Cycle Superhighways: safe as Bank of, er, Iceland

The Transport for London website has a nice new page with more details about the forthcoming Cycle Superhighways - the express cycle lanes which, it is confidently expected, will double the amount of cycle blogging in the capital.

The page indexes all 12 routes at a glance with their pretend start and finish dates. For the two routes opening this summer - Barking to Tower Gateway CS3, and Merton to Bank CS7 - there are also route maps and schedules of works.

There are also some artist's impressions (right) of what the routes will look like, which immediately contradict the assertions lower down the page that the routes will be 'direct and continuous'. (David Hembrow's blog analyses the impressionable artist's work in more detail. He's as unimpressed as we are.)


This is a more accurate impression (right) of how the routes will actually look.

The Superficial Cycleways are already a standing joke in cycling circles. But cycle campaigners are used to going round in circles.

It's not a particularly funny joke, though. Because there are many places where, we suspect, safety issues will be submerged beneath the B&Q emulsion.


Take, for example, the junction on the right. The cyclist is going west along the A24/A3, Kennington Road, just passing the fork left to Brixton Road. (The Oval cricket ground is just a Eoin Morgan reverse-sweep away to the north.) He wants to go straight on, towards Stockwell.

Now, at the moment, this is lethal. You can see why. From the previous junction, either you go along in the bus lane and then try to cut across a lane of fast-moving traffic; or you stay in the left of the middle, straight-on, lane, sandwiched between two lanes of fast-moving traffic.

And this is on Superficial Cycleway 3, Merton to Bank. So surely they'll sort it out, to make it 'safe and continuous'?

Maybe. Maybe not. The schedule notes provided on that TfL web page are unclear. All they talk about is "rearranging southbound traffic lanes... This will make it safer for cyclists".

Posting to the Lambeth Cyclists egroup about the "evil Oval", local cyclist Mark Knox said: "When some of us rode the route with the engineers and planners, we gave them all sorts of advice about this huge obstacle to easy cycling. One of our favoured options was restricting the left-turning Brixton/Camberwell-bound slip road to buses and cycles, and requiring all other traffic to carry on to the crossroads.

"What we stressed was that unless something radical was done to calm this junction, no route through it could be called a cycle superhighway. Sadly there is no mention of any measures to civilise the possibly even more perilous northbound straight-ahead journey through the junction."

Will such re-engineering happen? It's possible, just as it's possible that Lord Ashcroft might move in next door to us. But all we expect is a glossy strip of Dulux Caribbean Midnight. The great Cycle Superhighways Swindle. A bluewash.

Thames Crossings 16: Lambeth Bridge

Downriver from Vauxhall Bridge is Lambeth Bridge, dating from 1932.


It was built by Dorman Long, the Yorkshire company that made both the Tyne Bridge and Sydney Harbour Bridge. A plaque on the stonework by the roundabout on the south side of the bridge reminds you of its provenance: CONSTRUCTED BY DORMAN LONG & CO 1929-1932, YOU SOFT SOUTHERN JESSIES.


And the view from here is just as sensational as that from the coathangers of Newcastle of Sydney: the Palace of Westminster basking grandly in the sun by the waterside like, er, a large reptile.


Lambeth Bridge has mandatory bike lanes painted on either side which are five yards across. But because of an optical illusion they only appear nine inches wide, making this a rather unpleasant bridge to cross, despite its brevity.

There is a man employed to drive a white van endlessly across the bridge, looping round the roundabouts at either end all day. His job is to swish past to you as close as he can. He files reports back to base constantly on his mobile. So unless you're in a hurry, get off and walk and enjoy the views. Except of course if you're in London you're always in a hurry.


Just by the south side of the bridge is Lambeth Palace, the best-preserved Tudor building you can see from a road in London (right). When the Tour de France started off in London - a great incentive to ride away as fast as possible - they put up these amusing topiary figures of giant shrub-men riding bikes on the roundabout here.

Slicing across the roundabout there is a miniature rift valley of a bike lane that exemplifies the best in British cycle lane design. Unfortunately.

From here on the north side you go along Millbank, past a park and in front of the Houses of Parliament, and right around the tedious traffic flow of Parliament Square (near which there is Europe's safest pedestrian crossing, though you'd never realise it). On the south side you can ride the promenade for a photo-opportunity in front of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, which of course you can't see because it's the bell inside what's officially called the Clock Tower. Either way, Westminster Bridge is about half a mile away.

Lambeth puts Bike Hire Scheme on map

Hooray for Lambeth. The borough is first off the mark with its proposed list of locations for docking stations in London's definitely-happening Bike Hire scheme. We went to see and comment on a presentation of the proposed sites last night (right).

A map of the proposed sites is on the Lambeth website. Not all these sites will go through (which is why there are some clusters - they're alternatives).

The whole scheme is being pushed through in some haste from the top: work has to start in May 2009 and the first bikes have to be available by May 2010. So, for Lambeth and the other eight central London boroughs involved, coming up with the list of docking sites has been a frantic cross between Pin the tail on the donkey and Countdown.

We enjoyed a short promotional film in which Boris enthuses about the scheme and calls for our support. It's actually pretty good, giving the right sort of reasons and portraying cyclists in the right sort of way.

In the film, the scheme is imaged as a convenient, quick, easy, instant alternative to tube and bus, which are already at bursting point. Cyclists are portrayed, hooray, as not all wearing helmets, bright jackets and lycra, like mobile belisha beacons; but as normal people, unhelmeted and in jeans and skirts and everyday shoes, just getting from A to B.

(Helmets will not be provided as part of the bike hire, and quite right too. Boris stresses in the film that all research shows that more cyclist on roads means better safety. More cyclists on the road, many of them novices. Some road users won't like that. Well, get over it.)

So now starts the horse-trading over where docking stations can go. They are supposed to be every 300m or so, but some of the 'obvious' sites - such as on Belvedere Road, behind the old City Hall - are on private land. And private landowners sometimes have an attitude problem to two wheels. Such as when they block cycle lanes with planters the size of a small car, as they have done on Belvedere Road.

But we're very positive about the scheme. We take the simple approach: anything that gets more people cycling more often is good. Lambeth has set the pace; now, come on Southwark et al.