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Door Lane (CC BY-NC 2.0 licensed by Gary Cavanaugh:Flickr)Reading council to review ‘door zone’ cycle lanes
Reading council are to review two advisory cycle lanes following repeated criticism from campaigners, reports Get Reading. The lanes have been painted on the outside of car parking bays and critics say that in both cases cyclists are at risk of having car doors opened in their path.
Simon Beasley, network manager for Reading Borough Council said that the council would be reviewing the two schemes – in Wokingham Road in East Reading and Lower Henley Road in Caversham – but emphasised that they had “weighed up the balance of risk” when adding the lanes in the first place.
Beasley made a distinction between a parking bay in front of a parade of shops where cars would be pulling in and out all the time and areas of ‘static’ residential parking, such as these. However, campaigners are firm in their view that both schemes are highly dangerous and that the roads in question would be safer without them.
In August, a cycle lane was added to Lower Henley Road and Adrian Lawson from Reading Cycle Campaign was quick to brand it ‘disgraceful’.
Speaking to the Reading Chronicle at the time, he said:
“Government notes say you shouldn’t put in a cycle lane if it is going to make matters more dangerous. But because the lane is so narrow and there is no buffer zone, it is extremely hazardous. A cyclist without training will put themselves at great risk.”
Reading Borough Council spokesman, Oscar Mortali, responded by saying the cycle lane was purely advisory and that both cyclists and motorists needed to be aware of each other’s presence. He then urged drivers opening car doors to check for cyclists in their wing mirrors ‘as required by the Highway Code’.
Last month, we reported how another similar lane had been created, this time east of the town centre on Wokingham Road. Reading Cycle Campaign were again unhappy, pointing out that the lane had been made against the advice of local cyclists and in contradiction of both the council’s own Cycle Strategy 2014 and the Department for Transport’s guidelines.
Chairman of the council’s traffic management committee, Tony Page, said there would be a ‘pause’ on any further advisory cycle lanes until after the two cases had been reviewed and a report on the cost of removing them produced. The issue is now due to be revisited at the committee’s June meeting.
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
Latest Comments
- ktache 3 hours 16 min ago
The small frame, the aggressive posture, lots of standover height.
- mctrials23 4 hours 12 min ago
As i've said before, the police should be sued for a lot of money when someone they have knowingly ignored has gone on to commit a serious crime....
- David9694 4 hours 20 min ago
'Bad parking' blocks firefighters multiple times on same emergency call-out...
- David9694 4 hours 24 min ago
Cambridgeshire boy, 13, crashes Audi into garden wall after taking it from home...
- Adam Sutton 5 hours 9 min ago
Good stuff. Now do it on cycleway C9 through Hammersmith to Chiswick.
- mark1a 5 hours 19 min ago
It's technically allowed but it's not known as "London's Orbital Car Park" for nothing.
- Dogless 6 hours 27 min ago
You're defending bombing hospitals and refugee camps and starving children.
- mattw 9 hours 7 min ago
Used car salesman is a complete attention-seeking plank....
- tubasti 9 hours 24 min ago
I don't know if they're any better, but they's certainly become more boring.
- FionaJJ 9 hours 50 min ago
At risk of being cynical, and stereotyping the police, it's so they don't have to leave the comfort of their panda cars and pursue on foot when...
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15 comments
Cycle In it and get "doored", cycle outside it and get run over.,some tit in an office with jumped up degree in history came up with this as a scheme. Sorry but let's waste more tax payers money on a problem that doesn't exist.
The cycle lane on Henley Road in Caversham is also a disgrace, thanks to Reading Council. It sits in the usual place on the left hand side of the road up to the kerb. However, due to complaints from residents, cars are allowed to park in it.
These residents each have a drive way, but want to park in the road outside their house, so Reading Council backed down and let them. The councils response when pressed was -- if we put parking restrictions in the residents will complain and get the cycle lane thrown out.
Cyclists have to weave out from the cycle lane into the traffic, around a parked car, and back in again. All the way down the road.
Can't see that helping
1) cars can park in either direction (unless it's one-way?)
2) passengers don't look either when getting out
3) motorists walking to and from their cars through the cycle lane
There are plenty of cycle lanes like this in Portsmouth, which is great when you're cycling in the middle of the day and the roads are relatively quiet. However as soon as 3pm hits all hell breaks loose.
Usual nonsense. Give people a ghetto, a dangerous ghetto, and leave anyone who refuses to live in the ghetto open to abuse and harrassment from those who think they should be in it. (For bonus marks, criticise them yourself for entering the ghetto you built for them.)
More planners living in a box upon whose interior walls is written "a bit of paint is at least something".
Crazy traffic plans - if there's a 'door lane', I'm riding outside of that - surely that's common sense Reading council!
I ride Wokingham Road regularly, and it's not the door zone issue that is the problem. There are increasing numbers of close passes by drivers who think that as a bicycle is in a cycle lane, they do not have to give them any additional space. More importantly, the cycle lanes stop immediately before a traffic island or similar, and drivers clearly do not view a bicycle in the cycle lane as being on the road and force their way past whilst in the narrowed section. Negotiating the road now requires far more careful defensive positioning than before the cycle lanes were in place.
Yes I find this to be true in general. Cycle lanes only seem to give a lot of motorists the belief that the rest of the road is for themselves, and when the cycle lane disappears, as they generally do at the point where they are most needed, the motorists feel the cyclists should not be there, and just push through.
I think the tone of rethink is terrific and, I must say, what a pleasant bunch of comments under the Get Reading story. Local newspaper comments where I live are universally vicious, ignorant and furious.
"Reading Borough Council spokesman, Oscar Mortali, responded by saying the cycle lane was purely advisory"
Because it's OK to advise cyclists to ride in an unsafe position, while forcing them to would be crossing some line?
Swap the parking lane and the cycle lane. That would be a start, anyway.
And obviously found the lives of cyclists were expendable...
So what's the point of the lanes then? And do motorists understand they're only 'advisory'?
Yes they do.
Lower Henley road has the door zone cycle lane and also no centre marking as an example of Dutch style forward thinking that calms traffic and makes it safer. With oncoming motor traffic, motorists are evaluating the potential damage from colliding with another motorist vs the damage from colliding with a cyclist and deciding that the cycle lane is the safer place to be. After all, its only an advisory lane so its OK to use it if its unavoidable.
Next item on the agenda - the rotating knives along the walls of the entrance hall of the proposed new housing development.
**SATIRE***
The way council looks at making cycling lanes is similar to eastern European countries making pathways for disabled. Oh, the entrance to a building has 5 steps, lets just put more concrete on top and make a 45 degree angle for a wheelchair, jobs done. The amount of useless paint spent on the cycling paths is huge. Just because it is painted on the road will not mean that I will choose to cycle in a narrow, full of potholes path or door zone...