"Human bollards" step in to enforce road closure after "child knocked off bike" by motorist and cyclist reversed into

Campaigners in Exeter left fed up by bus gate violations from drivers have stepped in to enforce the closure as "human bollards", the community action coming after "people were just driving through with impunity" and two recent incidents reported involving cyclists being hit by motorists.

  The move was inspired by volunteers in Oxford who overcame a spate of vandalism to a low-traffic neighbourhood by acting as human bollards to enforce the road closure. Likewise, today, in the Devon city of Exeter, campaigners blocked a route reserved for cyclists, buses and taxi drivers, while holding banners calling for "safe streets now".

Solidarity and support to the Exeter Safe Streets Now group who are drawing attention to unlawful and dangerous driving behaviour at the Ladysmith Road bus gate, in the absence of enforcement by the police and Devon County Council. pic.twitter.com/QYiySLF1Zv

— Exeter Cycling (@ExeterCycling) February 19, 2024

The bus gate in question was introduced as part of the wider Heavitree and Whipton Active Streets Trial, a series of measures introduced by Devon County Council to calm traffic and promote safe active travel journeys.

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However, as Lorna Devenish, the spokesperson for the Heavitree and Whipton Liveable Neighbourhood Group, told road.cc as part of a wider discussion that will be available in full during an upcoming episode of our podcast, violations of the bus gates have become an "outstanding issue for the trial" with many drivers ignoring the closures and paint sprayed over the signs meaning "people were just driving through with impunity".

She said: "The situation outside Ladysmith School has just gone back to being terrible again now. And in fact a child was knocked off their bike and a woman on a cargo bike with a baby on the back was reversed into by a car doing a manoeuvre around the bus gate."

Those incidents fuelled the human bollard action, which was supported by Safe Streets Now, whose Exeter spokesperson told the BBC the event had been a success and the human bollards would "continue all week at the beginning and end of the school day".

"There was a lot of support; lots of supportive parents and even a supportive taxi driver who stopped to thank us," he said. "There were also some inevitable angry residents and parents as well. 

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"But what was really lovely was watching kids on their scooters going to school. It needs to be safe for them to do that, and the best way to make it safe is to remove the drivers from the roads outside."

Tensions boiled over this morning in #Exeter as campaigners who support the #LowTrafficNeighbourhood trial stopped 50 drivers in an hour from flouting the restrictions@ExeterCycling @countcaspargh

More here: https://t.co/WGTQSrPiwm pic.twitter.com/KMDQgTQfPC

— Greatest Hits Radio Devon News (@GHRDevon) February 19, 2024

Ms Devenish told road.cc: "The bus gates violations are an outstanding issue for the trial. We have two bus gates, and people worked out within two or three months that they weren't really being policed. And one of them was sprayed with a thick black paint on Boxing Day. At the beginning of the trial, the county council had been absolutely brilliant about rapidly replacing bollards, but following this report the county council going cold on it, no one had been out to clean these signs. So people were just driving through with impunity.

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"So we really fear that the violations around the bus gate are skewing the figures [for the trial], but because people are being encouraged to cycle more and people are driving through the bus gates, there are people who may be cycling for the first time who are not as safe as they should be. We cleaned the signs, and amazingly enough that had an immediate effect. Fewer people drove through it, now that you could see the restrictions again.

"We've been inspired by campaigners in Oxford to take some direct action, to do some human bollarding, to really call on Devon and Cornwall Police to properly police it. They say they aren't resourced sufficiently, but I think with the power of social media, they really only need to issue letters to ten per cent of the people we reported, and that would go around like wildfire. It probably wouldn't take too much effort, a few random visits by a patrol car at key times, even just having the parking wardens there at school pick up and drop off.

"So all these things could be done, and I don't think it would be a huge use of resources, but there seems to be an impasse on that. So that's our next action, to get these bus gates properly policed."

The aforementioned interim report on the Active Streets Trial, which those in favour of the scheme say was "sprung" on the committee charged with implementing it "at the last minute", claimed that while motor traffic has been significantly reduced within Exeter's newly installed low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs), and cycling numbers boosted, traffic and journey times on boundary roads have soared. 

It also concluded that unless the trial delivered better results by the end of this month it may be abandoned prematurely, with the power to suspend the scheme transferred from the city and county councillors to an unelected official. The bus gates were introduced as part of an 18-month trial alongside a host of other traffic-calming measures, such as modal filters using bollards or planters to encourage walking and cycling, and reduce pollution on residential roads.

The bus gates were meant to provide easy access for buses, emergency vehicles and taxi drivers, access restrictions that campaigners say have not been policed properly and led to today's action.