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news
Kids riding to school (CC licenced by EdinburghCycleChic)Cambridge residents' association opposes plans for two-way cycling on local one-way streets
A residents association in Cambridge has called for a ban on cars to make a school traffic rat-run more cycle friendly - saying that now is not the time for contraflow cycle lanes in the area.
The North Newtown Residents Association (NNRA) has said that it cannot endorse plans to introduce two-way cycling in the area close to Hills Road because of the ‘dangerous’ levels of traffic around several schools.
Cambridgeshire County Council is looking into bringing in two-way cycling on a number of one-way streets as a way of using some of the £6 million cycling ambition fund it has been awarded by central government.
Helen Higgs from the NNRA was reported the Cambridge News as saying that two-way cycling needed to be introduced as part of a wider package.
"Too many rat-running cars go through the area, we have too many school drop-off cars coming into the area – we have too many people visiting the area who have to park their cars somewhere," she told the county council.
"The problem at the moment is you've got a mixture of rat-running cars – we have too many cars coming into the area – and schoolchildren criss-crossing the area. It's not safe until the whole area becomes more cycling friendly.
"At the moment, it's a dangerous mixture.
"We want more cycling and safe walking, we want to make north Newtown once again a pleasant place to live and work. But instead we find ourselves forced into opposing what should be part of the solution."
Cllr John Hipkin said: "The increasing feeling in the city is we have got to reduce, control volumes of traffic coming into the city.
"I think we will have to wait until traffic cannot move at all until members from outside the city finally concede that they too have got to be part of a plan to alleviate traffic."
Martin Lucas-Smith from the Cambridge Cycling Campaign added: "Two-way cycling enables more schoolchildren to cycle through the area, avoiding dangerous areas like the Cambridge Catholic church junction."
Last year we reported how councillors postponed a decision on a implementing a £1.8 million bike path project citing concerns about “kamikaze” cyclists.
Cambridgeshire County Council’s were debating plans for improved cycling facilities on Hills Road and Huntingdon Road, but called for revised plans to be submitted in July, despite warnings from council officers that Government funding for the scheme had to be spent by May.
Councillors expressed concern that the proposed floating bus stops, which allow cyclists to safely pass stationary busses, would be a hazard for pedestrians who would have to cross cycle lanes to board and disembark.
John Williams, Liberal Democrat councillor for Fulbourn, said: “I can’t tell you how often I see cyclists disobeying red lights and not stopping at pedestrians crossings and pelican crossings.
“I don’t have any confidence cyclists will give way to pedestrians moving to the bus stop because of what I see going on in this city with cyclists.
“Unless we make pedestrians the priority at these bus stops, I have serious concerns there will be an accident.”
Williams’ fellow Liberal Democrat, David Jenkins, councillor for Histon, said: “I’m concerned about cyclists’ behaviour. It’s only a small minority, but it’s a significant small minority of kamikaze cyclists in the city and they are intolerant of other road users, and there has to be some way of policing them.
“Simply allowing them to have priority means less confident bus users will be stranded on the island as these guys go past.”
And earlier this year we reported how campaigners hit out at the board of Cambridge City Deal after it rejected a proposal to build long-distance cycling routes into the city from outlying towns and villages.
A meeting of the City Deal executive backed the Chisholm Trail and city-centre cycling facilities, but rejected longer-distance rural projects recommended by a January 12 meeting of the arger City Deal Assembly.
After the decision City Deal executive board members were slammed for not understanding how facilities enabling people to ride in from further away could help with the city's congestion problems.
Latest Comments
- CarlosFerreiro 7 min 9 sec ago
No mention of the design process for the cycle lane being looked at? The lane not being usable was identifed as a contributing factor to a fatal...
- hawkinspeter 13 min 26 sec ago
She's He's not my Queen King and certainly has no ownership of our language!
- bensynnock 1 hour 5 min ago
I see a car go through a red light at almost every single cycle at every single junction. ...
- chrisonabike 2 hours 3 min ago
Also don't forget - Sustrans are a charity *....
- chrisonabike 2 hours 15 min ago
Yes ... but (just due to the large numbers of people affected) this likely would only proceed in the UK at a very ... cautious ... pace....
- EK Spinner 2 hours 32 min ago
Arsehole in the van not with standing, how did they manage to get a risk assessment allowing a race (a group not a TT) group to be competing on ...
- RafaDy 2 hours 28 min ago
I think reviewer completely missed the point here trying to match bike's name with what it can do. Ribble is namin git's bike weirdly, the...
- Moist von Lipwig 5 hours 53 min ago
Bit of googling gone wrong in the article - the JAT is the Junction Assessment Tool, the Joint Approval Team appears to be a coutner terrorism...
- HKR 7 hours 8 min ago
Can't believe that child threw his bike on the floor at the end of that. Young people today have no respect... ;))
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11 comments
I'm not convinced the NNRA are saying anything particularly bad. They are saying, for instance "no-car zones outside the six schools in the area" would be "fantastic". The implication is that on residential one-way streets, putting in contra-flow cycle infrastructure (which, by the DfT doesnt have to be a lane at all - just arrows and markings on the road) on fast-moving, aggressive one-way roads could be seriously problematic. The NNRA are then proposing, rather than rejecting anything, an even more radical answer - road closures or timed closures. Frankly, I'd much rather have road closures than contra-flows. So why doesn't Cambridge CC find common ground with an organisation that sounds like it's essentially on cyclists' side?
yeah, wot he said. Rat running and kids cycling to school don't mix regardless of directions. Sounds like they are proposing something much more radical and worthwhile.
NNRA sounds a little like NRA the rabid gun lot in the states, who think the best way to protect everyone is for everyone to tool up to the max. Anyone who isn't should wear bulletproof vests or those cute little bulletproof school rucksacks for children..
This bunch,especially the Cllrs seem almost as rabid about cars and driving frankly.
It's the sound of Dinosaurs dying
I wish the short (and tweeted) version of the headline could be changed- "Cambridge" doesn't oppose it. The Newtown residents association opposes it.
It's one way in Bridge Street but hundreds, thousands of c*nts on bicycles disobey this and cycle the wrong way up Bridge Street, if you are lucky they are on the road, but many of the f*ckers ride on the pavement especially if a bus comes meaning peds have to jump for their lives or indeed people standing on the pavement, or exiting premises or shops nearly get hit. I hate f*cking cyclists. I say put snipers on roof tops to take them out.
I can't make sense of this. How would having contra-flow cycle lanes increase the car traffic?
It might be a side-issue to the 'real problem', but I don't get the reason to therefore actively oppose it.
We've had contraflow cycling in Cambridge for years: in some places decades. I am not aware of a single collision as a result of this policy.
Whereas the double-roundabout between Lensfield Rd and Trumpington Rd is one of the worst in the city for actual collisions, and is one of the features that people on bikes are trying to avoid by using back-street routes, which is made easier with contraflow cycling.
Residents need to get a sense of perspective. Although they are not wrong that traffic volume should be reduced as well.
Have you heard of the term "subjective safety"? In general cycling isn't as dangerous as many people believe. Not to ignore the tragic and avoidable incidents that do occur, but by far the bigger issue is the fear that many will feel when, for instance, cycling towards a bus coming at them head-on with only inches to spare. Most parents would wince at the very thought of putting their kids in that situation.
Telling people to man up and get used to the idea isn't going to lead to mass cycling across wide demographics. In the Netherlands cycling *is* safer in real terms, but more importantly people feel safe on bikes.
In the Netherlands you will also find two-way cycling on one-way streets, on local streets where there isn't the room / traffic volume to have segregated cycle infrastructure.
No-one has to use a contraflow cycle route: it is an option that makes routing more straight-forward and convenient, but if you want to avoid a particular street because it feels unsafe, go ahead.
Residents are objecting to giving other people options, and specifically options that make it easier to avoid the both subjectively and objectively unsafe main roads.
My understanding is that in the Netherlands those kind of roads will generally have the traffic volume reduced by other means, such as closing the road to (motorised) through traffic, ie rat-running. You might see signs explaining "auto te gast", "cars are guests".
The problem is that local authorities can be quick to stick in a contra-flow cycling sign on a normal one-way road because it doesn't cost much and they can tick their "cycle-facility" box. But as the residents are pointing out it doesn't work for them, because traffic levels are still uncomfortably high. Admittedly I don't know the area. Are you able to point out the nice safe child-friendly (but still direct and convenient) alternative option? Or are you just fine with it as long as it works for you?
There are at least three schools in the area: it is a destination, and as such there can be no alternative to the last stretch to the door of the schools. There is an alternative for some of the journey up until that point, and it is main roads which have accident blackspots at major junctions on them.
There are already a lot of people who cycle their children to those schools. This is Cambridge, after all: cycling rates here are high, all ages and gender-balanced. I'm not saying this is an ideal environment, but opening up those streets gives parents more options than they have now. Parents and kids are using these routes anyway, but either with unnecessary detours, or by being forced to use main roads for longer stretches.
It is effectively holding to ransom one improvement for the sake of something else unrelated that should also change. As converting one-way streets to two-way for cycling is a city-wide project, it will ultimately cost more to treat this area individually, or it gets missed off the list and no improvements are made.
In other areas of the city residents are requesting, and getting, their roads closed to through-traffic, or new double-yellow lines, or residents' parking, or whatever changes they need to make their streets more congenial to them. They don't need to screw others over and hold up improvements to do so.