The Times Cycling Campaign

It would be interesting to hear what has already happened in the battle over this scheme that you seem to allude to, Magnus. Without knowing anything about it, allow me to speculate.

You're right that cycling hasn't been considered here. I agree that this is a very poor scheme, although approaching improvements in the way that you do is probably the wrong approach.

Sure, but if you look at my Liverpool example they've actually put in a compulsory purchase order and then most of the additional land is given over to a grass verge and a couple of trees, insane waste of money!

It's not just that--they want space for an additional general traffic lane. The new footway and verge is designed to mitigate the environmental impact on pedestrians (probably not very effectively). What you have here is a two-lane (in each direction) arterial road. The proposed scheme is designed to increase motor traffic capacity of the junction--that's all of its purpose. This is why walls are knocked down (and rebuilt), the carriageway widened, and new junction approach lanes introduced (three instead of two, and a total of four, up from three, at Crosby Road North). Motor traffic capacity at junctions can usually only be increased if you create more traffic lanes at the junction than there are along the main drag of the streets meeting there.

To introduce any segregated tracks, you would have to negate the scheme's entire purpose, which is to increase the number of approach lanes to increase capacity. This they are not going to do; the number of people cycling on that road is most likely low, and engineers tend to engineer for existing flows of motor traffic, not future projected flows of non-motorised traffic. (With tracks retro-fitted to the scheme, you'd probably also make a major left-hook hazard from Crosby Road North into South Road worse. This seems to be a dominant movement at this junction, judging by the special provision for it. Letf-turning problems need careful consideration if you want to go for a segregated approach.)

So, the problem you're up against is not that they don't want to do something extra that's quite small, but that you'd be trying to get them to do the opposite of what they want to do. The overall strategic context, not only concerning and surrounding the junction, but probably also in Liverpool's overall transport policy, is unlikely to be in your favour there. It's not just a question of how much special cycle provision would cost--it's about what the proposers of the scheme expect it to do, and that obviously doesn't have anything to do with cycling.

As its basic design parameters tell against it, influencing this scheme to be something sensible is undoubtedly a lost cause. The only thing you might do here is to try to get them to drop the scheme entirely. This is probably also a lost cause, but slightly less lost if there is local opposition that could perhaps be galvanised (perhaps on the issue of old walls being knocked down, loss of amenity, more traffic, more noise/pollution, etc.). There does seem to be quite a lot of walking there, a clear sign of an under-developed junction with much more potential.

(I see this from a London perspective and I don't know what the political climate is like in Liverpool--and what could reasonably be expected, or whether a temporary rejection of the scheme would really improve any future proposals.)

If you wanted to get towards influencing such schemes, you'd have to start somewhere smaller where the engineers might listen to you, and work up to bigger things.

Hm, not very hopeful, I guess, and you may well already understand all these things. I just thought it was an interesting case study of quite how much is wrong with most traffic schemes that are done.