Who is responsible for dangerous cycle paths and traffic cal

[Manalishi]

This might sound like a fairly simple question and I'm thinking the answer would be, "Your local council".

There are numerous examples of very dangerous practices being carried out:

- Cycle paths that get diverted off the main road onto the pavement to run behind parked cars for a short distance then returning to the road. This return puts you at risk from cars cutting into the cycle lane on your return to the main road.

- Pavement build outs and wide pedestrian islands. These act like a funnel and many local examples are very narrow. These serve to endanger cyclists directly and also add to cyclist - driver stress as vehicles have to wait behind until the cyclist has passed through.

This kind of stupidity should not be left for individual councils to implement the way they are doing currently. There should be a national governing body that is responsible for all road layouts. This way we would get consistency and we would all know who to complain to when things are badly planned.

In short, how do we get these dangers removed? Who do we write to?

[mjr]

In England outside London, the county councils and unitary authorities (=highway authorities) control all our roads except a few major routes and motorways which are controlled by Highways England, plus the borough/district councils control town planning and many open spaces.

I agree that there should be a national governing body that is responsible for all road layouts, but that seems unlikely while David "localism except when I don't like it" Cameron is in power. They could even set down decent standards. The current situation is governed mainly by the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges and the Manual for Streets but they're vague and subject to (mis)interpretation about cycling and authorities seem rarely held to them. Keep writing to your MP pointing out that they're not serious about cycling and walking while it retains this third-class practice.

Short of loads of money on lawyers, the best chance of getting stupidities removed seems to be to convince the highways officers (unlikely), local county/unitary councillor (possible if local cyclists are organised, especially with a bit of local media support), or the council's casualty reduction or public rights of way working groups or similar (bit of a lottery but can happen).

So, either help existing organising efforts (maybe CTC, maybe Cyclenation) or if none exists, start one (Cyclenation and CTC should both support you), and keep pushing. I wish I could say that we just explain why something's lethal and it gets fixed, but some councils seem to have rent-an-experts who aren't expert on cycling and willing to defend anything, while others will appeal that they barely had money to build a deathtrap and don't have money to remove it.