What Happened to the Review of the Bay Gateway?

Lancashire County Council were required to conduct an evaluation of the £125,000,000 A683 Bay Gateway road building scheme to provide feedback to the Department for Transport so that they can provide accountability for the investment, provide evidence for future spending decisions, enhance the effectiveness of existing schemes, and improve future schemes based on learning.

According to senior orificers from Lancashire County Council Highways department “At the 2019 Evaluation; Matt Hodges attended representing the local Lancaster group Dynamo and Cycling UK and it would be great if he is still available.” You can read Dynamo’s account of the workshop here (https://lancasterdynamo.wordpress.com/2019/07/18/report-back-from-bay-gateway-stakeholder-meeting-10-july/). There was monitoring data collected in 2018 that was no doubt shown at the workshop, but interestingly that did not even get a passing mention in either the notes provided to the council by Dynamo following the meeting (https://lancasterdynamo.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/bay-gateway-workshop-notes-2019.pdf), or in their blog post.

It was clear from their original message to Cycling UK that the council orificers were keen for Matt Hodges to attend again, he had already proved himself to be more than happy to turn a blind eye to anything that might not reflect well on the council or its oficers, such as the fact that there was already evidence of a significant decline in cycling levels in central Lancaster. Any good cycling campaigner would usually have a very keen interest in anything that was specifically about cycling, especially information on levels of cycling because it is such a rare thing.

The figure below is the walking and cycling monitoring data that was shown at the workshop which Matt Hodges attended on behald of Dynamo and the rest of the cycling community. We will leave it to you to decide whether Matt Hodges decision not to raise anything about this was genuinely in the best interests of local peple who ride bikes.

Having invited a Cycling UK representative the same senior orificer from Lancashire County Council Highways department stated that “The 5 year evaluation workshop took place on Tuesday 27 February and local campaigner Matt Hodges attended and represented the cycling community as he did at the 1 year evaluation workshop and he also kindly produced the attached document.” We would provide a link to Dynamo’s blog post in which they summarised their attendance at this workshop, but we can’t because they never posted one. Whilst we do have a copy of the comments that Matt Hodges provided to the council following the workshop we aren’t making them publicly available because Dynamo haven’t, so we feel that it’s reasonable to assume that they don’t want either their members or anybody else to know about it. However, we did read them in detail and an assure you that, once again, Matt Hodges managed to avoid any mention of the now very concerning decline in cycling levels in and around the Lancaster area, as you can see from the figure showing the count data that was collected.

Oddly enough a whole year later Lancashire County Council still haven’t published the outcome of their review. Coud that be because the considerable decline in cycling levels in the Lancaster area was explicitly mentioned in the comments that were returned to the council by Cycling UK, because the council’s plan to ensure that Matt Hodges was the only representative of the cycling community and quietly brush the dramatic decline in cycling levels out of sight under the carpet was foiled by the dedication, determination, and persistence of Cycling UK’s Cycle Advocacy Network?

Making a Truly Walkable City

Walking is by far the main mode of travel for short local journeys in the UK, with 83% of journeys under one mile being walked, and that’s about a quarter of all thr trips that we make. Overall walking makes up nearly a third of our journeys that are less than five miles.

Earlier this year Oxford City Council had an agenda item on Making Oxford a Truly Walkable City. Unfortunately, the item never got discussed at the time, but was on the agenda for a meeting earlier this week. There were also a variety of other interesting and progressive things raised.

Walking is the main thing of interest to us at the moment though, and that is because so many people walk. If cycling were more inclusive, rather than being restricted by the conditions to only the bravest and fittest members of society, people might cycle some of those journeys but there are always going to be a lot of short journeys where walking is the most convenient option.

Most people walk, so any changes that councils make to improve conditions for walking directly benefit lots of people. Continuous pavements can make a real difference to the experience of people walking or wheeling, by removing the seemingly never ending ups and downs at driveways and side roads. Individually there are scarecly noticeable, but ultimately they just make getting around harder especially as the distances get further.

The Oxford motion suggested that the City Council could require residential dropped kerbs to be “Dutch style” entry kerbs. That is the kind of thing that would only affect new work though, so wouldn’t make much different is the short term.

Something that can be done in the short term is to reduce waiting times at traffic light controlled pedestrian crossings. We are at the time of year when people not only are the conditons for being outside much worse because it is darker, colder and more likely to be raining, there are also more people out shopping, meeting people, and celebrating.

Reducing the maximum waiting times at pedestrian crossings is the kind of thing that benefits an awful lot of people (even though a few of them might be too drunk to either notice or remember) by reducing the time that they are left standing in the wind and rain whilst drivers, who aren’t even visiting in the city, are hurried through in their warm dry cars.

Some Really Good Bike Parking

Here are a few photos of some bike parking that I used whilst staying overnight in Utrecht recently. This one is the station parking and although it’s free for the first 24 hours you do need an OV card (kind of a NL equivalent of an Oyster card) to use it.

It’s quite busy so there is a wide two way cycle path into it. There was a sign on the aproach to indicate how many spaces were available at this parking and several others in the city centre (like we have for cars in some UK cities) so I knew before I got there that I would be able to park my bike.

I went to the top floor (there are two) thinking that if the locals struggle with hills I might find a space more easily. The parking is the standard two tier racks and there was somebody just leaving as I arrived so there was a space for me to put my bike in. There are signs in the corridor indicating how many free spaces on the top and bottom racks in each bay.

There are lots of bays, I parked in bay 85 and took this picture so that I could stand a fighting chance of finding my bike in the morning. You can exit the bike parking directly into the plaza outside the front of the Central Station. My bike was still there the next morning, nice and dry despite some heavy rain overnight.
Apparently the bike parking has 12,500 spaces, for comparison apparently the Trafford Centre in Manchester has 11,500 car parking spaces (but probably takes up quite a bit more space).

How Effective have Painted Cycle Lanes been in Lancaster?

We don’t get many comments on these blog posts, but we recently had one raising concerns that we were saying that painted cycle infrastructure doesn’t either increase levels of cycling, or make those who already cycle any safer. Actually we were just putting forward what other people have said, but perhaps it’s useful to reflect on what has happened for cycling in Lancaster since the Millenium Bridge was opened in 2020. Certainly a cynical person might say that what has been done for cycling in that time has been almost (but not quite) as useful as rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, so lets have a look at what has been done.

Lancaster was a Cycling Demonstration Town between about 2008 and 2013 and there was about a million pounds spend on cycling every year. We wrote about this back in early April 2024. Those cynics might say that what it did demonstrate was that you could spend a great deal of money without achieving anything, and might even go so far as to say that the Council were probably treating spending money that was allocated for cycling as though it was a competition to see who could spend the most of the tax payers money to deliver the least possible benefit to society.

We’ve mentioned that there were more than three times as many permanent cycle counters as there are in Utrecht, and that would be a great way to spend the money that won’t do anything to encourage people to cycle or to make people riding bikes any safer so it was clearly an easy choice. We also mentioned that despite all of the funding the levels of cycling in Lancaster increase approximately in line with the general overall level of cycling in the UK as a whole, and that a comparable city that had no additional funding achieved twice the increase that was seen in Lancaster. The SUSTRANS report of the project suggested that a lack of political will might have been the problem, who would have thought.

The Highways Department at Lancashire County Council says that the painted cycle lanes that have been the mainstay of any additional provision for cycling in Lancaster were also largely part of the Cycling Demonstration Towns Programme. They have been diligently repainting them ever since, despite the first study into the effectiveness of painted cycle lanes having been conducted in the Lancaster area. The study was called “The effect of cycle lanes on the proximity between motor traffic and cycle traffic” and was sufficient to prompt the Scottish Government to include a warning in its guidance that advisory cycle lanes should not be less than 1.5 metres because narrow cycle lanes encourage close passes by drivers. Some people think that there were highways departments in Scotland that put this knowledge to use in providing narrow cycle lanes on routes that they wanted exclude cycling from. That issue probably contributed to the fact that the decade of commitment to make cycling 10% of al journeys in Scotland by 2020, that had about 7% of their entire transport budget over the period, such a resounding failure.

So more than a decade later where have all the painted cycle lanes in Lancaster got us to? Have they been the mainstay of a vibrant cycling culture and kept traffic congestion and air pollution at bay? Well Lancaster celebrated 20 years of polluted air earlier this year, and drivers are still always complaining about the traffic problems in the city. We have to look at the actual cycling levels to know whether all that paint has increased levels of cycling and make cyclists any safer. Fortunately Lancashire County Council had to conduct a 5 year review of the Bay Gateway, and that included some monitoring data for cycling. Unfortunately the officers involved kept forgetting that they had invited Cycling UK to comment, so they managed not to include us in the stakeholder engagement event although the local campaigns group Dynamo were in attendance. We are still trying to work out why Dynamo haven’t mentioned anything about this event because it was clearly quite a big deal. We wrote about this in late April 2024.

Lancashire County Council had to conduct monitoring of cycling and walking levels in the area to see if there had been any effect from the new road on them, and they compared data for 2013, 2018, and 2023. There wasn’t any real change in pedestrian numbers over this period, but the cycling data shows that by far the busiest location for cycling in and around Lancaster if the Millenium Bridge, and this was clear from all of the years that data are available for. Between 2013 and 2018 there was a 20% decline in the level of cycle traffic, and by 2023 this had fallen to only one third of the level in 2013. Levels of cycling were recorded at 24 locations around Lancaster in 2018 and 2023, and the level of cycling fell during this period at 23 of them, demonstrating that the decline is not simply due to people using other routes rather than the Millenium Bridge. Strangely enough the council still haven’t published their findings, and politicians of all colours seem to be much more interested in covering it up, at least until after the County Council elections next May.

We would encourage you all to make your own minds up about whether painted cycle lanes have been a benefit to cycling in Lancaster. We will no doubt all have plenty of time to ponder this while the advocate of painted cycle lanes looks for some credible evidence that they increase levels of cycling and make cyclists safer than doing nothing at all.

Paint only cycle infrastructure kills 10% more people than doing nothing

Sir Chris Boardman, Active travel Commissioner at Active Travel England recently spoke at the Active Travel Cafe about what has been achieved since the organisation was set up.

The key messgae that he gave, and one which several people picked up on, was that painted cycle infrastructure kills 10% more people than doing nothing at all. On the other hand, any politicians who are brave enough to implement good quality cycle routes are invariably successful in achieving real change, and getting more people making local journeys on foot or by bike.

One of the first studies into the effectiveness of painted cycle lanes was conducted in the Lancaster area, and published almost 15 years ago. It is now four years since a quantitative study conducted in London found that advisory cycle lanes increase the changes of injury to people riding bikes by one third. Lancaster, like many other places has effectively run a quarter of a century long experiment into how effective painted cycle infrastructure is.

Unfortunately, the failure of these line paintings to either improve cyclist safety or increase levels of cycling has been no deterrent to councils continuing to pursue the approach that has always failed to be effective at what they claim to want to achieve.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results” – Albert Einstein

You can find a recording of Chris Boardman’s summary of what Active Travel England have achieved so far on YouTube

Cycling in London

Twenty five years ago cycling in London was much like the the rest of the country, with very little provision of infrastructure that was actually useful for people trying to get about by bike. London always had more of an incentive not to drive given the traffic congestion problems, but it also has a far better public transport system than any other part of the UK too.

Following the implementation of the congestion charge in 2003 the reduction in the numbers of cars meant that conditions on the roads in central London became much more suitable for cycling. Boris Johnson was able to capitalise on the efforts of his predecessor to improve local transport on London by beginning the development of a network of genuinely good routes for cycling.

These days cycling in London is just a way of getting about, it’s not a statement about your social or political views, it’s just a cheap and quick way of getting about. Because cycling trips are door to door they can compete effectively with journeys by public transport that need a walk at either end of the bus or train ride. Also, if you are riding your own bike you don’t need to pay for a ticket.

With the reduction in cars there has also been an increase in the space available for people and there are frequent outdoor spaces. An additional benefit of the reduction in traffic is that central London is much quieter than most UK cities, which makes sitting outside a much more enjoyable experience. Secure on-street bike parking also helps to make cycling more convenient, especially for flats or small terraced houses, and Bike Hangars are a relatively common sight on residential areas.

Public Space Protection Orders

Whilst Lancashire County Council is busily consulting on another sustainable transport route, and how they can make cycling safer, Lancaster City Council are consulting on whether cycling in the city centre should be considered as anti-social behaviour.

It would apear that despite having declared a climate emergency one thing that absolutely cannot be tollerated in Lancaster is cheap and sustainable local transport. Several Local Authorities have already managed to use PSPOs to establish themselves as anti-cycling councils, with Grimsby doing very well at it. A very common theme amongst these councils is that they have doen nothing to make cycling any less dangerous on any of the possible alternative routes, and Lancaster certainly fits very well into that category.

We are especially concerned to see that the questions address behaviour whilst drinking, whilst the in relation to cycling the council are asking about a restriction on cycling, without any suggestion that the manner of cycling should be inconsiderate to be anti-social for a restriction to be desirable. We are concerned with the framing of cycling as an anti-social behaviour and that this would be a case of a PSPO not being used correctly: it is framed as a blanket ban on an individual’s choice of transport, rather than being focussed on anti-social behaviour.

The comments submitted can be found here.

Why do People Cycle on Pavements?

People complaining about other people riding bikes on pavements is not at all uncommon. However, thsi does need to be considered alongside the fact that people also frequently complain about people cyciling on roads. Apparently, one in three drivers think that cyclists should be banned from using public roads, although thats a considerably smaller proportion than the two thirds of adults in the UK who think that the roads are too dangerous to cycle on.

When people aren’t complaining about cyclists on the roads, or on the pavements they are usually either complaning about people riding bikes being too slow and holding up traffic, or for going too fast, or for riding two abreast, or not having any lights, or because they didn’t like the choice of clothing. Having considered all this the one thing that really is clear about cycling is that whatever you do people are definitely going to complain about it.

So, if you are going to be on the receiving end of a whole load of complaints anyway surely it’s better to feel safe. Ultimately it’s safety that is why peopel cycle on pavements, and the police have been recognising this for over a quarter of a century in the enforcement approach that they take towards pavement cycling.

Where there is a safe space for cycling you probably won’t see many people cycling on the pavements, but where there isn’t and the roads have either fast or heavy traffic then cycling on the pavement often becomes the only way of safely getting where you are going. There are only two places in Lancaster where you will find a separate protected cycle path by a road, and in both cases they are exceptionally short. These are outside Leisure Lakes bike shop on Penny Street, and by the bus gate on North Road. We are prepared to bet that you probably won’t see anybody cycling on the pavements in either of these two locations.

South Road did once have protected cycle lanes on it, although only for a very brief period before local politicians decided that although they support safe spaces for cycing they didn’t support these safe spaces for cycling and swiftly had the protectin removed in favour of some paint. It is hardly surprising that as soon as the protecte dcycle lane was removed and repelaced by paint the number s of peopel sysling on the pavaments increased considerably. Local Cycling UK members estimate that the change to a painted cycle lane resulted in about 10% of all cycle traffic on South Road switching from riding on the road to riding on the pavements.

Paint is not Protection

One of the difficult things about cycling in the UK is that, because of the complete lack of safe routes along main roads in most places, it is often obvious to people who want to try cycling that the routes they knwo are completely unsuitable.

People who have been cycling in the area for a long time will have found a variety of routes that work for them, sometimes making use of the poorly thought out snippets of cycling “infrastructure” and tortuous back roads. Although some of the main roads around Lancaster do have pained cycle lanes, this is only because councils insist in wasting money on them s that they can claim to have “done something for cyclists”. People who try using them often subsequently choose other routes because the painted cycle routes often feel less safe than nothing at all.

Indeed, there is evidence to support that they are more likely to result in cyclists being injured than doing nothing at all. Perhaps councils are still wasting the taxpayers money on painting cycle lanes when they have quite clearly been completely ineffective at either increasing levels of cycling or making cycling safer for the last 25 years precisely because they want to deter cycling.

Another possible reason why local politicians like painted cycle lanes so much is because in addition to being able to claim thatt they have “done something for cyclists” (which drivers should most certainly be resentful of), it does absolutely nothing at all to inconvenience drivers (whose views are usually considered to be at least ten times more important than those of anybody else as far as politicians are concerned). It also provides absolutley no benefit whatsoever to people riding bikes, infact it actually makes them more likely to end up in hospital).

Pedestrian Safety in Lancaster

Whilst Rishi Sunak and his friends complain about “Dangerous Cycling” others who are more concerned about the safety of pedestrians are campaigning for real change to make our streets safer for everybody.

Meanwhile in the real world it is now over a decade since the then Justice Secretary Chris Grayling MP announced the Government’s intention to launch “a full review of all driving offences and penalties”, stating that he “wanted to make our roads safer”. This review still hasn’t been undertaken a decade later.

A quick look at Crashmap reveals that the most dangerous places for pedestrians in central Lancaster tend to be in the vicinity of signal controlled pedestrian crossings on the one way system.

W understand from Lancashire County Council that the wait times at these crossings can be up to 45 seconds from someboddy pressing the begging button to people actually getting a signal that it is safe to cross if the roads are busy. There are a few crossings where the delays are 10 seconds shorter, but that can still be quite a long time to wait standing in the rain.

Of course these traffic lights are programmed to give a signal that it is safe for people to cross the road much more quickly if there isn’t any traffic coming, but this is of limited usefulness to most people who can see that the road is clear and cross without needing the lights to change. That tends to make these pedestrian crossing little more than a very expensive placebo, except for visually impaired people.

We have all see people in a hurry and not wanting to wait for the lights to change to stop the traffic take their chances to cross the road before the traffic has stopped. This rather common behavoiur could well explain quite a few of the pedestrian road casualties in central Lancaster, so why aren’t those people who claim to be concerned about the safety of pedestrians actually trying to make crossing the road easier for people who just want to get to the shops?

Councillors and council officers routinely complain that there is no money to make any improvements, but changes such as this don’t require any costly road works, just a bit of time reprogramming the traffic lights. So what’s stopping them?

Next time you go to Manchester have a think about how long you wait at a pedestrian crossing for the trafic to be signalled to stop.

Dangerous Cycling

An important part of the governments ongoing, and evidently futile, attempts to “End the War on the Motorist” has been to generate additional resentment for people just trying to get to school, work, or the shops by bicycle. One of the ways that they have done this has been by making a big issue about “Dangerous Cycling”. Whilst this won’t now be made law it will almost certainly made some drivers fell less need to drive considerately around people riding bikes on the roads.

Once again local politicians in Lancaster have been a step ahead of Rishi Sunak and were already raising concerns about dangerous pavement cycling almost a year ago.

According to Crashmap there have been 14 pedestrians injured by people riding bikes over the last 24 years in and around central Lancaster (the most recent year that data is available for is 2022). However, all of these injuries are reported as slight.

Something that we haven’t heard local politicians expressing any concern about is the 164 pedestrians that have been injured in and around central Lancaster over the same period by cars, including one fatality and 51 serious injuries. There have been a further three pedestrian fatalities caused by goods vehicles, and two by buses over that time too.

We also haven’t heard local politicians expressing concern about the 189 cyclist casualties, that include three fatalities and 52 serious injuries.

Whilst we aren’t trying to claim that pavement cycling might be a problem we are certainly not convinced that it is very often dangerous, and there certainly are much greater dangers to pedestrians than people riding bikes. Anybody raising concerns about dangerous cycling certainly isn’t trying to make people any safer.

We also think that it is important to point out that for a very long time there has been a national police policy on pavement cycling.

“The introduction of the fixed penalty is not aimed at responsible cyclists who sometimes feel obliged to use the pavement out of fear of the traffic, and who show consideration to other pavement users.

"Chief police officers, who are responsible for enforcement, acknowledge that many cyclists, particularly children and young people, are afraid to cycle on the road, sensitivity and careful use of police discretion is required."

We will be having a closer look at why people choose to cycle on pavements in the future.

What are the Alternatives to Bus Stop Bypasses

It’s always easy to criticise something, but it is usually much harder to suggest a better alternative. Perhaps this is why none of those who have been criticising and complaining about bus stop bypasses have suggested a better alternative as yet. Indeed, a very cycnical person might be inclined to think that those who are leading the criticism of bus stop bypasses are more interested in preventing people from having access to cheap and sustainable alternatives to driving for short local journeys than they are about the safety of bus passengers and pedestrians.

We have mentioned before the poor standard of provision for cycling in Lancaster, and that there probably isn’t a single inch of cycle route near a road that meets current guidelines. That doesn’t mean that Lancaster doesn’t have off-road cycling provision going past bus stops though, even though absolutely nobody is complaining about them.

So what it is that’s so much better about bus stops on shared use pavements than properly made cycle tracks that bypass bus stops? Certainly the three examples we found in Lancaster all have potential for conflict between people riding bikes and waiting for busses, or trying to get on and off them.

The only other alternative that we’ve seen, and is probably even more prevalent in Lancaster, is where there is a dashed pained line by the gutter that enables local politicians to claim “Look, we’ve done something for cyclists, aren’t we environmentally friendly.” However, if you look at how well this has worked out for Lancaster, with rapidly diminishing levels of cycling in the city centre it’s hard not to conclude that all this paint in the road only works as a deterrent to using a bike rather than a car for short local journeys.

Ultimately it’s a question of whether we want people to feel that they have more transport options to choose from or not. If virtually everybody has no option but to drive it only makes driving even more inconvenient for those that really need to.

Ending the War on Drivers

We’ve already commented that the Government are “Ending the War on Drivers”, and trying to do this by making cycling more unpopular, and probably also more dangerous. However, the more observant among you might have noticed that Rishi Sunak wasn’t even elected as an MP until five years after “Ending the War on Drivers” had begun. So who really is at war with drivers, and why are the government so utterly incapable of stopping it?

I’m a keen drivist myself, but I can’t avoid noticing that the long journeys I did in on old Mini (with the heater on all the time, even in the summer) thirty years ago haven’t actually got any quicker, despite thirty years of road improvements, faster cars, better navigation, and smarter motorways.

Between 2020 and 2025 National Highways are going to spend over £800 for every car on the roads saving a whopping 36 minutes for each of them. So the question is, it it really worth £22 a minute not to sit in your car? But don’t worry, you’ve already had 25 minutes of your £22 a minute time saving, so nobody can swindle you out of it.

So with driving more popular than ever, about 10% more cars on the roads than when the Conservative government started “Ending the War on Drivers”, and cars so much bigger than they were before, can it really be people riding bikes that are causing all the problems on our roads?

Answers on a postcard please to trouble@mill

Bus Stop Bypasses

It won’t have escaped your attention that as part of the attempts by the Prime Minister to “end the war on drivers” he has been increasing his war on people riding bikes. However, with 91 people killed, 4,056 seriously injured, and 11,546 slightly injured cycling on the roads in 2022 the drivers that he wants to end the war on clearly have a very big head start, as well as powerful killing machines to help them. You won’t be surprised to learn that we couldn’t find any examples of drivers having been killed by dangerous cyclists, despite all the complaints that you will have heard.

Part of this has been a review of the safety of bus stop bypasses, perhaps because there have been a few stories about people being a bit scared by a passing rider when they were getting on or off a bus, and there have even been some injuries. The review was performed by Transport for London, and they found 164 bus stop bypasses on their own network of roads and cycleways, although they noted that there could be more.

They identified casualties that occurred within 50 metres of the bus stop bypass over the three years between 2020 and 2022, and then those that occurred on the bypasses themselves. From all this information they found 4 cases of pedestrians that had been injured by people riding bikes, that’s just over one per year on average. None of the incidents appeared to have occurred on the pedestrian crossings where people cycling are expected to give way to pedestrians.

Importantly the report noted that the chances of being injured at a bus stop bypass are very low compared to the chance of being injured by a driver on the wider network. Over the same time period There were more than 11,400 pedestrian casualties and more than 15,000 cyclist casualties resulting from collisions with motor vehicles in London.

Interestingly, despite a very good safety record only about a third of the bus stop bypasses were fully compliant with current best practice guidance. By comparison we don’t think that you will find a single inch of a cycle route that is associated with the road network in or around Lancaster that meets the current guidance, but please let us know if you think that you have found one.

Recent Cycling Levels in Lancaster

The recent review of the Bay Gateway by the County Council included information on the levels of cycling in Lancaster that were of significant interest to Cycling UK. This information would also have been expected to be of interest to anybody with an interest in the availability and accessibility of cycling as a cheap and sustainable mode of transport for local people.

The most notable monitoring point is at Millennium Bridge, where there were over 1600 recorded trips per day in 2013. Following the opening of Lancaster’s Northern Relief Road the number of daily cycle trips recorded had fallen by about 20% to about 1300. This might reasonably be expected given that driving in the area had been made much easier, but nothing had been done to improve conditions for cycling. The 20% reduction might well be people choosing to drive for relatively short local journeys that could be cycled.

Walking and Cycling Levels in Lancaster

Rather more alarmingly, in the 5 years since 2018 there has been a further 60% reduction in the number of cycle trips recorded on Millennium Bridge to 535 trips per day. This level of cycling is only one third of the levels seen in 2013, and should be a significant cause for concern for anybody wishing to promote sustainable transport.

Millennium Bridge had, and still has, the majority of trips recorded to the locations included in the monitoring, but declines were observed at all locations between 2018 and 2023. This certainly rises serious questions about who has been representing active travel to the council in recent years.

The Legend of the CYCLOPS

We recently had the opportunity to ride through one of the new CYCLOPS junctions. These are a relatively new thing in the UK and are intended to make conditions for walking and cycling much better, but without compromising the junction for drivers.

CYCLOPS stands for ‘Cycle Optimised Protected Signals’ , and they separate people walking, cycling and wheeling from vehicles, reducing the risk of conflict between users.

The cycle route goes around the outside of the junction for cars, but the timings for the lights enable you to make a right turn in a single movement, as you would if you were driving, although you might have a wait for the duration of the car phases.

It is probably a bit slower to negotiate than using the road, but it is a pleasant and relaxing experience regardless of how busy the road is.

Overall these kinds of junctions are a really positive step for active travel in the UK, and we hope that there will be many more such improvements in the region in the coming years.

Bay Gateway - 5 Year Review

Cycling UK recently had the opportunity to comment on the five year review of the Lancaster Northern Relief Road. We are extremely grateful to the County Councillor with responsibility for Highways and Transport for ensuring that our contribution was possible.

Summary of Cycling UK Comments

Lancaster has experienced a considerable reduction in levels of cycling over the past decade, and whilst some of this decline may be due to the construction of the Lancaster Northern Relief Road it is unlikely that this is the only factor. Cycling UK believes that gradual changes to the road network in and around Lancaster city centre have also progressively made Lancaster more dangerous, and therefore considerably more undesirable, for cycling. This has resulted in considerably lower levels of cycling in Lancaster compared to a decade ago. There are also several issues identified in the Lancaster Northern Relief Road that the council should aim to avoid in future projects. Several recommendations are made for the future to avoid similar problems from being repeated.

Cycling UK recommends that Lancashire County Council adopts a road danger reduction approach rather than the conventional “road safety” based approach, which seeks to achieve safer roads for all users by reducing the sources of danger on the roads.

Cycling UK recommends that where an entirely new junction is built, or an existing junction completely remodelled, key routes for walking and cycling are laid as tunnels under the junction prior to its construction, rather than providing multiple stage crossings at the same level as the motorised traffic.

Cycling UK recommends that where practical cycleways along roads with high traffic speeds (> 60 km/h) should be located with some space between them and the traffic lanes to improve the user experience.

Cycling UK recommends that any staff involved in the design of major active travel projects should be required to ride existing routes so that they can identify problem areas and avoid similar ones in future projects.

Cycling UK recommends that future Park and Ride schemes are fully integrated into the local transport system, with appropriate facilities for a variety of modes of transport into the city centre.

Presentation by Lancashire County Council

Comments from Cycling UK

Motonormativity: A blind spot we all share

Just over a year ago some UK based psychology researchers published a study about how the standards that we apply to cars and driving is at odds with those that we apply in other areas of life. They called this motonormativity.

Motornomativity: How Social Norms Hide a Major Public Health Hazard

One of the authors recently gave a presentation on this subject at a conference and this is available on-line. It is interesting and certainly gives plenty of food for thought.

You can watch the presentation below.

Lancaster Cycling Demonstration Town

The Cycling Demonstration Towns programme saw levels of funding for cycling approaching levels that are more typical of The Netherlands over a period of 6 years between 2005 and 2011. Lancaster and Morecambe was one of the locations, and averaged a spend of £13 per person during this period.

Of the six towns that took part in this project there was quite a bit of variation in terms of how much cycling levesl increased over the period compared to a baseline from 2005, i.e. at the start of the programme. It was noted that the individual delivery programmes, political support, funding changes, influence from other interventions and weather influences may have each contributed.

The Cycling Demonstration Towns project involved a lot of monitoring of cycling levels, and during the programme Lancaster had more than three times as many permanent cycle counters as there are in Utrecht! Virtually all of the cycle counters in and around Lancaster were abandoned relatively soon after the end of the programme though, amking it much more difficult for people to know how levels of cycling in Lancaster have been changing since then.

the cycling levels in each of the towns was compared against a matched town that was not part of the programme to understand how useful the additional funding had been in promoting cycling in the area. The figure below shows how increases in the levels of cycling in Lancaster compared to the matched area.

A greater growth was recorded in the corresponding matched area than in Lancaster with Morecambe. Whilst there was no significant investment in cycling in this matched area, political leadership strongly supportive of cycling is reported in this location during the corresponding period. There was some relatively small scale delivery of schemes to enable cycling, such as the installation of cycle contraflows, and a considerable effort to restrict car movement and to increase permeability of the town centre for cyclists.

Government road traffic estimates over a similar period of time indicated a increase in cycle traffic of approximately 18% between 2002 and 2012, which is broadly similar to the degree of change seen in Lancaster during the Cycling Demonstration Towns programme.

You can find the Sustrans reports on the outcomes of the Cycling Demonstration Towns progamme here.

Levels of Cycling in the UK

The National Travel Survey provides information on the levels of walking and cycling nationally.

The data suggest that on average there are between about 15 and 20 trips per person per year, and that this figure has been quite consistent for about 20 years.

Average number of cycling trips per person per year

However, we know that about 85% of people aged 16 and over in England do little or no cycling in a year.

This means that there are a small number of people making quite a lot of trips each.

This means that on average the few people who do actually cycle are probably making about two trips per week each by bike.

We will be looking to see if there is any more specific data for the Lancaster area in future posts.