Sustrans Handbook for cycle friendly design - a poor design manual which sets very low standards

Not only does this Sustrans route consist of nothing but loose
pebbles, there's a gate on it which I could not pass without
removing my bike trailer.

Sustrans (the name means sustainable transport) is a high profile campaigning organisation in the UK. They have a long history, having been around for 37 years. It might seem surprising that an organisation which claims to have been working on behalf of cyclists for so long should be criticised by many cyclists, but it's very common to hear their work criticised and there are good reasons why. The Sustrans name is not associated with high quality infrastructure.

A common problem with Sustrans signs is that they tell
you the same thing in more than one direction. That's
no help if you're lost. Which way should I go now?

Several years have now passed since Sustrans proudly announced that they had built up a 10000 mile network. Unfortunately, those of us who have tried to ride along it know that this in many cases this achievement came about as a result of prioritizing quantity over quality. It makes for a good headline, and this perhaps works well for fund-raising, but the result doesn't make for good cycling. When I lived in the UK, I tried to use Sustrans' network of infrastructure myself and was disappointed more often than not. When I rode from Land's End to John o'Groats, I tried on several occasions to use the National Cycling Network infrastructure, and each time it caused a problem. In the worst case it nearly caused me to crash so at that point I switched to a dual carriageway A-road for my own safety. This is not how it should be.

A photo from nearly ten years ago. From this point, turn left and take the Sustrans NCN route along 60 mph country lanes to Newmarket, 15 miles without many cars. Turn right to take the direct route to the same place, which is just 6 miles away if you ride on a busy 70 mph road with lots of cars. This has still not been improved.

Sustrans' attempts at building infrastructure often include such features as paths shared with pedestrians, on-road cycle-lanes shared with buses, narrow widths, rough surfaces, places where it's necessary to dismount, and many obstructions. These make progress by bicycle slow (so much for a practical means of transport). Where Sustrans routes consist of nothing but sign posts on country lanes, these almost invariably result in a long detour. These are not characteristics of proper cycling infrastructure.

Fast forward to today
I could spend a lot of time writing about past errors of Sustrans but this blog post is not about those. What I want to write about today is the new Sustrans "Handbook for cycle friendly design", which sadly is not nearly the document that it should be.

Cycle training cannot
result in mass cycling

Sustrans' document starts with a foreword which includes sort of text that we've come to expect from any document about cycling. There are many nice words about "cleaner healthier travel", "public health" and "liveability" and the introduction ends by talking about doing "all that we can to enable travel to be both healthier and better for the environment".

A few pages later the document starts to talk about "understanding user needs" with the illustration to the right being prominent. This shows "primary and secondary riding positions", primary meaning of course taking up a position in front of motor vehicles in order to control the following traffic.

Sustrans say they are designing for "the less confident cyclist" but this apparently means "a sensible 12 year old [...] trained to Bikeability level 2". While Dutch children have cycled to school as well as for other purposes for many years before they reach the age of 12, the needs of younger British children to be able to do the same are not being addressed.

It should be noted that Bikeability training in the UK is not associated with a higher rate of cycling. Training cannot result in true mass cycling because it does not address the fundamental issues which face cyclists. In particular it does not address subjective safety issues so parents won't allow their children to cycle even if they have been trained.

The importance of a fine grid of infrastructure appears to have made it into the Sustrans manual (they call it a mesh) and it's illustrated by a map which similar to those you'd see in the Netherlands, showing a primary grid which is linked by a secondary and third level grid. The language of what is required is in the Sustrans document, but what follows falls well short of the extremely high quality and convenience required in order to attract people to cycle.

Sustrans emphasize Shared Space
features early in the document

The first section on street design emphasises Shared Space designs, though in the Netherlands these have been found to be dangerous and to discourage less confident cyclists.

Bizarrely, their diagram to illustrate "good street design" shows that roads on which there was space for a cycle lanes should lose those lanes as they approach a roundabout which itself has no clear markings. This will generate conflict and danger just as it does at similar designs which have been tried in the Netherlands.

Two out of three are dangerous

The Sustrans design for "road humps" and "speed cushions" has proven to be dangerous in that drivers often pull sharply to the left before reaching such a traffic calming feature in order to avoid all four wheels going over the traffic calming feature. By doing this, they often pull into the path of cyclists.

Similarly, the central island design is lethal. Sustrans suggest painting bicycle symbols on the road, but this paint will not prevent drivers from pulling into the path of cyclists in order to pass the pinch point. We have pinch-points like this in the Netherlands, but not with cyclists are on the road. They are used at entrances to villages and to assist people to cross the road.

Advanced stop lines ? In 2014 ?

We move on to Advanced Stop Lines (Bike Boxes). This infrastructure claims to give cyclists a head start at traffic lights, but they're associated with cyclists stuck in the feeder lane when the light goes green being injured by moving vehicles, especially when they turn across their path. These are very much out of fashion in the Netherlands and those which still exist are relics of the 1980s. We have none remaining here in Assen. ASLs are no longer built in the Netherlands because they are an inferior way of designing a traffic light junction. We have no ASLs left in Assen and I have long recommended that these are one of those examples of infrastructure which should not be copied.

It's already proven to be dangerous
in Southampton and lethal in
Denmark. Why duplicate this
elsewhere in the UK. There are
better, safer designs for traffic
light junctions.

Under the banner of "innovative cycle facilities" we see "hybrid cycle tracks" which sadly found their way to the UK as a result of a misunderstanding when visitors from Cambridge saw a single very old cycle-path in Groningen and though it looked achievable. This is not something to copy. We also see "armadillos", much criticised in London and barely resembling the very oldest infrastructure here in Assen.

But the worst of their "innovative" facilities by some margin is the much criticised Southampton two-stage turn. This attracted criticism well before it was built because it was no more than a poor copy of a type of junction which is not only inefficient for cyclists to use but which has also proven to be lethal. Denmark has many junctions of a similar type and has worked for years to try to make them safer. Nevertheless, a relatively developed form of this type of junction killed seven Copenhageners last year. Is that the type of innovation that the UK needs ?

Sustrans asks for British cyclists to have
cycle-lanes narrower than the Dutch build

Sustrans then moves on to on-road cycle-lanes. The Netherlands has few on-road lanes because of the many problems which they cause. I've documented those problems together with the required widths in the Netherlands. I don't suppose it will surprise many readers to find out that Sustrans has much lower standards than do the Dutch.

Sustrans propose mere 2 m wide cycle-lanes as being adequate even with traffic flowing at 40 mph. At these speeds, proper high-quality segregated paths are required.

Gilbert Road Cambridge is used as a
"good" example by Sustrans. Actually
it was a missed opportunity to do
something better.

I was also amused to find that Sustrans had includes a photo of Gilbert Road in Cambridge as an example of good design. I know this road well. It was part of my commuting route for many years when we lived in Cambridge and the rework which has been there is to a far lower standard than was possible. Gilbert Road in Cambridge is a prime example of where a very much better solution was possible but cyclists ended up with nothing more than narrow on-road lanes largely as a result of not understanding what was possible and having low ambitions for improvement.

What's more, there is the suggestion that building a cycle-lane between lanes for motor vehicles is a good idea. This is one of several points in the Sustrans manual which I've criticised on several occasions before, including in my recent summary of cycle-lane problems. This dangerous idea keeps being proposed in inferior design guides from around the world. A cycle-lane like this almost invites motorists to turn across the path of cyclists and it is not a safe place to be. Not for an experienced cyclist and also not for the 12 year old with Bikeability training which Sustrans claim to be designing for. There are far better, far more convenient designs of traffic light junctions than those which Sustrans seems to be aware of.

Buses and bikes should never be mixed

Sustrans appears to think that buses and bikes can share lanes satisfactorily. This is a combination which never works well for reasons which any cyclist and any bus driver will understand. While the average speed of buses and bikes across town may be similar, cycles travel at their average speed while buses make that average by travelling relatively quickly between stops. The result is that bikes hold up buses and buses hold up bikes. Quite apart from the potential for lethal results from genuine error where you have a very heavy and large vehicle sharing a lane with a vulnerable cyclist, the tensions that result from this "sharing" often bubble over into deliberate violence. Just two years ago an incident due to an angry bus driver in Bristol, the home of Sustrans, made the national news in the UK. This conflict must be designed out of city streets, not encouraged by bad design.

The only way to achieve harmony between buses and bikes is to keep them apart.

Cyclists need all the help they can get when approaching and
negotiating a roundabout. Stopping the cycle-lane early so that
cyclists can "mix with traffic" is not a solution. Click to find
out how the Dutch build safe roundabouts.

The roundabout designs proposed by Sustrans are also compromised. There is great emphasis on "continental design" and emphasis on changing the geometry of the roundabout. In fact, what keeps Dutch cyclists safe on roundabouts is not the geometry, which varies considerably, but that bicycles are not ridden in the main traffic lanes.

i.e. The very safest designs of roundabouts for cyclists are safe precisely because cyclists don't use the roundabout.

Sustrans are not the first to make this mistake. It's a misunderstanding which has come up repeatedly with British road designers. I had a prolonged online conversation with a planner in Bedford in 2011 about this exact misconception. Regardless of this, Bedford has more recently gone one 'better' and proposed a turbo-roundabout with on-road cycling, and Sustrans amongst other campaigning organisations actually approved of this as good practice.

Turbo roundabouts are absolutely not for cyclists to ride around. They are a special design of motor vehicle specific roundabout intended to speed up traffic around such places as motorway exits. Ideally, cyclists won't even see these types of road junctions.

Mini-roundabouts give little reaction
time and can be more dangerous than
full sized roundabouts for cyclists

Mini-roundabouts are also featured in the Sustrans guide. I know I'm not alone in finding these to be less than safe. Earlier this year, my mother was injured cycling across a mini roundabout in the UK, just a few miles away from Sustrans HQ in Bristol. I've also had incidents in the past, and there were fatalities at mini roundabouts near where we lived in Cambridge. These are not good cycling infrastructure.

No. Don't do this.

When we come to the discussion of segregated infrastructure, Sustrans' old problems come to the fore. As I've tried to explain in the past, bollards should be used sparingly. The last photo at that link shows how the defunct Cycling England had much the same ideas about good practice as does Sustrans, but this not only costs more than would a single bollard which was adequate to stop people from driving cars along here, it also is dangerous for cyclists and restricts access by people with tricycles, cargo bicycles, trailers, or by people with disabilities. It is that latter group who I think need to be thought of most, and I'll come to this again in the conclusion below.

What Sustrans thinks of as an off-road facility is interesting. Note that we don't have any shared use paths in the Netherlands because they cause conflict and are not efficient to use but Sustrans expresses a strong preference for shared use on the grounds that it "maximises the usable width". As we're on the subject of widths, what do they suggest ? It turns out that a 3 m wide path is considered to be adequate for a main cycling route. That is thought to be enough for two way cycling combined with 2 way walking. 2.5 m and even 2 m widths are also considered to be adequate in some situations.

Sustrans recommend just a 2.5 m
wide bidirectional cycle-path
through underpasses. This is
very narrow. They also suggest
long subways are permissible.
All the dimensions are below
Dutch standards for tunnels.
There's also little consideration
of social safety.

A two metre wide path is simply not wide enough to allow for safe use in both directions at once, even without pedestrians also using the path.

Contrast this with the situation where we live in the Netherlands. We have mostly 4 m wide cycle-paths for bidirectional use, narrowing sometimes to 3 m wide for secondary routes. These are usually parallel with a 1.5 to 2 m wide path for pedestrians. For single direction cycle-paths, 2.5 m wide is normal, again parallel with a 1.5 m to 2 m wide path for pedestrians. The usable width is not being "maximised" by Sustrans' guidelines, but actually it is being set very narrow indeed.

Sustrans dimensions for segregated
paths would be OK if this was for
single direction use. A 2 m width for
bidirectional use is just not enough.

But wait, they're also talking about equestrians using the same paths. "Greater width" is then required. But horses should not be on the same paths as cyclists and pedestrians for reasons other than width. Horses are scared easily and that can lead to conflict and danger, and they leave behind something that no pedestrian wants to stand in and no cyclist wants to ride over. Horses need separate paths from cyclists and cyclists need separate paths from pedestrians. That's what we have here in the Netherlands.

Sustrans have been building inadequately wide infrastructure for an overly broad user-group for many years and of course they have seen the conflicts that result from cramming people onto narrow badly designed infrastructure. This document even suggests a way of trying to deal with it: 'On unsegregated paths consideration should be given to the erection of courtesy signs such as “cyclists give way to pedestrians” or “share with care”.' Needless to say, well designed paths do not need such signs.

Then there are the signs. Some of those shown as good examples  also are simply not good enough. The one on the left is hard to spot (from experience) and doesn't actually tell you where you're going or why you should follow that arrow. Perhaps your destination is in the opposite direction.

The one on the right illustrates another problem. This road junction has been designed in a way that it is so confusing to use that people require a sign just to tell people how to negotiate the junction. It doesn't tell the user anything about their destination unless that happens to be "Canal" or "Ashton Road".

And I've even pictures two of the others, which say "Please give way to pedestrians in path", raising the question of whether this would be necessary if the infrastructure had been designed to remove conflict between user groups instead of creating it, "Use diversion when route ahead flooded", which raises the questions of why there is a cycle path which floods and whether this is really an issue which should be "solved" by putting up a sign.

Who are Sustrans designing for ?
I mentioned briefly above that people with physical disabilities particularly have an enormous amount to gain from a real grid of high quality infrastructure. But that, sadly, is not what Sustrans are planning to enable. They've adopted the language of providing a real grid but their standards aim far too low to provide infrastructure which can be used by the entire population.

Sustrans labelled this photo
"inadequate drainage". I'm
more interested in how you
get through that gap with
this type of bicycle.

By concentrating on their mythical able-bodied 12 year old with Bikeability training, who they think can negotiate all types of roundabouts from mini to turbo, who can avoid being crushed at two stage turns, swerves easily around bollards, is un-phased by cycling in a narrow cycle-lane alongside 40 mph traffic, or indeed a lane with traffic on both sides of his lane, who has no concerns about social safety, likes sharing space with buses, pedestrians and cars as well as with horses, who doesn't mind routes being indirect and inefficient and has no problem at all with having to stop and read a sign just to find out how to cross one junction, they've seemingly forgotten about everyone else.

The designs that Sustrans are promoting are not good enough to get the masses to ride bicycles. They're also not good enough for confident cyclists to make the efficient journeys which everyone who cycles wants to be able to make.

Cycling should be for everyone. Able-bodied, disabled, young, old, fast or slow. Infrastructure for cycling should be designed for all these people to use safely at once. There should never be a choice between a safe option and a fast option. This is not a dream, it's reality just over here on the other side of the North Sea.

I think it's notable that while the best practice in cycling is not to be found in the UK, the references section of Sustrans new handbook includes only UK sources. Sustrans' references section tells me where to find their own publication about dealing with Japanese Knotweed, but there's no reference to the world's best practice cycling design documentation from CROW.

It's not just CROW that they're ignoring. We've offered to help to educate Sustrans planners about best practice but ten years have gone by without any interest being shown by Sustrans. We're still here. We can still help. We can show you better than ever what best practice really looks like as well as explaining the pitfalls that you must avoid. But we can only do so if you talk to us.

Other new guidance

Several of my older photos are used
in the camcycle guidance, one from
2008 fills most of the front cover.
The document could have benefited
from newer ideas and newer photos
but these were not sought.

As well as the Sustrans handbook, two other documents have appeared in the UK which seek to offer guidance on cycle facility design. Making Space for Cycling produced mainly by Cambridge Cycling Campaign and Space for Cycling from CTC. Both of these are much shorter documents than that from Sustrans and neither of them are so prescriptive as Sustrans' handbook. Both of these other guides fall short mostly by omission so I see them as much less harmful than the Sustrans handbook.

Both CTC and Camcycle have used photos from and around Assen, some of the photos used even feature Judy and myself. This should not be taken to indicate our endorsement. While both of these are improvements over Sustrans' work, neither of them aims quite high enough. For instance, some of the photos of Assen used as good examples are of infrastructure replaced years ago, there are references to hybrid cycle lanes and requirements for widths are inadequate.

It's also worth pointing out that not one of the three new documents discusses the safest roundabouts or the safest traffic light designs from the Netherlands. In all three cases they are promoting inferior designs which are less convenient as well as less safe for cyclists. Read more about good junction design.

From "Fast Forward" onwards, the illustrations and photos above come from Sustrans' handbook except for those on the cover of Making Space for Cycling, the largest of which is my photo.

A reader confirmed that the "inadequate drainage" barrier still exists and pointed out where it is.

Christchurch New Zealand Cycle Design Guidelines

Christchurch in New Zealand published a Cycle Design Guide last year. My attention was drawn to it because of a bad design which I discovered came from this design guide. I've read most of the design guide now and sadly it's at least as deserving of criticism as Ontario's lacklustre design guide or the NACTO guidelines.

This will not be a full point by point critique. I can provide one if Christchurch wants it.

"Dutch Junction"

Christchurch's ideas for a "Dutch
Junction" prompted me to write this
piece. They appear to have based this
design upon a sketch which was part
of a criticism of someone elses poor
design standard

I was drawn to this section of the document because of the flawed illustration of this type of junction which had appeared across several New Zealand blogs. I found the image in a blog post on the Cycle Action Auckland site, but it originated in Christchurch's design guide.

Christchurch's design guide calls this junction a "Dutch Junction". The section about this type of junction starts on page 32 of the document where there are two photos of what the authors think a "Dutch junction" looks like. However, neither of these photos are actually they think they are. The upper photo is actually of a simultaneous green junction while the lower photo doesn't look like the Netherlands.

The Christchurch design misses many key details. The geometry of it is also completely wrong.

Cyclists are shown as stopping at the same stop line as drivers so there is no head start over drivers. That is not according to Dutch practice. In the picture there appear to be no cycle traffic lights. The description only says that separate lights are required "ideally". What's more, they don't seem to have understood how cyclists are protected in the Netherlands from drivers turning left across their path. The Christchurch document merely says that this type of junction "can incorporate advanced cycle starts", which is not the way in which cyclists are usually kept safe in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands current practice would require that drivers turning left do not receive a green light to proceed at the same time as cyclists have a green light to go straight on. There also appears to be no expectation that cyclists will benefit from being able to make a left turn when the traffic lights are red. That's normal in the Netherlands and helps to offset any additional delays that cyclists might have on occasions when they are turning right.

With this design you would also expect to see multiple lanes on road (Mark's sketch, which seemingly inspired this, includes such on one arm). What's more, there's no way for a cyclist who has crossed one arm of Christchurch "Dutch" junction and wants then to turn right to actually see his traffic light as it will be behind him. To end, the angles at the junction are wrong. Cyclists travel through graceful curves, they cannot make on the spot 45 degree turns.

A mish-mash
Christchurch's design guide features a mish-mash of different ideas from all across the world with no apparent overall concept of which is the proper way to go. There are some relatively good ideas, though even these are compromised in the way they are presented, but they're given equal billing with types of infrastructure which happily no longer exist here in Assen (advanced stop boxes, cycle-lanes in the middle of the road) and other things which we never had in Assen and would never want to see (sharrows, two stage "hook" turns).

The design guide also offers an interesting insight into how the designers view cycling. For instance, page 16 discusses one type of "major cycleway". This lacks specifics such as how wide a cycle-path should be but they clearly expect cyclists to make slow progress ("approximately 15 km/hr for expected users" of one type of "major cycleway") and they want to micro-manage how cyclists cycle (messages stencilled onto paths "move off path when stopped", "warn when approaching"). This would appear to be a tacit admission that the planned width is rather narrow, such that these low speeds and warnings might be required for safety. Good cycling infrastructure never requires cyclists to travel at an artificially low speed.

Where widths are mentioned, they vary. On page 20 it is said that "a desirable width of 2.4m on
both sides of the road" is required in order that cyclists can pass each other while by page 24 that has reduced to "approximately 1.8m to 2m on both sides of the road"

Christchurch's design guide is not a coherent piece of work but more of a summary of things that the authors have read about, and in some cases misunderstood.

Unfortunately, it appears to lean heavily on photos and opinions swept up from across the internet, some perhaps used without credit and some of them used without the concept being well understood by the authors. That may seem harsh, but I can say for certain that it's true in at least one case:

Cycle Barnes Dance

Is it not a bit rude to take credit for
someone else's work ? The original
photo is from one of my blog posts.

Someone working for Christchurch copied a photo from my blog of a simultaneous green junction here in Assen (find it here), edited it to remove my URL, and reproduced in black and white on page 34 of Christchurch's document. It is labelled "Cycle Barnes Dance". Perhaps after all that work they thought I'd never find it. While a small number of people are credited as photographers on page two of the document, my name does not appear and I certainly wasn't asked for permission to use this photo. I wonder who took credit for this photo ?

More seriously, we have to ask why did they use photos that were swept up off the internet rather than their own. Presumably the answer is that they didn't have any of their own. The probable reason for a lack of photos is that the authors of Christchurch's design guide have never actually seen and used this type of infrastructure. Their take on what a "cycle barnes dance" should look like is as follows:

Christchurch's take on a simultaneous green junction. They've missed key details of the design. This photo is taken from Christchurch's document. I certainly do not claim credit for it.

Unfortunately, the authors of the document have clearly misunderstood how simultaneous green junctions work. They have unhelpfully provided extra paint on the ground seemingly to guide cyclists to ride across diagonally rather than using the curved paths that are normally taken and which are essential to avoid collusions. They've also again forgotten about the opportunity turn right against a red light at junctions like this. That's normal in the Netherlands.

The text accompanying this is also interesting to read. Again, the document refers to separate traffic lights for cyclists being required at such a junction only "ideally", suggesting that you could allow cyclists to cross like this at the same time as drivers were in motion. I'd expect that to cause carnage. It never happens in the Netherlands. There are always separate traffic lights for cyclists at simultaneous green junctions. This is not optional. The document also refers to a possibility of combining the pedestrian and cycle phases, which again does not happen in the Netherlands because this would cause conflict and probably injury.

More bad practice lies below
The further I read through the document, the more examples of lacklustre design glare out at me. On page 38 there's a photo of a really dreadful and actually pointlessly badly designed "cycle bypass" (compare with the same concept done properly). On page 41 there's a relatively decent bus stop bypass design followed by a design which is almost impossibly bad on page 43. By page 57 it's back to discussing how to "encourage slower cycle speeds" (this should never happen) on shared paths on a page which also features a narrow "berm separated" cycle path which has an enormous drain in it.

Christchurch uses the term "hook turn" to refer to what is known elsewhere as a two stage turn. In most parts of the world, the word hook is used in this context to refer to the type of crash that it common to this type of infrastructure.

In general, there's far too much emphasis on on-road cycle-lanes. These are relatively uncommon in the Netherlands and just as in other countries, they're not entirely safe here either. The picture on page 61 especially horrifying. It combines those on-road lanes with several other examples of bad practice, several examples of how cyclists can be put into danger, in one image:

Let's count the problems:

1. Cyclists turning left have a potential left hook problem due to there being positioned on the left of left turning motor vehicles.
2. Even though there's a separate lane for cyclists turning left, no thought has been given to how cyclists could have been allowed to turn left on red without conflicting with anyone.
3. Cyclists going straight on experience added potential for danger due to having to try to stay in the middle of the road cycle lane. Drivers on their right but who want to turn left will turn across this lane.
4. Advanced stop lines have never really provided any benefit to cyclists.
5. Cyclists turning right are expected to go straight on, then slam on the brakes in front of other cyclists, turn left a bit and wait in the small green box. However, they won't know when the traffic light for their direction has gone green because it's behind them. If there's a separate left turn phase then drivers wanting to turn left who come from behind the cyclists waiting in the box won't be able to get past those cyclists.
6. Cyclists need to be able to make efficient journeys so many won't want to make their right turns in this inefficient way. That does not only apply to "fast" cyclists, but to everyone. If a child is late for school, they won't want to use this box either. They will have to cross two lanes of traffic on the approach in order to be in the right turn lane. Drivers will resent this because the cyclist is not using the provided cycle facility.
7. Cyclists coming in the opposite direction are forced into a left hook situation with drivers who wish to turn left.

This junction design is a recipe for disaster

I have to also mention that treatment of roundabouts is lacking. On page 64, they're talking about "taking the lane" on roundabouts. That's a very long way from best Dutch practice.

It goes on and on. There are very few gems in there (the bus stop bypass design isn't bad). Very few. Please, Christchurch, if it's not too late, do not adopt these guidelines.

You need coherence in design, not a mixture of ideas picked up from different places and with a wide range of different qualities. Copy from the best, not from everything that you've seen.

Don't guess. Know !
Christchurch could have found out a lot more in advance. For a start, they could have asked us specific questions about how these junctions work. They could have asked about what is actually built and how well it works but also specifics such as measurements of different parts of the junctions, radii. Instead of guessing and writing down those guesses as design guidance, they could have found out in advance and adopted best practice. Christchurch could even have employed us to write about things that we do know about rather than employing someone else to write about what they don't know about.

Christchurch: Don't just "borrow" my photos
uncredited, send a party of people on the
study tour to learn about real Dutch cycling
infrastructure. They'll then be able to take
their own photos in the same locations,
having seen with their eyes and used this
infrastructure and hopefully also
understood what they're looking at.

Ironically, the URL which someone in Christchurch removed from my photo was for the cycling infrastructure Study Tour on which they could have sent participants to learn about real Dutch cycling infrastructure so they can't have been ignorant of what they did. The photo was taken during a study tour and two previous participants are shown. One of them is cut in half by Christchurch's edit.

It seems to me to be very strange to start by writing standards and only find out later on what it is that you should have been doing. Surely it would be beneficial for Christchurch to send people to see infrastructure like this first hand before making an expensive and dangerous mistake by copying it incorrectly.

That my photo has been taken without permission and without credit and used in the Christchurch design guide should not in any way be thought to represent my endorsement of their guide. Overall, this is a poor guide to cycle infrastructure design.

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.