10 wishes

Even when we're getting old and grumpy, we all still have things we would secretly love to get from Santa each year. I know of at least one bloke who would never admit it but would love to get an Airfix kit of a Spitfire.

Now that the preparation for Velo-City 2014 is well underway and we have some great keynote speakers organised, there are probably 101 things we could do in preparation and 101 more other new ideas that we will get out of the conference.

As a starting point, this is my wishlist for Christmas:

1. Designate streets

Earlier this year, those clever people at Copenhagenize Design Co produced an easy to follow bicycle infrastructure planning guide. The required road treatment depends on speeds and motor vehicle numbers:

The important point to note is that this should not come after the event. Speeds and vehicle numbers can be decided beforehand by properly designating streets as residential, 'neighbourhood rings', main roads, arterials and so on. Designating streets in that way determines their role and whether, for example, they are through routes. For a better explanation, see one of my favourite blog posts of this year.

Our problem at the moment is that almost every single street or road is a thoroughfare.

2. Divide suburbs into cells/segments

Once you have designated your streets, divide suburbs or parts of suburbs into their own self-contained segments. Organise things in such a way that you have to leave each segment (by car) the same way you came in and use the designated arterial route to get to another segment. Filtered permeability of course means that there will be different rules for people on foot, people on bikes and in public transport.

Journey times by cars will be increased only marginally but it makes all the difference to the quality of living spaces.

3. Introduce a mandatory design guide for arterial roads

I wrote a blog post about this a little while ago after finding out the estimated life span of a road surface. They are renewed generally every 15 years. If we make as part of that timetable, our road network could be transformed in 15 years. Even in 10 it would be unrecognisable.

There is a reason this is so important.

We hear calls for people to share the road, for their to be mutual respect and for things like one metre passing laws. They're all very well but even with the best intentions, human frailties get in the way and can lead to disaster. That is where good design comes in. Decent design can do a lot for safety by sending clear signals about speed, upcoming obstacles and, importantly, who goes where.

4. Change local government road laws so that filtered permeability becomes default

This related to wish number 2 and it is all about priorities.  For a far better explanation than I could ever give, see one of the old favourites.

5. Make all railway stations transit and cycle-oriented development

A network of cycling routes or feeder buses synchronised with train times can increase the catchment area of each station by a significant margin. Cycling routes have the advantage of being so much cheaper.

Imagine being able to hop on your bike, ride 15 minutes without having to worry about traffic and main roads, parking your bike in abundant, secure, under-cover parking and then, after a very short wait, jumping on a train that will speed you to work. I know I would use it.

Here's Mikael explaining how it works (in part 3 of his 10 part series):


Episode 03 - Intermodality - Top 10 Design Elements in Copenhagen's Bicycle Culture from Copenhagenize on Vimeo.

 6. Introduce the 8-80 test

Adelaide City Council has not been idle in the last few years. The Sturt Street lane was attempted and learned from. There are new ones on their way on Frome Street. The Victoria Square redevelopment is underway, as is Rundle Mall and there are other bigger projects thanks to the State Government. Our "bicycle network" also continues to grow with bike boxes and new stencils on roads like Pulteney Street. The question is whether it is the right kind of treatment.

All new changes I think should have an overall fitness test applied once they're complete - the easy to apply 8 to 80 rule. Would you be happy with your 8 year old child using it? Would you be happy with your 80 year old parent or grandparent using it? If the answer to either question is no, it may be time to go back to the drawing board.

7. In time, divide the CBD into 4

Suggest this to anyone who comes to the CBD by car and you will either be looked at with disbelief and, more likely, it will be assumed that you are either mad or joking. However if you have been following bike blogs this last year, you will have seen the Streetfilms film about Groningen and know that it works beautifully. Here's the link. The part about dividing into segments begins at the 2 minute mark.

Under such a plan, the four Terraces around the CBD become a ring route. To get from segment to segment (in a car), you must use the ring route. The main north-south and east-west roads can then become transit corridors for buses with big, well lit and comfortable bus stops.

8. Start making underground parking mandatory

If you look at parts of some Australian cities from the air, the amount of land that is devoted to storing cars practically free of charge is astounding. Here is Dr Behooving's take on Launceston. And here is a bird's eye view of Norwood, a densely populated inner city suburb where space is at a premium:



Asking that it is made easier to walk or take some other form of transport that is not a car is not about forcing anyone out of their car. That simply does not work. It is simply about providing an environment that allows people to make the most rational choice. If people want or need to take the car, so be it. If that is the case, it is ultimately better for everyone if we use the land available for efficient uses and dig holes to store our cars. It works especially well when it is hot.

The end result, while a little more expensive, actually makes things better for everyone. Your car is safe, secure and cool if choose to come that way but it is just as easy to get there in other ways too. The environment seems to be preferable too.

This is another favourite post of mine that explains it all.

9. We seriously need that underground railway

This is quite topical because it is suggested in the State Government's Integrated Transport and Land Use Plan. Among the plans for new tramlines around and from the city to Prospect, Unley, Henley Beach and Norwood, it suggests as a long-term proposal a railway tunnel under the city with four intermediate stations. If you ask me, it is more important and will be far more effective than the tramline plans.

I have a blog post slowly brewing but to summarise, a tunnel under the city will allow long distance trains to service most of the CBD, it will facilitate easier train changes and will allow direct and predictable through train services. Regular services along with a combination of park-and-ride and the things under number 5 above will allow our railway network to service a pretty decent proportion of the metropolitan area.

10. Thank people (Cykel Karma)

If you ride a bike, you rock. And you should be told so. That is why I like the people from Cykel Karma so much. I'm not entirely sure what they say but you can hazard a pretty good guess. This is a great excuse to post their video again:


I bike CPH - god cykelkarma from I bike CPH on Vimeo.

Merry Christmas everyone!

The Prime Directive

As captain of the USS Enterprise, Captain Kirk and Captain Picard after him and Captain Janeway after him (and various others) have all been required to follow the Prime Directive. It has been defined in various ways including:

As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Star Fleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely.

In other words, Captain Kirk was not allowed to appear to Neanderthals and show them how his iPhone worked. They were supposed to develop their own iPhone at their own speed.

With certain types of design, the Prime Directive sometimes seems to be alive and well on planet earth. Judging by some of the more recent UK blogposts (eg: this, this and this), you would think that we are simply not permitted to use superior designs already used by other civilisations. Through a long, painful and sometimes lethal process of trial and error, eventually we will learn what works and sometime in the far distant future, we may perhaps even use it. However, until that day, the Prime Directive prohibits us from cutting short our slow development.

We are guilty of that a little here as well. Rather than moving straight to best practice, we like to have a go with things that have already been tried elsewhere but replaced with something better. An example is bicycle storage areas, aka bike boxes. There has been a fair bit of literature written about them and I recall I may even have had a little moan about them at some time or another.

There are two main flaws with bike boxes. First, they are so easily ignored:

  (I did not have to wait any time at all for a driver to ignore the bike box. I just crossed the road and the car was just sitting there)

Second, they are the precise shape of a truck's blind spot:


(Borrowed from Demotix via ibikelondon)
Third, how do you use them? The bike lane that leads to them is to the left. When you leave them you travel on the left. Why would you position yourself in front of cars only to have to move out of the way and back to the left once you get moving?

There is a way they could be improved, without breaching the Prime Directive, by turning them into hook turn boxes. At the moment, all we have are those little turn boxes sitting by themselves in the middle of the road:


My cheap and cheerful change requires only two small changes.

First, swap the pedestrian crossing and the bike box around. At the moment, the bike box is behind the pedestrian crossing so that when you do your hook turn, you either have to cut cross the pedestrian crossing to get to the bike box or, more likely, you just turn around and sit in the middle of the pedestrian crossing - I know that's what I end up doing.

Put the bike box the other side of the pedestrian crossing:


Second, change the stencil to one showing the direction you take to perform the hook turn, eg:


(This picture is not mine. It is shamelessly stolen from Thomas Davidson who appears to be a New Zealander who, among other things, is really very good at art which can be found scattered around his website)
Also, if we have nice wide raised lanes, the bike boxes become redundant for people travelling straight on. Those people can just sit behind the lights waiting for green while the bike box turned that has been turned into a handbrake turn box slowly fills up with people doing their hook and handbraketurns.

Easy - einfach - facile - eenvoudig

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.