On Friday the Croydon Cycling Campaign met with council officers on site at Mitcham Road to discuss the redesign of the road. We have previously suggested a re-design involving bay parked cars and a two-way cycle track between such parking and the pavement, which you can see here. This was an exciting opportunity to discuss this possibility with the designer, the biking borough officer and the highway engineer who are looking at the problems with Mitcham Road. A warning to reader’s though. This is going to get very, very detailed.
As a little refresher, here’s the road in question:
Sadly, one of the key aspects of our plan was shot down immediately; the bay parking. The barrier? Cars are not permitted to reverse out onto a road. As a corollary, car parking is not allowed to be designed in such a way as to encourage/allow drivers to do this. It’s hard to argue with this sensible safety measure. It would be good to one day see laws enacted to allow this option, forcing drivers to only reverse park into these bays and making it part of the driving test. However, this is a national issue, not an option to us at the moment, and is highlighted here with the intention of documenting a specific case where national policy is making it harder to build better infrastructure for cyclists.
The second issue we face is with the pedestrian refuges. In our proposed design, the refuges would be wider and double as a traffic calming measure. The problem is that Mitcham Road is used heavily by lorries, meaning that a few car parking spaces would have to be lost either side of the refuges in order to create room for them to manoeuvre around. The council officers will not currently put forward any proposals that require removing car parking spaces because it is their belief that the cabinet transport committee will instantly dismiss any plans that remove car parking. We proposed instead replacing the refuges with pedestrian crossings that are continuous, getting pedestrians safely across the road in one go, i.e. pelican or zebra crossings. However, pelican crossings require an area of clear space either side of them, which would again mean removing car parking space. Building a zebra crossing may be a possibility and is perhaps our best hope of recovering road space lost to the pedestrian refuges, but may still be difficult to get past the transport committee. The barriers here are mostly political.
The need for lorries to use this road also means we won’t be able to squeeze much space out of the road by narrowing the lane widths. The trees on the pavement restrict the usable width of the pavement, but cannot be moved themselves. We’re not big fans of this, but some space might be able to be squeezed from the road by having part-pavement parking over the pavement space in between the trees. Ultimately, there’s not going to be enough space we can squeeze out of the road for anything more than a single segregated track. The plan is looking likely to be to have this running eastbound. A significant amount of the segregated cycle track is also likely to be covered in part by car door zone. Signposting for the parallel route along Westcombe ave and Rochford Ave is likely to be added for less confident cyclists travelling in the westbound direction. For more experienced cyclists, removal of the pinch points and the current cycle paths painted on the road should make things more pleasant for vehicular cycling in the westbound direction.
All things considered, it’s an improvement but it’s not going to be enough to put the children of the Lanfranc school on their bikes. The council is in talks with the cemetery to try and connect up a route through the cemetery to Commonside E, though the likelihood is that this would only be usable during cemetery opening hours, 9am-5pm during the winter months (until 7pm in summer). There are still other unresolved problems, even if we had managed to get our suggested solution. When you get past Mitcham Road and start passing through Mitcham Common, the cycle lanes are still far too narrow and often blocked by debris/puddles/overgrown foliage. This narrow road is unlikely to ever be able to support two lanes of traffic and two sufficiently wide cycle lanes. That was an oversight on our part. It may be time to start asking “What would the Dutch do?”.
Let’s ask that. One of the things that “Go-Dutch” promoters have been pushing is how the Dutch ‘unweave’ the main cycling routes from the main driving routes. What if we were to ‘unweave’ the westbound traffic from Mitcham Road by making Mitcham Road one way, forcing westbound traffic around Mitcham Common via the A232 and A237? That way we could reduce Mitcham road to one-lane of traffic, leaving plenty of space for wide, segregated cycle tracks in both directions. Political barriers around car parking would be avoided, and while motorists passing through would have longer routes to take, it would just become a question of capacity on the alternative route. This is also open to a trial, as the road can be temporarily closed to see if traffic chaos ensues or if its just business as usual.
The added benefits are that such excellent cycle facilities would begin the start of a process known as ‘traffic evaporation’ whereby improved conditions for cyclists results in people taking the bike instead of the car. Also, the headteacher of Archbishop lanfranc school has complained about inconsiderate driving, including 3-point turns, during rush hour bringing traffic to a halt on Mitcham Road, a problem quickly solved by making the road one-way.
Perhaps I’m being optimistic though. Do you see any barriers this solution that I am missing? Or am I understating the size of the capacity/political barriers? Get me your thoughts ASAP as I’ll be looking to submit the idea to the council officers for consideration early next week.
bay parking does happen on similar urban A Roads, if you want an example see the A193 east of the junction of the B1315 on Tyneside, a road that carries LGV’s. Looks like a very similar road.
To ensure that people reverse in all you do is put the bays an an angle pointing towards the direction of traffic.
As ever you are not getting the full picture when they say “it can’t be done”. One suggestion might be that if there is an alternate route for LGV’s then I’d assume that LGV traffic could perhaps be made one way, which might mean that the motor vehicle lane in one direction could be narrowed and also they might have less of a problem with changing the parking.
Worth keeping at it and lobby councillors direct. Trees can be removed and replanted.
Very useful! Thank you!
“The council officers will not currently put forward any proposals that require removing car parking spaces because it is their belief that the cabinet transport committee will instantly dismiss any plans that remove car parking”
Same old same old. Let’s be clear, the council officers don’t want to put forward such a proposal because it doesn’t suit their “cars to prosperity” agenda. They are actually fearful that the proposal would be passed by the politicians, who would be pretty brave to be seen rejecting life-saving measures in favour of parking capacity following a tragedy. Better and easier to blame the politicians by pretending to second guess them than admitting to be the real obstruction.
Love the new website.
I understand your suspicions, but from speaking with the council officers and hearing the opinions of councillors, I’m inclined to believe that in Croydon it is the councillors holding things back. I’m open to change my mind on that as I learn more about how things work, but so far that’s what it looks like to me. I’ve addressed your comment and why I currently feel this way in the latest blog post: http://croydoncyclists.org.uk/croydons-contraflow-conundrum/
Glad to receive your thoughts btw, keep posting and thanks for the kind words about the website
OK, it’s possible that things have changed but I’m doubtful. At any one time and as a generalisation, you may have the officers on side, the politicians on side, both or neither. In my experience there has never been a time in Croydon when a critical mass of both politicians and officers have been pulling in the right direction, and the evidence for this is the poor cycling conditions in Croydon compared with more progressive boroughs.
Underlying my previous reaction is the point that it’s outrageous for the officers to second guess the politicians and then use that as an excuse for no action or inadequate actions. This practice creates a democratic deficit, whereby politicians cannot be held fully to account for their choices because they in turn have been denied by unelected officials the opportunity to make any significant choices.
The officers should be presenting a full range of options, stating which of those would be the most effective at improving safety and at what costs (e.g. to parking). Then the politicians can make real, hard choices and we can see where their sympathies really lie.
Well, how far back are you looking? Croydon has only had a biking borough officer since 2010, that’s a pretty significant change. 2 years ago now but I’d still call that fairly recent in the scheme of things.
While there were much more promising candidates for cycling in the London mayoral elections, Boris is a pro cycling mayor who has set TFL to push cycling onto the agenda of local councils. This is helping Croydon councillors to take cycling seriously as a mode of transport. This again is new. Take for example Steve O Connell’s recent attempts to bring cycle hire to Croydon.
I’m still learning on the councillor/officer thing, but I did speak to a very experienced Hackney cycling campaigner on Wednesday who said “council officers have very little power”. Basically, for Croydon to become a cycle haven all is required is backing of the councillors.
We also have to turn a critical eye to our own efforts. Promoting cycling requires a strong set of campaigners to push the issue onto the agenda of every councillor and educate as many of them on the benefits as possible. Cycling has taken off in a big way in the boroughs with the strongest cycling campaigns, namely Hackney, Southwark and Camden. We don’t have anything close to the campaigning strength of these boroughs. It’s on Croydon’s cyclists to change this, get involved and build an effective local cycle campaign.