"First-of-its-kind" cycling roundabout will improve safety and reduce congestion, council promises... but outraged residents claim it will "undoubtedly disrupt our lives in significant ways" and "cause carnage"

"Should" - but  a) UK driving culture and ultimately b) humans.

Sustainable safety for the win again.  Work with the drivers we have and (slowly...) nudge them towards being the drivers we hope for.  We do that by making road rules and infra designs as clear, simple and "lazy, distractable, mistake-prone human-proof".  And also thinking about ways that some will still go wrong and minimizing expected harmful consequences (principle of "forgivingness").

This one actually seems to be the wrong infra design in an odd place.  Doing lots more *in* the town would seem to be the "low hanging fruit.  But of course that would attract far more "but disruption" / "but it's fractionally less easy to drive".  (I am not a local though - don't know the details of the area / how it is to cycle there / traffic flows etc.).  But as much of the design details as are shown don't look too bad when compared with the "best practice".

Tony W. wrote:

If all drivers adhered to the highway code, we wouldn't need traffic calming or anything else, drivers are their own worst enemy.

How's that going to come about?

Wouldn't need traffic calming for what, though? I don't believe that would see more people cycling. It wouldn't do much to improve the general issues with mass motoring. Probably wouldn't even keep cars out of houses...

https://cyclingfallacies.com/en/16/higher-standards-of-driving-would-mak...

Doesn't every driver pay road tax ?

No, keep up.

I can't tell if this is a joke or a serious question? Certainly most drivers believe they pay road tax but they actually pay vehicle excise duty. I mean £200/year, you couldn't even get a parking space for that much.

Circles wrote:

Doesn't every driver pay road tax ?

You may wish to bring yourself up to speed on current affairs as road tax was abolished in 1937

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Excise_Duty

Circles wrote:

Doesn't every driver pay road tax ?

Every tax payer pays road tax. The trick is to spot that in the tax you pay, as road spending comes out of the general tax take.

As others say - the motor-vehicle-specific taxes (fuel duty, VED) are to do with pollution mainly (but will almost certainly be re-spun for electric cars - they still damage roads / emit *elsewhere* etc).

chrisonabike wrote:

Every tax payer pays road tax. The trick is to spot that in the tax you pay, as road spending comes out of the general tax take.

As others say - the motor-vehicle-specific taxes (fuel duty, VED) are to do with pollution mainly (but will almost certainly be re-spun for electric cars - they still damage roads / emit *elsewhere* etc).

It's about time that a tyre pollution tax was introduced as they release a lot of very nasty chemicals into our air and a lot gets washed off the roads into our waterways

You're right. In fact cars 2.0 are not very different from ICE cars in terms of negatives inc. pollution.  Even road noise is much the same (at UK-standard speeds electric cars are basically as noisy as as ICE ones).

No difference to all the other issues of motoring either, they still need the infra, still take up the same space.  Plus some new ones (charging cables left over the footways, different public parking provisions because "we have to charge").

(BTW good use of "mobility track", will try to drop that places.)

The whole thing is really strange to me (not a local) - why the heck there?  I mean - I can see some "cycle paths" (shared use...) on Google Maps if i have the right place.  There's only one cluster of around 20 houses about 200m away - otherwise it's in the middle of an industrial estate, on the edge of a town, with none of the roads directly leading to anyware / connecting anything except large industrial concerns.

Is it "we have to spend cycling money so we're putting it where we can" (e.g. where it will cause the least hassle - as opposed to where it would be useful for more than a handful of cyclists, which of course would definitely conflict with driving / be very visible).

Perhaps there are masses of people cycling to (probably low wage) jobs?

Why anyone other than maybe the businesses be bothered?  I mean - is it they're worried about some more traffic when driving to the cemetery?  Is it Jack & Jill's nursery, the caravan storage, or getting to the Majestic Wine Warehouse?

IMO industrial estates are one of the key places where we need mobility tracks - big, unwieldy, poor visibility cargo vehicles go there just as much as they do to construction sites and city centres.

And much the workforce drives when they may still be waking up, drinking their coffee or worn out and going home. You can get an estimate of how much traffic there is by counting parking spaces and lorry bays on Google.

Further, that's where all the people go to work work in the day, and we want them to walk or cycle. Those journeys need to be safe and viable.

Further still, both lots of traffic will be happening 24 hours a day.

This location, in the newest large industrian estate near me, has conventioned nougties type infra (this is Nottinghamshire), and a person riding to work on a cycle had been killed before it was even finished early in the morning by a turning van which was a tradesman or delivery man collecting something in his iirc Bedord size van.

We teased out the suspected cause here whilst talking about finding collision data and we worked out that the reported time of death was within 1 minute of sunrise, which the van was turning directly into and ran down the cyclist who was on the road, presumably without seeing him.

Just this warehouse and the big one at the end have getting on for 1000 parking spaces and ~150 full size loading bays between them. Just those two are going to be 3000+ movements per day, and they are perhaps half of the whole estate - ignoring the petrol station with Costa and Greggsm Screwfx etc. There's no count, but it must be around 10000 AADT including maybe ~2000 logistics vehicles.

Here's a link to the location:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/VnpcNvXCMm1p57F5A

It really seems a strange choice as you say. I imagine the Dutch planners would say:

"Hey - it's on the edge of the urban area - but it's a massive industrial park!  There will certainly be lorries and vans.  And probably few cyclists (even in NL).

"If we are concerned about vehicle flow a signalised junction is out.  If there are in fact more cyclists (and not too many vehicles) make this a roundabout *without* mobility priority (see what I did there).  But - since we're clearly thinking about vehicle flow and more than a few will be big heavy ones we need to have a grade-separated junction for safety.

" BUT ... actually - we will instead look at the network for cycling here.  Does it even make sense that cyclists will really need to go in all directions here?  It doesn't feel like either a "main through route" for cyclists - or even an important part of the cycling mobility network.  So focus resources on those (in town / between towns).  Perhaps the places where people will want to cycle can be connected up in a different (and possibly more convenient) way?

(Or something like that).

As for bi-directional - hmm... agree with what you say on convenience (David H is a fan, although NOT with priority).  But in the UK this may be "a bridge to far" because drivers.  Probably for more than a generation!

There are (a few) debates even in NL I think - there certainly were about a decade ago about priority.  Although bidirectional cycle roundabout designs do exist there.

Google "cycle infra" layer isn't great with showing active travel infra (and certainly not with "actually quiet streets") BUT I'm starting to smell a rat.  Look at the rest of the place...

Doesn't look great on e.g. OpenCycleMap.org either although that does at least show a route going there.

Any locals can comment?

It looks from Google maps as if a new housing development is in the offing. Maybe part of a sec 106 deal?

It could be an active-travel-friendly rat of course - perhaps someone is in favour of this kind of thing in the county / LA, but without one in existence no others will get built (because "not tested here") so someone's found the place where doing the first will cause minimum controversy?

4/02539/16/MOA or 24/02823/SCO Details can be found at https://planning.dacorum.gov.uk/publicaccess/search.do?action=advanced&s...

The emerging LCWIP links stuff together.  It doesn't look like there currently a map of all their Walking and Cycling proposals at the moment probably because of the stage it is at.

https://www.dacorum.gov.uk/home/environment-street-care/climate-change/s...(lcwip)

I found a LCWIP Map on line: 

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/23172b0d9b1043eebfbeaa6e092901d3

Thanks!  They've got a nice site there, quite a bit of info.  Again - a mixed bag but ultimately not answering my main questions.

I', guessing the answer is simply "we're starting by tinkering with what we've already got.  Which is hardly anything, starting nowhere most people would want to access it, and not connecting to anywhere they'd want to go").

Though - charitably - could it be part of a much bigger, longer term plan?  As Chris Boardman notes no-one in the UK seems to believe in anything not already being done right here *.  So is it a plan to get some examples in so we then only have to deal with the battle of getting them put where they're really useful?

* Unless of course it's got all the interest of politicians or some of the public e.g. by being new, shiny and having giant concentrations of money (or the potential for) around it.

Main questions - why cycling priority *?  Why here, why not building a grid of mobility routes / restricting motor traffic in the centre of town where people are and people want to go?  Assuming we're even imagining we're aiming at "Dutch"!  Per the site there still seems to be a "cycling network" which a) isn't a network (dense grid of routes) and b) is a corridor connecting to a route which heads off somewhere else.  It doesn't even come into the town and ends just after going through ... a large industrial estate.  Did someone miss when drawing the lines?

Just how far the place apparently has to go even with this scheme can be seen by mention of "quietway have been completed, including a new signal-controlled crossing on Breakspear Way and shared use path between Green Lane and Breakspear Way."  None of those things are entirely bad (well, "shared use" is generally setting a very low ceiling on ambition...) but much more "UK now or past" than "Dutch design of our future (e.g. of about 30-40 years ago or more)".

*  Are the cyclists going to dominate the traffic flow here? (Even with a "never-before experienced in the UK" increase in cycling?).  That condition is really where such a design would be most appropriate.  With sufficient HGV traffic I bet UK cyclists won't be asserting their priority!  Plus the overrun could be a PITA if mostly HGV drivers AND get trashed.  I don't know, maybe there are as many people cyling here as in the centre of Cambridge ... but even given that I can't help think the Dutch might have tried to avoid mixing cycling and HGVs entirely at a network level - or made access safe but "lower priority".  Or at least grade-separated things.

I suspect the answer is "we are still in the 90s, and we start frm here".

There will also be a lot not on that map, which brings up the need for far wider cycle access to suitable public footpaths.

These are all Road Safety questions to be fed back to the coming Road Safety strategy consultation.

I generally agree (although it's obviously about a lot more than road safety - we can use that though), and I'm more critical of "we have to get something" than I was *.

BUT again folks like Chris Boardman / Ranty Highwayman provide some useful insight into getting the system to change from inside it.  In some places, even if there is political will, they're just not going to acheive much right now **.  So focus and setting priorities is absolutely key.  If something over-ambitious is tried and fails that tends to kill the whole idea for a long time.

Of course - activists from the outside have more freedom to aspire to the moon on a stick right now - or, better, that the direction is set and *actual* plans are made / monies start being set aside.

I'm not against people combining things with footpaths (my "key infra" for daily travel happens to be all shared-use) etc. but we don't want an urban "mobility network" with the same ease-of-use as lots of the Sustrans / NCN stuff.  That is: "recreational; useable by the fit, unhurried / determined - in some weathers".  In general "shared use" means "conflict between pedestrians and cyclists if it's at all well used".

* The idea of "momentum".  But it turned out that "build it crap, or even build it 'less attractive than driving' and few if any will come" - so no momentum resulted.  As the Dutch found - not only does it need to be good enough, but an overall plan is needed to provide attractive alternatives to driving (inc. public transport) AND simultaneously (slightly) reduce motoring convenience.  Infra appears to be necessary, but is not sufficient.  By "necessary" I mean like this as some people (objectors is seems) claim to believe this means "a cycle path for every inch of road".

** All kinds of reasons, including "pots of money not yet big enough / funding still irregular".  But particularly "just don't have the staff or experience" - or even internal measures of success which will rate anything more than "capacity for motor traffic"!

So we need to build more  - in fact everywhere that there are not 20mph limits.

And make them properly separated where traffic volumes are high and require it.

I'd make the improvement of each section of road a must do improvement on each major maintenance cycle. We already have the law to do it in the Equality Act needing to be applied to road maintenance and design. "Mr Data - Make It So".