Oxford Road Cycle Track Closure

A whole section of the Oxford Road cycle track, southbound from Charles Street to Brancaster Road has been closed overnight.



It seems that the building work on the old BBC site has been given permission to take over the whole of the pavement and the cycle track.



So the only safe way to cycle along here is to take the centre of the lane to prevent unsafe overtaking.



My bet is they will now simply use the extra space to park vans & cars...



So much for, so called, popup cycle lanes and new infrastructure.

Oxford Street Lorry Park

Today some minor roadworks were taking place in Oxford Street.

The signage directs cycles onto the pavement against council guidelines.



The work was not blocking the cycle way, but their lorry was.



What's the point of segregated cycle tracks when they are abused like this?

Manchester's Flagship Cycleway?

I don't think I've ever been along Oxford Road on a bike without having to swerve into the road to avoid taxis, roadworks or other obstructions.




The taxi drivers block it all the time.



This is also a common occurrence.



The roadworks never seem to stop.



When combined with taxis it makes the cycle way almost pointless.

Oxford Road, it's better than nothing, but nothing like Amsterdam!

It's better than nothing, but nothing like Amsterdam!

Notice the lack of junction treatment, no protection from vehicles turning left across the cycle route. In Amsterdam cycles get a separate phase at traffic lights.

Meantime the bus stops are over complicated, with pointless solar powered led lights, rumble strips and give way signs that were added later. Money spent on blaming people cycling whilst ignoring the real dangers at the junctions.

But the real problems on this route are the drivers using the cycle route as a parking place, normally it's private hire cars, but this time it was rather different...

Oxford Road going south



Oxford Road going north



When they put in half decent cycle routes in Manchester it's not long before they are closed by building works...

Oxford Street Southbound - Useless!

I am beginning to think we should call this sort of thing "flagshit infrastructure"

Why on earth is there no kerb separating the cycle track from the parking spaces?

This idiot had no idea what he was doing and didn't care...



Yes this is a cycle track...



Further south it becomes a slalom - this is just dreadful.



Somehow I wish the traffic engineers had thought cyclist!



Useless!

Please support the Oxford Road corridor cycle scheme (again!)

From Love Your Bike

At the Manchester Cycle Forum on Tuesday 28th June, a number of changes to the cycle infrastructure designs on the Oxford Road corridor were outlined. Ironically, these changes appear to have come about as a result of concerns raised about a different scheme – the Cycle City Ambition Grant (CCAG) route from Rusholme to Didsbury.

Love Your Bike has consistently supported the case for high quality – protected space for cycling on the Oxford Road corridor and elsewhere. We continue to support the Oxford Road scheme but believe that some of the proposed changes will make the cycling facilities less attractive, less comfortable and less safe.

We have until 12th July to send in comments on the proposed changes. Love Your Bike have set up a simple email action (see link below) to help people to show their support for the Oxford Road scheme but ask for the proposed changes to be modified.

Join us in campaigning for the scheme to be as good a possible, by completing our simple email action.

Link: http://www.manchesterfoe.org.uk/loveyourbike/oxford-road-2016/

Yesterday's Manchester Cycle Forum

Don't have time for a full report, but here are a few comments from last night's meeting.

Firstly, Manchester has a new Cycling Champion, Councillor Mandie Shilton Godwin who represents the Chorlton Park Ward and is a regular bike rider. She chaired the meeting quite firmly and had to cut some of the later items short because of a very full agenda.

One nice surprise was seeing council leader Richard Leese join the meeting for the first half hour (he then had to rush off to another meeting). Richard Leese has taken a role in looking after highways during Cllr Kate Chappell's maternity leave.



The other good development was that the meeting was held in a comittee room in the old Town Hall building, so there were no problems gaining access. However, there was the same problem of the room not being large enough for everyone to sit at the table, and several people had to sit at the back of the room.

There was also a presentation about future transport plans and strategy for Manchester. The Manchester Transport plan and the City Centre Transport Plans are both going to be revised over the next couple of years. This will be a big opportunity to steer the council's statutary plans towards walking and cycling and away from increasing road capacity.

The meeting was dominated by presentations from officers on the many and various schemes going through, many of which will go out to some sort of public consultation before the end of the year, and several may turn up this month.

These included:-

Updated plans for Oxford Road - it looks like all the pressure from campaigners has paid off and the engineers have found sufficient space for all but one bus stop bypass and there will be proper kerb separation between the cycle tracks and the bus lanes, except where there are a couple of loading bays needed. The only bad news is that the plans are to open the road to all traffic between 9pm and 6am. The traffic orders will be advertised sometime around the end of October and we need to express support for the scheme.

The Velocity plans do not seem to be such good news. The draft plans we saw at an earlier meeting were very poor, and whilst updated plans are being promised it is very likely that when they come to full public consultation we will have to make further objections to stop some of this becoming a waste of money. Keep an eye out for these consultations and please respond.

Also, the revised City Centre LSTF plans which we have had a real fight over will be coming back for consultation soon - watch this space. There is a replanning of the Deansgate/Liverpool Rd junction which will need careful examination when it is published.

Finally, there were plans shown for the tram Second City Crossing cycle facilities. At this point the meeting turned quite angry. The person who presented the plans turned up with only one copy of each sheet, and they were only A3 size, so quite difficult to see. Basically the only major improvement for cycling will be that the Cross Street tram stop will now be an island platform, like Market Street, to stop cyclists being squashed between the trams. The rest of the plans were very poor. Basically everyone will be expected to cycle in the one metre wide gap between the pavement kerb and the tram rail. This is no better than Mosley street where most people play it safe and cycle on the pavement, or avoid the route all together. The plans for Princess Street were just dreadful, and several very harsh comments were made in the meeting, which became angry at this point. Hopefully, these plans will be re-presented at a separate meeting, but they look so bad that at this late stage it may well be impossible to sort out this mess.

Overall it was a very mixed meeting, but the fact that senior councillors are getting involved is still a promising sign, and the lesson from Oxford Road is that complaining and campaigning does work!

An ACE Cycling Event

Last Wednesday was the Corridor Manchester Annual Cycle Event on Oxford Road.



I arrived as the stalls were setting up.



Get Cycling were just getting their machines out and the people running the stalls had a quick play.



There were various stalls with information and products



including TfGM with maps and the plans for Oxford Road,



a pre-owned bikes stall,



the Trans-Pennine Trail and Sustrans




and Love Your Bike sharing a stall with Manchester Cycling lab.



Gabi had lots of information about the lab's work on hand.



The fun part of the day was the cycle tryout track...










All in all a good day and I spent the morning catching up on the gossip about cycle campaigners and learning from the highly successful UMBUG team about how to run a BUG.

Armadillos & Planters - a progress report...

A letter by cyclist Rob Cole in the Camden New Journal provides worrying new evidence of he failure of armadillos and planters in Royal College Street, Camden after less than 6 months in place.


Photo by Rob Cole via the Camden New Journal

In the letter Rob Cole says he has "been saddened to see how quickly motor vehicles have ruined this new lay-out."
He has documented:-

• 10 plant pots affected by vehicle collisions, eight squashed / pushed over, one missing (mounting plate still in road), one empty of contents (looks like a contractor replaced a damaged container, but not the contents and it has no safety, reflective, tape unlike all the other pots);
• Two plant pots with rubber edging strips peeled off, exposing sharp metal edge to oncoming cyclists;
• Three armadillos affected by vehicle collisions – two missing (mountings still embedded in road), one twisted on mounts.
• Numerous vehicles were parked into the cycle lane on the southbound lane, ignoring the white paint and armadillos, including a Camden Council van. Refuse bags were piled against the plant pots on the southbound lane.

He also reports that "As a cyclist I have had a number of near-collisions on the southbound lane in the past few months as this new design hosts car parking, with motorists and couriers with packages rapidly decanting into the cycle lane without checking for oncoming cyclists. I have also seen other cyclists have too many near-misses, despite travelling at safe speeds and using bells."

So, neither the armadillos nor the planters have lasted 6 months without damage. Vehicles can clearly breach the line of armadillos and block the cycle lane, so they offer limited protection against motor vehicles.

Clearly neither planters nor armadillos are suitable for a major, permanent scheme like Oxford Road.

Meantime lots of people are making excuses...

Design Options for Oxford Road 2

The Oxford Road Flashmob took place nearly nine months ago, a short demonstration of over 100 people with pedal cycles showing just how much we cared about the future plans for cycling in Oxford Road and the wider Manchester area.



So how are the plans progressing?

At last Tuesday's meeting at Oxford road TfGM asked the attendees to rate various options for the Oxford Road cycling infrastructure.

It soon became clear that they had only come up with a narrow range of options, many of which were completely unsuitable.

All the way through their options referred to "cycle lanes" not cycle tracks etc, implying on-carriageway provision. For simplicity I will stick to the same terminology in this post...

Cycle Lane Widths

We were only offered two options, 1.5 metre or 2 metre wide both of which seem too narrow, so I checked my copy of "Cycle-friendly Infrastructure" (1996) which I had taken along for reference.

Now this specifies lane widths as a minimum of 1.5m and 2m wide wherever possible and says that if cycle flows are heavy (above 150 cyclists in the peak hour) 2.5m may be necessary. (11.3.2 pg46)

So I asked what the projected traffic flows are for Oxford Road. The reply was that they were already around 200 in the peak and were projected to rise to around 600. So it is clear that if these were just cycle lanes then they would be too narrow at 2m. However, we are aiming for segregated cycle tracks along Oxford Road, quite separate from the road.

I have now found the section in Cycle-friendly Infrastructure that refers to "Off-carriageway but within the highway"

This states that cycle tracks should be a minimum of 2m wide, so the option of 1.5m is totally unacceptable for the Oxford Road designs.

Unfortunately Cycle-friendly Infrastructure (1996) is not available on line and Local Transport Note 2/08 October 2008 Cycle Infrastructure Design which is on line does not contain advice about cycle flows.

My conclusion is that the segregated cycle lanes on both sides of Oxford Road need to be at least 2.5m wide to cope with the cycle flows at peak time and preferably 3m where possible.

The TfGM officers did accept that it may be possible to find space for 2.5m wide lanes in some parts of Oxford Road...

Cycle Lane Carriageway Segregation

We were shown 8 options for the lane/track design, sadly none of them are totally acceptable...
The first issue I raised was the question of maintenance. This was acknowledged as a problem. If the measures were made from breakable materials then there would have to be ongoing replacement. The 8 options were:-

1 - White line hatch segregation

This is just a cycle lane with 0.7m of hatching between it and the bus lane. It offers no segregation from buses and taxis. Taxi drivers are very likely to drive into the cycle lane to collect and drop off passengers. This option is simply not what was offered in the consultation and is totally unacceptable.


Cycle Superhighway 2 - photo from London Cycling Campaign

2 - White line hatch/Flexible bollards segregation

These plastic bollards are a great way to quickly and cheaply convert an entire traffic lane into a cycle route. They have been used in parts of the USA to relocate road space to cycling. However, they are easily broken by motor vehicles, as they rapidly discovered on the NW Lovejoy Ramp in Portland.


"Soft-hit" bollards in San Francisco. Photo: Steven Vance

There is also the problem that they are very ugly. If these were installed on Oxford road en-mass it would not be long before there was a campaign to get rid of them, and we would be pushed back into unsegregated cycle lanes.

3 - White line hatch/Armadillo segregation

The armadillos are a new product from Spain that has not been in use for long so there is little evidence of their impact.


Photo from manufacturer's web site.

They are low plastic humps which would not prevent a bus or taxi entering the cycle lane and will provide very little feeling of separation for those on bikes. It is made from recycled plastic which means they are likely to be damaged and degrade over time.

They are also pretty ugly and easily removed.

Many of us at the meeting think that they may also be unsafe, particularly when placed at an angle to the cycle lane. Some free samples have been sent over which are going to be tested in Salford along Liverpool Street/Middlewood Street, so we will get a chance to see them.

4 - White line hatch / Armadillo / Planter segregation

This is the approach taken by Camden in Royal College Street.


Photo by The Alternative Department for Transport

It is a real dog's breakfast, whilst the planters may provide the feeling of separation they are a real safety hazard and maintenance problem. The planters are big solid objects with sharp edges which will do serious damage to anyone on a bike who runs into them. As for maintenance, is anyone going to look after the plants and remove all the rubbish that gets thrown in? Very unlikely.

5 - Combination segregation

This is just a combination of option 2 and option 4 with the combined problems of both. Just dreadful.

6 - Island segregation with gateways

This is a UK-style segregated cycle track, as you can already find along Hulme Hall Lane & Alan Turing Way in Manchester.



The big problems with this design is the height of the curbs on the sides of the cycle track make the rider feel hemmed in and reduce the useful width of the track. You wouldn't want to catch a pedal on those full-height curbs.

Also, even a full height curb wouldn't prevent a determined driver from getting onto the cycle track, but it is at least clear from the design that this is a separated part of the highway.


Cycle Superhighway 2 - photo from London Cycling Campaign

7 - Island segregation with gateways, combined with bollards

This combines the above with the plastic bollards. It helps reduce encroachment from drivers, but would look pretty ugly.

8 - Segregation by elevation

This is the most visually attractive option, and the only true, "Dutch Style" option on offer.


Photo from London Cycling Campaign

However, in the context of a main road like Oxford Road this is not the approach you see in the Netherlands, because it can easily be invaded by motor vehicles, and would be extensively used by taxis to drop off and pick up passengers.


Old Shoreham Road cycle track,
photo from As Easy As Riding A Bike.

How it should be done...

Raised cycle track with curb separation

One Dutch approach in this sort of context is to put a raised curb between the cycle track and the road.


Photo from As Easy As Riding A Bike.

This has the advantage of the raised curb in increasing segregation and meaning that the cycle track itself has only shallow, sloped curbs, making the full width of the track usable for cycles and reducing the feeling of enclosure.

This was the approach that I suggested durring the meeting and TfGM and MCC officers were receptive to the idea.

Raised cycle track separated by street furniture

This is how it should really be done.

The most common approach to busy wide main roads and cycle tracks in Amsterdam is to place the street furniture (trees, lamp posts road signs etc) between the cycle track and the road.



Photos from Sustainable Transportation in the Netherlands

This provides a complete separation between the motor traffic and pedestrians and bikes. This approach also creates a calmer streetscape for people and the separation is enforced bt street furniture which would otherwise clutter up the pavement.

I am sure that this approach would create a far more attractive and safer environment on Oxford Road than any of the options currently on offer.

This image of Vassar Street - Cambridge MA shows a cycle scheme in the USA which uses the same approach in a context that looks similar to Oxford Road.

Image taken from "Cycle Tracks: Concept and Design Practices"

I hope we can persuade TfGM, Manchester City Council, Corridor Manchester, the Universities and some cycle campaigners that this approach is the best solution for Oxford Road.

Design Options for Oxford Road

UPDATE

The following has been sent to cycle forum members

As discussed at the Manchester Cycle Forum meeting last week, TfGM have set a date for a workshop to discuss cycling infrastructure options as part of the Bus Priority Package. This workshop will be focused on the section from Hathersage Road into the City Centre.

The cycle forum workshop is to be held at TfGM’s office at 2 Piccadilly Place on Tuesday 14 January 2014. The workshop will start at 5pm in Room 1A.

TfGM will host the workshop with the intention being to discuss the most suitable approach for Oxford Road’s cycling infrastructure.

Please could you respond directly to Philip Haynes at TfGM to confirm your attendance, email Philip.Haynes at tfgm.com

-------------------------------------------

Design options being considered by TfGM for this "On-Carriageway Segregation" :

I will add more information to this post as I find it.... sorry it's a bit of a mess at the moment, but I wanted to get the information out.

Flexible ‘wands’ - as used for the London Olympic lanes;

The wands, appart from looking ugly are not robust against moving traffic. Shortly after the wands were installed they ended up like this;


smashed up by passing traffic, so no protection at all!

The wands in this location were smashed up a second time after they were reinstalled.

So these are not at all robust and will be a maintainance problem.

Armadillos: possibility of echelon or longitudinal arrangement;

The Armadillos are also made out of plastic by a Spanish company based in Barcelona. Judging by their web site the company are new to the market and have only been used in a few places. This also means their longevity is not proven. Also, as they are quite low they are no protection against a driver who wants somewhere to park.

Cycle campaigners are not happy with the way they have been used in Camden.

Photo from The Alternative Department for Transport

And neither were the Washington Area Bicyclist Association happy with the way they were installed in Pennsylvania Avenue.

Discontinuous kerbing;

As for intermittant kerbs, they are no match for the determined driver either.


Brighton - Grand Avenue and The Drive

Vertical v’s physical segregation;

Update: think I've worked out what TfGM mean by this...



Wider than wands, possibly more robust, these will eat into the lane widths and look pretty ugly....

Appropriate drainage solution;

(and boy does Oxford Road need the drains fixing!)

Other possible alternate options.

(presumably this could include proper Dutch or Danish designs...)