niggle wrote:Pete Owens wrote:That cycle lane is very much thinner than 2m and will result in buses passing very much closer than they would if they were simply sharing the same overal width.
As that is just some sort of digital 'artists impression' I would hope that the lane is actually a genuine 2m as promised.
Well if you look at the detailed scale drawings of the giratory you can see the narrow cycle lane (heading towards Brighton) - much less than the space cyclists need for safety. To see how much worse 1.5m cycle lanes like that make conditions for cyclists take a look at:
http://www.warringtoncyclecampaign.co.u ... -lanes.pdfIt is a shame because the scheme does look to involve genuine roadspace reallocation. They have not just converted one lane of the dual carriageway to a bus and cycle lane but actually increased the width of that lane so that there is sufficient space for buses and cyclists to pass each other. If only they didn't insist on subdividing that space it wouyld be very very good.
Pete Owens wrote:And that plan looks positively lethal. Cyclists are taken off the road to go behind a bus stop then re-emerge onto the carriageway brom behind a stopped bus just at the approach to a junction.
I see what your saying, but the issue will only be with other traffic wanting to enter the left turn lane for Hollingdean Road,
I was thinking more of vehicles turning into the car park imediately after the bus stop. The cycle lane to the right of the left hand filter for Hollingdean Road is much less of an issue.
the cycle lane is continuous and compulsory before
Not according to the drawing. What I see is a narrow advisory on-carrageway cycle lane heading north up Lewes Road and across the mouth of Upper Lewes Road. This is then diverted off the carrageway and behind the bus stop.
and immediately after the bus stop and protected by being raised by 50mm then 25mm before finally continuing as a distinct marked lane- traffic going up the main(?) route straight ahead will not be in conflict with the cycle lane but cyclists wanting to turn right at the 'top' of the 'gyratory' will be needing to take more care and make movements across 'all vehicles' lanes, but hard to see how to avoid that.
It is only hard to see that if you insist on separating streams of traffic by vehicle type rather than direction of travel. Once you segregate by type you are bound to cause conflict at junctions where those streams have to cross each other. This is the explanation why parallel off-carriageway cycle paths have such a poor safety record at junctions.
Another issue will be how pedestrians are enabled to cross the cycle lane to reach the bus stop- opportunity for conflict there.
Indeed so. And here we get to the real purpose of bus stop bypasses. If you start with an
off-carriagway cycle path running alongside a bus route then this will inevitably lead to conflict at the bus stops. It is a bad idea to send cyclists through a bus shelter (though this doesn't seem to occur to some designers (see
http://www.warringtoncyclecampaign.co.u ... il2013.htm - and others). And to have the cycle path going imedieately adjacent to the bus as people are stepping off is obviously dangerous (though commonly implemented). So to arrange for the cycle path to be routed behind the bus stop is the least bad solution - a way to minimise the unavoidable conflict.
However, these things seem to have become fashionable as a good thing in their own right - so now we are starting to see
on-carriagway cycle lanes diverted round the back of bus stops then back on to the carriageway. This is a really bad idea - you are creating conflict where there was none before. To do this on the approach to a junction is plain daft.
Whenever anybody criticises a facility I do think they should back it up with their solution, or to say up front that they are opposed to all facilities...
Well if the problem is the danger caused to cyclists by a proposal to implement a daft cycle path then the simple solution is don't do it. As with medics the first thing is to avoid making the situation worse that it was to start with.
However, the real question is: "How do we improve conditions for cyclists through this cycle-hostile road layout". Unfortunately, rather too many people interpret this question as "Where can we fit in some cycle facilities" with the implicit extension on the part of highway engineers: "without inconveniencing motor traffic in any way whatsoever".
So. This is what I would do:
First I would start by getting to the root cause of the problem - and remove the giratory itself. The entire purpose of giratories is to speed up motor traffic by creating multi-lane roads which require high-speed merging and filtering. Theyare nasty for pedestrians and cyclists and really have no place in any liveable city. This might be politically tricky in some places - but this is Brighton where the Greens are in power - and do show a willingness to take on auto-centric assumptions.
Lewes road would then be a continuous conventional 2-way street similar to the way it is towards the town centre. (though where it becomes a shopping street further to the south I would consider something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... vzDDMzq7d0) There would be a single general traffic lane in each direction and I would maintain a shared bus/cycle lane southbound. I would make the northbound traffic lane as wide as possible and the southbound general traffic lane as narrow as possible.
There would be a traffic light controlled cross-roads (or possibly a contintental geometry roundabout) at the north end (where Hollingdon Rd & Bear Rd Cross) and a traffic light controled T junction (or continental roundabout) at the south end for Upper Lewes Rd. The current Northbound part of the giratory would be blocked to through traffic (possibly with a bus gate) and accessed from the north.
The speed limit would be reduced to 20mph, and enforced by average speed cameras.
) and looking on the Brighton & Hove City Council website the key route for her into town, Lewes Road, has had recent significant improvements, with apparently a 2 meter wide cycle lane separate from the bus lane: http://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/content ... provements.
But, with local people, I think we generally call it the "Sainsbury's corner" or something like that, owing to the giant supermarket in the middle of it all. But that would be confusing to a non-local: there are plenty of Sainsbury's!
