicles, the size of our roads, the space needed for parking, and so on. Or at least they seem to have been so sold on the idea of building bigger and bigger roads they lost sight of the fact that people are social animals… so that destroying our city centres by building huge roads designed to get people to those same city centres was both illogical and wildly stupid.

In other places completely new towns were built, on the basis that automobility was the goal. There’s one a few miles from my home city. Houses sit on cul-de-sac streets which are directly connected to bigger streets, and then to a set of major distributor roads which are kept free of housing, human scale activity, and pedestrians (who are confined to separate paths linked by underpasses). The whole plan was to create free flowing traffic, and a modern way of life. It was idealistic – driven by a real belief that this would be a positive step. There can often be plenty of green space, and there was an aim of creating places full of fresh air and healthy people.

© Mapbox © OpenStreetMap

But in general this failed, and failed miserably, creating relatively soulless towns, but with plenty of congestion remaining… because even when building completely new towns nobody was realistic about the huge amount of space that would need to be dedicated to roads for moving vehicles, and parking for storing them.

Nobody anywhere has managed to make this work, creating both nice places to be, and free flowing traffic.

Many many cities had a turning point, where they realised their mistake and turned back. Even the Netherlands with its bicycles and its traditional city centres followed this path. Utrecht is currently replacing an inner city centre motorway with the canal (moat) that was filled in many years ago to create the motorway. Amsterdam planned a wide city centre road and had made the space to build it, but changed its mind and instead put the medieval streets back in place. Birmingham, England, built inner ring roads and motorways suffocating the city centre, and has very very slowly been downgrading or removing these.

The Netherlands is notable because it didn’t just stop pursuing the automobility dream, but it came up with a new vision, and started struggling towards this many decades ago. Many countries, my own included, stopped pursuing the really radical plans to create free flowing traffic, but never really worked out a new vision.

I’ve recently been supporting some work to redesign an academic module introducing undergraduate civil engineers to road design. The old course taught – until last year –  how to build a motorway, and was based on the idea of traffic movement. The new course teaches about how different designs around our urban roads and streets have an effect on the lives of people who live and move about there. I think that this isn’t at all unusual – worldwide I suspect that many people working on our streets have been taught that real roads look like motorways, about flow, about controlling pedestrians, about gradients and kerb corner radii, but nothing or almost nothing about how to make urban streets better for people to live beside.

There are still many many people out there who have jobs connected with maintaining and developing our roads and streets who have come from this background – and who secretly are still believers (or half-believers), or who simply apply the tools they were given because they don’t know any better. Their city may have plans about cycling and walking and public transport, but deep inside they still assume that with sufficient political support and enough commitment the city could have free flowing traffic.

When they build, or maintain, or approve changes to our streets, they’re still thinking that they are working towards traffic flow – so little by little small (or large) changes are put in place with this in mind. If a corner can be made more gentle to keep traffic moving they make it more gentle. If traffic lanes can be added they add traffic lanes. If a junction can be changed so that it allows traffic to move through it faster then that seems to them to be a good change.

This is where our question becomes useful I think – because it’s very reasonable to ask this, but it forces the believers in flow to confront their beliefs.

Where is the best place for the congestion?

Other questions

There are equivalent questions – which generally mean the same thing or which ask people to think about the same issues:

• If you improve congestion at this junction, where will it happen instead?
• Why is it a good idea to increase the capacity of this junction?
• Your policy says that the city is prioritising cycling, so doesn’t that mean that you should be trying to limit the capacity of this road to carry vehicles?
• How is the city trying to direct congestion so that it can be in the best place?
• Based on your traffic model, which are the junctions where their current limit on capacity is helping to control overall traffic volume in the city?
• Why hasn’t anyone modelled this? Surely that’s an essential step?
• Where are there sections of free flowing carriageway which could be narrowed or controlled so that traffic flows more slowly and congestion is decreased at junctions?
• Where is there currently spare capacity in this road system, and what are you going to do to remove it so that these roads match the overall capacity of the system as a whole?
• If you don’t improve this junction, when do you think it’ll reach capacity – so that people choose a different route?

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See also

• Traffic is not the lifeblood of a city
• Falling out of love (with my city)
• What nobody told me (introduction to Netherlands urban design)
• Read everything – New here? This is a suggested reading order.

Comments…

• I welcome comments, even if you want to tell me (politely and constructively) that you disagree, scroll below to view what others have said.
  If you landed here from a Twitter link on a mobile device you may need to press ‘Leave a comment’ below to see the comments on this article or you can reload the page to see them.

This article presents a set of ‘measures’ – really just a small set of five very simple questions – which can be used to quickly provide a top level assessment of the quality of an environment for cycling. These measures have already been tested in a number of scenarios, and I’m happy that they are useful, as are many of those who have used them – therefore the main aim of this article is to set them free into the wider world.

(Skip ahead to the measures)

Introduction

I’ve spent time (previously) in a professional role where I was often asked about the quality of cycle routes. It turned out that these questions were very difficult to answer – even when I knew a route well. To put it simply my ‘good’ might be ‘bad’ to someone else (or the other way around).

Then later, in conversation about auditing routes, the same question re-emerged, but from another angle. What should a surveyor record in order that someone sat in an office, with only maps and data to go on, could answer these kinds of questions?

I know that many readers of this blog will at this point be wanting to tell me about a tool they know of, which tries to measure quality more objectively.  I know many of these tools – and there are a large number of them. My contention is this: many of these tools are useful, but they generally do not get around the subjective nature of these judgements about quality – they just hide it away. Look carefully, and it’s still there.

This is no different to discussions about the quality of hotels, or books, or films. What one person likes another may dislike. Quality can be discussed, and we recognise it, but it cannot easily ‘measured’ in an objective way. Of course measurements of some features can be taken, but this approach can end up obscuring an understanding of overall quality with details about things only of interest to specialists.

Quality in this respect is ‘subjective’ not ‘objective’. Once we accept this it allows us to embrace the subjectivity – to look for a way to work with that subjectivity rather than trying to hide it. I think the results of doing this are very helpful. People might be afraid that this would lead to ‘poor’ being classed as ‘good’, but I think there are several ways we can avoid that.

So I set out to look for a method to work with the subjective nature of the judgements that would be required, but without losing a clear definition of what ‘good’ looks like. So we’re not talking about an unfocused 5 point scale or similar here…

There is already one fairly well established idea in the UK, providing a rough guide to the level of traffic safety available on a street. That idea is that ‘safe’ in broad terms can be judged as being the level at which a street is suitable for cycling by an unaccompanied twelve year old child. This is sometimes misunderstood to be about designing for children, but (to my understanding) the idea has always been that the level of safety needed for an unaccompanied twelve year old is also representative of the level of safety needed for a whole range of other bicycle users.

This idea is useful – but of course the quality of cycling experience relies on much more than traffic related safety. Surface quality also matters (not least in the UK where people sometimes think that cycling has been adequately provided for by putting signs on unsurfaced and indirect paths).

However there are also other very important factors. The Helpful Quality Measures include important questions about ‘social safety’ and ‘flow’. These are in recognition that everyday cycling can’t be hidden away in places where people are afraid to go at night, and that a certain basic level of speed and comfort must be facilitated.

But even this isn’t the whole story. It is very important to note that these Helpful Quality Measures are only intended for helping with judgements about those elements of quality which are inherently subjective. There are other elements of quality which can be objectively measured – and which must also be taken into account in a proper assessment. Directness, gradient, appropriate prioritisation of different users, and accessibility (around disability) are all at least as important as the factors assessed using the Helpful Quality Measures. Of course there may be no harm in also creating simple questions to help with assessing these if that approach fits a particular situation.

I’m indebted to a small group of staff from the organisation Sustrans Scotland who, mostly outside their normal roles, helped me with the very earliest discussions about this issue, the development of the measures, their initial testing for auditing purposes, then the further refining of the wording used.

The remainder of this article presents and explains the measures (and is written to be used without this introduction, so briefly repeats a few of the points already made above):

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The Helpful Quality Measures

The ‘Helpful Quality Measures’ are the five simple questions below:

Looking only at traffic-related safety, would most people allow an unaccompanied 12 year old to cycle here? Looking only at surface quality, would a road (racing) bike be used here? Looking only at issues of social safety, would most people feel comfortable walking here after dark? Looking at ‘flow’, can a relaxed 8mph (12kph) be continually and safely maintained here? Looking only at route signage, can this cycle route be followed confidently without a map?
[This measure is ONLY FOR SIGNED ROUTES]

Each question can be answered with one of the following ratings:

Yes Perhaps Probably not No

‘Yes+‘ may also be helpful as a rating for surface quality

 

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How the measures work

People don’t have any issue forming opinions about the quality of infrastructure they encounter when cycling, but what makes it difficult to measure quality is that personal opinions vary, and people disagree about what ‘good’ looks like. These measures make it easier to communicate about a relatively well defined level of quality.

The measures aren’t complicated, and are designed so that they can be understood and used by ordinary members of the public, but it is helpful to understand the following points if you’re going to work with them.

The measures are specifically about cycling.

These measures are only about the quality of the infrastructure in regard to cycling – not about other issues like the quality of place, or about how well designed a street is for those on foot or using a wheelchair (etc). Cities and towns which are genuinely good for cycling are also designed to be good places to live. These measures tackle the one important issue only, with an approach that works specifically for this issue. The measures should be used alongside consideration of the wider issues.

The measures are about ALL infrastructure which might reasonably be used for cycling for everyday journeys.

These measures are specifically designed to be as applicable to ordinary roads as to anything built specifically to support cycling. Only the measure about signage has a more limited usage (applying specifically to signed routes).

The measures might not be applicable at all in regard to other types of cycling. For example they are clearly not of any use in assessing mountain bike routes.

A complete assessment of infrastructure for cycling also must consider other factors.

These measures, on their own, will never completely define the difference between ‘good’ and ‘poor’ infrastructure – and they aren’t intended to do so. Many other factors have to be taken into account.

I’ve created these measures to fill a gap in the tools and measures which currently exist. They don’t replace these. They address qualitative/subjective factors which aren’t easily measured by existing tools/methods.

Among many important issues which are not addressed by these measures are directness, gradient, appropriate prioritisation of different users, and accessibility for a variety of bicycles (including those designed for use by people with disabilities).

Each measure is a simple, memorable, question.

I think that the simplicity and memorability of the measures is important. I think that these questions can be easily understood both by ordinary members of the public and by specialists.

The questions are carefully thought out so that, while remaining simple and memorable, they are focused on specific quality factors. The approach provides much more useful information than simpler ratings would.

The ratings which can be given are a set of memorable words or phrases.

The quality scale provided by the ratings is very simple and is memorable. This makes the measures easier to use than if they used a numerical scale, and this makes them more practical for the purposes I’ve designed them for.

In this article I’ve explained the measures in detail, but in practice it ought to be enough to remember that the questions can be answered with ‘yes’, ‘perhaps’, ‘probably not’, and ‘no’.

The rating ‘yes’ is the minimum standard, indicating basic, decent, usable infrastructure, and relatively civilised streets which can be used for everyday cycling.

The measures are phrased so that even the rating ‘perhaps’ indicates a failure to provide decent infrastructure which will adequately support everyday cycling. ‘Yes’ is the minimum standard for ‘adequate’. People may learn to cycle safely in hostile conditions, where their needs are disregarded, and may keep cycling even when this is an unpleasant experience. Most people who currently cycle do so simply because it’s a good way to get around. But the measures lay out the conditions which we’re going to need to create if we’re to make cycling just a transport choice – rather than a test of character.

You can use these measures however you like. They are useful in discussing or planning new infrastructure, informal assessments of existing roads, formal and informal assessments and audits by groups of people (including the public), and for communicating with the public (perhaps with mapping).

I’d strongly discourage attempts to formalise the measures or to make them less subjective, or to change the wording – this has been carefully thought out and tested.

You are encouraged to use the measures for any purpose you desire, but if writing about them, using them in presentations, or for paid work please provide a link to this article and an acknowledgement of my work.

For measuring quality in more detailed ways look to tools like the London Cycling Campaign ‘Cycling Level of Service’ tool (or a local equivalent) which is designed for this purpose.

Appendix 1 provides additional notes about the practical usage of the measures for auditing purposes.

Appendix 2 answers some additional ‘frequently asked questions’ about the structure and wording of the measures for people interested in how they have been developed.

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Details about individual measures

This section provides more detail about each individual measure. When working with the measures most people only need to read this section once, or only need to refer to it to answer specific questions as they occur.

Measure 1: Traffic related safety Looking only at traffic-related safety, would most people allow an unaccompanied 12 year old to cycle here?

The potential ratings, ‘yes’, ‘perhaps’, ‘probably not’, and ‘no’, are simply answers to the question.

Key information

This measure is specifically about traffic-related safety.

If somewhere is (or will be) safe from traffic it should be given a positive rating even if you wouldn’t allow an unaccompanied 12 year old to cycle there for other reasons.

Frequently asked questions about this measure:

Q. I don’t know any 12 year old children. How do I know whether people would allow a 12 year old to cycle somewhere?

A. In reality 12 year old children vary hugely in their skills. The idea of an unaccompanied 12 year old conveys a very rough idea of a level of safety. I consider that a 12 year old child will have the physical skills to be in complete control of a bicycle, able to cycle predictably and according to any way they have been taught. I also consider a 12 year old as a child, with a child’s understanding of risk and a lower ability to predict and avoid this. I consider that ‘most people’ would be much more protective of a 12 year old child than of an adult.

Q. Does ‘most people’ mean everyone, or only those already cycling?

A. ‘Most people’ means everyone, not just people who currently cycle.

Q. Two of us disagree about whether we’d let a 12 year old cycle in a particular place. How do we decide whether to record ‘yes’ or ‘perhaps’.

A. That’s the nature of these measures. Talk about it. Use the discussion to learn from each other about why you disagree. Ask other people for their opinions. Record ratings from several people and work out what the median is (the rating that half the people think is too low and half think too high) but also record that people couldn’t agree because that’s useful to know too.

Q. 12 year old children can be very experienced on a bike. Am I judging on the basis of a trained and experienced 12 year old, or one lacking experience?

A. Judge on the basis of a typical 12 year old for the area/place you’re rating. The fact that it would be possible to train a 12 year old to be safe, despite poor traffic safety, should not be taken into account. In countries with good quality infrastructure much younger children can safely get around unaccompanied and with minimal or no training.

Q. It’s possible for 12 year old to cycle safely here if they use the pavement, and lots of people don’t seem to mind if this happens. Should we rate the route according to its legal use or on the basis of how people actually use it?

A. We’re looking for a rating for ‘proper’ use of the infrastructure – as it is designed to be used by people following any rules laws and signs. If people don’t follow the rules because of feeling unsafe then you almost certainly need to be recording the lowest level of rating for safety here.

Q. The level of traffic-related safety on this road varies during the day. During commuting hours it’s poor, but on weekends it’s pretty good. How should we record the level of safety?

A. This isn’t a scientific measure. Do what seems sensible. Is the route used primarily during commuting hours? If so then record what it’s like at this time. Is it used primarily for leisure at weekends? If so record what it’s like at the weekend. Or give it two ratings. You’re only using these measures to communicate about the route.

 

Measure 2: Surface quality Looking only at surface quality, would a road (racing) bike be used here?

The potential ratings ‘yes’, ‘perhaps’, ‘probably not’ and ‘no’ are simply answers to the question.

It may also be useful to allow ‘yes+’ to indicate the very highest quality surface:  motorway standard tarmac/bitmac, which is very smooth, with no cracks or potholes at all. This rating is helpful because it indicates a surface which is so good that it can also be used for small wheeled devices like skates.

The rating ‘yes’ would tend to be used for normal UK roads which are in relatively good condition – covering a wide range of conditions.

Key information

This measure is specifically about surface quality.

Although the question asks about ‘road’ bicycles the measure is not used to judge how fast it is possible to cycle. Issues around speed are dealt with in the ‘flow’ measure – which penalises designs which don’t adequately account for the wellbeing of those on foot (etc).

The measure asks about ‘road bikes’ because these aren’t normally used on rougher surfaces. Skilled bike users can do amazing things but the measure asks if a road bike would be a sensible choice on a particular surface.

If a surface is (or will be) smooth then rate it highly for this measure even if nobody would actually use a road bike there for other reasons.

Frequently asked questions about this measure:

Q. The quality of this path surface varies during the year. It’s really good in dry weather but unusable in the wet. How should we record the surface quality?

A. This isn’t a scientific measure. Do what works. Perhaps record two values, for summer and winter, or consider whether the path is normally wet or dry. Simplest may be to record it at its (normal) worst.

Q. What exactly is a ‘road bike’ and how do I make judgements if I’ve never ridden one?

A. ‘Road bike’ is the proper title for what some people call a ‘racing bike’. It’s what someone in the Tour de France rides and a simple Google image search will provide examples. The measure asks about road bikes because they have very skinny tyres, which are pumped up to be very hard, and are therefore normally only used on relatively smooth sealed surfaces. Remember that this isn’t a scientific measure so a guess about what it is like to ride such a bike is still useful.

Q. Why are there 5 possible rating values for this measure (‘yes+’ is allowed) when there are only 4 for the other measures?

A. The measure is intended to record a very wide range of surfaces, and four levels weren’t enough. The top level (‘yes+’) is for recording sections of tarmac which aren’t just good enough for use on a road bike but also good for other uses – for example on a small wheeled scooter, with less robust wheelchairs, or on skates. Such surfaces also make for comfortable and efficient/relaxed cycling on any normal city bike too.

 

Measure 3: Social safety Looking only at issues of social safety, would most people feel comfortable walking here after dark?

The ratings, ‘yes’, ‘perhaps’, ‘probably not’, and ‘no’ are simply answers to the question.

Key information

This measure is intended to record issues of social safety.

If a place feels safe in social terms you should give it a high score even if there are other reasons you might not walk or cycle there.

Although this measure asks about walking it’s designed to record information for people cycling. The measure asks about walking because people are generally more cautious when walking than when cycling, making the measure is more sensitive.

Frequently asked questions about this measure:

Q. This measure asks about walking after dark. Should I record a rating on the basis of what the area is like in the middle of the night, at rush hour during the winter, or at another time?

A. Do what’s sensible. This isn’t a scientific measure but just an attempt to capture something about the character of an area. It may be helpful to record two or more ratings for defined situations. One simple system can be to record one measure for busy times (e.g. winter rush-hour) and one for quiet times (e.g. winter late evening). It’s unlikely to be useful to provide a rating for use in the middle of the night. If you want to record only one measure judge according to conditions during a late winter evening – i.e. after dark, after rush-hour, but not in the middle of the night.

Q. Why does the question refer to ‘walking’ when these measures are about cycling?

A. The measure asks about walking after dark because that makes it more sensitive. In areas where social safety is perceived to be lower people are less willing to walk than to cycle. It’s also clear that some people are used to cycling in darkness in environments which others find intimidating. We want this measure to support judgements about everyday cycling.

Q. Why does the question ask about ‘most people’?

A. The question asks people to ignore whether they personally would walk in an environment after dark, instead judging whether it would be a normal thing to do. This also makes the question more objective.

 

Measure 4: Flow Can a relaxed 8mph be continually and safely maintained here?

(use 12kph instead of 8mph in this question if you wish)

This question can sometimes be a little more difficult to answer, so the following additional explanations may help.

The rating ‘yes’ indicates that it is never normally necessary to drop below 8 mph – little concentration is required to cycle above 8 mph – cycling above 8mph is safe and will not alarm anyone on foot (or using wheelchairs, etc).

The rating ‘perhaps’ indicates that it isn’t normally necessary to drop below 8 mph – but that if this is necessary then it is only slightly below 8mph and it isn’t for long – or that cycling above 8mph might perhaps risk alarming people on foot (but might not) – and might (or might not) require some increased concentration.

The rating ‘probably not’ indicates that it is probably not possible to remain above 8mph – or that at some times this is impossible – or that it is not a relaxed experience doing so (it requires concentration) – or that it is likely to cause risk (or alarm).

The rating ‘no’ simply records that it is not possible to remain above 8mph, or that doing so causes alarm or risk, or requires significant concentration or skill.

Key information

This measure is about quality of design, and usability.

Good infrastructure is easy to use, meaning that cycling can be an efficient and relaxed experience, and that at the same time the wellbeing of others – such as those on foot or using wheelchairs or similar – is fully taken into account. This measure is designed to take each of these issues into account. At first sight it may seem slightly more complex, but it’s been found to be fairly simple to apply in practice.

Note that a full picture of ‘flow’ also requires that length/chance of delay is recorded for locations where it may be necessary to stop cycling. This can be measured objectively (so details are not discussed as part of these helpful quality measures).

Frequently asked questions about this measure:

Q. How fast is 8mph/12kph? I don’t have a speedometer on my bike.

A. This is about the maximum speed that most healthy adults would reach running for a bus, and only fit adults running on a flat straight path would maintain this speed for any significant time. It’s a speed which on a bike probably won’t feel any more energetic than walking does. While this measure doesn’t ask for precision it can nevertheless be helpful to use a speedometer to check what 8mph/12kph feels like before trying to use this measure (even using a speedometer smartphone app, provided the phone is suitably mounted for safety of course).

Q. Can you come up with a better word than ‘flow’? Couldn’t you measure it differently? Shouldn’t you just talk about average speed?

A. This isn’t really a measure about speed at all, but of the character of infrastructure and of how speed relates to the wellbeing of others. I’m very happy to consider alternative terms, but so far this has been the simplest, and in testing it proved useful. This measure penalises designs which make cycling difficult, demand silly manoeuvres, or mix pedestrians and cycling on narrow paths.

Q. Often people can maintain speed by ignoring signs and instructions or by bending the rules. Should this rating of ‘flow’ be based on speeds in reality, or speeds if you stick strictly to all the rules?

A. This is a measure of infrastructure quality, not of actual speed. It should be judged on the basis of someone following all the rules, including any instruction given on signs and similar.

Q. The usability of a path will vary during the day. At times it will be full of people walking. Should I judge it’s ‘flow’ at busy commuting times or at quiet times?

A. This isn’t a scientific measure – do what’s sensible. I’ve written the measure to take account of this to some extent. The ratings ‘perhaps’ and ‘probably not’ can be seen to refer to changing conditions during the day. Remember that 8mph is a very relaxed speed on a bicycle and in cities which are good for cycling the answer to this question will be ‘yes’ in most places, even at rush hour.

Q. 12 kph isn’t quite the same as 8mph!

A. True. But it’s easier to remember rounded numbers and this isn’t a scientific measure, and memorability is more important than accuracy.

Q. When judging ‘flow’ on a hill, should I take account of the fact that it’s faster going down than up? Or should I disregard the hill in some way?

A. I think that the easiest way to deal with a hill, assuming that infrastructure is similar for uphill and downhill travellers, is to rate it for downhill use. This measure of ‘flow’ is intended to record design not geography. Gradient is important, but it can be measured separately should you wish – as an objective fact providing additional information about quality.

 

Measure 5: Route signage quality Looking only at route signage, can this cycle route be followed confidently without a map?

This measure is only to be used for signed cycle routes. The following additional explanations may help to make it as useful as possible.

The rating ‘yes’ indicates that the route is obvious, and that users will be confident of being on the route.

The rating ‘perhaps’ indicates that it is necessary to look for signs carefully but they are present and a user will probably be confident they are on the route.

The rating ‘probably not’ indicates that most people will have some difficulty following the route and will often be unsure whether they are on the route or not.

The rating ‘no’ simply indicates that the route cannot be followed without a map.

Key information

This measure is specifically designed for cycle route signage.

In most locations (away from signed cycle routes) this measure can be ignored.

This measure is not useful for assessing other signage, even though this is often much more important in general wayfinding, and it is not useful as a wider measure of how easy it is to navigate.

Frequently asked questions about this measure:

Q. What counts as a ‘route’?

A. The word ‘route’ can be confusing, having many related meanings. Here I specifically mean a route for cycling which has been given a name, identifying number or other identifying code which (it is intended) means it can be followed using signage. This kind of signage is what is used for routes such as those on the UK National Cycle Network. I’m not meaning ‘routes’ used for cycling in the wider sense.

Q. What signs should be taken into account?

A. This is specifically about signs which use some kind of number, code, or route name identifying the route, to tell people how to follow it. It may be possible to navigate following other clues, including general road signage, but this shouldn’t be taken into account. The measure is specifically about the quality of dedicated route signage.

Q. Why does the question ask about route users being confident about being on the route?

A. The question is asking not just about whether following signs means people stay on the correct route, but also what it feels like to follow the signs. Good route signage doesn’t just point the way at junctions, but also ensures that route users remain confident that they are following the route correctly in-between junctions. There are route signs designed specifically for this purpose. This also tends to result in a robust route, which isn’t badly disrupted by vandalism, damage, or the loss of a few signs. A messier question might add the words  “and without feeling the need to check a map”.

 

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Appendix 1:
Using the measures for auditing

For scenarios where the helpful quality measures are used for auditing/evaluation of existing infrastructure the following notes may be useful. I’ve included suggestions for understanding how to process auditing/evaluation ratings.

Using multiple auditors improves the value of the information.

Clearly these measures are subjective. A key learning point in testing was that while one rating from one auditor can provide useful information, more helpful information arises from ratings being independently provided by several different auditors.

To put it another way; the more people rate something the better. In testing we found that good infrastructure is given a consistently high rating, and very poor infrastructure is consistently given a poor rating. For situations in-between the ratings can vary a lot from auditor to auditor. This is useful in itself. The fact that ratings vary a lot in these situations gives important information (mainly indicating that the quality is too low to be considered satisfactory, but that it is not really bad).

Numerical scores can be used for processing, but shouldn’t be used for assessment or presentation.

For those who are involved in processing ratings from different auditors – probably to create an overall rating – numerical values can be assigned to the quality scale after an audit has taken place. However, even if results are processed in this way then any final presentation of results should rely on the words and ideas. The measures were not created in order to score quality numerically, and attempts to use them in this way seem likely to provide misleading results.

In testing we had success by converting auditor ratings on a scale from 1 (poor) to 4/5 (good) and by calculating median values from this for a particular section – then indicating the result with a suitable colour scale related to the original ratings.

Despite its statistical limits as a measure of variance we found standard distribution can be used to work out roughly where people agreed and where they didn’t. We think that it may be useful to present this information as part of results – once again not trying to assign a score, but just a general indication that people did or did not agree over their ratings.

Auditors should learn the questions and rating values (answers).

The individual measures are very simple, but it is important that auditors understand how the measures are interrelated, and how they each focus on something very specific.

In particular auditors should understand how not to confuse the measures – for example when encountering a path which is completely separated from traffic, but which passes through an area which feels unsafe for other reasons, they should be clear that it deserves a good rating for traffic related safety – therefore answering the question about whether “most people would allow an unaccompanied 12 year old to cycle here” with ‘yes’ (despite the fact that people would not actually allow this).

Different lengths of road/path can be audited.

There is no correct way in which to divide up a road or path or route into sections for auditing.

There are many possible approaches. For example it could be useful to come up with a rating, based on these measures, for a whole route. At the same time it could be useful to allow auditors to come up with ratings which vary even every few metres.

Different approaches result in different challenges for anyone processing audit results.

Preparation can be helpful.

The measures have been designed to make them easy to use, even by ordinary members of the public, and they are inherently subjective. However, a small amount of preparation may increase consistency between auditors.

In particular:

• If an auditor has never ridden a road (racing) bike they may find it helpful to speak to someone who has, to try one out, or even simply to look at pictures or videos of them in use.
• If an auditor has not been a parent of school age children they you may find it helpful to speak to someone who is before trying to judge how ‘most people’ think about a child’s safety on the road.
• It may be helpful for an auditor to do some work to establish what 8mph (12kph) feels like on a bicycle before trying to provide a rating for ‘flow’.

Audit signage separately.

In general it seems easiest to work with the measure about route signage separately from the other measures.

This measure is about something quite different to the others, and it requires observation of very different features.

You can code answers for quick recording

In testing these measures many of those involved found that it was helpful to have a very simple way to write their observations quickly. The following codes are a very obvious way to do this.

‘y’ stands for ‘yes’
‘per’ for ‘perhaps’
‘pn’ for ‘probably not’
‘n’ for ‘no’

These codes work for all the measures. Remember that the surface quality measure also has a ‘yes+’ rating (for extra-smooth surfaces).

The list below illustrates how these letters can be combined with a letter for each question:

Looking only at traffic-related safety, would most people allow an unaccompanied
12 year old to cycle here?
12y | 12per | 12pn | 12n

Looking only at surface quality, would a road (racing) bike be used here?
Ry+ | Ry | Rper | Rpn | Rn

Looking only at issues of social safety, would most people feel comfortable walking here after dark?
Dy | Dper | Dpn | Dn

Flow: Can a relaxed 8mph be continually and safely maintained here?
Fy | Fper | Fpn | Fn

Looking only at route signage, can this cycle route be followed confidently without a map? [ONLY FOR SIGNED ROUTES]
Sy | Sper | Spn | Sn

 

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Appendix 2:
FAQ about wording

As the helpful quality measures first were used and tested those involved or who were informed about the work inevitably asked questions about their wording. These notes explain why the wording is as it is. I’m quite happy to hear ideas for better wording – but please read this section before getting in touch. The current wording results from some careful thought and development, and real-world testing.

Q. Couldn’t you make the questions simpler?

A. They could be made simpler, but I think that this would make the measures less useful. I worked hard, with those who helped me to create them, to make these questions as simple as possible – while maintaining a balance between this simplicity and their technical focus. Despite their subjective nature the measures are designed to collectively capture and communicate some very specific information. We tested the measures (and others did in several different situations) and generally they seem to work well.

Q. Lots of people haven’t ridden a ‘road’ bike or don’t know what this means. Would it be simpler to refer to a ‘city’ bike, a ‘hybrid’ or ‘a normal bike’?

A. See the point above. Most bicycles can be used in most circumstances and we want an idea of surface quality which is as clear as possible. Road bikes are much more sensitive to surface quality than other bicycles.

Crucially, I also consider that the design of a road bike is well known – races like the Tour de France are watched by many people who don’t cycle, and even those who don’t cycle can envisage that narrow wheels/tyres set limits. Actually it is difficult to find any other bicycle ‘type’ which is so commonly understood or which has been so stable over time.

Some people are worried that this question makes it sound like all cycle tracks are being designed for people to travel fast, even if this disadvantages others. This is a risk, but I believe that most people will recognise that these are technical measures and that the ‘flow’ measure specifically penalises designs which disadvantage others.

Q. Lots of really enjoyable leisure cycling is on more isolated paths and tracks which aren’t really designed to be used after dark. The question about social safety would rate these poorly. Shouldn’t it be re-written to account for that?

A. I’m enthusiastic about good quality infrastructure which is designed for leisure cycling, but I’m also keen to see bicycles used as everyday transport, including after dark. This measure helps to clearly distinguish infrastructure which is well designed for leisure purposes – from infrastructure which is well designed to support everyday bicycle usage for transport. Remember that ‘after dark’ includes, in the UK, everyday trips around working hours. Rather than re-writing the question, it might be easier to ignore it for leisure cycling routes (or to accept a lower rating, like ‘perhaps’ as the minimum level of quality).

 

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Acknowledgements: I’m indebted to a small group of staff members from Sustrans Scotland for their support in helping me take these these measures from an initial set of conversations though to testing and refining – and for trying out their use more widely. Particular mention goes to Simon Philips (for the very earliest discussions about whether a set of measures could be created at all and about what they might measure), and to Chiquita Elvin (for suggesting the ‘after dark’ measure).

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See also…

• Read everything – New here? This is a suggested reading order.

Comments…

• Scroll below for comments. As always, one of the aims of publishing here is to seek comment, ideas and criticism. Please let me know what you think.
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Design Details 2 A quality checklist for continuous footways

(Skip the introduction)

NB: This article was written some years ago. More recently I’ve been leading a multi-year research project investigating continuous footways – the results of which can be found on the Living Streets website at www.livingstreets.org.uk/inclusivedesign . This includes more complete guidance on what makes continuous footways work or fail.

The promise of continuous footways is that they can be used to significantly prioritise and protect pedestrians and people cycling, people with less skill in negotiating moving traffic, and to enable level access for those who need this. But continuous footways only do these things if well designed. Poor quality continuous footways, or hybrid designs that create something that’s not really a continuous footway at all, can produce an environment which can be really difficult for many of these same people.

I support the opposition of various people, and most obviously groups representing those with a visual impairment, to some of the designs currently being introduced in the UK.

I’ve often been asked about how continuous footways should be designed, and I’ve grown tired of the continual re-inventing of the wheel that I can see – when the Netherlands has been refining these designs for decades to make sure they work well for everyone. This article proposes a draft quality checklist for ‘continuous footway’ designs. It is aimed at a UK audience, but might apply in many other countries where continuous footways are being introduced. It’s intended for designers and technicians, and to prompt discussion among experts, and (if I’ve got it right) to act as a reference.

The articles “I want my street to be like this…” and “Design Details 1” offer a much better introduction to continuous footways than you’ll find here. Unless you already care about the design of continuous footways you are likely to find this particular quality checklist as dry and boring as any other quality checklist – although you may find the images after the checklist to be helpful guides to what good/failing designs look like.

Lots of people are now being referred to this checklist, but I continue to welcome comments. Please keep an eye on it because I may update it in response.

The checklist necessarily has lots of words, with the accompanying images coming later in the article. To keep things interesting here are images of three designs which meet the checklist conditions…

…and images of four POOR designs which FAIL the checklist conditions and which should be avoided.

Disclaimer & checklist status:

It would be negligent for anyone to implement a design on the basis of this article without undertaking a full, independent, and competent assessment of the safety of that design. This article presents my layman’s understanding of what makes for good (safe) continuous footway, based on my personal observations of Dutch designs in place within the Netherlands (and Danish designs in Copenhagen). It is not based on any qualification or position I have, or on reference to any agreed set of standards. I have no direct evidence that using these designs in the UK will be safe. With the introduction of any novel design it is also essential that the performance of the design is assessed in terms of safety, and in other respects, after it is installed, and that the design is rectified or removed if it fails at that stage.

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CONTINUOUS FOOTWAY QUALITY CHECKLIST

Version 1.2 – January 2020

A – fundamentals

‘Continuous footway’ is a term used to describe situations where the footway1 of a major street2 continues alongside the major street, across the entrance to a minor street2 or other minor access. This checklist proposes minimum conditions for continuous footway designs in the UK. For continuous footway designs to be safe they must meet at least these conditions.

1. Anything which looks or feels like a footway to people walking3 on it should be designed so that it is very clear, to people in vehicles, that it is a section of footway and not a section of carriageway, even if people are allowed to drive over this footway. The safety and proper functioning of ‘continuous footway’ depends on this clarity.
2. The safety and proper functioning of ‘continuous footway’ requires physical constraints to bring vehicle speeds to a walking pace. There must be short distinct ramps4 at either side of the footway that force anyone driving any normal motor vehicle to slow to a walking pace when driving up onto the footway. A wider set of design features must also be in place in order to control the speed of any vehicles not suitably slowed by such ramps.
3. The safety and proper functioning of the ‘continuous footway’ must be created by the overall physical design, with minimal reliance on any accompanying road markings, signs, or laws.
4. The footway design, the street design, and traffic conditions experienced near the footway, must allow people driving to see the footway and understand how to deal with it safely and appropriately and with sufficient time to react.
5. The safety and proper functioning of a ‘continuous footway’, on the basis of the points above, must not be undermined by too great a volume of vehicle movement over the footway, or by queues of vehicles waiting on the footway (meaning that it must be used only in situations where traffic is, or will be, limited).
6. Only one direction of motor vehicle usage across the footway must be possible at a given time, either through ‘one-way’ regulation, or by physical restrictions to the width of space available.5
7. The design must also meet the further ‘design conditions’ in section B, and if the major street includes a cycle track also the ‘cycle track conditions’ described in section C.
8. A continuous footway should only be used where it will also mark a transition, for people driving, from a more major carriageway to a more minor carriageway (or access) where the physical design of the streets (or access) create lower speeds than on the more major carriageway.

footnotes:
1 ‘Footway’ is used here as a more technical and specific term for what is usually called ‘the pavement’ in the UK
2 ‘Major’ and ‘minor’ here are intended to refer to the relative status of the two streets involved, not their level of classification in the wider road network
3 ‘Walking’ is used as a general term to keep the language in the checklist simple, and it should be assumed to also be referring to others appropriately using a footway, such as people using a wheelchair, mobility scooter, and children on balance bikes.
4 The ramps may be omitted at a very minor access which is rarely used, such as to a private driveway for parking one vehicle, provided vehicle speeds are equally restrained by other physical features.
5 In other words, if two way traffic is allowed the entrance should be so narrow that someone driving a vehicle into the minor street must wait for any vehicle being driven out of it to fully exit (or vice versa) – so pedestrians are not at risk from vehicles moving in both directions at the same time.

B – design conditions

The fundamental points A1-A7 above are likely to require a design which complies with the detailed design conditions below:

1. Other than at the ramps (which facilitate vehicle access between carriageway and footway), it must be completely clear which sections of the design are footway, and which are carriageway.
2. The footway must be visually distinct from the carriageway.
3. The appearance of the footway, and specifically its overall colour and texture, must not substantially change at or near the place it crosses the minor road.
4. The line defined by the kerb at the edge of the major road, and the access ramp to the footway, should be aligned, so that the ramp continues the kerb line without any significant bends or inset into the footway area.
5. Any linear road markings, or other linear design features, which follow the edge of the major road, should continue substantially unchanged across the end of the minor road (this includes the design of any on-street cycle lane).
6. The surface of the footway should be flat and level (in relation to the wider street incline and crossfall rather than in an absolute sense – so any overall incline matches that of the surrounding infrastructure)
7. The ramps must provide a gain in height of at least 100mm, within 800mm or less [NB: this is a DRAFT condition which has values which are based on guesswork and Dutch standards, and these would need to be checked against UK vehicle designs – I particularly want comments on these values].
8. If parked vehicles will be present on the major road then the ramp allowing access to the footway from the major road, and the kerbs immediately on either side of this ramp, should be in parallel to the line defined by the outside of these parked vehicles (see annotated images later).
9. There must be no road markings on the footway, nor the ramps. If for safety (or to avoid damage to vehicles) it is the case that a given design will require road markings in order to instruct people how to behave or to highlight the existence of the ramps, then it is not a good design, or it is a design which is being used in an inappropriate location, or a design which requires appropriate changes to the wider environment so that this is no longer the case.
10. Any signage directed at those considering entering or leaving the minor road should be close to the ramp between the footway and the beginning of the carriageway of the minor road (rather than in the general footway area or close to the ramp to the major road).
11. There must be physical features to prevent parking on the minor street at a location which is too close to the footway, where it would obscure the view from a vehicle (approaching along the minor street) of people on the footway.

C – cycle track conditions

Where a cycle track6 runs in parallel to the footway beside the major road, conditions A1 to A6 are unlikely to be met unless the design also complies with the detailed design conditions below:

1. At the continuous footway the cycle track must run within the area between the ramps (in the same way that the footway is between the ramps – and rather than it being between the ramp and the carriageway of the major street)7
2. The cycle track must be visually distinct from both footway and carriageway.
3. The cycle track must be continuous (i.e. must not stop and start on either side of the continuous footway feature).
4. The appearance of the cycle track, and specifically its overall colour and texture, must not substantially change at or near the place it crosses the line of the minor street.
5. The cycle track must continue in a line which is generally parallel to the direction of the major road. Any bending of the track toward or away from the major carriageway should be gentle enough to avoid undermining the visual impression that it continues with this generally parallel line.
6. Any markings, signs, or other design features on or associated with the cycle track, must not undermine the visual continuity of the footway, and must not imply priority for those driving across the track. If for safety (or to avoid damage to vehicles) it is the case that a given design will require such road markings, then the overall design it is not a good design, or it is a design which is being used in an inappropriate location, or without appropriate changes to the wider environment.
7. The cycle track must be separated from the footway by an appropriate kerb of at least 50mm height, which (at the continuous footway) has an angled surface so as to allow slow speed access to and from the cycle track by bicycle from the major or minor road or access.

Footnotes:
6 For the purposes of this checklist a cycle track is an area provided for cycling alongside the carriageway which is physically divided from the carriageway.
7 Take note that conditions B5 and C1 have consequences for the design of cycle lanes protected by ‘light segregation’ features (i.e. where the cycle lane is structurally part of the carriageway rather than being offset from it). These conditions taken together would generally prevent the provision of such a lane where there would be a gap in the light segregation at the continuous footway. The gap in the light segregation features (necessary to allow vehicles to cross the lane) risks creating the appearance of a road end, thus undermining the safety of users of the footway.

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Images of good designs

These three designs comply with the checklist.

D1: Footway, with parking on major street

Take note of the following: It is clear that the footway is footway. There is no ambiguity in this design. The one-way side street’s carriageway is very narrow, restricting speed. The ramp beside the major street’s carriageway sits in a line which is parallel to the outside edge of the parked vehicles, and both ramps are very short, steep, and distinct. There is no break in the double yellow line, and nothing curving inward from this which might suggest a road end. The footway is not the same colour as the carriageway. There are no road markings on the footway or ramps.

D2: Footway and cycle track, with parking on major street

This is fundamentally the same design as D1, but there is a cycle track. Take note that the cycle track is unbroken, has no changes in its path which would undermine the visual continuity of the footway or suggest a road end, and that it is visually distinct from the footway and carriageway.

D3: Footway and cycle track, without parking on major street

This design shows the situation where no parking takes place on the major street. This design passes the checklist conditions, but may be problematic when used for a side road entrance because the drivers of vehicles turning into the side road from the nearest lane cannot easily see people approaching from behind. Design D3b may improve matters.

D3b – D3 design but with additional minor bending of the cycle track

This design is similar to D3 but with some minor bending of the cycle track, aiming to increase separation from the carriageway. This design passes the checklist conditions provided this bending is not so great as to imply a road end (condition C5).

Additional images from the above models are provided at the foot of the article.

Design failures

The following four designs fail against the checklist.

D4: Footway is too insignificant

This design fails condition A1 because the continuous footway is much too narrow, meaning that it is visually much less significant (fails condition B2) in comparison to the overall visual presence of the carriageway of the minor road.

There is also a failure to significantly narrow the carriageway of the minor street well before it reaches the footway, allowing a parked vehicle to obscure the view that someone driving out of the minor street should have of people on the footway (condition B11).

D5: Confused visual signals

This design fails condition A1 and B1 (it is not clear whether this is footway or carriageway or a hybrid ‘shared space’). This results partly from it failing conditions B3 (lack of visual continuity due to significant surface changes), B5 (yellow lines mark the carriageway junction rather than continuing unbroken), and B9 (road markings on what might otherwise be understood as footway).

The effect of adding road markings to try to make the design safe is that the most important message, which is “here is a footway” is buried under multiple competing messages, many of which imply that this is a section of carriageway.

It also fails condition A6, because it allows simultaneous two way traffic, significantly increasing the risks to those cycling and walking.

D6: Confused visual signals, missing ramps

This design fails condition A1 and B1 (it is not clear whether this is footway or carriageway or a hybrid space which is a bit of both). These failures arise primarily as a result of the design failing condition B3 (lack of visual continuity due to significant surface changes). The break in the visual continuity of the cycle track (conditions C3 and C4) significantly increases the impression that this is a section of carriageway (despite the white markings). The lack of visual continuity of the footway is significant, despite the fact that the change in surface material is further from the minor street than in design D5. This makes a larger area look like it may be for driving on, and significantly undermines any message that it is a section of the footway.

The lack of the ramps is a very major failing (condition A2), very significantly increasing risks to those walking and cycling because people can now drive onto this space at speed.

As above, this design also fails condition A6, because it allows simultaneous two way traffic, significantly increasing the risks to those cycling and walking.

D7: Raised table creating shared space

This design fails condition A1 because the addition of the raised table on the carriageway means it is not clear what is footway and what is carriageway (also conditions B1, B2, B9, C2, C3, C4, C6).

It fails condition A2, because ramps to the area are too distant from the space where people walk (rather than being alongside the footway), and are not steep or sharp or distinct enough (also condition B7), therefore not slowing traffic sufficiently.

It also fails other conditions (A6, B4, B5, C3, C7).

Adding a raised table to the carriageway generally is not compatible with the creation of a continuous footway, however there may be other very different situations where raised tables are appropriate at a junction – for example, in quiet residential streets (see article ‘I want my street to be like this…‘ ).

Discussion

In reading the checklist the following should be understood:

‘Continuous footway’ is a relatively new term which arises from the need to add new infrastructure in existing locations. It is not normally used to describe existing locations where footway can be driven over to reach a residential private driveway or minor access, but in design terms there is no clear division between ‘continuous footway’ at a street junction and the design of footway at this kind of minor access. Thus the checklist is intended to apply to both situations. There are many existing examples of footway design at private accesses which create poor conditions for footway users. Good quality footway designs at these locations would comply with the conditions in this checklist.

One purpose of this checklist is to highlight that hybrid designs, with only some features of continuous footway, are undesirable, and that they may be unsafe. This checklist is written in such a way that it specifies that if any users of the footway, including those with visual or cognitive impairments, or the very young, are likely to interpret a design as a continuation of the footway then this checklist should be applied – or the design should be changed so this is no longer the case.

The checklist is not intended to outlaw other different methods of prioritising the movement of people walking or cycling across a side road – provided they do not give the impression to footway users (including users of any associated cycle lane, track, or path) that the footway (or cycle infrastructure) continues unbroken.

Other level ‘side road entry treatments’

The checklist raises difficult questions about those “side road entry treatments” which create a surface level with the footway, but with no pretence that they continue the footway. Here’s an example from London.

This is clearly NOT a continuous footway. It is what tends to be called a (raised) side road entry treatment. There is little doubt (for most users) that this is a section of carriageway.

I’m not personally sure that this is a good thing to do – I don’t know whether it’s a good design or not – but I do know that this is not a continuous footway design.

I’ve explained where I think the line is which divides ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ continuous footway designs – in the top condition in the checklist (A1):

“Anything which looks or feels like a footway to people walking3 on it should be designed so that it is very clear, to people in vehicles, that it is a section of footway and not a section of carriageway, even if people are allowed to drive over this footway.”

I would apply 3 tests to a side road entry treatment design like this:

• Do the wide spread of ordinary users of the footway interpret this as footway, or recognise it as carriageway?
• Do people with visual impairments interpret this as footway, or recognise it as carriageway?
• Do children of 5 years old interpret this as footway, or recognise it as carriageway?

If people driving are going to interpret this as carriageway (which seems quite likely – but perhaps should be checked) then it is essential that all of the above footway users recognise it as carriageway. If they do, that’s fine – it’s a side road entry treatment which may or may not achieve anything, but which isn’t covered by my proposed checklist. If any or all of the above people interpret this as footway, then in my view the job needs to be done properly – making it proper continuous footway and ensuring it passes this checklist.

Why do we need this checklist?

It is my belief that the only safe way to introduce continuous footway designs in a UK environment, is to ensure that they are of high quality. In places where the use of continuous footway is common, and people are familiar with them, then more compromised designs might still be safe. But in the UK the use of continuous footway is very rare.

To my mind what this means is that we should carefully copy the proven designs used elsewhere, with the Netherlands being the obvious choice. And we should take note of what a good quality Dutch design would look like, and of why it looks that way.

Let’s put it like this: if, instead, we were introducing zebra crossings into a country which had never used them, we’d want a very high quality version of a zebra crossing. We’d look to a country where zebra crossings are standard. We’d create a really good copy of one of their really good zebra crossings. We’d want whiter paint, more obvious stripes, brighter lights, a narrower stretch of carriageway, and so on. I’ve heard it argued that the UK isn’t ready for proper Dutch continuous footway, and that ambiguity makes things safer. But it would be ridiculous to argue that – in a country unused to zebra crossings – the safest designs would be ones which were ambiguous. It’s just as ridiculous to make that argument about continuous footway.

Additional images

These are additional images – from different angles – of the designs already shown above.

Good designs D1 (good): Footway, with parking on major street

D2 (good): Footway and cycle track, with parking on major street

D3 (good): Footway and cycle track, without parking on major street

D3b (good): As D3 but with minor bend in cycle track

Design failures D4 (failure): Footway is too insignificant

D5 (failure): Confused visual signals

D6 (failure): Confused visual signals, missing ramps

D7 (failure): Raised table creates shared space

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Checklist change log:
Version 1.0 – new, October 2019
Version 1.1 – minor change to wording of condition A7 for clarity, January 2020

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See also

• I want my street to be like this (detailed discussion of Dutch residential local access streets – the areas which are behind the gateway created by continuous footway)
• Design details 1 (a longer explanation of what makes continuous footway work, what it is used for, and a detailed explanation of why ambiguity in this kind of design is a mistake). INCLUDES STREETVIEW LINKS to examples of continuous footway designs used in the UK, and examples from the Netherlands.

External links

• Who is liable from Ranty Highwayman might provide some thoughts about liability when pursuing novel designs, not least because he uses continuous footway as an example.

Comments…

• Scroll below for comments.
  Please read on below as there are some substantial comments, adding important ideas and information, including from ‘Hanneke28’ who provides useful details about the Dutch situation, direct from the Netherlands.
  If you landed here from a Twitter link on a mobile device you may need to press ‘Leave a comment’ below to see the comments on this article or you can reload the page to see them.

I want my street to be like this… Reclaiming residential streets, Dutch street design, and why this REALLY REALLY matters.

This might be the most important blog post I write on urban design – but it’s also been one of the most difficult. I want to demonstrate how to look at a quiet Dutch residential street, and to see what isn’t there – and to be amazed by that. Obviously that’s not an easy thing to do.

Look at this video. It’s quite a nice street isn’t it? Nice, but I don’t expect many people to be amazed by it. I’m going to try to change that. Perhaps you’re trying to encourage people to cycle in your city. You might look at this street and say ‘so what?’ – and go looking for one of my articles on segregated infrastructure. But if you do that you’re going to miss out on something really big and really important about what makes Dutch cities what they are, and what might make our cities substantially nicer to live in.

I’d like people to look at streets like this and to say “wow that’s amazing”.

So get yourself a cup of coffee and a biscuit, or glass of wine if you prefer, and let’s get started. Trust me – it’s worth it. (Although if you really have to have nothing more than 3 minute version of the article then jump below to the main animation and just watch that.)

I’m going to write about the UK quite a bit in this article, but I hope it will be just as useful to readers from elsewhere. My objective is to explain why the Dutch infrastructure is amazing – and to support a way of seeing and understanding Dutch design – and it’s easiest to do this by making comparisons to another country.

The “what’s different?” challenge

Take a look at these ten photos. Five are of UK (Edinburgh) residential streets, and five are of Dutch (Amsterdam) residential streets. I’m sure that most people can immediately tell which are Dutch and which are from the UK (this should be very easy for UK readers, but perhaps a little harder for international readers). How is it possible to tell?

Ignore the differences in building design and ignore what the streets have in common.

Focus on what’s different in the street layout.

Maybe also take a look on Google Streetview. Drop in on the Dutch cities at some random location – perhaps choose somewhere with a reputation for being particularly good for cycling. You’ll probably land on a street which looks like one of the Dutch ones above. The Dutch designs I’m showing here aren’t unusual. In general terms this is roughly what most streets in Dutch cities look like (outside of industrial areas).

What is it which makes them feel Dutch? What’s different to how the UK (or your country) works in comparison?

Throughout this article I’m going to encourage you to refer to Google Streetview. Try to do this for real – I’m going to make big claims. Don’t just trust me – you can check this out yourself – and agree or argue that I’m wrong if you like…. You WILL be able to find locations where what I say isn’t true – but how common are these? Clearly I’m generalising a lot in this article, so if you think I’m wrong then how wrong am I? Is it just about fine detail? Am I right in the overall thrust of my argument? Or not? Do comment below.

Now – lets make the challenge easier. I’ve taken out all the distractions and created an animation (below) to help.

The animation switches between typical Dutch and typical UK designs.

• I’ve used exactly the same building layout, the same distances between buildings, and the same overall street pattern, and even the same lighting on the ‘Dutch’ and ‘UK’ models.
• I’ve missed out some details which are common to both countries, and which I feel to be less important… like street lighting.
• The buildings look like some kind of apartment, but they could just as well be separate houses – I aimed for something simple to model – ignore them and concentrate on what’s between them.

I think that some of the differences we see here are really dramatic. I hope you do too.

It would be easy to assume the Dutch streets feel different, just because they are Dutch. Or we may assume that they feel different just because fewer people are wanting to drive. Or we may think that what makes the difference is the number of people on bikes.

I see this the other way around.

It’s the urban design – the way that the street is designed – which makes them feel different, and the people cycling, walking, and living there… sitting in the street, standing talking… are doing that because the design has facilitated it.

And – incredibly importantly – there are fewer people driving in these streets because that’s how they have been designed, not because people don’t want to drive through them. If we put UK street designs in the Dutch cities then they would feel like, and operate like, UK cities. Dutch cities work the way they do because of the way their streets are designed – and UK cities work the way they do because of the way their streets are designed.

I’ll say more about this later.

Top level differences

Before we get into detail (answering the “what’s different?” question in depth), let’s take a moment to think about what ‘top level’ differences can be seen in the animation. This second (much shorter) animation illustrates one of the biggest:

Overall, what I see in Dutch design is a street-space from which a minimum and very limited area for driving on is cut out. I’ll use the UK word ‘carriageway’ for this part of the street. Because this space for driving on – the carriageway – is so tightly controlled it tightly controls speed (not always enough, but much more than UK street design). The general assumption is that the street is for multiple purposes (it’s quite common to find play areas for children also cut out of the street-space).

(Click/tap for larger images – these are from two different sections of the model)

Below I’ve taken some of the images of Dutch streets that I used earlier, and I’ve drawn red lines along the edges of the carriageway. The red lines show the edges of the bit of the street that looks like it’s designed for driving on.

(Tap/click for larger images)

Overall – in contrast – what I see in UK street design is the assumption that the primary purpose of the street is the movement of traffic.

In contrast to the Dutch approach (with minimum space for driving), the need for space for walking is accommodated by providing the minimum footway. If there are individual locations where this minimum space is inadequate, for example at key locations where it is impossible to cross a road, some secondary features may be provided to improve things a little. And (again unlike the Dutch approach) any space not currently used for a parked vehicle becomes available for driving in. Parking is restricted only to allow for the movement of motor vehicles.

Below are some of the images of UK streets I used earlier. The red lines indicate the edges of the carriageway – the edges of the bit of the street which appears to be for driving on.

Learning point: Dutch residential local-access streets define a much narrower carriageway than is used on UK residential streets. They provide only what is needed for one-way vehicle movement and nothing more. Parking is off the carriageway, and vehicle speeds are severely controlled. The effects of this design are not only physical, but also visual (and the streets feel very different too).

All the other differences

What other differences are there? What other details can we see which make a difference? Well be assured this isn’t a dry technical exercise… some of the other differences are also dramatic.

One-way versus two-way

Dutch residential local access streets carry one-way traffic if possible.

UK residential streets carry two-way traffic if possible – this image is from exactly the same position in the UK model as the image from the Dutch model above.

In Dutch residential streets it is normal for one-way restrictions to apply to motorised vehicles only.

I didn’t draw the relevant signs on my animation – but I’ve assumed they are there (so the person cycling towards us here is doing so legally). Most ‘one-way’ and ‘no-entry’ signs have an ‘except bicycles’ sign, exempting people cycling from the rule:

Some might assume this would be unsafe, but it is so normal, and one-way streets are so common, that anyone who drives expects to see people cycling the other way.

This means that residential areas are permeable on a bicycle, in all directions, but are very difficult to drive through using a motor vehicle.

Learning point: Dutch one-way streets are an essential tool in prioritising cycling over motor traffic.

On UK residential streets it is usual for one-way restrictions to apply to everybody, even if they put people on bicycles at a major disadvantage.

There’s a common belief in the UK, which is that one-way streets are ‘bad’ because (it is argued) vehicles are driven faster on them. It is also said that one-way streets will mean people visiting a location might need to travel a bit further, with the result that any one location will see more traffic. I hope the images I’m showing here demonstrate how damaging these myths are.

Clearly if we change a two-way street, like those I picture in the UK model, to be one-way – without any other changes – then vehicles might be driven faster on the wide space. But do the one-way streets I’ve modelled here look like places where vehicles will be driven faster? My experience of the Dutch streets is so much the opposite.

Learning point: One-way streets, appropriately designed, can significantly cut traffic speeds and volumes.

I describe this situation in simple terms of preference for one-way streets. In truth on wider residential roads – perhaps further from a city centre, or where there is a lowered pressure for parking and already plenty of footway space – Dutch design is quite happy with two-way streets. Like all the principles discussed here, variation from this starting point can be seen if you look at Streetview images – but I hope what you’ll see is the application of the set of principles, but with an appropriate response to the individual location.

Junction priority

The two images below are animated, changing between Dutch and UK designs.

Dutch residential street junctions have no marked priorities. Their Dutch default ‘yield to the right’ rule applies, meaning everyone may have to give-way. They are very careful to alter the shape of junctions like this to ensure that nobody assumes priority (the bend in the street in the design I show makes it clear that this is a three way junction).

The result is that each junction in a residential area acts as a traffic calming feature.

Generally (given reduced levels of traffic) people cycling here don’t need to slow down at all from the steady Dutch cycling speed.

UK residential street junctions almost always have marked priorities. The aim is to ensure that nobody is in any doubt that vehicles on one of the roads can maintain speed, while vehicles emerging from the secondary road have to wait.

Learning point: Appropriately designed junctions, with no priority markings, act as traffic calming.

There are many other important design features used at Dutch residential local-access street junctions.

The junctions are designed, like the streets, by providing just the minimum space needed for vehicle movement. Traffic has to negotiate junction space slowly because the space is tight. There are often hard features, including bollards, forcing slow speeds.

Parking is restricted to increase the space for footway, and to improve sight lines so that people on foot and cycling are safer.

UK residential junctions lack these features. Footways tend to remain at the edge of the street, perhaps with a ‘build out’ on occasion, or some minimal change to street colour or surface level. Most of the street space is for vehicle movement – and if parking is restricted it is to facilitate this.

Learning point: Junctions combining the narrow Dutch carriageway, with no priority markings, leave lots of public space and wide open areas for city life to thrive.

Some more sceptical people might complain that I’ve drawn standard UK junctions here, not improved versions as are described in the modern policies of some cities. But how much difference do you think that these ‘improved’ junctions make – when you compare them to the Dutch designs?

Are you really sure that those gentle speed humps at the road ends make any difference? They might be painted red (or the paint may have worn off). They might not be speed humps but cobbles or some other feature. It might not be possible to drive over them at 40mph (but 35mph is fine). There might (as above) be some small ‘build out’ features to narrow the gap a little, or to reduce the radius of the curve of the kerbs. But really how much difference is this really making? Some perhaps? Or is this just ‘window dressing’ in comparison to the Dutch design?

And maybe there could be a minor build-out on the bigger road too? You can see there are two people waiting on a build-out in the background of this image. It’s a little bit easier to cross here than it was before – but this design shares almost nothing of the Dutch streetscape. The ‘build-out’ is clearly a build-out not a normal section of footway – it’s a temporary refuge from traffic, not somewhere you’d stand for a conversation. Compare that to the Dutch design. The overall feel of the street is basically unchanged by this build-out. Is it better than nothing? Perhaps. Is is ‘good’? Not in comparison to the standard Dutch approach.

Carriageway surface

The surface of Dutch residential local access streets is very often of street bricks. This is a very important signal to people driving on these streets that they are not on a main thoroughfare. In general this is consistent across the whole country.

The colour and design of this surface creates a warmer streetscape compared to the UK use of black/grey tarmac/bitmac. Sometimes the slightly uneven nature of these bricks, on older streets, can also be significant in creating a message about how the street should be driven on. I’ve drawn these street bricks on my animation, which is a key reason for the Dutch model looking warmer and sunnier (despite me using the same lighting in both models).

Note that Dutch street bricks are nothing like old UK cobblestones or setts. These are a modern surfacing material, and can provide a smooth surface. They also provide a surface which is permeable to water (look up ‘water sensitive urban design’ to understand why this is now seen as so hugely important internationally) – I’m reliably informed that it has been being taught, for at least 20 years in the Netherlands, that this is a good reason to use street bricks.

Here are more photos of the real thing:

Street bricks aren’t universal, but they are extremely common.

The surface of UK residential streets is almost always built from the same material as the surface of any main street/road. The tarmac may be more worn, but when the street is resurfaced it is brought up to the same standard (in general terms) as any main thoroughfare. There are very few national distinguishing features indicating a difference between residential streets and main thoroughfares. Often the speed limit doesn’t even change.

Parking is handled completely differently

As already alluded to above, and shown in many of the images, parking in Dutch streets usually works completely differently in comparison to the UK. We already discussed above the way that parking feels like it is off the carriageway. There is usually a different surface material, or at the very least a change in the pattern of the street bricks. There’s commonly a broken dividing white line along the carriageway edge – helping to mark the narrow width of the carriageway even when there are empty parking spaces.

But what’s also worth noticing is that it is assumed that parking is not allowed unless a space is provided for it. That means that there are no yellow lines along road edges marking where parking is prohibited.

Let me emphasise that last point, because not many people notice this…. There are no yellow lines marked along the edges of Dutch streets for controlling parking.

UK parking is on the carriageway. There is no difference in surface material. It is assumed that parking is allowed unless it’s marked as not being allowed. UK cities have thousands and thousands of miles of yellow line painted along the edges of their streets.

Can you imagine taking our system to Dutch cites and trying to tell them that it’s a good one? Instead of marking the places to park, they’d have to paint yellow lines along the edges of all their lovely homely streets… I don’t think they’d buy the idea.

If you want the full story about Dutch parking rules, rather than this simplified version, then take a look at the links and descriptions provided by ‘hanneke28’ in the comments at the end of the article.

Learning point: Dutch streets don’t have yellow lines drawn along them to control parking. The system (in busier locations) is to mark where it is allowed, not where it is not allowed.

Trees

Dutch residential streets often/regularly have on-street trees. Often there aren’t only a few trees, but many.

Some UK residential streets do have street trees, and there are cities where these are more common, but they certainly aren’t a normal feature when you look at the UK as a whole. They work more like a luxury feature. In places with more money, or wider streets, they are sometimes included. If the streets are narrower, or money tighter, or the perceived need to move motor vehicles is greater, they are missing.

Who ‘owns’ the space

Dutch residential street space often feels like an extension of the nearby houses. It’s clear that the local people – in many places – feel that this is ‘their’ space. There is often greenery looked after by the residents (and there are often weeds, moss, grass growing in cracks too). There may be benches belonging to the residents. Their bicycles are left there. There are signs of human life.

UK residential street space generally feels sterile, and is clearly the territory of the local authority (council etc). It is clear that local people do not regard this space as ‘theirs’. Weed-killer may be used here to ensure that no weeds grow. It is seems that benches or plants belonging to a resident would probably be removed (even if there was space for them).

This is an image from the exact same spot in my UK model as is shown in the Dutch version above.

Now clearly my model is simplified – in many ways. The bicycles in the Dutch model are all in a neat row. Because I’m not modelling the houses the UK model loses any softening effect that might exist because of private gardens. You might claim that this makes the comparison unfair – but I don’t think it does. After all, I’m wanting to emphasise how the street works – not the overall amount of greenery present in an area. How the street works changes who feels safe on it, how people travel, what people think it’s for. There are some nice UK streets – but what I almost always see is the domination of the strip of sterile tarmac which lies between one private space and another.

If you stand on the footway of many Dutch residential streets and ask “who loves this space?” people will point to the local residences. If you stand on the footway of most UK residential streets and ask the same question, people will think you are strange (I’ve done this by the way – and it was only when I explained with one of the images I show below that people understood why I was asking this).

How many UK city streets look like this? I’m sure we can find some, but this in completely normal in Dutch cities.

Not all streets look exactly like this of course – these particular images are all in central Amsterdam, and I’ve chosen them because they match what’s in my model. But go searching using Google Streetview and you will find that is very normal that a street feels like there is a merging of private and public space. This is absolutely not my experience in the UK.

Area-wide nature

More sceptical people might look at my animation and complain that this street in the UK model (below) has been drawn as if it’s more important – as if it is required to carry more traffic – than the comparable street in the Dutch model. They might assume that good design must allow for this flow to continue.

Such people might argue that the comparison is unfair because in the Dutch model I’ve shown a street clearly designed to carry less traffic.

In one way they would be correct. Quite clearly the Dutch street, at the same location in the model, couldn’t carry the amounts of traffic shown on the UK model.

But that’s the point of course. The Dutch system takes streets which in the UK would be seen as key routes (with a supplementary residential function) and decides that they are residential local access streets – not urban through streets. They are then designed – in all the ways discussed above – so that cannot any longer carry large volumes of motor traffic.

In the UK one of the least understood elements of Dutch design is the way that their ‘Sustainable Safety’ policy (an example of a “systemic safety” policy or “safe systems approach”) works in achieving this end. I’m not going to describe it in detail here – but here’s something everyone should know…

The Dutch streets in locations like this are either classified as urban through streets or residential local access streets. The Dutch words are gebiedsontsluitingswegen and erftoegangswegen (which I’m not translating literally). You may notice that I’ve tried to use these classifications throughout this article because I want to emphasise how important they are.

For an explanation about why I’m using non-standard and non-literal translations of ‘gebiedsontsluitingswegen’ and ‘erftoegangswegen’ please see the note in the appendix at the end of the article.

This isn’t just a classification for the sake of classification. That’s what often happens in the UK – a street is classified in one of many different (probably local) ways, but that classification is really just a description of the way the street currently operates. In the Netherlands this classification really matters because once it’s been decided which category a street belongs to its design is changed (at some point) to match what’s required for a street in that category. For the kinds of street we’re looking at here there are only really two classifications available – urban through street, or local-access street. That makes the system beautifully clear – except in exceptional circumstances the street has to be one thing or the other – and this is the same across the whole country.

Here (in our model) we have a street which might have been classified as an urban through street – but instead a decision has been taken that it’s to be a local access street. The reason that it now looks so different is because once this was decided it has been re-designed to prevent through traffic.

If, instead, it been decided that it was to be an urban through street, the design would also have been changed. Then the safety of people cycling and on foot (etc) would take precedence (generally speaking) over the needs of people to park. Some kind of segregated cycling facility, or at the very least a properly wide cycle lane, would be provided. This would be done even if parking had to be removed to fit it in.

Imagine if the choice that was given in the UK to local people – about their streets – was between 1) a very quiet one-way street with plenty of parking, but no through traffic, and 2) as street where parking was limited because cycling takes priority. Imagine if it was national policy that streets had to be one of the other.

Learning point: The Dutch “Sustainable Safety” policy (which is a systemic safety policy) is about infrastructure design, and over time its influence has been profound.

Dutch residential local access streets are in large blocks, with urban through streets around the edges of these areas. The transition between urban through street and residential local access street, is obvious – with people needing to drive over the footway to enter the area, and the streetscape changing radically and immediately upon doing so.

There is a great deal more about ‘continuous footway’ – where the footway is continued across the end of a residential local-access street – in this previous article (‘Design Details 1’).

There is a change in speed limit when entering an area of residential local access streets over this continuous footway. The continuous footway acts as much as a gateway feature as it does a support for walking and cycling on the urban through street. It is obvious that the speed limit in these areas is lower (although driving faster would be difficult anyway). The one-way systems in the residential local access streets almost always make it very difficult or impossible to drive through an area as part of an ongoing journey. Those driving in a residential area are only normally going to be accessing or leaving one of the properties in that area.

In comparison it is unusual for there to be any features in the UK which clearly distinguish local residential streets from any other roads and streets. There is absolutely no transition marked here (in the image below, from the equivalent point in the UK model)- the street ahead is just another UK street.

There may or may not be a change in speed limit, but this is generally only indicated by signs, and driving faster is common and easy to do. There may be traffic calming features, but these look no different to traffic calming anywhere else. Where decisions have been taken to limit through traffic it is often on a street by street basis.

For a few words on my choice of language around ‘sustainable’ or systemic or systematic safety please refer to the explanation at the foot of this article.

But parking is equal

Last in this list – here is what is not different.

There are generally, in Dutch city streets, just as many cars parked as there are in UK city streets (and certainly in the Dutch streets which look like those I’ve modelled).

Roughly speaking, depending on exactly how you count, there are the same number of parked cars in both my models. The cars are distributed a little differently, but actually Dutch design leaves plenty of space for parking (and if anything can be criticised for making residential streets into car-storage areas).

Why this all matters

I don’t hear people talking about these things. I speak to lots of people about Dutch cities. I follow lots of Twitter feeds which describe Dutch design. I hear lots of debates about how to find a way forward for supporting people to cycle and walk in our UK/international cities and towns. I rarely hear people talking about how Dutch residential local-access streets are designed. I rarely hear people talking about the Dutch Sustainable (or systematic) Safety policy/system.

People tend to be drawn to images of segregated infrastructure – lovely Dutch bicycle tracks, and beautiful sweeping Dutch bridges for walking and cycling over. People even point to the Eindhoven ‘hovenring’ as something we should aspire to. The hovenring is just a glorified bridge over a motorway-like road. It’s a very impressive piece of engineering, and it’s a sign that money is spent on infrastructure for cycling, but it’s just a bridge.

Nice bridges, and beautiful cycle tracks are really important – yet I think that too few people stop to think to analyse properly…

What proportion of Dutch urban roads/streets have segregated cycleways?

Take a look on Streetview again. Look at the proper urban areas rather than any industrial estates. The proportion of Dutch streets in these areas which have cycleways of any kind is actually pretty small. Most Dutch city streets do not have segregated facilities for cycling BECAUSE they are residential local access streets and they are consequently good for cycling on already.

The re-designs I’ve shown here, in general terms, make these residential local access streets: 

• good for living on;
• good for walking along;
• easy to cross;
• places where you might be able to sit in the sun;
• places you can speak at normal levels because there’s minimal traffic noise;
• places which feel a bit like an extension of the private space around them; and
• good to cycle on.

Learning point: Dutch cities and towns are good to cycle in, despite only having segregated infrastructure for cycling on main urban through-streets (and beside more major roads too).

Many UK schemes to increase cycling begin with trying to increase segregation on main streets, while ignoring the nearby residential streets. But the Dutch system works as a unified whole. They couldn’t do what they do for cycling on their main urban through streets without doing what they do on their residential local access streets. The Dutch segregated cycling tracks work BECAUSE of the design of the nearby residential streets. This is part of a unified design strategy.

In the UK changes to introduce segregation for cycling on main streets inevitably impact on parking and loading. This is particularly the case where parking and loading have previously been prioritised over the safety of people cycling.

And UK changes to introduce segregation for cycling often fail miserably due to design compromises when at side-roads. Huge and disastrous, or even dangerous compromises are made where maximum vehicle permeability is still being sought in the residential streets. Dutch continuous-footway (and cycleway) works as a design because it’s used in the way I describe above – it isn’t used to take cycle tracks or footway across major roads. If the road is a major road then that major road also gains segregated cycle tracks, and probably proper traffic signals or a roundabout will be provided at the junction. If it’s not a major road then it becomes a local-access street – as above.

In my view, changes to main streets to support cycling MUST be accompanied by changes to the nearby residential streets.

But this isn’t a scary thing – this might broaden the scale of the changes we need to discuss, but it’s a MUCH better way to work and has huge advantages as far as local people are concerned.

It means that overall parking levels can be maintained, even if parking is changed on a main through street. This may not be ‘good’ in environmental terms, but at least should reduce objections.

It means that segregated infrastructure can be built in such a way that it is no longer fatally compromised at side road crossings.

But most of all, if we work this way it means that the biggest effects of the overall changes in streetscape are to improve the quality of life of the local residents, with improvements to the safety of ‘cyclists’ (people cycling through the area) being only one part of a whole unified scheme.

Of course if we only do this in one area we might make ourselves unpopular – after all one person’s local area is another person’s through-route. But once we start to consider this as city-wide policy we should find that everyone living in a city has their own local area that they’d like to see improve.

I think that this is something worth striving for. How about you?

I want my local street to be like this:

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Appendix – Sustainable/Systematic/Systemic Safety

Those in the know will notice (and some might object) that I’m not using the most literal/common translations of the Dutch words gebiedsontsluitingswegen and erftoegangswegen – and that I talk about “systemic safety” rather than so often using the direct translation “Sustainable Safety” of the name of the Dutch policy.

The Dutch sustainable safety approach is discussed very little in the UK – and I often think that people assume it to be some kind of behaviour/safety campaign rather than a policy directly influencing infrastructure design. In this article I only want to convey some of the most important features or effects of the approach – and indeed to highlight how important it is.

I’ve done my best to find appropriate phrases, which concentrate on conveying meaning rather than on being a full explanation of their policy (using ‘local-access street’ and ‘urban through street’ consistently above). I’m also adding this explanation to the bottom of the article so that curious people are clear that the words I’ve chosen aren’t standard ones.

Someone may be able to come up with better phrases than ‘urban through street’ and ‘local access street’ – and others might argue that more common translations are just fine – but this article isn’t an attempt to explain the whole policy anyway. I think that clarity in this article is more important than sticking to traditional translations.

No phrases will be perfect, and those I’ve used here may not work in other countries. In the UK the word ‘street’ is used in the urban context (where people live or walk or shop), whereas ‘road’ is more general. Streets are always also roads, but not all roads are seen to be streets. The word ‘distributor’ in the UK (often appearing in translations) is often associated with large multi-lane motorway-like roads – even though this is not its literal meaning. It’s probably used more literally elsewhere.

For the article above, and in an urban UK context, the key difference between these road types is the assumption that ‘gebiedsontsluitingswegen’ carry vehicles through an area, whereas ‘erftoegangswegen’ are designed to not allow for anything other than local traffic (discouraging through traffic). Many in the UK will find it difficult to believe that cities can work in this way – so I want to use phrases which make it as clear as possible that this is the Dutch approach.

And whether ‘systemic’ or ‘systematic’ is best… who knows. To my mind ‘sustainable safety’ simply doesn’t mean what we need it to mean in English. I suppose ‘systematic’ means something practised consistently and across a system in a focused way to achieve a goal. ‘Systemic’ on the other hand means something which is at the level of the system.

In the end it won’t matter, because the meaning of any phrase soon drifts once people start to adopt it – but for the moment I’m going to commit to the phrase “systemic safety” because I think that implies something at the level of the system – and reminds us that what we’re looking for is high level changes of principle, not just focused and systematic application of existing principle.

Our current system is fundamentally focused on the movement of vehicles at the expense of human safety and well-being (on the basis that ‘accidents are basically unavoidable). What I’m working for is a change to this system, so that the system is instead based on the idea that safety comes first, and that movement of vehicles should only be allowed if this isn’t destructive of human life and safety. That might sound idealistic, but it only mirrors what’s happened in the workplace in the UK and many other countries over the last hundred years or so.

Once upon a time if a worker died in your employment you might be able to argue that it was just an accident, a product of the worker’s carelessness perhaps, or just an unfortunate chance occurrence. Nowadays – at least in broad terms – if a worker dies in your employment the assumption is that you’ve been incompetent, or neglectful, and that this is true even if the worker made a mistake. I’ve explored this idea much more in an article introducing systemic safety.

Please feel free to discuss this in the comments below. If someone can point to a good enough reason I may even update the words in the article.

For anyone curious to find out more, there’s a link below.

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See also…

• Amsterdam vs Copenhagen (part 1) (basic cycle track anatomy)
• Amsterdam vs Copenhagen (part 2) (basic junction anatomy)
• Amsterdam vs Copenhagen (part 3) (what can we learn)
• What nobody told me (about Netherlands urban design)
• Design Details (1) – Continuous footway. Side-road crossings. Simplicity and clarity. Getting it right. Getting it wrong
• Read everything – New here? This is a suggested reading order.

External links…

• Sustainable or Systematic Safety by Mark Wagenbuur (Bicycle Dutch)
• Sustainable Safety by Paul James / Cycling Embassy of Great Britain

Comments…

As ever, I welcome your comments. If you disagree with something I say then let me know. If you can help me explain my points then please do so. And read the comments of others to see what they think too – there’s some in-depth knowledge already offered by others if you want to keep learning.

If you’re Dutch (or have detailed Dutch knowledge) you might disagree with some of the generalisations I make. You might know of streets that look nothing like those I picture. I do too – but I’m explaining principles here. If you think I’ve generalised too much or that there are details which I’ve glossed over then do say so.

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