Barriers to enjoying the CS3

The launch of the Hire Bike Scheme has seen the Cycle Superhighways pale into relative insignificance. Which is just as well. Or perhaps it's just that the blue paint is fading faster than expected in several parts. Anyway, I took a spin along CS3, Barking to Tower Gateway, the other day.

The bit along Cable St is good (though of course it's only a blued-up and smoothed-over version of the mile of separated cycle track that was there already).

At Limehouse Basin the strange contraflow maze is still entertaining topologists, with surprising gems like this Continental-style wrong-side-of-the-road challenge here.


Also at Limehouse Basin is a swing bridge. If you're unlucky, it's swung when you arrive, and you have to wait a couple of minutes while river traffic shuttles between basin and Thames.

Now, the devious blogger might take a picture of it in this state, and make a cheap crack about the CS3 not being continuous when it has this barrier across it. That would be unfair.


No. The actual barrier across the CS3 is further on, here in East India Dock. If you can find it after the blue paint mysteriously runs out for a few hundred yards.

If you're not sure which way to go, simply get a camera out and pretend to take a picture. Within seconds, a security guard will rush out and shout clear, firm instructions for you to clear off or he'll call the police, pointing the way helpfully with his fist.

Strange ways in Tower Hamlets: Horseferry Rd contraflow

What would you do here? You're a bit east of Tower Bridge, and heading east on Narrow St towards Limehouse Basin (pic 1, right).


Well, you'd turn left, obviously, into Spert St. You can see that the road ahead is no entry, and two signs point you left. And you never disobey a traffic sign.

Anyway, if you've ridden here before, you know that this is a sort of square-roundabout clockwise one-way system, as in the Google map on the right.


Wrong! You're obviously a lycra lout who enjoys knocking over old ladies on the pavement. In fact, you should have gone straight on.

If you do turn left, this is what you see: a new bike contraflow coming on your side, the wrong side, the 'continental' side, towards you. (Pic 2, right. That big thing in front of you is the entrance to Limehouse Link, and just round the corner from here is Rotherhithe Tunnel, by the way, east London's answer to the Large Hadron Collider.)


But you carry gamely on, along Horseferry Rd (pic 3, right), not sure whether you should be in the marked-off cycle lane (in which case you're going the wrong way) or just to the right of it (in which case the cars behind you hoot because you're 'not in the bike lane').


Eventually you get near the end of the third side of the square (pic 4, right), where you turn left to rejoin the road you originally left, still wondering what's going on.

What's happened is that the old one-way system has been made two-way for bikes. Which is good.

Except it's bad, because (a) it's been done in a confusing way - with bikes being put on the wrong side of the road and (b) half the signage (so far, anyway) is missing.


Presumably, cyclists are now expected to go the opposite way round the square to the traffic, anticlockwise. (Perhaps this is to give westgoing cyclists who can't make it to Dignitas better access to Rotherhithe Tunnel.)

Except that if you do, you're liable to get confused when you see No Entry signs like this (pic 5, right) apparently barring your progress.

But every cyclist I saw on Thursday and Saturday last week was still going round the same way as the traffic (quite legitimately, of course), contrary to the contraflow.

In other words, the wrong way. Or maybe the right way. Or the wrong wrong way. Or something.

I don't know. I have no idea. I don't think the council do either.

But let's be optimistic. Good things can come from this. In 1736, faced with the problems of crossing bridges in the most efficient way in Konigsberg, Euler came up with a whole new branch of mathematics to solve them: topology. Maybe that Marcus du Sautoy bloke off the telly could come up with something here to unite String Theory, the Riemann Zeta Function, and where to turn left to find the riverside path.

Mind you, this is Tower Hamlets, home of the Glamour Ride: they sometimes do have strange ways here...

Wrong-side cycling at the Elephant

I like these little bits of the continent in London: double-contraflow places where both you and oncoming cyclists have to keep to the right.

Savoy Court has been Britain's most famous example of a wrong-side 'road', with cars, taxis, cack-handed traffic lights and all. Sadly, it's being semi-pedestrianised, which will spoil that experience.

Cyclists using the separated cycle path in Tavistock Place though can continue to enjoy life on the other side, if briefly, and bewilderingly.


So I was pleased to notice this one (both pics) the other day, on Southwark Bridge Road just north of the Elephant, by Keyworth Street.

I noticed it because I nearly collided with an oncoming cyclist who was as temporarily confused as me.

So why go to Paris for a weekend and pay £6 for an overbranded lager just for the privilege of right-side cycling, when you can do both of those in London?

Goodwill to all men (even this one)

It's the season of goodwill, so I'll bear no malice against the white van man who parked blocking the contraflow in Roper Lane, just south of Tower Bridge. After all, the number plate says it all.

Is this the right way?: The City's new contraflows

New bike contraflows with custom signs are all the rage in London these days. Permeability is the new black. Two-way cycling is the new Twitter. Being shouted at by a taxi driver who thinks the street is still one-way is the new rock and roll.

The City is the latest borough to unveil a set. Five opened today, in West Smithfield, Cloth Fair, Salisbury Court, Creechurch Lane and Finsbury Circus. (Fann St, a purported sixth, doesn't count as it's two-way for traffic.)

Last week I discussed Kensington and Chelsea's contribution to the counter-directional cycling movement. Taking advantage of relaxed new government guidelines on signing such things, they show the entrance to a contraflow with the hitherto illegal combination of 'no entry' sign plus plate saying 'Except cyclists'.


The City, of course, like doing things their own way. Not for them the bully-boy tactics of the Met Police, for instance, arresting cyclists for going down a deserted pavement when cars flagrantly ignore ASLs on the adjacent road. No. They have their own force, the City Police, for arresting cyclists for going down a deserted pavement when cars flagrantly ignore ASLs on the adjacent road.

So no surprise that the City have their own approach to signing: for them it's the 'stunt motorbike' sign (above right), of a powered two-wheeler vaulting a car, denoting 'no motor vehicles' - so, by implication, allowing cycles. They paint a mini-give-way line with a bike, and hey presto, there's your contraflow.


At the other end, they warn incoming drivers of oncoming cyclists with a sign we rather like. It says ONCOMING CYCLISTS (right). To us, that concisely informs drivers that there may be cyclists oncoming. It's often reinforced with one of those blue signs that looks like a bike taking a ride down in a lift.


There's also a temporary sticker mounted on the kerbside saying LOOK BOTH WAYS (right). It's very well-designed, in an eye-catching yellow and blue. I nearly ran over two people who were staring at the sticker while walking across in front of me.

Anyway, I explored the five new contraflows this morning. Some are so new they were still having the finishing touches from the construction crew. They're all rather shorter and more obscure than you might expect from the coverage they've had in the press.


Salisbury Court (pictured right, and very top right) is being touted as now enabling a continuous backstreet alternative to going up New Bridge St, north from Blackfriars Bridge. In practice nobody will be able to find it until this notional route is signposted; it'll be a useful, though very minor, aid to permeability, when commuters eventually manage to find it.

West Smithfield makes it now possible to cycle away from Carluccio's if you've been eating there, instead of having to push your bike 20m.


Cloth Fair (right and second-top right) smooths and shortens the way for cyclists going north from say St Paul's to the Barbican (along the satisfyingly named Little Britain).

Finsbury Circus is useful for cyclists going to, well, Finsbury Circus. There must be some of them I suppose.

And Creechurch Lane's southern end, thrillingly situated at the foot of the Gherkin, provides a bit more permeability for those going south through the City, enabling a faster escape for bankers keen to spend their Christmas bonus before the lynch mobs arrive.

I was the only cyclist using all of them. As ever in the city, all of them had parked delivery vehicles, meaning quite a bit of squeezy-pasty stuff when I was using the contraflow and a vehicle was coming the other way. But, as ever in the city, drivers waved cheerily with their fingers, indicating I was the first cyclist they'd seen using the new facility, or perhaps the second. Nah, seriously, I didn't have a problem. It seemed like they'd not only seen the signs but actually understood them. Unlike the Copenhagen Summit.

In sum, it's not much. But it's a start. As they say, 'Every journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, before the City Police stop you and ask why you're taking photographs'.

Cabbages, King's Road, and contraflow cycle lanes

I've just received my Dec-Jan copy of the London Cycling Campaign magazine. The LCC is like a Cabbage Marketing Board: you can sort of imagine what they're supposed to be doing, but you're not aware of anything they've actually done.

Anyway, among the mag's out-of-date news stories is one about Kensington and Chelsea's decision to pioneer new signing on contraflow cycle lanes.

Now, as I understand it from this Central Office of Information news story, the situation is this. The government is keen to cut red tape, and is letting local councils tweak road signs without having to get approval, as part of a Traffic Signs Review. The Review started on 17 September and runs until this Thursday, 10 December. K&C was one of the first councils to take this up.


As part of their review, K&C have put up signs for contraflow cycle lanes that are normally considered illegal: a simple 'No entry' sign with a plate below it saying 'Except cycles'. Such signs are legal in Scotland, and widely used on the continent - one of the few bits of Dutch I'm fluent in is 'Uitgezonderd fietsers'. You'll have seen several examples in 'illegal' use already, though, like the one (right) at the entrance to Petworth St near Battersea Bridge.


But in England, you're supposed to design the entry to a contraflow cycle lane like the Great Gates of Kiev, with no-entry signs for cars, and the bike lane barriered off and signed separately with a blue cycle-lane sign, like the correct example on the right into Herbrand St near Tavistock Square. Cambridge Cycle Campaign's gallery page has more examples for fans of counter-directional pedalling.

Now, K&C's new signs are on five quiet back streets: Gilston Rd and nearby Hollywood Rd, off Fulham Rd; and the almost-contiguous Holland St, Old Court Place (below right) and Thackeray St off Kensington Rd. In each case the start of the contraflow is marked by the 'illegal' except-cyclist sign and a short or medium length painted cycle sign.


The idea is that, with fewer literal and metaphorical barriers to creating contraflow cycle lanes, councils might be readier to do it, and make streets more permeable, which would be a good thing. The Holland St / Old Court Place / Thackeray St set, for example, is a newly-created contraflow sequence. I cycled all the above back streets in both directions yesterday, and it felt no more dangerous than say a Go Go Hamster.

If the idea catches on after the review finishes this week, expect a few silly news stories on the lines of 'now cyclists are being allowed to go the wrong way up all one-way streets' - as did the BBC website's report last year. Make no mistake: these are very quiet back streets, and the stretches affected are only a few dozen yards, less than the total of column inches they've already generated.

But make no mistake also that these will really encourage councils to shift the emphasis from car to cycle. As the K&C spokesperson quoted in the LCC mag said themselves, this measure will "reduce street clutter" and "allow more parking"...

...Oh. Well, I never did like cabbage much anyway.

As one door closes, another knocks you off

In the latest issue of New Scientist is an article about a cyclist-detecting car door being developed by BMW. If sensors detect an object nearby as the door is opened, the door opening is automatically damped.

At the moment the technology can only detect lampposts, but they're working on the detection of more convenient forms of transport such as bikes.

To make things even easier for lazy drivers, they could add an automatic recorded announcement that shouts at the cyclist and complains that we don't pay road tax.

In that curious management jargon that equates technology with pastry, BMW hasn't yet made a decision whether to 'roll it out'.

Meanwhile there are still terrible contraflow cycle lanes that force you to run the door-opening gauntlet of parked cars, such as the one in Ebury St (right).

There's a straightforward low-tech solution - make all one-way roads two-way for cyclists and make the speed limit 15mph - but few politicians are going to stick their neck out on that one. Unless German engineering can come up with a problem-sensing device for political necks.