wulfhound

@BrandNewGuy redesigns can't prevent everything, *some* collisions result from a level of idiocy by one of the involved parties that no design can prevent. In this particular example though, by the 50-year measurement, it'd only need to be a 10% reduction to break even, which to me sounds plausible. If this design drastically reduces crashes resulting from hook-hazards to cyclists, and those resulting from "bad" crossing patterns by pedestrians, it'd easily do that.

The really bad junctions of course cost a lot more than ?200k to fix though. The re-dos they're planning at Elephant & Castle, Old Street etc. probably run to the tens of millions.

When they finish the Oval-Vauxhall cycle superhighway (next year?) that route will be much less stressful. Especially if Lambeth's Loughborough Road scheme also gets the OK. For the time being, the Brixton / Clapham / route is the one to go for.

Just to put James Barber's figures in perspective:

For the period 2000-2010, at that junction or immediately next to it there were around 20 "slight injury" collisions serious enough to have been reported (via STATS19), with one motorcyclist seriously injured. Financial cost to society? Nearly ?0.5m.

(source: http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2011/nov/18/road-casualty-uk-map )

Suppose this redesign lasts 25-50 years as stated above, it doesn't have to reduce casualties much to pay for itself on that one measure alone - over 50 years the current layout is likely to cause ?2.5m+ in economic damage from collisions.

If a better design increases walking/cycling and decreases car use even slightly, the economic benefits are likely to be much bigger again.

@DaveR that's a very good point indeed - although maybe they already have that data?

@James Barber Paxton *again*? Didn't they just spend months and ???? digging that one up? What (and why) is the plan this time around?

Looks great! High Line but on a much more intimate scale. I hope there'll be room for street performers or even perhaps micro food stalls as well as the cycle path.

Would also like to flag up the issue of disabled and service access. At the very least it must be accessible to wheelchair users and surface cleaning machines; ideally to Bakfietsen family bikes as well.

BrandNewGuy I'd suggest that ED-bound local traffic from Court Lane and Woodwarde Road should go due east to Lordship Lane (i.e. the LL & Court Lane or Eynella Road junctions). If it's a journey far enough to be worth driving (i.e. well beyond ED itself), the detour involved is pretty minor. Another option would be Dovercourt, right on to Townley and then left on to LL.

A lot of the traffic on Calton Ave isn't from Court Lane or Woodwarde Road, it's people turning right from DV, left on to Calton and then right at the Townley Road / Green Dale / EDG junction. It's worth asking though whether this turn is sufficient to reduce the volume on Calton or whether people will just turn right on to Townley at the end of it and then left on to LL, instead of left on to Townley, right on to EDG and then on towards LL.

I'm very strongly in favour of banning the right turn - as well as reducing conflict for south/east-bound cyclists (near misses there are very common, right turning drivers either underestimate the speed of cyclists, fail to see them, mistakenly think they have right of way or just don't care), it will also greatly reduce the amount of rat run traffic on Calton Ave.

The best thing LBS can do for cycle safety & to get more people on their bikes is create a stronger distinction between "residential" roads (little or no through traffic, low speeds, no dedicated facilities for bikes) and "main" roads (high volume of traffic, 20mph or higher speed limit, and either dedicated cycle facilities OR an alternative route using the quiet streets running parallel). I'm all for anything that removes through traffic from residential roads - for those who are able bodied and don't need to carry a vanload of gear, there are almost always alternatives to driving.

I'm guessing the total budget for this work is somewhere in the ?150k ball park. Even as someone who cares about cycle safety, I hope it's not too much more than that - there are bigger barriers to deal with than this one junction.

jack'n'danny Wrote:

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> I walked it there......much safer than using the

> roads which after all were built for Cars.

*ahem*.

http://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/

http://www.ideal-homes.org.uk/__data/assets/image/0010/356851/lordship-lane-00634-640.jpg

Dulwichgirl82 Wrote:

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> I have to disagree, of course there are genuine

> accidents, things that can't be predicted or

> stopped. It doesn't mean you shouldn't try but a

> surprise skid, a car/bike malfunction that

> couldn't be predicted etc. And in reality probably

> in many cases mistakes by both parties causing

> accidents which on a luckier day would have just

> been a near miss.

Genuine accidents are vanishingly few in number. I've been involved in a handful of crashes, witnessed a lot more, and every time somebody (sometimes me) screwed up. But people adopt a "shit happens" mentality and then wonder why 2,000 lives a year continue to be lost. Some might call that an acceptable price to pay for business as usual, I'm not one of them.

> As I said we should all try and be better, but I

> feel blaming one side more than an other is not

> really a solution

It's not about blame, it's about taking responsibility when you bring more speed, power and mass to the situation. That applies equally to cyclists in parks (those who ride fast around small kids and dogs are as bad as any inconsiderate motorist) and on greenway paths, drivers on the roads and truckers on the motorway.

> in an ideal world cars and

> bikes would have some form of separation to be

> prevent these accidents, where I agree sadly the

> cyclist is likely to come off worse.

That's what they're planning to do in parts of Central London over the next year or two, and on those roads (where they need to keep traffic moving and there isn't any alternative route) it's the right thing to do. Out here though things are a bit more nuanced - you can't really put in a separated bike lane along Barry Road, Peckham Rye or Lordship Lane (not without losing a lot of parking or taking from the common, at least) so the Spine route plans to use back streets. But that in turn means that through motor traffic has to be kept on the above mentioned main roads, to keep conditions on the back streets quiet enough that an 8yo can ride it.

@rodneybewes - they're not really pavements though, more pedestrianised areas that you're allowed to cycle through (in that they don't usually run alongside a road). There are exceptions (indeed some in Southwark - Dulwich Common on the S Circular springs to mind), but they're only justified when you have a wide, lightly used pavement and a very fast busy road.

Presumed liability means "presumption" not "automatic", the onus is on the operator of the heavier vehicle to prove they were in the right. This also applies to crashes involving lorries and cars, and those involving cyclists and pedestrians. It's sensible because whoever is operating the larger and more potentially dangerous vehicle should be exercising the greater responsibility.

@Dulwichgirl82, as someone who has to drive for their work, please can you try & get away from the idea that there is such a thing as a "genuine accident". Somebody made a serious mistake, every time. Not, by any means, always a driver; but someone did, and someone likely got badly hurt (or at least had to waste a perfectly good afternoon sorting out a smashed headlight or wing mirror) as a result.

Incidentally, the main reason why airliners don't crash in the West anymore (well, pretty much) is that the aviation authorities adopt exactly this approach. No accidents, only preventable mistakes. Same goes for the rail network, at least since the spate of accidents at the start of the millennium. Yet seven or eight Jumbo jets full of people die on the roads every year in the UK alone.

@aquarius moon the problem with allowing pavement cycling (apart from OAPs finding it intimidating and unpleasant) is that pavements don't have priority over side roads. So on a dense street grid like ED it's a frustrating, tiring, stop-start experience (and according to some cycle instructors, actually more dangerous than cycling on the road - highest likelihood of getting hit is at junctions), whereas if you're on the major carriageway you can just flow.

Southwark Cyclists "Healthy Rides" & Lambeth Cyclists "Architecture Rides" are good for those who fancy an interesting route at a relaxed pace. Dulwich Paragon have a non-members taster ride the first Saturday of every month, it's 35 fairly hilly miles, no rider left behind but it's a good work out. Brixton Cycles also seem to organise some rides in the area, don't know the details but I'm always seeing people riding in their kit.

The way to sort out the Spine is mostly not segregation, but getting rid of rat runs. A few strategically placed bollards and fire gates along Crystal Palace Road and Eynella Road, for example, to keep through traffic on Barry Road and Lordship Lane where it belongs; rework the Bellenden Road / Lyndhurst Way gyratory so that one side is "mostly cars" and the other is "mostly bikes" (basically return the whole thing two-way, with bollards under one or other of the bridges and more where the "bike" road meets Peckham Road). Once you get north of Peckham Rd it's quiet roads all the way to Burgess Park anyway.

Will be interesting to see whether the council is brave enough to try something like that. I'd love to see them prove Donnachadh wrong.

Hi everyone,

Wanted to drop you a line about the Londoners On Bikes campaign. It's a citywide thing, but I'm the comms & street team volunteer for Dulwich (live up the hill in Norwood but come through every day on my cycle commute) so I hope you don't mind me posting here.

http://www.londonersonbikes.org.uk/ - our web site

- short video about the campaign, what we're doing and why

Londoners On Bikes (LoB for short) is a volunteer-run campaign focused 100% on the Mayoral election, pushing for safer streets for cycling. We want safer & more pleasant streets for people on bikes & on foot, and we think it's frankly criminal that 25% of Londoners would like to get about the place by bike some or all of the time, but are too scared because of the road conditions.

The opinion polls show Boris & Ken neck-and-neck in the race, so a relatively small number of voters can have a significant influence. If we can treble our current 3300 supporters in the next few weeks, we think they'll work hard to win our vote.

So if you ride a bike, or would like to, or care about someone that does, please sign up on our web site & help spread the word!

Cheers,

WH - LOB volunteer.

Have you seen the forecast? Heavy rain, 6 degrees C :o(

How many are you expecting this Sunday? might tag along...

DJKillaQueen - indeed there's nothing a driver can do at zero distance. Which is why the appropriate driving speed, on roads where pedestrians are expected, is one that minimizes harm if that should happen. The road is public space, and although it's hard to believe today, pedestrians have the right to cross anywhere (with the exception of urban motorways). Sure, some people are silly, but last time I checked we don't live in a Sharia state where the deserved punishment for a moment's inattention is broken bones or worse.

I cycle across London regularly, and occasionally drive. Admittedly, motorbike/scooter is probably quicker than either, but except late at night, the same journey takes less time on a bike despite a top speed around 18mph. Again, can't speak for motorbikes, but my experience in a car is that most of the time you're sprinting from one traffic queue to the next - increasing the peak speed makes very little difference to the journey time, because the average speed is so very far off the peak; just makes things more unpleasant for pedestrians & cyclists, meaning more people drive, meaning yet more congestion. Again - reducing peak speeds increases road capacity, so any time the network's speed is capacity limited (& I'm no traffic engineer, but if your average speed on a predominantly 30mph road network is 12mph, there just might be a capacity issue there) you actually speed journey times up by bringing speed limits down. Sounds paradoxical I know, but they've tried it, in the form of lower limits at busy times, on some stretches of the M25 & M1 and it appears to work.

Have to say I don't agree with the AA about junior zebras. What we need is simply more zebras, ideally with enforcement cameras as per Pelicans. Under Ken Livingstone there was a hierarchy of road users - pedestrians at the top, then cyclists, public transport users, freight & delivery vehicles, taxis, private cars. Unfortunately Boris scrapped it to woo the outer-London petrolhead vote; the result is policies that will end up costing lives e.g. "smoothing traffic flow".

Anyone would think that the speed limit is the speed you *have* to drive at. No, it's the maximum allowed speed - you should still drive slower if conditions require, and where there are parked cars and pedestrians, that suggests a lower speed to give you time to react to the unexpected.

Also worth remembering that roads are a public space that pre-date the car, and even the bicycle, by centuries. To suggest that people on foot should have to detour by a hundred meters or more for the benefit of people who very often just can't be arsed to walk or cycle is just wrongheaded.

Speeding doesn't always cause accidents, but it does make them worse (as well as making it harder to stop in time). The statistics for pedestrian casualties are drastically different at 20mph (~95% survival) vs 30 (50%). That on its own should be enough to justify blanket 20mph limits, especially when you consider the average speed for a journey across London is just 12mph.. limiting peak speed to 20 instead of 30 adds virtually nothing to journey times, and in many cases actually improves them - at lower speeds, you can drive closer to the car in front, which increases the number of cars per minute that can get thru the road. Then consider all the people who'd like to bike but currently drive (or are driven, in the case of kids) because they don't want to mix with 30mph traffic. Aside from the emergency services, there just isn't any need to drive at 30mph in London - it really doesn't get you there any quicker, and just makes life less pleasant for everyone else.