Centralised discussion space for TfL plans and cycling in London

Bit of a long report from Islington's "people friendly streets":

Good to see Islington install their second low traffic neighbourhood this week, in Canonbury East (i.e. west of De Beauvoir, east of Essex Road). This joins up with their first in St Peter's near the canal which went live in early July, and eliminates through-motor-traffic along the short section of Quietway 2 in the borough. I took my friends on an unhurried car-free ride starting with a coffee at De Beauvoir Square, down to Tottenham Court Road and enjoyed a stroll in car-free Soho - new to cycling they loved it.

In St Peter's, I've seen more families and kids out on bikes enjoying the space that has been unlocked with only a few bollards. Earl of Essex, Duke of Cambridge, Pophams all very enjoyable, as is the Narrowboat, as will be the Island Queen (when it reopens) and fingers crossed for the Bill Murray.

Prioritising these two areas in Islington for low traffic neighbourhoods is probably a small part of the legacy of the quietways programme. In principle the programme was deeply flawed for lots of reasons, however with continued activism in the years since, the council is now moving on from the indirect, incoherent route-based white-paint approach on residential streets. Evolving it into an area-wide approach now eliminates through-traffic in neighbourhoods, disincentivises short car trips, and unlocks space for walking and cycling for local people.

https://islingtonpeoplefriendlystreets.commonplace.is/news/2020/07/14/peoplefriendly-streets-to-arrive-in-canonbury-east

I hope the pace of change continues in spite of protests: 25% car ownership in the borough should mean this is an easy win and a voter winner once the majority can experience the benefits and see it for themselves.

The usual anti crowd are up in arms with weekly protests outside Islington town hall - swelled by some in the taxi lobby - which suggests the council is doing something right. It is difficult for me to gauge public opinion among all residents, but as far as I can tell, the word on the street is generally "this is OK isn't it, no big deal, I never liked the rat-running traffic going past my home" - at least I hope that is what most people are saying because that is what I hear when I talk to people.

The council could do better on communications. Providing the pros and cons is important - the average understanding of these types of schemes in the UK seems appalling; it seems difficult to communicate the benefits and the impacts without a decent one-to-one conversation, and sometimes even the english language is not on our side ("road closed"). When local residents who drive hear that their access will be maintained, they think this means that all the routes they use to access their property by car will remain the same - this is a source of conflict not well communicated.

As this programme of low traffic neighbourhoods rolls on and calms down over the next couple of years, I hope this means the borough can focus the big investments on busier roads, where they are most needed (as @Backstop says) - the sooner the better.

Thanks for the update. Do you know whether this means no more non resident cars at all allowed from Southgate Road to Essex and New North Road?

It means there's no longer any through-routes within the traffic cell bordered by southgate, baring, new n, essex, balls pond.

Heres a map trying to show these changes:
https://www.islington.media/resources/a-map-showing-where-the-work-in-canonbury-east-will-take-place

As i mentioned, i think the map and islington comms could do with being clearer.

Clear enough to me.

The cycle lane along Lee Bridge Road has really highlighted how bad the Quietways program was.

It's really disconcerting as you swap from being a first class citizen, to being sent around the houses on the Quietway through Hackney.

That said - I think Quietways are good supplements for direct routes. Spending tiny amounts of money creating permeable routes between otherwise good roads (especially between LTNs) creates loads of options for local trips.

You have no idea of how much of a barrier an A road (with no cycle crossing) is until you've tried riding it with a child on tow. For example, my wife would kill me if I took our son anywhere near Camberwell New Road on his bike - we can even only cross it at places where it has a signalised crossing, which forces big detours and often requires a bit of walking (or cycling on the pavement).

I think quietways as originally implemented were just substandard LTNs. I think LTNs are how quietways/mini hollands were originally intended.

I think a basic model is modal filtering to create neighbourhood wide cells and then segregation on the through roads. This requires a level of political ambition and engineering know-how we seem to be sorely lacking.

And the Lee valley route is lovely, though I'd like a little more priority on the signal timings.

The original dream of Quietways was there were lots of quiet back streets ready to be linked together quickly and cheaply into new routes with minimal interventions and no fuss.

It very quickly became clear that (a) no there aren't (b) any vaguely direct route was also a popular rat run requiring lots of filtering and (c) filtering was extremely politically controversial and the boroughs weren't interested. Very few were implemented.

The fundamental problem was that they weren't thinking about LTNs, only about the linear cycle routes. They've now found that it's much easier to build a political coalition in support of LTNs for their own sake than it is to demand neighbourhoods be re-engineered for the benefit of cyclists.

(though the interventions in Islington on Quietway 2 have been prioritised partly because they want to improve Q2, and partly because they've been sitting on the drawing board ready to go for years, with political leadership constantly noping them for fear of backlash)

Well, there are lots of back streets ready to be linked together. But the links can be quite difficult.

For example, in Camberwell, demolishing the wall at the end of Southwell Road to allow cycles to enter the Hospital campus would create a lot of route options.

But, who would you need to work with to do this? Probably 5-6 stakeholders, plus the local NIMBYs. Much easier just to fix Denmark Hill road which is wide enough for proper cycle lanes.

Newham and Waltham Forest are doing a joint LTN experiment in my area and I just wondered if anyone had any thoughts on if it was a good plan or not? I live on the Waltham Forest end of Odessa road (the blue bit) and on the surface it looks like a great idea as my road is a bit of a rat run and the the reduction in traffic during covid has really highlighted how bad it was.

I really don't know anything about traffic management so looking to be educated.

https://newhamwalthamforestltn.commonplace.is/schemes/proposals/an-overview-of-the-scheme/details

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^ well usually the aims are to eliminate rat running (i.e. no motor through traffic) and disincentivise local resident car trips in favour of walking or cycling.

A v v quick look and this appears to work around odessa. I'm sceptical of one way streets in principle but I presume they will be one way except cycles. And it should only be local car/van traffic using those one way streets north of you.

If you don't drive you'll probably find this is great.

If you do drive and cycle you'll also probably find it great. It will mean your house is still accessible by car but the route(s) you take will change and will become much more limited - via dames road only.

Reducing local residents' car access and "mobility" is the contraversial bit. Your neighbours who drive but don't cycle will kick off at having more inconvenience added to their already stressful driving environment in London. They will say car trips will be displaced to other roads making congestion worse and they will say their car trips will get longer and therefore they will be polluting the neighbourhood more. All their complaints will miss the point that because road capacity for cars will decrease and car trips will be disincentivised, then overall trip making will change and there will be more walk and cycle trips as a result of the scheme.

I can show you around Islingtons low traffic neighbourhoods if you ever around quietway 2 around the canal east of Angel - St Peters LTN and Canonbury East LTN

https://islingtonpeoplefriendlystreets.commonplace.is

I won't give you a full analysis of this, but overall, like most of the 'low traffic neighbourhoods', which as mentioned before, is a very silly name, these are not well-conceived. The officers mostly designing the schemes have very little experience of modal filtering and fail to understand some key principles of how these schemes should be done.

(1) Define cell boundary streets. Ideally, cells shouldn't be too large, or you get aggressive driving when people have to cover quite a lot of distance through the cell. 'Area 2' is much too large. This may be because none of the streets inside it are suitable as cell boundary streets, but it's (counter-intuitively) better to break very large cells up into smaller ones. It leads to much better driver behaviour.

(2) One-way streets are a 100% no-no in any filtered area. There are two main purposes to filtering: increase cycle permeability, i.e. remove one-way streets in the cell, and remove crashes caused by rat-running drivers turning injudiciously on streets bounding a potentially filtered cell. The vast majority of turning crashes, and the vast majority of serious and fatal cycling casualties are caused by such turning behaviour. When you filter, these largely disappear, as people accessing cells turn much more carefully.

If, therefore, one-way streets persist in any 'filtered' area, the filtering is nonsensical. I'm not hugely familiar with the area but rode around there just recently, and all of these one-way streets could, and should, easily returned to two-way operation with the right filtering scheme. This needs to be rethought entirely.

(3) One of the most persistent mistakes people make when filtering is that they filter at the edges of cells. You can see this here in both yellow areas. It's bad for a number of reasons: (a) It increases distances to be driven inside the cell, with the consequences for driver behaviour mentioned under (1) (and actually doesn't do that much to improve turning behaviour where people have to drive into a cell from the other side to get to, say, the streets immediately adjacent to Leytonstone Road); (b) it causes much greater priority to the main street, which has suddenly 'lost' a junction with a side street that drivers would otherwise have to pay attention to, and this is not at all good--except for footway level entry tables, any measures that de-prioritise side street junctions on cell boundary streets, such as the modish 'continuous footways' are very much to be avoided; and (c) it removes a healthy level of side-street interaction and often certain design possibilities, such as the possibility of constructing better-quality pedestrian crossings. Designers are often worried about side-street interaction, but if an adjacent cell is filtered, this is typically very low. Hence: NEVER filter at the edge of cells. It is always avoidable. Filter as deep inside the cell as possible instead (with the above caveat not to make cells too large).

(4) Following on from the above point, the main constraint that local authorities typically encounter is the operation of refuse vehicles. This is a very reasonable point, and must be taken into account. In most cells of an acceptable size, refuse vehicle paths can be defined through openable gates. It should usually be possible to limit their number to one or two for a whole cell. It's actually something that refuse services should welcome, as good filtering causes far less conflict with other drivers. Needless to say, there can also be local buses that run along streets an authority may not wish to consider boundaries. This is the most difficult problem to solve when filtering and will usually require bus re-routing if possible.

(5) Loops are also to be avoided, but can't always be avoided (e.g. for access to public buildings). The most problematic loops are where drivers on a cell boundary street for some reason persistently turn around by driving a loop through adjacent local streets. This is often caused by banned turns. Deciding what to do about these requires local knowledge and observation. Generally, the effectiveness of a filtered area is greatly increased if drivers have to turn around a lot. Designers often try to prevent this by leaving lots of loops in, but that's not a good idea. It can in due course lead to conflict between drivers going in different directions and the usual impetus to make said streets one-way.

(6) You should use the fewest possible filters. I favour four-way filters at junctions like the filter at Northchurch Terrace/Northchurch Road/Culford Road/Lawford Road in De Beauvoir.

Anyway, the most important rule is to filter in the centre, not at the edges.

I've seen one scheme so far, in Southwark, that seems well-thought out, but this one here is basically a full card at bad filtering bingo. All the mistakes that can be made are present.

I'm sceptical of one way streets in principle but I presume they will be one way except cycles.

Not in this area, no. The streets are quite narrow and it's either full one-way, without exemptions, or remove one side of car parking ... which obviously won't happen.

I don't drive but I am taking my test next week. I only want a car for getting out of London I'd barely ever drive in London.

There are people kicking off but they seem to be in a minority, there seems to be
a lot of support for improved cycling infrastructure and a reduction of motor traffic in general.

I cycle up the canal and through Angel a lot but it's hard to gauge what it's like for the people who live there when you're just flying through.

Thanks for this, as I said I'm clueless with regards to how traffic management works so this is extremely helpful.

I wonder if area 2 is so large because of the cemetery and housing estate in the middle? There isn't a lot of through access in that area anyway so maybe making it smaller would have cut certain roads off?

Has there been much success at getting one way streets changed back to two way? From what I've read on the local feedback map is that, if anything, there seems to be an appetite for more one way streets. I guess people must assume it's safer as they only have to worry about traffic from one direction?

Would you say implementing this scheme is worse than leaving things as they are? Obviously you wouldn't look to start a bad scheme but as there is a 6-18 month trial period with feedback after 6, is it a good thing that this is starting and can hopefully be improved on in the future? Or are you of the opinion that it's so bad it'll fail and be scrapped?

I wonder if area 2 is so large because of the cemetery and housing estate in the middle? There isn't a lot of through access in that area anyway so maybe making it smaller would have cut certain roads off?

The reason seems mainly because they don't want to make Odessa Road a cell boundary street. I know why--it doesn't have suitable characteristics, but I do think two smaller cells (which would still be quite large) would be better.

Has there been much success at getting one way streets changed back to two way? From what I've read on the local feedback map is that, if anything, there seems to be an appetite for more one way streets. I guess people must assume it's safer as they only have to worry about traffic from one direction?

Yes, as it's the most important network characteristic that benefits cycling, we emphasised it in Hackney. The biggest triumph was having the Shoreditch one-way system (largely) returned to two-way. It's still not complete, but the simple fact that people coming down Hackney Road no longer had to turn left to go down a long detour of a four-lane one-way Shoreditch High Street but could carry straight on into Old Street caused a huge increase in cycling.

As I said, filtering is largely worth pursuing for the two factors that it makes it possible to return streets to two-way and because it reduces main street turning crashes.

Would you say implementing this scheme is worse than leaving things as they are? Obviously you wouldn't look to start a bad scheme but as there is a 6-18 month trial period with feedback after 6, is it a good thing that this is starting and can hopefully be improved on in the future? Or are you of the opinion that it's so bad it'll fail and be scrapped?

No, it wouldn't be worse than it is now. Still, there's no point in getting filtering wrong, as once it's done it probably won't be touched again for decades. I don't think that it'll be scrapped even if the features I criticise are implemented, but it won't be as good as it can be. The key is to try to get the supporting residents to understand the above and get the officers to change the scheme. I'm not saying that they should leave Odessa Road as a boundary--as I said, it really doesn't have the right characteristics to be one, but it's worth looking at. In principle, it's good to filter as large an area as can be filtered, but there is that difficulty that you may later find driver behaviour leaves something to be desired because of the long distances they have to cover inside the cell.

Has there been much success at getting one way streets changed back to two way? From what I've read on the local feedback map is that, if anything, there seems to be an appetite for more one way streets. I guess people must assume it's safer as they only have to worry about traffic from one direction?

I think a lot of people look at one way streets and assume it will be half of the traffic compared to a two way street. In reality though there is less conflict so traffic flows more freely so you get more traffic going in one direction (and often faster).

Yes, and far more crashes where people turn into them fast.

One thing to consider is the pressure to implement these schemes with as few interventions as possible, due to cost, time and the required experimental nature of them. Stuff like tidying up one-way systems can be done at a later date.

Also, "keep cells as small as possible" is fine on paper, as long as you're happy to condemn one of the roads where you split a large cell to becoming a main road. If you're worried about journeys within the cell being too long, that can surely be solved by making the sectors/quadrants/whatever* within the cell smaller.

(* I've heard some people refer use "cell" to mean both the thing surrounded by main roads and the divisions within that, which makes discussing these things even more fun)

except for footway level entry tables

I put up with these every day as a pedestrian (Archway end of Holloway Road) and they're the absolute worst for ambiguous priority. Let's build a thing that encourages pedestrians to cross without stopping to look, but which drivers still have absolute legal priority over! Awful things.

One thing to consider is the pressure to implement these schemes with as few interventions as possible, due to cost, time and the required experimental nature of them. Stuff like tidying up one-way systems can be done at a later date.

No. It needs to be done at the moment of inception. Otherwise, you'll wait for years and years. Returning streets to one-way in filtered cells is child's play.

Also, "keep cells as small as possible" is fine on paper, as long as you're happy to condemn one of the roads where you split a large cell to becoming a main road.

Yes, as I said, I fully recognise that Odessa Road doesn't have the right characteristics as a cell boundary street.

If you're worried about journeys within the cell being too long, that can surely be solved by making the sectors/quadrants/whatever* within the cell smaller.

I think what you may mean is 'make them as evenly-sized as possible'. This is what I was talking about when I said you have to filter in the centre of a cell. The larger the cell, the longer journeys will be within it even with optimised 'quadrant' sizes. There's no way around that, I'm afraid.

(* I've heard some people refer use "cell" to mean both the thing surrounded by main roads and the divisions within that, which makes discussing these things even more fun)

Ah yes, that can certainly cause confusion. 'Sub-cell' is a good word.

except for footway level entry tables

I put up with these every day as a pedestrian (Archway end of Holloway Road) and they're the absolute worst for ambiguous priority. Let's build a thing that encourages pedestrians to cross without stopping to look, but which drivers still have absolute legal priority over! Awful things.

Many are badly-constructed and at the end of unfiltered streets, yes. They're still better than 'continuous footways'. What makes the difference, as ever, is how drivers behave turning into them.

The reason seems mainly because they don't want to make Odessa Road a cell boundary street.

Odessa Road is already a rat run, wouldn't making it a boundary exacerbate the problem?

The biggest triumph was having the Shoreditch one-way system

I'll look into using this example in the feedback reviews

It's strange, I've been cycling in London for so long but don't know what makes thing's better or worse, except from when it's an obvious shit show. The work is starting this month so lets see how it goes, from a selfish point of view I am looking forward to not having idiots fly past my front door anymore.

except for footway level entry tables

I put up with these every day as a pedestrian (Archway end of Holloway Road) and they're the absolute worst for ambiguous priority. Let's build a thing that encourages pedestrians to cross without stopping to look, but which drivers still have absolute legal priority over! Awful things.

The highway code is being changed so pedestrians waiting to cross will have priority over turning vehicles. (Peds already have priority if they've started to cross - the change gives them priority while waiting to cross.)

So the new junction treatment reflects the new rules. Pedestrians should be able to wander across at will.

Would be even better if they painted a zebra crossing at every junction, but you'd have years of uncertainty before the massive painting project was completed - what does it mean if a junction has no zebra crossing, yet?

My experience is that car drivers crossing pavement level junctions (like the one at Magee St to the A3) behave more politely than they do at other junctions.

I won't give you a full analysis of this, but overall, like most of the 'low traffic neighbourhoods', which as mentioned before, is a very silly name, these are not well-conceived. The officers mostly designing the schemes have very little experience of modal filtering and fail to understand some key principles of how these schemes should be done.

The officers are also being put under pressure to deliver schemes quickly, at low capital cost. So I think we can afford a bit of generosity.

But the Oval LTN exhibits some of the problems you highlight - filters in the middle of the triangle would have been better than ones along the A3, except that filtering along the A3 has improved safety on CS7 by eliminating traffic turning accross the cycle lane. If they want to keep the A3 exits open, and keep the CS7 safety benefit, they'll need to make the re-opened junctions traffic light controlled - and they don't have any money for that.

Odessa Road is already a rat run, wouldn't making it a boundary exacerbate the problem?

Not necessarily. Rat-runs often function in conjunction with other side streets, i.e. someone may use Odessa Road as part of their rat-run and other streets as other parts. If the latter became unavailable, the usefulness of Odessa Road as a rat-run could also decrease. As I said, I don't know that area very well, so it's up to local knowledge to reach a verdict on that. The existing one-ways certainly suggest that more than just OR was in the past being used to rat-run before the one-ways came in (although they probably also reflect past/present rat-running parallel to Cann Hall Road).

I'll look into using this example in the feedback reviews

For this particular project, it's not necessarily the most appropriate, as it's a major one-way system on what became the Inner Ring Road in 2002/3. You're looking at a residential area. Also, as I said, Shoreditch is still not completely two-way and numerous problems remain. There are plenty of existing filtered areas, though, like De Beauvoir, and good and bad examples of filtering everywhere. If you want a bad example, try using Lower Clapton north of Powerscroft Road (between Lea Bridge Road, Lower Clapton Road, Powerscroft Road, and Chatsworth Road)--all the filters are at the northern, eastern, and southern edges of the cell. For a good example, use De Beauvoir with the exception of the filters at the edges, e.g. the one at the Southgate Road/Northchurch Road junction is very bad. (It's part of the reason why that junction is so hazardous.)

The highway code is being changed so pedestrians waiting to cross will have priority over turning vehicles. (Peds already have priority if they've started to cross - the change gives them priority while waiting to cross.)

So the new junction treatment reflects the new rules. Pedestrians should be able to wander across at will.

Yes, but in practice that won't happen quickly.

Would be even better if they painted a zebra crossing at every junction, but you'd have years of uncertainty before the massive painting project was completed - what does it mean if a junction has no zebra crossing, yet?

Well, I'd rather the law was such that crossings wouldn't have to be painted. On main streets, yes, but the more signing and lining and complication you introduce into non-main streets, the more you increase the impression of a motor traffic environment. The best thing is simple streets that just look like simple streets.

My experience is that car drivers crossing pavement level junctions (like the one at Magee St to the A3) behave more politely than they do at other junctions.

The problem with continuous footways isn't the effect on the side street, but that on the main street. It increases motor traffic capacity and reduces driver attention. The caution when turning is dealt with by the filtering, no further measures required, and the impression of side street junctions is important for the functioning of main streets.