Velo-city2009 Segregated Cycling and Shared Spaces

8/14/2019 Velo-city2009 Segregated Cycling and Shared Spaces

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Shared Space & segregated cycling

in today's cities

This is a slightly modified and annotated version of the slides for the

presentation on Segregated Cycling, part of the Subplenary session on

Shared Spaces at the Velo-City conference 2009 in Brussels, Belgium.

The complete set of presentations at Velo-City 2009 can be found online here:

http://www.velo-city2009.com/programme-en/subplenaries-sessions.html

The Velo-City2009,Bruxelles MobilitandECFlogos are property of their

respective organizations. All original content Creative Commons

with attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) to

Esteban Garca ([email protected]).

With special thanks for their cooperation to the people in the Ciudad Ciclista

Network (http://ciudadciclista.org).


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Culture shock

This is a view on the present cycling culture in Europe

by a cyclist who was fortunate enough to spend years getting to know his

bicycle and his city all by himself,

without any contact with that culture,

and thus without any preconceptions about what he was supposed to think.


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A paradigm shift

is on the making

in our cities.

Peak oil, congestion, pollution, obesity, deterioration of public spaces

the dominant model for our cities during the XXth century is at the end of

the rope.

A new model is already here for the cities we want, and Shared Space is justone of the signs of it.


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We are at risk ofbecoming an obstacle

to the new paradigm.

And for the first time the urban bicycle users (or rather, the bicycle

advocates) are increasingly at risk of becoming a conservative and

reactionary force acting to preserve the XXth century status-quo and against

the new city paradigm.

The crucial point of this danger is our attachment to so called cycling

facilities, and specifically to segregated cycling structures.


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Segregated cycling

The problem comes with cycling facilities which are in fact segregated

structures:

Segregation: keeping motorised traffic in streets while marking specific part of

the streets width for bicycle use alongside same direction motor traffic.

The basic device for bicycle segregation is a longitudinal divide of the way,

trying to keep different kinds of traffic in different points of its width. The

elemental implementation is a longitudinal line (solid, dotted) on the roadway,

meaning bicycles to one side of the line, motor traffic to the other side.

Various enhancements can be provided (pavement coloring, barriers, different

ground levels approaching the cycling space to the pedestrian space) without

changing the essence of the concept.


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Segregation is often confused with, but by no means the same as,

reserved spaces for bicycle traffic (non-motorised streets, counterflow

cycle-only lanes).

Segregated and reserved cycling structures are often loosely and

incorectly bundled together, but they are completely different in nature and

need to be discussed separately if the issues are to be solved.


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Cycling segregation is a structural part of the dying paradigm on western

cities.

Cycling segregation is a completelly artificial concept, and an arbitrary

decision made several decades ago in a small part of Europe for ideological

reasons in no way related to cyclists safety or comfort.

A number of societies in Europe which could not develop segregated

cycling from the beguining of the car era have chosen for decades to

believe that they needed segregation to promote cycling. The fascination

with the Dutch Model has had a devastating effect on cycling culture and

bicycle use in large parts of Europe.


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Kill the concept.

The concept of segregated cycling in post-car cities

cannot possibly work (i.e., actually increase cycling safety and comfort)

is having destructive effects in the quality of public spaces

is, however, extremely attractive and has trapped the cycling community

collective mind has thus adversely affected cyclist advocacy and even the way cyclists see

ourselves, the use we do of our bicycles and our place in our cities.

and is in fact running against the desirable evolution of our cities

in all car-saturated societies.

We need to kill the concept of segregated cycling and move on to a

cycling paradigm acording to the present and future needs.


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Arguments forsegregated structures

The common sense argument. The Dutch do them argument.

The Everybody else does them argument.

The safety argument.

The BL create cyclists argument.

The vulnerable users argument.

The novice users argument.

The visibility argument.

The transition argument.

The etc etc etc argument.

In our fascination with the Dutch Model

and under the enticing cloack of a proper space for cycling

we have build a list of ad-hoc arguments to sustain the segregation

paradigm.


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Come live and cycle

in sunny Spain!

(Advertising break)

Lets have a look at the segregation paradigm at work.


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Door to door bike lanes!

Engineering

Now it is possible to cycle straight out of home into the cycle lane


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Cities designed from the ground for cycling!

Politics

Segregation as a first choice in design to the exclusion of designs that would

be possible, more modern, more realistic, and clearly safer.

Segregation as a pretext to justify bad, unsafe design.

Whole cities designed from scratch with dangerous configurations.


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Fantastic projects...

Engineering

Source:Ayunta

mientodeGuad

alajara|Guada

lajaraC

ityCou

ncil

Beautiful projects, lots of talent, time, bureaucracy and money


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...with few details left out!

Engineering

But when you actually go to see the place, the real effects are disheartening.

but the segregation bureaucracy goes on.

(The images show how the project in the preceding page would look if

implemented. Which are going to be taken out, the elderly people or the

vegetation?)


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Bike lanes through privilegednatural spaces!

Source:ht

tp://www.ecologistas

enaccion.org

Environment

Even emblematic natural spaces are being destroyed to serve the cycling

segregation ideology regardless of actual circumstances or needs.

(The image shows the building site of a bike path through Natural Park of

Doana in Spain, one of the most important natural reserves in Europe.

Aparently the perfectly safe, perfectly cyclable, old-fashioned path in thebackground of the photo is not good enough for cyclists, and the outcry by

conservationist and other civil groups in the area has not been enough to

stop the agression to the park commited in the name of cycling mobility.

The spanish cycling community has been notoriously absent from the

protests against this infrastructure).


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A no-fantasies street

Lets try to have a fresh look a cyclists needs from the starting point of a

real street like the ones in which I live and work: high density, double

parking, scarce space

How can we get to fill this kind of streets with people cycling?

Shared Space seems to bring in interesting ideas


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Shared space?

Source:Socia

te@Flickr.

But when we see a classic image purported to represent Shared Space, a

number of questions come to mind:

Where did they park all the cars?

How did they get those wide spaces?

How much money all that cost?

and it becomes clear that if this is Shared Space,

it is not something that can be readily applied

in a majority of the real streets that we have to deal with in our cities today.


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Pulse para aadir unttulo

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGCE6vI5j68

A cyclist in Shared space!?

And then, watching a Youtube video of cyclists riding in this kind of space,

we find

A cyclist entering the roundabout much too close to the edge

then making a left turn sign

(which is strange, because one of the uses of roundabouts is precisely to

eliminate left turns)


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First conflict... awkward... unduly gives way...

getting in an akward position in front of a incoming car

hesitating, almost foot to the ground finally giving way to the car

(which is strange, because in a normal situation

it is the vehicle inside the roundabout the one that has the priority)


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Riding along on the outside...

Riding alonside that car for a few seconds


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Second conflict... unduly takes preference...

Getting again in an akward position in front of that very same car,

which has to stop this time to give way to the cyclist


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Third conflict... crossing pedestrian style...

Forcing another car to stop to allow the cyclist cross the street


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Off we go!

Before going on her way through the wide open, flashy, expensive, shared

spaces of her city.


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Is this all

Shared Space has to offer

to cyclists?

because if it is, it is not something worth fighting for, from this cyclists

point of view.


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What is the problem?

The most strange thing is that the configuration of the roundabout and the

speed of traffic in it are so bike-friendly that it offers no difficulty for the

cyclist to ride through it in the most natural fashion

if only she wanted to.

Which brings us to the conclusion: the cyclist in the video is in fact

refusing to ride naturaly through the roundabout. She is making lifedifficult to herself and to the drivers around her because she keeps behaving

as if she were in a bike lane.

(which is in fact the case, but that is another matter).

In short: eighty years of cycling segregation have so crippled the cycling

culture in the Netherlands that cyclists are reluctant to ride naturally ineven the easiest and most friendly places.


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Empowering cyclists

Which brings us to another conclusion:

The main goal of any cycling policy in today cities must be

empowering cyclists to take back their cities streets and to regain

control of their own safety.

IfShared Space (or any other policy) is not going to bring about this

empowering of bicycle users, it is not worth pursuing.


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Fun fact #1:

Empoweringcyclists?

Cyclists' comfort has widely been used as a simple criterion for cycling

infrastructure, and as a pretext to justify cycling segregation.

Cyclists' comfort, just as cyclists' safety, has been unduly equalled with

difficulties in the road network, and thus engineering measures have

primarily been sought to increase it.

However, cyclists' comfort and safety are complex fenomena,

a function both of the physical difficulty of the space to cycle through and

of the cyclists skill.


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Empoweringcyclists?

The segregationist paradigm has made a enormous (and arguably

unsuccessful) effort over several decades to lower the physical difficulty of

the streets network for cyclists.

A direct effect of that effort has been a continuous lowering of the cycling

skills of the users needed to keep the comfort level.

Several damaging results of this process are visible in the cycling culture of

todays bicycle users throughout Europe, among others:

Cyclists who reportedly feel endangered in traffic, but who do not feel

concerned or able to follow the basic traffic discipline and rules.

Cyclists who cannot cycle confidently and naturaly in the most friendly

and easy streets and roads.


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A no-fantasies street

What does Shared Spacemean here?

Since the more visible version of the Shared Space concept doesnt seem of

much use to bicycle users, lets try to have a second look at its essentials,

strictly from a cyclists point of view,

from the kind of real streets we have to deal with:


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XXth Century urban planning:

Adapting cities to motor traffic.

Hard to argue this


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The ergonomic rulesof traffic

Right to driving space. Drive on the proper side. Rules for giving way. Speed positioning. Maneuver positioning.

The rock-bottom of adapting the streets to motor traffic is:

creating a uniform and simplified driving space in which drivers can behave

in simple, uniform, predictable and easy to understand and comunicate

ways.

The basic rules of traffic behavior do not need any road signalling to make

driving perfectly safe


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Space and visibility

A perfectly safe street to drive and ride.

Urban spaces don't need a lot of traffic signs to be safe...


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SLOW

provided that the driving goes at an appropriately slow speed.


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Source:fuenter e

bollo.com

and our forefathers new that very well.


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However, during the XXth century, traffic design has created a large array

of signaling tools


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SPEED

The name of the game is

Fun fact #2:

almost strictly to allow faster traffic speeds while trying to maintain the

safety level.


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The signal-saturated urban trafficnetwork:

Incoherent - Contradictory.

Ineffective.

Unwanted side effects.

Fun fact #3:

The irony of this is that

many of those tools are now being questioned as being ineffective for their

intended goal.

a number of elements with opposite functions (for instance speedfacilitators and speed limitators) are increasingly present next to each other

(and countering each other) in our cities.

the whole speed-centered system of design is having unintended and

unwanted side effects.


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The speed based engineering has corrupted

the behaviour of users.

Militarisingthe streets

Maybe the most damaging unintended effect:

The signalling was intended to make things easier for pedestrians and

drivers, but instead the signalling saturation has gotten in the way of a

natural use of public spaces.

Signals have become more important than people:

for a car driver it is not any longer important whether there is a pedestrian

trying to cross the street.

What is important is whether there is a zebra crossing for the pedestrian to

claim priority.

For one century now, we have been militarising the streets

so it is not surprising if people are forgetting how to act civil in them.


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Simplicity Uniformity

Maybe the main merit of the Shared Space concept is recognising that

this signalling overload has been an arbitrary, speed-minded adition

to the basic principles of street design


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Simplicity Uniformity

and trying to get back to those principles.


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We already have Shared space for cycling

in a vast mayority of our streets.

Fun fact #4:

Yes, we do!

If we only could convince people of it!


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Why can't we

Convince people?

How did we come to a point in which people think that just riding a bicycle

in a normal street is suicidal?

Lets have a look at this question.


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Strangely enough, in the huge array of traffic signals created during the

XXth century, signals created to warn drivers of dangers ahead or to

regulate their behaviour in every conceivable situation, there are only two

signals meant for bicycle users:

Signal 1: Bike lane: You are obliged to ride there.

Signal 2: You are forbidden to ride there.

(there are maybe a couple more signals, but all of them are dependent on

those two)

Isnt this strange?

What does this say about the cycling culture and the cycling advocacy of

the last century?


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Some traffic signs that do not exist...and the reason why.


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We have this sign...

We have this sign: Space shared by pedestrians and cyclists.


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But we do not have this one.

Why, in a century of traffic engineering, we have not been able to create

this sign: Space shared by bicycles and cars?

The answer: because the cycling community has decided that their space is

with the pedestrians

(where the cyclists have the upper hand)rather than with the car drivers.


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And we do not have this one either.

It is well known that pavement riding is highly dangerous why dont we

have a signal like this, prohibiting it?


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because they would be in conflict withthe sign that we have chosen to have.

vs. because it would contradict the other one that we have chosen instead.

Prohibiting pavement riding would challenge the segregation paradigm

that the cycling community have chosen for ourselves,

and thus it has to be allowed, even if proven

dangerous,a deterioration of the street quality for pedestrians

and a continuous source of conflicts with them.

)In fact, in most places pavement cycling is forbidden, but the prohibition is

rarely enforced).


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We have this sign,prohibiting a dangerous maneuver...

We have this sign, prohibiting lorries to ovetake cars in certain points

where it would be dangerous


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To prevent another frequent dangerous maneuver.But we do not have this one,

And we know that for a cyclist overtaking on the right a lorry or heavy

vehicle is extremely dangerous.

Why then dont we have this sign, prohibiting it?


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Why not?


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vs. because it would contradict the whole conceptof cycling that we have chosen to have.

In fact, the very concept of a segregated bike lane is an incitation to wrong

side overtaking by cyclists. How is it surprising that cyclists keep doing it

when they are in a street without a segregated structure?


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Cycling segregation has precluded thesearch for real solutions to real problems

by actual cyclists in real cities.

In short, the segregation paradigm has created an artificial mindframe

in which very real dangers to cyclists are unavoidable

And the measures to counter them are, simply put,

Unthinkable.


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We have chosen

a mind framework

acting against

the interests of cyclistsand the chances ofrecycling our cities.

Fun fact #5:


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The cycling community,

and the cycling advocates

Have painted ourselves into a (very dangerous) corner in our cities.

An the only way to break out of it is to kill the segregation paradigm.


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Killing the concept

Old paradigm:

Segregated lanes are

part of the solution.

New paradigm:

Segregated lanes are

part of the problem.


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Killing the concept

Old paradigm:

Create bike lanes

everywhere possible.

New paradigm:

Avoid creating BL if at all

possible.

Fully develop the alternatives

to segregation.

Clearly tell people to stopexpecting any more bikelanes.

The bit about stopping creating segregated structures is the easy part.

The really hard part is acknowledging to ourselves,

and to the cicling and not cycling public,

that a radical change in attitude and route is needed

if we reeally aim to turn bicycles in the dominant vehicle in our cities.


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We cyclists have been for 80 years trying to create our own space and own

rules.

Shared space, in cycling, in today's cities, means sharing space AND

RULES with cars.

And that means stopping lobbing for space and rules, and start lobbing for

space and rules that we can share.


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What do we want?

... Cycling facilities?

or

... Cycling cities?

Because Cycling facilietes and cycling cities are by no means the

same.

An the the inmediate future, and in the new paradigm for our livable cities,

both may in fact be quite opposite and incompatible.


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Shared space for cycling:

Velo-city2009 Segregated Cycling and Shared Spaces

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