“Systemic failure” of National Highways to apply own design standards “endangering cyclists”, transport experts claim

National Highways, the government-owned company charged with maintaining and improving England’s major roads, has been accused of “endangering cyclists” through a “systemic failure” to apply its own design standards when it comes to cycling provision – with Freedom of Information (FOI) requests revealing that the agency did not know how many of its active travel schemes were built to the required standards.

The Department for Transport also admitted this week that National Highways was using a loophole to avoid building high-quality cycling infrastructure beside rural trunk roads, instead focusing on substandard shared-use paths in areas where it feels usage will be lower, according to a Guardian article published by road.cc contributor Laura Laker.

Laker’s report also found that, while National Highways has spent £84 million on cycling and walking schemes since 2015, it could not pinpoint exactly what kind of projects the money had been spent on, or the impact of the initiatives on cycle uptake and safety.

> Cycling and walking targets “in tatters”: Damning report finds government almost certain to fail on active travel objectives in England

National Highways’ cycle traffic design standards, known collectively as IAN/CD195, have required, since 2016, the inclusion of high-quality active travel infrastructure, to help mitigate the impact of A-roads and motorways on cycling and walking journeys by providing safe alternative routes and crossing points.

However, recent written questions and FOI requests show that National Highways appears to be relying on a loophole which appears to state that the active travel standards set out in IAN/CD195 do not apply to shared-use paths.

Therefore, shared-use pavements are being built beside trunk roads, requiring users to give way to fast-moving traffic at major junctions and side roads, contradicting modern safety standards for cycling infrastructure, as well as discouraging cyclists from using the paths and forcing some to ride on the carriageway, where they don’t have to stop at every side road.

Though National Highways denied using such a loophole, a minister in the Department for Transport, Richard Holden, admitted that the agency was not always applying IAN/CD195 on rural roads and that the safety standards were “one of a suite of documents that National Highways has to ensure the most appropriate provision is provided for walkers, cyclists, and horse riders.”

The MP continued: “As much of National Highways’ network is rural and located away from residential and industrial areas, providing shared-use walking and cycling provision may often be a more proportionate approach for the anticipated levels of usage.”

> Rural A roads are where cyclists are most likely to be killed, road.cc analysis reveals

Transport consultant Phil Jones, a co-author of IAN/CD 195, described the agency’s interpretation of its own cycling safety standards as “perverse”.

“The thing I tried to get across to them is you should always have a cycle track because cyclists go everywhere, whereas they don’t think of it that way,” he told the Guardian.

“The potential for cycling between towns is much greater than walking because of the distances, if you’re talking about six or seven miles. They’re failing to meet the needs of the main active travel user in rural areas.”

Meanwhile, Cycling UK’s policy director Roger Geffen said that National Highways’ traffic engineers were “endangering” cyclists by creating shared-use paths which cross trunk roads.

“National Highways have some really good standards for designing facilities specifically for cycling, but have adopted far worse standards for any cycle facility that is shared with pedestrians or horse riders,” Geffen said.

“This leaves their traffic engineers free to endanger cyclists wherever a ‘shared use’ facility crosses a side road or junction on the trunk road network, even though this has no benefit for other users of these facilities.”

> Active Travel England rates councils' capability to deliver infrastructure — 94% fall in lowest three categories

When questioned through a FOI request on how many of its active travel schemes applied with IAN/CD195’s design requirements, National Highways were unable to provide information for either England or more limited geographical areas, such as the north-east, claiming that “we do not hold the information you have requested”.

Jones said this failure to provide the requested information suggests that National Highways do not know what cycling and walking schemes they had built, or how.

“In my view this is a systemic failure of National Highways to apply its own standards, which I know from experience of reviewing schemes is leading to poor provision on the ground,” he says.

“They design for shared use, which means in reality a pavement you’re allowed to cycle on. It has few of the attributes of a good cycle route.”

Geffen also argued that National Highways needed to start counting cycling and walking journeys on its network, in order to assess the impact of its projects.

Responding to a series of written questions by Ruth Cadbury MP, co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for walking and cycling, the Department for Transport said National Highways was now “proposing to conduct an assessment of active travel integration along its network in order to identify major or complex severance issues, as well as opportunities to connect with wider active travel provision, such as national cycle networks”.

 “Active travel is extremely important to us,” says Dr Joanna White, roads development director at National Highways. “We are investing more than £105m in active travel schemes for cyclists, walkers, and horse-riders.

“We look at each scheme on its own merits and our design teams follow established standards to determine provision, working with stakeholders, and ensuring value for money to the taxpayer.”

> Government faces legal challenge on cut to cycling investment

The criticism of National Highways’ implementation of its own cycling safety standards comes just a month after a similarly damning report by the government’s official spending watchdog found that the Department for Transport is almost certain to fall short of its active travel targets, thanks to its inability to influence the poor design and “patchy” delivery of some local schemes.

According to the report published by the National Audit Office, the Department for Transport is highly unlikely to achieve any of its four goals for active travel by 2025, including doubling the number of cycling trips, increasing the proportion of primary school children cycling, ensuring that almost half of short urban journeys are walked, cycled, or wheeled, and having an average of 365 ‘walked’ stages of travel per person a year.

In fact, with the exception of the last of these targets, the report found that the levels of activity for these measures are lower than they were when the government published its first Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy for England in 2017 – prompting campaign groups to claim that the government’s plan to boost walking and cycling numbers is “in tatters”.

The NAO concluded that, despite spending £2.3bn funding councils to build active travel infrastructure between 2016 and 2021, the DfT – thanks to the lack of, until recently, guidelines for how this infrastructure should be implemented – “knew too little” about what was being delivered, and therefore was not able to influence the quality of these local schemes.

In the same week that damning report was published, it was also revealed that the government is currently facing a legal challenge from a campaign group over its cut to investment in walking and cycling in England, which some estimate will lead to two thirds of the previously promised funding being lost.