One-Two-One One-Three-Two

Not one to give up easily, the Mayor of Adelaide, Steven Yarwood, and Adelaide City Council were not prepared to accept all of the negativity and carping about the experimental Sturt Street bike land and after a lengthy period fo thorough consultation, have released plans for proper cycling infrastructure along Frome Road in the city. It actually looks really good. Here's hoping it spreads across the city.

Beginning at South Terrace, the plan is for a complete route all the way to North Terrace using protected bike lanes.

Predictably, the howls of protest did not take long to start and Mayor Yarwood to have to get on the defensive and ask everyone to simmer down a little.

The complaints you hear are predictable and the assumptions behind them generally mistaken. A common gripe comes from what is perceived to be removing space for cars, generally in the form of reducing the number of lanes.

The plan involves Frome Street being reduced from two to one lane, except at intersections where there will be a separate slip lane.

Is reducing the street to one lane really so bad and will it increase congestion? The concept of induced demand suggests no as does the fact that traffic often seems to behave like a liquid. It seems to flow quite well until it reaches a bottleneck of blockage and then you have tailbacks.

Starting at the southern end, Frome Street starts at Carrington Street. That street only has one lane in each direction:


Turning on to Frome Street, it suddenly switches to two lanes:


There is no reason for the change at all other than the fact that there is space for it. That then continues all the way down to the zoo where, because of space restrictions, it reduces back to one:


At certain times of day, that is where you get the bottleneck - exactly as you would expect.

Another bottleneck is at the intersection with North Terrace because of buses turning right. Once Frome Street is reduced to one lane and the bike lanes, there will still be plenty of space to allow for that and even space for buses to have their own lane:


You see this sort of thing all over the place. This is close to the intersection of Main North Road and Fitzroy Terrace - both of them busy and wide roads:



You can see that the single right turning lane turns into three just before the intersection. In fairness, I assume that is so that three short rows of traffic can get around the corner when the light is green to avoid a long tailback. Having said that, once it's around the corner, the traffic is taken the short distance to Prospect Road and then just after that, the three lanes reduce back to two - another bottleneck:


All that happens when a lane is split like that is that there is a mad dash to the front of the queue in each lane followed by ridiculous jossling to get in front once the light turns to green. It slows everyone down. You see it happening every day.

I cannot help thinking that traffic could flow more smoothly (if that is your goal) by avoiding bottlenecks like that. Slow the traffic down to increase road capacity. The new single lane Frome Street will be just fine with a 40 km/h speed limit - and it will be fine with one lane. Slower traffic travelling more smoothly is better for everyone:

You burn the least fuel, and thus pollute the least, when you drive at a slow speed, providing a steady flow of gas to the engine or, even better, coasting. The biggest cause of pollution is the traffic dance of constantly speeding up, slowing down, braking, and idling. In urban areas particularly, the faster the speed limit or the feel of the street, the more starting and stopping drivers do. When traffic speeds slow down overall, the flow becomes smoother, and the result is less pollution.

It is also of course a lot less stressful. I have heard that heart attacks are not all that comfortable so if we can avoid them, all the better.

Neighbourhood traffic calming

While pondering bike lanes, where they should go, how separated they should be and how wide, it is easy to forget the things that can easily be done in your local neighbourhood to slow things down and drag residents out of their houses into the sunshine.

I think it is fairly well established that sticking 40 or 30km/h speed limit signs around the place is not that effective. People either ignore them or whinge about them. You change behaviour by changing the built environment. Traffic is slowed very easily by narrowing the street, removing the painted line in the middle of the road and by making it much harder to speed around corners. It amazes me that there are not more prangs involving cars at residential intersections. So often we see drivers take a right turn at speed and on the wrong side of the road. It is a matter of pure dumb luck that there is not someone coming the other way at that point. They are generally just a few metres back. Enough to make the driver swerve just a little but not quite enough of a scare to stop the practice.

Narrowing the road at intersections can serve a number of purposes. If you make the street narrow enough, only one vehicle at a time can get through. That certainly slows things down. Narrowing the street also makes it easier for pedestrians to cross - they don't have quite as far to walk. As part of the narrowing you can also send a clear signal by making the pavement continuous so that cars have to be driven across the pavement. You would think that would send a pretty clear signal about right of way.

Another positive about build-outs at intersections is that they can be turned into stormwater gardens. If the local council advertises well enough, there is generally a helpful neighbour who would be happy to adopt it and tend to the plants.

Doing the right thing on corners can not only bring the place alive but it can boost business. Here's a corner on Wright Street where the Jam Bistro is (go there for great food and coffee served by one of the best Baristas in town - Adam. He has no hair on his head but lots on his chin. Go figure):



There is space for nearly 20 people to sit out the front. A single car takes up the same space. How easy would it be to extend the pavement further out into the street (the same width as the parked cars) and free up all that space for more tables? You would double the number of patrons for the price of a single car parking space. The person parked there probably isn't buying coffee from Adam anyway. It would be no loss at all, only a gain - for the city and local business.

Montreal shows us how:

Positivity

When you spend your spare time reading blogposts like this one, it is easy to get a bit despondent and negative.

While we can all find something to whinge about, there is plenty to be chirpy about. I sometimes get a bit jealous of our Danish friends because some of them get to live in a city with architecture like the 8-House and Mountain Dwellings and others:


(Borrowed from here)


(and this one is from here)
Lots of architecture can end up fairly drab after a few years even though it looked fairly spiffy when built. And so I am particularly cheerful when I ride across Morphett Street bridge (on the pavement) and see the new South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute shimmering in the sunlight. There is no shortage of information on the web about how many people will work there and what they will be doing.

(Update 14.10.13: the builders asked for the picture back - see comment below - but if you Google SAHMRI you can see some images of it)

From my point of view, it just looks great the way it stands there on its two legs with all of those little triangle reflecting in different ways as you cross the bridge.

Just around the corner is the new stadium taking shape. If you use Linear Park on that side of the river, you are diverted close to where the entrance will be. Check out the progress if you haven't for a while. That and the bridge are going to transform that part of town.

Talking of finding new things, all of us slowly perfect our routes over time to make them the right combination of quick, safe and enjoyable. Until this morning, my route used to use part of Frome Road next to the zoo. I would come off Linear Park at the bridge, and join the road before hitting Adelaide CBD's only segregated bike path (for now).

I had seen a turnoff before and thought it would just take me to a road. I tried it today and ended up on a shared path the other side of the zoo:



It had road crossings that required cars to stop:



and it took me to the beginning of the off-road path:



All this time I had absolutely no idea it was there - little bits of red carpet slowly joining up.

The only blemish was when I was taking the photos. I accidentally pressed the button on the iPhone that switches to the camera on the front of the phone and so suddenly got a close up of my bloated face with the helmet on. Eek! Bad look. I never look at myself in the mirror with the plastic hat on. Now I know why.

Negativity

These past few weeks, for various reasons, I have had to drive a lot more than usual. It has meant that instead of riding my bike to work almost every day, the bike has become the exception.

What it has brought home to me is just how tedious driving a car everywhere can be. I remember years ago I had a paper round. The thing about paper rounds is that you can build up your skills and speed to a point but beyond that you cannot get any faster. You still have to walk up all the stairs and deliver the papers. Driving the car around is a bit like that. You can try and reach the speed limit as quickly as you can and use side streets to try and shave time of your journey but sooner or later, you have to stop either at a red light, a give way sign or behind a line of traffic.

Generally your view of the world is this:


or if you're lucky and you get to see two flash German cars, it might be this:


What driving around also showed me is just how unattractive taking the bike or bus looks as an alternative - despite how dreary it is sitting in a car.

The buses are all stuck in the same traffic. The passengers get to catch up on Twitter or play Angry Birds but that seems to be their only advantage. On all of the routes I took, there was not a single part of the road where it was made easier for buses by allowing them to bypass the traffic. Indeed, their ability to keep to the timetable seems to rely almost exclusively on the generosity of motorists in allowing them to pull out.

From where I was sitting, I did not see that many people riding their bikes. A few passed in the opposite direction and there was the odd one that got past me while I was stuck in a traffic jam, which was the majority of the time. When they did, it was not quite like all those pictures of groups of Danish people speeding past traffic on those wide raised lanes along Nørrebrogade. No, it was usually a single cyclist creeping along in the gutter propelling themselves forward with their left foot on the pavement (that also served to stop them falling over because of the lack of space).

Those cyclists you see invariably have the fluoro yellow top, the tight pants and the obligatory grimace. I did once see a pretty young lady on a Dutch bike, which was a very pleasant though rare change.

Another thing I noticed was just how few roads actually have bike lanes. Those you do see are routinely ignored. It is weird. It is as if they are totally invisible and drivers instead use the gutter to guide themselves. The painted lines seem to be treated as if they are either decoration or a leftover from another time.

I also noticed how poor a condition some of our roads are in - not just the roads, the bike paths too:


That hole was not put their by overweight cyclists by the way. It was something a little heavier:


That lane is on Light Square. It was coloured green to prevent motor vehicles from being driven on it. Surely a corner like that needs something like this (at the very least):


It must have been an unusual couple of weeks for me. If the comments pages are to be believed, there are crazy lycra-clad cyclists swarming along roads, speeding through red lights and generally putting car occupants in mortal danger. I didn't really see much of that. I was keeping my eye out but managed to see a total of two scofflaw cyclists. One was riding on the pavement - because the road, including the painted bike lane, was completely blocked by two lanes of car traffic. The other went through a red light. It was at a pedestrian crossing. The lights were still red but about to change to green and nobody was crossing. The cyclist (in his 60s) was approaching slowly and riding uphill. You could see that it would have been a pain for him to have to slow down and restart. He just carried on travelling at about 8 km/h in the bike lane. He was halfway across the empty crossing when the lights changed. Is that really so bad?

All of this revealed one obvious truth. From the point of view of your average punter sitting behind their windscreen, the thought of taking any of their journeys using any means other than their motorcar is light years from their mind. Riding a bike looks fairly awful. You wouldn't let your kids do it and you probably wouldn't bother yourself. Riding the bus is only marginally better and then only if you really want to play Angry Birds. You still have to wait in a queue to get on and then sit in the same traffic as everyone else.

It shows that we still have a lot of work to do.

I'm back on the bike this week - out of breath and feeling chubby. The temptation to make an excuse why I need to take the car is strong. However I have given the bike a polish and taken the luggage rack off the back so it feels marginally lighter and looks good. Also, it's spring and the sun will soon be shining, Apple has released not one but two new iPhones and Mikaell Colville-Andersen is a keynote speaker at Velo-City 2014.

All good.

Speed

We already knew this but it is very often quicker by bike even in a sprawling city like Adelaide. Top Gear proved that it is the case in London. Streetfilms did it in New York and for the Dutch it is just every day.

I had to run an errand not long ago in the morning. Part of it involved a drive along Kensington Road to the city. I took the car. It was about 7.20am and there was light traffic - a lot less than you get during rush hour. It was plain sailing the whole way.

On my way, I passed a guy on a bike. I saw him first before Portrush Road near where Marryatville High School is. He was travelling the same way as me towards the city. It was a cool bike too. A dark grey Specialized something or other. It had internal gears and a carbon drive belt instead of a chain.

On the way down, I saw the cyclist a couple of times. I didn't really consider him again until I got right into the city to Frome Street and there he was again. Even outside of the rush hour in light traffic, he was just as fast. During peak times, he would definitely be faster. I should add he was not speeding. He wasn't on a racing bike. He wasn't in racing gear. He was wearing cargo pants and travelling at a fairly normal speed. Admittedly, that stretch of road is a long gentle downhill slope but he still kept up with almost no effort at all.

And that is in a car-centric city like Adelaide!

Now why would you not encourage that? It really is absurd not to. Admittedly, that way of getting around is not everyone's cup of tea but why not make it easy, advertise it by making it visible and give everyone the choice?

Seeing alternative forms of transport turning out to be as fast or quicker than the car shows a couple of things:

1. The pent up demand for alternatives is underestimated. This is most clearly seen in things like the British Skyrides;

2. Alternatives to the car can and should be available as part of wider intermodal network. For example, allowing that sort of intermodality can increase significantly the catchment area of our north-south railway line. It can also do it in a much more efficient and less expensive way than park-and-ride stations that inevitably take up a lot of land.

We can see the seeds of this with the Greenway program but we have a lot of under-utilised space on our roads too. It's time to put that to good use.

Despite the obvious advantages that alternative modes of transport have in certain circumstances, we still have the usual calls for massive road-building projects. Our new Prime-Minister, Tony Abbott, has announed he will provide funding (as if it is his money) to about six major road projects, including the highly dubious East-West Link in Melbourne. He seems to be under this strange illusion that roads a a national issue while suburban rail infrastructure is a local State issue. Similarly, not long ago,'Infrastructure Partnerships Australia' put out a press release calling for 'genuine debate' on infrastructure before nominating four different road building projects as sound investments.

This has been going on for years. I bet you Tony Abbott could not name a single city that has solved or even reduced its congestion problems by building more roads like the ones he is supporting. I know that because there is no such place. We all know that.

To reduce congestion, reduce the cause of it. Do that by making the alternatives easy to choose. A common quote I see around the traps says:

"If you make the bicycle the fastest and easiest way from A to B, people will use it."

I have a feeling the quote is attributable to Mikael Colville-Andersen. For many journeys, as we see every day, it already is the quickest. The next step is to make it the easiest.

Learning Lessons

Someone I know quite well was involved in a minor collision the other day. It happened at a small roundabout on a quiet street not far from a school. It was the beginning of the afternoon rush hour. School had not long ended for the day.

My friend was travelling very slowly and, as is quite often the case, she missed the cyclist who was also approaching the roundabout from her right. He hit the side of her car and fell down. Other than a couple of scrapes to his arms, he was fine. It all happened at slow speed.

My friend did the right thing. She stopped immediately and made sure he was ok. So did the driver of the car behind her. That person then commented that she was glad my friend had been in front because she did not see the cyclist either.

A conversation then ensued. The other driver commented that the cyclist might want to wear brighter clothing next time. She also asked what the cyclist was doing out on the roads at that time and whether he was going anywhere in particular. He said he was just out for a ride. The driver suggested that this was probably not the time to be out just riding with all of the traffic on the roads.

Given the proximity to the nearby school, there is a certain irony there but I think it was probably lost on the driver.

Just in case, my friend also reported what had happened to the police. The officer was very understanding. She said this happens a lot where drivers simply do not see cyclists and there are collisions like this - thankfully at low speeds.

The officer had a little more insight than the other driver and said that the roads were unforgiving. "The bike lanes should be wider", she said.

And she is right.

It should be a concern to traffic engineers, the police, our politicians and indeed all of us that this is happening to such an extent that the police officer was not in the slightest bit surprised and was so understanding. The cyclist probably would have been seen with a fluoro top or something in bright pink or if he had some paint-stripper lights flashing away on the front of his bike. But then again, he may not have.

One of the reasons these things happen is because of our unforgiving roads. Roundabouts like that say loudly and clearly "cars are coming". But they do not even whisper "bikes and people might be coming too". They should.

We all know about the principles of sustainable safety because Professor Wegman told us about them. It is time they were implemented.


Look at those children riding around at school at closing time. Don't they realise how dangerous it is?

Half Man Half Lefty

Most bicycle blog followers would know that England is making some baby steps towards a more balanced transport policy. Whether it can be classified as progress depends on where you are and how you define progress. Regardless, there are some promising things happening. One is the experiments with Dutch road designs, especially roundabouts. The Guardian reported on it recently.

It led, as these things do, to a flurry of comments. One of my favourites is from "camerasouth"

Yes, all this if fine IF you can cycle, but not everyone can, especially many elderly and disabled people who have to use cars (and mobility scooters etc). Additionally, motorists are paying more and more for less and less road use yet cyclists are paying absolutely nothing towards all of the benefits and priorities that they are and are likely to get as a result of research like this. It's no use them claiming that they pay in their rates because many do not pay rates (children etc.) and there may be many cyclists in just one rate paying household. Besides, motorists also pay rates on top of all the other motoring expenses.

I agree that anything to make cycling more acceptable and safer is a good thing but I also think that it is time that cyclists started to share some of the cost of all these initiatives and appreciated that, as road users, they also have an important responsibility to act sensibly and safely and keep their machines in good order. Maybe a compulsory cycle MOT and registration number, financed by the cyclist would assist here and also provide some new jobs for the testers etc!

It has all the old favourites: "not everyone can cycle", "only motorists pay", "cyclists get all the benefits and pay nothing", etc.

And "children don't pay".

Eh?

These comments are a dime a dozen on any news article that mentions bicycle riders, especially if the article has the audacity to suggest that space or money could be used differently.

It is great when soon afterwards you read a short punchy response that deals with those sorts of answers succinctly and lucidly. For that we have Half Man Half Lefty to thank:

Firstly, you seem to be under the mistaken belief that you get something in return for tax. You don't, you just pay it and that's the end. That is why it is called tax and not a subscription or a service charge or a licence fee or a membership. What do you think you are entitled to in return for the VAT you pay, for income tax, for insurance tax, for alchol duty? We all pay tax you know, not just when we get in a car and none of us get anything back for it. Do you think perhaps that public services should only be available on presentation on a tax return which shows how much tax we have paid so perhaps you have heart attack and the paramedics tell you that they only use the defibrillator on people in the higher rate income tax band? or do you think we should all pay in to a big pot based roughly on what we can afford, so more or less the system we have now then?

Secondly, I am not sure how you are getting less road use. As far as I know roads are still being built but none are being dug up so surely you are getting more roads to use, not less

Thirdly, households haven't paid rates for many years. They pay council tax. Also, are you seriously suggesting children should be taxed as because they have a bike but it is only their parents who pay council tax, not them? presumably you'd need some kind of legal sanction for tax evading six year olds but I'm not sure a stretch in dartmoor is really appropiate so you'd need to come up with something new on that

Fourthly, I don't think the funds dedicated to a bunch of boffins in a field in Berkshire quite compares yet to the funds lavished on roads for motor vehicles. My local trunk road is to have an extra lane added for around 12 miles at a cost of £300 million. Perhaps you could find out how long it would take before the spending on cycling in the entire country would take to reach £300 million. Another local town of a few thousand popupulation is getting a £42 million bypass to take a moderatly busy non trunk road around a market town of a less than 5,000 people, so perhaps add that on as well. Perhaps to give a southern perspective, look up how much the Hindhead Tunnel cost and whether cyclists are allowed to use it. I'll give you clue: £155,000 per metre and no, they're not. Can you point me to a bike lane which cost £150 grand a yard?

Fifthly, perhaps of car drivers stopped killing cyclists then the cost of all these improvements, coming out of your own pocket apparently, could be avoided. Motor vehicles kill over 100 cyclists a year, cyclists do not kill any motorists. Bit of unfair fight wouldn't you say, and bit mean minded to begrudge spending any money trying to reduce that number wouldn't you say?

Sixthly, a tax on bikes which you propose would be £zero as it is for around 2 million low emmison motor vehicles so it would be a net cost to the system, not a revenue raiser. Also, would you make everyone on a bike get one of these £zero bike tax discs, even a kid doing his paper round? where would you attach a tax disc on a bike and what duties would you have the traffic police give up in order to stop people on bikes and check their free issue tax disc? bikes don't go on motorways so those ANPR vans wouldn't be much use

Seventhly, when we see an end to the carnage inflicted on the community by motor vehicles; pile ups, drunk driving, hit and runs, staging accidents to make fraudulent insurance claims, killing 400 pedestrians a year, 50 of them on the foot path, pumping pollution into the air, parking on footpaths, killing each other in fights over parking spaces then perhaps you can tell cyclists they should be sensible and safe but until ten an indignant motorist telling bike riders to act safely is unlikely to be taken very seriously don't you think?

Wish I could write like that.