Transport Focus represents the interests of users of England’s motorways and major ‘A’ roads (the Strategic Road Network or SRN) and therefore wanted to understand the experiences and needs of cyclists, pedestrians, equestrians and carriage drivers who travel along SRN ‘A’ roads or need to cross any part of the SRN.
Future Thinking was commissioned to study these audiences, exploring not only their attitudes towards and interactions with the SRN but to also gauge views of the best means by which to achieve a robust future measurement of SRN satisfaction for these groups.
This paper investigates the place of utility cycling (cycling as a means of transport rather than as a sport or leisure activity) under urban modernism in the UK. In many western contexts the dominant feature of urban modernism was its emphasis on accommodating private vehicles to the neglect of other forms of mobility. The result was the production of a ‘car-system’ with significant change to urban and rural environments.
Planners and politicians in many countries seek to increase the proportion of trips made by cycling. However, this is often challenging. In England, a national target to double cycling by 2025 is likely to be missed: between 2001 and 2011 the proportion of commutes made by cycling barely grew. One important contributory factor is continued low investment in cycling infrastructure, by comparison to European leaders.
The Healthy Streets Approach puts people and their health at the centre of decisions about how we design, manage and use public spaces. It aims to make our streets healthy, safe and welcoming for everyone.
The Approach is based on 10 Indicators of a Healthy Street which focus on the experience of people using streets.
London is facing an inactivity crisis. Over decades, machines, cars and technology have gradually taken over many of the tasks that used to require physical effort. More than 40 per cent of Londoners
do not achieve the recommended 150 minutes of activity a week; and 28 per cent do less than 30 minutes a week. Almost without realising it, we have engineered physical activity out of our daily lives.
The numbers of pedal cyclist fatalities in London have varied over the years from 1986 to 2006; averaging 18 per year, the maximum was 33 in 1989 and the minimum was 8 in 2004. There has been a substantial increase in cycling, particularly in central and inner London. The London Travel Report 2007 (Transport for London, 2007a) reported that in 2006 the cycle flows on London’s major roads were almost twice as many as in 2000. During the period January 2001 to December 2006 a total of 108 pedal cyclists were killed in London.
There are fewer road deaths per head of the population in Britain than in almost any other country in the world. With minor variations in international rankings, this has been the case consistently for many years. The most recent data (2015) show that Norway and Sweden both have fewer road deaths per head than Britain while Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands have more.
The aims of this article are to demonstrate the successes and failures of the £100million London Cycle Network plus project and to discuss the standard of the highway engineering schemes delivered, particularly in relation to their overall effect on ride quality as defined by the cycling level of service assessment set out in the 2014 London cycling design standards. By highlighting areas where changes could have been made to improve the delivery of the project, it is hoped that lessons can be learnt for future projects of this type.
The objectives of this study were to examine the issues regarding road narrowings and to monitor the benefits of measures designed to assist cyclists. The general approach to the study programme was to divide the research into four main elements:
