(Urgent) Help needed - Cycleway complaint

[freiston]

Thank you all for your help. I've attempted to contact a few people including the Civil Engineering Consultant who designed the cycleway (the local CTC officer helped with this). I also intend to get my head around LTN 1/20 but haven't even looked yet. I'm hoping that I will get some good input and direction from those people but in the meantime, I'm going to work on a "fall-back" of disputing the markings, particularly that they are for edging a carriageway but do the opposite, effectively downgrading the carriageway and upgrading the carpark access to carriageway status with priority over the true cycle carriageway - the hatched markings creating two lanes across the cycleway too (when hatched markings should go along a carriageway).

[slowster]

I think it would be worth contacting the author of that blog I mentioned - he seems to be well informed about good design of cycleways, and this alteration to the cycleway was made after his visit. I suspect he would be able to give you some good pointers and insight.

I think there would need to be a separate Traffic Regulation Order to add those markings. So you could try an FOI request for that TRO together with any responses received when it went to consultation. If there was no TRO, the markings may not be legal. It does look suspiciously like the CTK people had them painted.

Not listed on the Coventry Council website, not even as an experimental order. The TROs for the cycleway generally are also not listed, but I presume were made longer ago, whereas the changes in front of the Christ the King entrance are recent.

https://www.coventry.gov.uk/roads-highw ... n-orders/2

[AndyK]

Not listed on the Coventry Council website, not even as an experimental order. The TROs for the cycleway generally are also not listed, but I presume were made longer ago, whereas the changes in front of the Christ the King entrance are recent.

https://www.coventry.gov.uk/roads-highw ... n-orders/2

Yeah, like many councils (including my own) the highway authority seems to think that past TROs are nobody's business but theirs, so they remove them from the website as soon as they take effect.

With my council I've found a polite request gets them to dig out the relevant info, if somewhat grumpily. The OP probably needs the full set of TROs relating to the creation of the Coundon cycleway (to establish what the priorities at that entrance were meant to be) and any later TROs relating to that area of Westhill Road.

My wild guess is that the council copped out at the time of construction, perhaps under pressure from the church/school/community centre, and left the priorities ambiguous. Look at this 2023 Streetview: https://maps.app.goo.gl/TLVURQFrbGbQr6Uw8 - the dashed centre line of the cycle track mysteriously vanishes as it crosses the entrance. At other entrances the priorities are made much clearer. Then later someone (the school? the community centre? the highway authority? the highway authority under pressure from a councillor who has links with the school??) said "OMG but what if a car coming out of the car park hits a cyclist? The car might get SCRATCHED!!!!" and took matters into their own hands. Whether they went through the proper legal process to do that...

[slowster]

My wild guess is that the council copped out at the time of construction, perhaps under pressure from the church/school/community centre, and left the priorities ambiguous. Look at this 2023 Streetview: https://maps.app.goo.gl/TLVURQFrbGbQr6Uw8 - the dashed centre line of the cycle track mysteriously vanishes as it crosses the entrance. At other entrances the priorities are made much clearer.

The blogger's article highlights that the red surfaces across the various side street entrances etc. are all like that, with the cycleway markings and pedestrian/cycleway separation markings not continuing over the red surfaces - https://therantyhighwayman.blogspot.com ... -city.html

At the junction with Chester Street we immediately see the consistent approach taken with side road treatments and accesses with the use of continuous treatments (above) which carry the cycle track and footway across the side street which gives visual priority to walking, wheeling and cycling and which reinforces the Highway Code hierarchy which gives those moving ahead priority (Rules H2 and H3). My message to designers is that this should be your default approach, unless location conditions dictate otherwise.

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Interesting to compare Christ the King's new markings with those of Bablake School, albeit that this is not part of the cycleway (which is on the other side of the road), but the point remains that the give way markings at Bablake School make it clear pedestrians have priority.

https://www.google.com/maps/@52.4125953 ... FQAw%3D%3D

[Pete Owens]

The root problem is that cycleways running parallel to roads are inherently dangerous when they cross priority junctions. Particularly 2-way cycleways such as this which increase the risk of collision by a factor of 10. Users approaching the junction need to monitor vehicles approaching from all directions, including from behind. Unsurprisingly, the more difficult you make it for people to navigate a junction, the more often people will make mistakes.

When different road users realise how difficult it is to maintain 360 degree surveillance in order to navigate the junction safely imagine that the solution is for other users to yield priority (this is what appears to have happened in this case). The trouble is that then those other users are required to maintain 360 degree surveillance. It is still just as dangerous - it just means a different road user is to blame. If there is a difference either way it will depend on whether cyclists or motorists tend to more observant.

The highway code and design standards don't help you here. The HC only tells you to give way in cases of unmarked priority; markings take precedence. The design guidelines are actually pretty restrictive about the circumstances where cycleways can be assigned priority. The visibility splay is not good here as drivers approaching from the side road are behind a hedge.

If you want to avoid being squished and maintain priority then the most sensible thing is to keep to the carriageway.

[gaz]

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[mjr]

The root problem is that cycleways running parallel to roads are inherently dangerous when they cross priority junctions.

More recent research than the 1980s stuff Mr Owens relies on has disproved this for the LTN 1/20 spec cycleways, accrding to Chris Boardman on a recent Active Travel Cafe (I think). Publication pending.

However, Mr Owens can take heart that it also confirms his past work that crap narrow gutter lanes are more dangerous than no lanes.

[mjr]

... the give way markings at Bablake School make it clear pedestrians have priority.

The position of the give way markings may imply pedestrian priority, but the legislation behind them only requires drivers to give way to vehicles.

Which legislation do you mean? TSRGD?

Don't the recent changes to highway code and driving standards make it clear that not giving way to walkers means falling below the standard required of a careful and competent driver, or whatever the phrase in law is?

[gaz]

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[simonhill]

Unless I've missed it, what do those new markings denote.

Do they have any legal status or do they just imply a right of way to the cars.

What if a non stopping car hit a non stopping cyclist. Who is at fault.

[Pete Owens]

They are edge of carriageway markings - they have no significance in terms of formal priority.

However, the scheme design is not based on formal priority, but on the inherent layout. It uses the principles of continuous footway design, where the idea is that vehicles cross a pavement rather than pedestrians cross a road (though curiously the footway has not been included in this case). The edge of carriageway markings undermine the principle of the design by emphasising the continuity of the carriageway.

[gaz]

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[pjclinch]

I flagged this up as a reply to a Bluesky post by The Ranty Highwayman about some good infra elsewhere in Coventry, he reposted it and former West Midlands cycle commissioner Adam Tranter saw that and is flagging it up with Coventry...

Finger scrossed!

Pete.

[freiston]

Cheers

[Pete Owens]

, I think there would need to be a separate Traffic Regulation Order to add those markings. So you could try an FOI request for that TRO together with any responses received when it went to consultation. If there was no TRO, the markings may not be legal. It does look suspiciously like the CTK people had them painted.

Those road markings most certainly do not require TROs.
You only need that if any design imposes restrictions on parts of the highway that different road users may access. In the case of this junction, all road users are still allowed to turn in and out whatever helpful/unhelpful markings are painted at the boundary of the carriageway.

There will need to have been a TRO to create the cycleway, since this is a restriction on parts of the carriageway that may be used by motor vehicles, but the TRO will not have referenced the detailed design.