(Urgent) Help needed - Cycleway complaint

[cycle tramp]

, 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.

Technically, whilst they are markings on a highway,.. are do not confirm ti anything in the highway code. Certainly anyone using that cycleway/footway still has right of way over any vehicle leaving or entering the road. I suspect this confusion has lead to alot of never misses and in the case of an injury or damage being caused as a result of any collision its more than possible that the council may find itself partly responsible for causing the confusion, in the first instance.

[Pete Owens]

Yes, it is an inherently unsafe arrangement to send a cycleway across a priority junction, however it is marked. Something which apologists for side paths are usually keen to deny.

If you are going to argue that painting conventional edge of carriageway stripes to demark the edge of the carriageway makes it so dangerous that the highway authority would be liable for crashes (even in this case where the danger is mitigated by a raised coloured hump) then think how much more dangerous the vast majority of such junctions are where the boundary is delineated by a far more substantial boundary of a kerb, with the crossing not marked at all. At a minimum it would render removal of Cyclists Dismount signs negligent.

[Pete Owens]

I shared the pic with him. He said:

the new markings don't actually conform to the rules on road markings and have now made that location confusing.

They look like bog standard edge of carriageway markings to me. They are common where a carriageway is not bounded by a kerb or on the approach to centre islands.

The reason for their implementation will be that motorists will have found the original arrangement confusing. Indeed the whole point of a continuous footway is to introduce that element of uncertainty to approaching drivers so they are forced to slow down and take care (it is basically a shared space concept). The purpose of the edge of carriageway markings is actually to make the junction LESS confusing to drivers by indicating the path they are expected to follow.

[cycle tramp]

I shared the pic with him. He said:

the new markings don't actually conform to the rules on road markings and have now made that location confusing.

They look like bog standard edge of carriageway markings to me. They are common where a carriageway is not bounded by a kerb or on the approach to centre islands.

The reason for their implementation will be that motorists will have found the original arrangement confusing. Indeed the whole point of a continuous footway is to introduce that element of uncertainty to approaching drivers so they are forced to slow down and take care (it is basically a shared space concept). The purpose of the edge of carriageway markings is actually to make the junction LESS confusing to drivers by indicating the path they are expected to follow.

Except its not an edge of a carriage way. The kerb is dropped to the road side, meaning that pedestrians and cyclists have right of way over any vehicles leaving or entering the road.
So what we have are 'road markings' on a foot/cycle way which have no meaning, and no legal enforcement.
What the road markings infere is that pedestrians and cyclists should give way to vehicles entering or leaving the site - although there is no legal obligation to so.
It would be safer for those using the path to have the markings removed, and it would reduce the legal risk to the council. Where markings should be applied, would be a white dashed line between tge boundary of the site entrance and the foot/cycle way.
As it is, the dashed lines appear to suggest that vehicles leaving or entering site have right of way over the foot/cycle way users, despite their legal right that the users of the path actually have right of way over vehicles leaving and entering the site.

[pjclinch]

Yes, it is an inherently unsafe arrangement to send a cycleway across a priority junction, however it is marked. Something which apologists for side paths are usually keen to deny.

That must be why the Dutch serious accident rate is so high... Oh, hang on, it's not...

It's only unsafe if drivers approaching from the side don't realise they have to give way. They do in NL so it seems the problem isn't "inherent".

Pete