New towns – designing for cycling

[Steady rider]

Plans to provide many more houses across the UK are happening, with some developments involving up to 3000 properties.

How can these best provide for cycling?

What are the desired designs and layout to promote cycling?
Some ideas;

1
Fairly level landsite
2
Up to 6 square kilometres in size, (about 1.4km radius)
3
Three or more main access routes to the centre with an extra 3 to 4 direct routes specifically for cycling
4
Shopping complex areas (and services e.g. doctors/dentists/banking etc) with parking areas on outside of shopping complexes, (avoiding street shops - with on road parking, leaving space for cycling)
5
Schools near to sport facilities, also near to direct routes for cycling
6
Central areas to combine parks, shops and essential services, plus bus connections
7
Train services if available, to be on one side of edge of town (less problems crossing).
8
Underpasses if required
9
Business and industrial areas near to outside areas, with cycle routes access
10
Cycle routes joining to outer routes connecting to nearby villages or towns.
11
No traffic lights, except at railways if required
12
Speed zones, 40 mph, 30 mph and 20 mph, 10 mph where required.
13
Main access roads to have adjacent cycle tracks with priority at side roads, wide verges, allowing for cars to stop if needed.
14
Cycle tracks and road surface to be on same level, no steps or kerbs to mount, safer for cyclists joining paths. Lighting provided as required.
15
Community service bus, about 2 m wide, to minimise local car use

Reference material


UK’s booklet Space for Cycling: a guide for decision-makers and the complementary (but slightly more detailed) Making Space for Cycling guide produced on behalf of Cyclenation by the Cambridge Cycling Campaign.

http://www.cyclinguk.org/campaigning/vi ... g-policies

http://www.sustrans.org.uk/our-services ... ciples-and

[gaz]

Ebbsfleet Garden City, 15000 new homes. I've seen a scale model but even then it's tremendously difficult to grasp the scale of the proposals.

Lots of talk about "active travel", the little I've seen on the ground so far seems to be the usual farcilities. Admitedly I've not explored and I'm making judgements based on what exists on the fringes, much of which was developped before the Garden Towns announcement.

I hope they'll get it right.

[drossall]

16. Don't forget that not everyone heading towards the town centre wants to go to the town centre. Some want to go to visit their friends across town, get to work on the east side, or visit the sports centre one mile out west. So don't make every flipping route into town stop dead 400 metres short of the centre.

17. Signpost it like you would the road. Long distance (relatively) destinations until you get close. If you only signpost the next "village" or area of town, only people with an intimate knowledge of the entire city can get anywhere, and even they will probably get stuck in some kid's playpark where you randomly chose to make the path end. People get to Dalkeith by following signs to Edinburgh till they get close. They do not follow signs to Peebles then Eddleston then Penicuik and so on. So why would you expect them to get across Milton Keynes by navigating from village to village? The only sane way to get from Wavendon to Bradwell is by following signs to Stony Stratford.

18. Make major, through cycle routes look different from local ones. Finish them in a different tarmac or something. You try getting to Edinburgh when the A1 looks like a local single-track road that stops dead just round the corner, so you don't know which is the likely route.

19. Paint the direction signs on the path surface so they can't (easily) be vandalised.

20. More importantly, experience shows I think that you have to give bikes a real advantage. Make short car journeys awkward. Stevenage and MK ran into trouble because the bike paths aren't bad, although they are impossible to find your way around, but the roads are also built to make life easy, so people still choose cars.

[Steady rider]

Signage and provision to show where the routes go, needs a 'standard' to follow, route number system can work, with display maps. e.g. No 3 may go say 15 miles connecting two larger towns, route 3A may be off route 3, going say 1 mile, to connect with another route. Route numbers up to 99 could used to cover a defined area. National routes could have a different design to local route signs, so numbers would not be confused. Display maps would help people know their area and points of interest could be included on the maps, plus some local advertising perhaps.
Emphasis on pro cycling rather than anti driving.

[PRL]

. People get to Dalkeith by following signs to Edinburgh till they get close. They do not follow signs to Peebles then Eddleston then Penicuik and so on. So why would you expect them to get across Milton Keynes by navigating from village to village? The only sane way to get from Wavendon to Bradwell is by following signs to Stony Stratford.

Been there (Milton Keynes) , cursed loudly !

[PRL]

20. More importantly, experience shows I think that you have to give bikes a real advantage. Make short car journeys awkward. Stevenage and MK ran into trouble because the bike paths aren't bad, although they are impossible to find your way around, but the roads are also built to make life easy, so people still choose cars.

Indeed Milton Keynes has 17% travel to work by bike or on foot, York has 49%

[Steady rider]

49%?

If display maps were provided, at main junctions, start of tracks, what scale would be most suitable?

In town - 1:10,000 perhaps / connecting routes - 1: 20,000 perhaps

at 1:10000, 1km would equate to 100mm on the map, it should allow for showing quite a lot of detail and covering an area about 3 km wide by say 5 km. Assuming an A3 size, say 300mm x 500 mm, laminated.

at 1:20,000 scale, 1km = 50mm, covering an area about 6km by 10k for an A3 size. At A3 size photocopies could be made available.

[thirdcrank]

I can see benefit in offering an attractive alternative to a car for those who do not want to / cannot ride a bike. Public transport has been the traditional option but it's not attractive to everyone. There's a suggestion that driverless cars will be the next big thing. I'm not thinking of the current level of car ownership with a newer type but rather a robotic system of taxi's. A new town would be ideal to build in the system from the start, rather than adapt existing infrastructure. Perhaps the manufacturers and others with a vested interest would contribute to a demonstration project in a new town.

AFAIK, these vehicles can be programmed to suit a particular road environment. Without a lot of private cars clogging up the roads, they could make decent progress while still being safe when they encountered pedestrians, cyclists etc. Decent rail links with other places would be important, but the station(s) should be provided only with bike racks and pick up/ drop off places for driverless public transport.

Science fiction, but no less realistic than simply discouraging car use.

[Steady rider]

good idea to consider

http://advi.org.au/

15
Community service bus, about 2 m wide, to minimise local car use

possibly also a driverless bus as well.

At 1.4km radius, it would take about 5 mins to cycle to the centre, or 10 mins to cross a small town, hardly any need to get in a car unless needed for transporting goods or items etc

[ChrisButch]

How far we still are in advancing from notional commitment to 'sustainable' transport infrastructure on new estates to practical implementation has been made very clear to me by what's been happening in my closest town, Tiverton. Like most of the traditional smallish market towns in Devon, Tiverton is in the process of planing for growth with enormous new estates set to increase the population by up to a half, a requirement of centrally-imposed housebuilding targets. The planning authority seems on the face of it to be going about this in a sensible way, with a a lengthy 'masterplanning' exercise, including multiple stages of public consultation. aimed at an optimum overall shape and distribution of the developments in the public interest, rather than simply offering carte blanche to the developers. In these masterplans 'sustainable transport' always appears from page 1 as one of the key objectives.
As you would expect, those of us locally with an interest in such things have done our best to provide the masterplanners with the appropriate information and arguments to support the provision of cycling infrastructure as key to the delivery of that objective. Yet despite the apparently improved climate of opinion and general awareness of such matters among the planners and key decision makers, and their genuine interest and sympathy in personal contacts, what we are left with now the masterplan is complete, and outline applications from developers beginning to be processed, is nothing more than a slight increase in the number of unsegregated painted cycles lanes on the existing access roads, and a requirement in the section 106 agreements with developers for nominal-value sustainable transport 'vouchers' to be presented to the new residents.
If you were to look at a mock-up model of the new estates, you would see nothing essentially different from the car-centric equivalents of the 1970s.

[Steady rider]

This shows how the current approach is inadequate. Cycling UK does not have the people or methods to deal with the situation.

Perhaps an online petition may be useful, something like
The government should provide suitable protection for villages and small towns to prevent excessive housing or other developments that impact on the communities. Where extra properties are required the government should, in part, look to create new small towns, ensuring they have safe plus convenient cycling and walking routes and with connections to nearby communities where applicable. The government is asked to work with national cycling groups to format plans on designing new towns or developments and create high level provisions for cycling and designing to assist with driverless vehicles.

[thirdcrank]

I think ChrisButch has the right analysis. There's a pretty good reason why we have a lot of proverbs on the lines of "Actions speak louder than words."

[Vorpal]

When they do this in Norway, they provide carparks *outside* of the development, and single track roads inside that are pedestrian / cycleways. Motor vehicles are allowed in for moving, deliveries, and with a disabled badge.

https://www.google.no/maps/@59.7905513, ... a=!3m1!1e3 is an example. A handful of houses on the circumference have car access. The rest have two parking places in the car lot. Some places where they do this have community garages, instead.

There are advanatages of this for the development firms, as well. They can pack more houses into a smaller space and they don't have to spend as much on roads.

They do something similar in the Netherlands and Germany, even if people have to walk (or cycle) up to a kilometer to their cars. A friend who lived in the Netherlands bought a folding bike to go to & from his car.

Google 'car-free housing estates' or related phrases. It's been common on the continent since the 90s.

[Steady rider]

https://www.google.no/maps/@59.7904121, ... a=!3m1!1e3

do you know if the middle bit D shaped, is for waste?

[Vorpal]

https://www.google.no/maps/@59.7904121,10.2345056,26m/data=!3m1!1e3

do you know if the middle bit D shaped, is for waste?

It's a play area

I guess some people might say they are one and the same, but I'm sure my kids would disagree