Ontario Traffic Manual "Bicycle Facilities" draft edition. How not to design for cycling

Someone just sent me a link to the "final draft" of Ontario's new Bicycle Facilities manual. This is book 18 of the Ontario Traffic Manual, covering all aspects of design for all modes of transport. I have not read the other manuals and can only hope they are better than this one because unfortunately from the front cover page onward the manual for bicycle facilities demonstrates a remarkably low aspiration for cycling.

The good bit
Early in the manual people are divided into four potential types of cyclist and the authors recognize that 60% are "Interested but Concerned". This is a reflection of a lack of subjective safety, a theme covered many times on this blog.

It is a good thing that Ontario has identified that future cyclists can only come from that part of the population who do not currently cycle. In order for cycling to grow, the experience of cycling has to become more acceptable to the masses who do not currently cycle. This is why subjective safety is important. Cycling has to not only be safe but it must also feel safe. For this to happen requires the frequency of conflicts between cyclists and motor vehicles to be reduced. It requires this to happen no matter where the cyclist is riding from or to.

It is also necessary for cyclists' journeys to be efficient. It is often possible for cyclists to make shorter journeys than would be necessary by car or to have to stop less frequently for traffic lights than they would by car. It is possible for cyclists' journeys to take direct routes which are not in the same places as those taken by motor vehicle. It is possible for cycling journeys to be pleasant free of stress. That's the reality that we live in and it's what this blog tries to present to the world.

But does Ontario actually intend to take this on, or are their proposed interventions too minor to make a difference ?

What the document actually says...
The language of the document is slippery. Some of it sounds quite reasonable on an initial reading, but when you look closely it becomes obvious that the authors have rather low aspirations for cycling. There is an expectation that cyclists can share the roadway when both speeds and traffic volumes are at higher levels than we would experience. The authors think that it is only necessary to "consider" building an on-road cycle lane even with speeds of up to 100 km/h. The language of the document betrays the lack of ambition for cycling.

Diagrams like this have been produced across the world. However, to encourage cycling the bands need to be adjusted so that cyclists have their own infrastructure at far lower speeds and smaller traffic volumes than suggested here.

A passage which considers the needs of "Experienced cyclists (commuter or other utilitarian)" reads: "This group generally prefers direct, continuous facilities with minimal delay as is generally provided by the arterial road Experienced cyclists (commuter or network. Experienced cyclists may be comfortable on shared use other utilitarian) roadways with low motor vehicle volumes and speeds. However, users in this group typically prefer on-street bike lanes or separated facilities where the context warrants it." This sounds just fine until you consider what they're talking about. Our 85 year old neighbour's 80 years of experience is surely enough and her regular trips to the shops by bike are definitely utilitarian but I have never heard her express a preference for riding on arterial roads rather than the more direct, safer and more pleasant cycle-paths that we all use. Riding on road is equated falsely within this manual with making journeys which are direct and continuous and have minimal delay. There is no need whatsoever for that to be the case. There is a reason why fast cyclists in the Netherlands ride on the cycle-paths.

Similarly, when writing about "child cyclists" the authors say "This group generally requires separated facilities free of conflicts with motor vehicle traffic. Separated facilities should be considered near schools, parks and neighbourhoods. Children under the age of 11 should be permitted to cycle on sidewalks since they may not have the cognitive ability or experience to ride on roads with motor vehicles by themselves." This also sounds almost reasonable until you realise how restricting this is. The need that childrens have for separated facilities is to be considered only near these specific locations. The freedom of children is thus to be restricted to routes between places that the road designers have decided in advance that they might like to go to. Canadian children "under the age of 11" supposedly need to ride on sidewalks because they lack some unknown cognitive ability while Dutch children regularly make school trips by bike from a far younger age. Indeed, my daughter rode 150 km out into the countryside on a school cycle-camping trip at the age of 11. Nothing special - almost all Dutch primary schools do this.

There is actually no need for this compartmentalism. Children benefit most from exactly the same infrastructure as fast and experienced cyclists benefit from most. i.e. that which allows direct and convenient journeys to be made in safety.

These two passages demonstrate the lack of ambition of the plans for Ontario. But this was just scraping the surface. Just look at some of their recommended designs for infrastructure...

Is this bike really in a safe
place relative to the car ?

Sharrows
Something I've been meaning to write about for a long time is the strange North American fixation with painting "Shared lane markings" on streets.

This is not infrastructure, it's just paint. What's more, it's not even paint which attempts to give cyclists their own space. Sharrows do not place any physical object in the way of drivers. They don't even suggest that drivers should steer clear of cyclists. Sharrows are merely a tokenistic attempt to pacify cyclists. They are not a feature of roads in countries which have a high cycling modal share. Sharrows give the appearance that something has been done but without any real change having been made to the road environment.

In Ontario, as shown in this picture, cyclists are to be encouraged to ride no further than 1 m from the kerb and drivers are actually to be encouraged to overtake cyclists within the same lane. The manual explains this in black and white: "if the travel lane width is 4.0 metres or greater, passing may be possible". And what type of road would this be ? "roads with higher traffic volumes, low to moderate speeds (40 to 60 km/h) and frequent intersections or driveways."

Inferior to on-road cycle-lanes but sharing many of the same problems, sharrows are not the route to mass cycling.

Faith in signage

It's neither safe nor pleasant for a cyclist to be passed within the lane by a vehicle travelling at a considerably higher speed. So how does Ontario propose to deal with this problem ?

Please pass cyclists
within the lane...

Answer: erecting signs which read "share the road" alongside the sharrows.

This does nothing to improve the subjective or actual safety of cyclists.

For narrower roads with less than 4 m lane widths, Ontarian planners suggest that the sharrows should be further out and cyclists be used as mobile traffic calming devices behind which motorists will have to wait until they can pass in safety. This on roads with 50 km/h speed limits. i.e. a speed which only a small fraction of the population can maintain for any period of time (the world one hour record for a reasonably normal bike is still under 50 km).

If you have the guts to want to do it, then perhaps it is marginally safer to ride in front of frustrated drivers than to encourage them to pass within the lane. However it is unlikely to be a pleasant experience.

Drivers who are in a hurry, stuck behind a bike and tooting their horns haven't necessarily seen a sharrow and don't necessarily understand why you are obstructing them. In any place where cyclists are used as traffic calming devices the dream of mass cycling will remain a dream. This is not the hassle free cycling that is required to encourage the entire population to ride bikes. This experience will do nothing to convert the 60% of the population which Ontario has identified as being "Interested but Concerned" into regular cyclists.

Paved shoulders
The document refers to "paved shoulders". The recommendations for widths are vague: "should typically have shoulders between 1.5 and 2.0 metres of pavement width depending on the volume, speed and mix of vehicular traffic" is followed in the same paragraph by "practitioners may consider providing a minimum paved shoulder width of 1.2 metres after applying good engineering judgement and consideration of the context specific conditions." The lower minimum is available to anyone who thinks they have a "constrained corridor", but of course as we all know already, every place in the world claims to have "not enough space" and that includes Canada.

Sometimes they make it too easy to criticise. Of the three examples that Ontario provides of real paved shoulders, two have a car parked in them.

I'm happy to say that we don't have "paved shoulders" in the Netherlands. Or at least we don't have them as cycling facilities. The idea that cycling is made attractive by providing nothing more than a stripe of asphalt at the side of a road which may carry large volumes of high speed traffic is quite remarkable. It takes more than this. The optional separation by buffer of width 0.5 to 1.0 m is inadequate to lead to a high degree of subjective safety.

On Road Cycle lanes
We move on now to on-road cycle-lanes. These do exist in the Netherlands but they're generally older facilities and are not nearly so common as properly segregated cycle-paths (just 5500 km exist vs. 37000 km of segregated paths). You would expect to see such lanes in the Netherlands mostly on streets with fewer vehicles or occasionally in places which simply haven't yet been updated to remove them. They are found infrequently on busy roads or with frequently used parking because they are not suitable provision in such areas.

In Ontario such lanes are to be "1.8 metres wide, measured to the face of the curb or, in its absence, the edge of the roadway. Practitioners may provide a 2.0 metre facility on roadways with higher bicycle volumes to facilitate overtaking within the bicycle lane." and "bike lanes are typically no wider than
this so that they are not misinterpreted as being for general traffic use."

However, the diagram later on shows a slightly different idea. The desired width for a bicycle lane next to parked cars somehow shrinks to just 1.5 m, with a 1 m buffer (which may be reduced to 0.5 m) to protect from "dooring". This is simply inadequate. There also appears here a mention of the oft-mooted idea of cycle-lanes between lanes of cars. These apparently need to be just 1.8 m minimum in width.

However, on the subject of cycle-lanes, the drawings of proposed road layouts provide the most entertainment. Almost every one of their examples is flawed from the point of view of cyclist safety and most of these flaws are obvious at the first glance:

Problems caused by this arrangement include:
1. dooring due to opening of doors of parked cars
2. cars passing being too close.
3. cars wishing to park swerving across the cycle-lane
4. cars turning the corner swerving across the cycle-lane
5. Nothing is done to protect cyclists at the junctions - the most dangerous places for riding.
6. How does a cyclist make a safe left turn at these junctions ?

Added red and blue lines show how the paths of cyclists and drivers clash at a junction designed like this. It's just not good enough for lanes to disappear and signage isn't enough to prevent the problem.

In this example a cycle-lane disappears right at the most dangerous point - where the roadway narrows. The Ontarian designers place all emphasis on avoiding a collision on a cyclist who can turn his head by 180 degrees and judge the safe moment to pull left into other traffic. This is simply not a safe arrangement. I've added a blue triangle to show how kerbs on the road could be used to make this merging safer by forcing drivers to pull to the left.

Another example of designing in conflict. Cyclists heading straight on should not expect drivers turning right to merge into their lane. This arrangement of lanes requires both cyclists and drivers to be able to see behind themselves to avoid colliding with one another while they change lane while they must also look forwards to see what vehicles in front of them are doing as they may be adjusting their speed to merge or slowing for a red traffic light.

From the point of view of sustainable safety  this design is extraordinarily bad because it relies on everyone behaving perfectly at all times. For this to work without injuries, no-one must ever be tired or distracted. It's the precise opposite of the Dutch principles which seek to make roads safer despite their users' misbehaviour or mistakes and self-explanatory so that users do the right thing without having to take notice of excessive signage.

These examples were all found within the first third of the manual. There are far more examples of bad design which I have skimmed over and while it would be amusing to go through all of them this would also be very time consuming so I'm stopping here (unless Ontario wants to sponsor me to continue, that is).

Conclusion - please think again
I've read a few design manuals in my time and unfortunately I have to say that this is one of the very worst. The examples above come just a third of the document. Flipping through more of the pages reveals seemingly an endless stream of material which is just as bad and in some cases obviously worse than that above.

It appears that no stone was left un-turned in seeking out bad ideas. Amongst these further bad ideas are two stage turns, bike boxes, cycle-lanes in the middle of the road, "jug handles" to make left turns, recommendations for separated paths to be too narrow, bus stops on cycle-paths, paths shared with pedestrians, awful ideas about what to do with cyclists at roundabouts, junction design which very probably will be proven to be "to die for" and the suggestion of signs, signs and more signs to try to explain the whole mess to the users of the infrastructure

Take advice from people with experience. Learn from best practice.
Ontario: don't accept this document as your future guide to building bicycle facilities. It is inadequate to the task in more ways than I have time to document.

If your aim is to achieve a higher cycling modal share, encourage a wider range of the population to cycle and to improve the safety of your cyclists then you desperately need to start again on your manual.

Instead of seeking out only inexpensive "solutions" or inventing new ideas, and instead of being influenced by countries which have similarly low cycling modal shares to your own, please take a look first at what has been achieved here in the Netherlands. It makes absolutely no sense at all to ignore the most successful practices.

A good start would be to buy copies of the CROW manuals and read them thoroughly. These are the best documents that you'll find anywhere about cycling infrastructure. However, don't stop at just reading books and websites and be aware that the real life experience is only hinted at by what you'll read. You also need to know how it feels to use the best cycling infrastructure in the world and you'll find out how the best infrastructure explains itself and does not need the number of signs that you are planning to install.

You need to aim high in order to achieve future success. This is the reason why we offer cycling infrastructure study tours - so that professionals such as yourselves can see what best practice is and avoid making expensive mistakes.

A pattern...
A few days after writing this, I realised that the same consulting company was involved as had been paid to put together another inadequate plan. Not every organisation which claims expertise actually has it.

I really am willing to go through the rest of the manual for a fee. It could be instructive to point out all the problems. However, I think time would be better spent by Ontario setting about writing a proper manual for cycling facilities.

Average commute lengths in Toronto, Canada

Someone recently posted a comment on one of the posts on this blog in which he asserted that an average commute in Toronto was of the order of 25 km - 50 km each way.

Like any extraordinary claim, this immediately raised a flag. Average commutes in other places are much shorter than this, and it seemed so unlikely that Toronto should have commutes which were so much longer than everywhere else on earth. I looked it up and found a very interesting website about commuting statistics in Canada.

These are not cycling statistics, but
average commute lengths in Canada
for all modes of transport. Why don't
Canadians make even their short
journeys by bike? Because it's
Dangerous. In the Netherlands
journeys of the same lengths are
routinely made by bike.

It turns out that Toronto does indeed have the longest commutes in Canada, but the average length is just 9.2 km. This is much shorter than suggested in the comment. The national average is 7.2 km, which is much the same figure as you'll find anywhere in the world.

The same website also reveals that for the whole of Canada, 37.8% of commutes are over a distance of 5 km or less.

Five km is a distance very easily covered by bike, but is that how Canadians make their short journeys ? It turns out that they do not. Ottawa is the leading large city in Canada for both walking and cycling, yet walking accounts for just 7.5% of commutes and cycling for just 2%.

So if distances are not the problem, why do Canadians not use bicycles when their journey distances are short ?

The reasons are the same in Canada as in every other country where few people cycle. The conditions that (potential) cyclists face are simply not conducive to cycling. There is little specifically designed infrastructure and cycling is considered to be like an extreme sport.

Those who choose to cycle in Toronto and across Canada are "road warriors". i.e. they are members of that demographic who are most easy to convince to ride, largely young adults, predominantly male and without dependents. There is not the same wide range of demographic groups as you get with a successful and established cycling culture. As with many other cities around the world, some pockets of Toronto have a higher cycling modal share than others due to specific demographics, but the overall rate of cycling is low. Sadly, the mayor of the city has also recently been taking part in a well publicized "war on bikes" - another thing which makes the background such that cycling is unlikely to flourish.

Distance is an easy reason to give for why the cycling modal share is low, but just as in other places where this excuse is made, a little investigation shows that distances are not the problem in Toronto. In fact, none of the popular reasons given for low cycling modal shares ever really add up. Rather, for cycling to become popular, a good degree of subjective safety is needed, and cycling must be associated with a high degree of convenience and safety. That is the biggest difference between the Netherlands and other countries. We have many examples of what works.

It's the same story in other countries where claims are made that distances are "too long", including the USA. However, the reasons are the same too. Where there is inadequate subjective and social safety, few people cycle. Read previous posts about Canada for some of the reasons why.

Dollars and Pounds

I learnt two things this evening.

Firstly, funding for cycling in the UK has been cut. This blog post revealed this little piece of information hidden in a 99 page document full of hot-air about what the government claims to be doing for cyclists. In the past, government funding for cycling in Britain has struggled to get past the 1 pound per person per year level. i.e. 60 million for the whole population. It's now been cut to around 13 million. That's around 20 pence per person per year. It's enough to do... precisely nothing. In a city of 100000 people, it's 20000 pounds. That's not even enough to employ someone to think about doing something.

Cycling Officers at councils in Britain (in my experience hard working, good people who tend to find themselves as lone voices in a council which isn't actually very interested) must be worried about their jobs right now. It's a real shame.

By way of contrast, cycling in the Netherlands is funded at a rate of around 30 euros per person per year, which is about 150 times as much. That's what it costs to do a good job, and actually Britain could afford it as well.


Secondly, I heard from a correspondent that it is possible that cycling will be banned at a university in Canada because they've pedestrianized roads and now the pedestrians are frightened by the cyclists. They're looking at ways to "slow cyclists down", which is of course precisely the opposite of what you need to do to make cycling into a more attractive option.

If you can't get students to cycle, then who will ? They're absolutely the easiest demographic of all to attract to cycling: young adults, well educated, fearless and with not too much spare cash. All the "top cycling cities" in every country are university cities. That goes for Groningen, Copenhagen, Cambridge (UK), Davis (CA). If cyclists are banned, you convert cyclists into drivers.


Both countries have fundamentally the same problems. Neither wants to treat cycling as a serious means of transport and neither wants to spend an adequate amount of money on cycling.

Click through for some examples of what actually helps to bring about a cycling culture.

In the past, more was written about the experience of being a cycling officer in the UK. And this is not the first time that cycling policy has been abandoned in the UK.

OV Fiets in Vancouver

40% of passengers on Dutch trains arrived at the railway station by bike. This makes it impractical to allow people to all take their bikes on the trains, especially at rush hour. In this way, cycling is a victim of its own success. One of the solutions to the problem is the OV-Fiets.

The Dutch shared bike scheme, OV-Fiets, is a bit unlike most bike share schemes in that it operates with public transport. OV stands for "Openbaar Vervoer" which is Dutch for "Public Transport."

These bikes are available at 200 locations around the country, including almost all railway stations. The idea is that they are used by commuters. An annual subscription costs just €9.50 per year, and then it costs €2.85 to hire a bike for a day. This can be a maximum of 20 hours - the idea being that it is not for tourists - though virtually every railway station also has normal hire bikes available.

OV-Fiets bikes are always either under the roof of the railway station bike shop or in the possession of someone who has hired the bike. I suspect this keeps the vandalism rate well down in comparison with some other bike share schemes. However, they are also available from lockers or even "bike dispenser" vending machines at some locations.

Anyway, the video shows the 400 OV-Fiets bikes which are currently in Vancouver in Canada for the use of Dutch athletes during the winter Olympics. It's a bit odd in that people are wearing fluorescent jackets, and even helmets... but the prime minister doesn't bother even though they're compulsory.

On to the Olympics. The photo shows Sven Kremer signing a golden OV-Fiets after winning the gold medal for the 5000 m ice skating race yesterday. He set a new Olympic record time of 6:14.60.

And talking of ice-skating... It's still pretty cold here. People have been skating on the canals, and velomobiling on lakes too...

I previously covered the amusing advertising for OV-Fiets. The video is another from Mark Wagenbuur. There are also vending machines just for innertubes rather than a whole bike.

No room for cycle paths

These three photos come from a city in Canada. The same one I featured previously. They show a new cycle facility to create a link for cyclists.

Cyclists have been squashed between the existing sidewalk and a fence. Things such as seats at a bus stop are right on the "cycle path".



At this point the unfortunate cyclist is put into just about the worst possible point at the entrance to a property.

Unfortunately there was "no room" for a wide cycle path alongside this four lane road.

Of course, if you were to measure the width of the road you would soon come to the conclusion that there was plenty of room if it was possible to re-allocate just some of the space given over to motorised traffic.

The junction here is at the end of this cycle path. After bunny jumping the seat, cyclists are left to work out what to do next.

It is unfortunately extremely common for many countries to produce infrastructure like this.

It doesn't work to increase cycling levels by a significant extent because it's very obviously second rate.

Cyclists need directness, safety and to have a pleasant journey. They don't need an obstacle course.

Stop making excuses !

I previously covered this "too narrow" claim with an example in Cambridge.

Assen vs. Canada. Example of subjective safety differences

Jackie from Canada sent me this photo, showing the a picture that "was taken on a route which is 'recommended by cyclists' on the bicycle map of a small Canadian town. Pretty sad, eh? We have two main arteries going through our city of about 80,000, which is quite stretched out from east to west. Those two arteries, both recommended as cycling routes - for lack of anything better - have lots of traffic, also very heavy trucks like the one on the photo."

"I guess I should have had a cyclist on it. But in order to get a cyclist on a picture like that, on the 'bikelane', I might have to wait for half an hour or longer. I have a much better chance catching one on the sidewalk!"

Does this look safe ? Does it feel safe ? It's a classic example of how a lack of subjective safety will keep people from cycling. A frightening experience. You have three choices here. Share the road with rather large trucks, ride on the other side of the white line in a too narrow cycle lane with dangerous drains or ride on the pavement. Jackie suggests that last of these three is popular amongst cyclists. I suspect that the most popular option overall is to drive instead of considering cycling.

After that bad example, here's a scene from the North of Assen showing the main road which serves the industrial estate and a motorway junction. This cycle path provides cyclists with a much more pleasant experience despite being next to a busy road. It is very busy at all times, but especially during the morning and evening rush.

A short distance behind the camera is the location of the example of a traffic light which defaults to green for cyclists which was featured on the blog a few months ago. Also this path connects well with the surrounding area (there is a cycle path junction a few metres beyond this photo including a tunnel which crosses to the left side of the road), and the speed limit on the road is 60 km/h / 37 mph so although the cars are closer than is normal at this point they are at least not travelling at speeds that feel unpleasant.

This photo shows a view in the opposite direction. You can see both a gaggle of school-girls travelling home to outlying villages and the 2.5 m wide space between the road and path.

There are more posts about subjective safety, and more comparisons with elsewhere. If you would like to see this for yourself, consider booking a study tour.

Pit Canaries

Seen many cyclists recently ? There is a huge difference between the rates of cycling in different countries.

The graph on the left shows the rate of cycling as a percentage of all journeys made in sixteen different countries. This is also known as a modal share or modal split. Australia, the USA and the UK are at the left with 1% of all journeys by bike, while Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands are on the right with 11%, 18% and 27% of journeys by bike respectively.

There is a huge difference between the numbers of cyclists you see in different countries. There is also a huge difference between their behaviours.

So, back to the question. How many cyclists do you see when you go out, and how many of them are dressed in a way that indicates that they feel they have to worry about their safety on the roads ?

Are your cyclists a small part of traffic, wearing helmets, dressed in fluorescent jackets and predominantly young and/or "sporty" ? Do your cyclists cycle "vehicularly" and identify themselves as "cyclists"? Or do you live in a location where cyclists are of all ages, both sexes, and generally ride in normal clothes with no worries about visibility ?

Cyclists are the pit-canaries of the roads. If they're numerous, dressed in ordinary clothing and wide-ranging in age you can tell that you are in a location where cycling is "normal" in society and where it is safe enough, and feels subjectively safe enough, that everyone cycles. If people feel they have to dress to be safe then this is a sign that they do not have adequate subjective safety.

It goes further. Do you see women routinely cycling alone at night ? Do children cycle long distances alone, day and night ? Do most children go to school by bike ? Do parents consider it to be safe for their children to do this ? Do those parents who do let their children cycle make them wear helmets and fluorescent clothing ? These are indicators of how subjectively and socially safe people feel and are a determinant of health of cycling in an area.

Make cycling a truly attractive thing to do and more people will do it. Here in Assen, children are regularly seen riding great distances with groups of friends. Some cycle 20 km to school in the morning and 20 km back again each evening. Take a look at a video of how children get to primary school here.

As mentioned a few days ago in "Reclaiming the streets", cyclists are also the pit-canaries of society. Societal problems can also lead to low rates of cycling. If there is a significant risk of mugging (or worse) in your area, you will see fewer cyclists. This is a problem for social safety. It is surely no co-incidence that the three countries with the highest cycling rates also have progressive social policies. You will find a very similar ranking of countries in the results of a UNICEF report summarized by the BBC with the title of "Why are Dutch children so happy ?".


Dutch infrastructure works so well to convince people to cycle that recent immigrants to this country cycle on average about as much as people who live in Finland.


The graph at the top is from John Pucher and Ralph Buehler's article "How Cycling was made Irresistible" - one of many articles referenced on our cycling articles webpage. The Dutch really have made cycling into an irresistible thing to do. Everyone cycles for at least some of their journeys.

We run cycling study tours here in the Netherlands on which we demonstrate the how it is that the Dutch have achieved their amazing high cycling modal share. We also run cycling holidays in this location, which we believe is the most pleasant in the world for cycling.

Sadly, since this blog post was originally written, the cycling rate in Denmark appears to have dropped quite sharply.