Bouncing Around Bournemouth

I was in town for a couple of days and part of the plan was an afternoon seeing what was going on with infrastructure redevelopment to enable cycling around the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole area. 

I am grateful to my fellow chartered civil engineer, Engineer Like a Girl, for giving up her afternoon to take me on an infrastructure safari in a loop which took in a large chunk of the Bournemouth and Poole parts of the council area. I should also give a shout out to public cycle hire operator, Beryl for sorting me out with one of its freshly serviced hire cycles which operates in BCP. Being an electric model, I barely noticed the 17 miles we cycled!

I'll prelude the rest of the post mentioning a slide I used at the conference which used Active Travel England's excellent map-based "Plan Your Active Travel Schemes" website which has lots of data to play with. I used it to show that the main road network in the area is fully joined up in contrast with the patchy cycling network. As I keep saying, until there is a decent primary cycle network in an area, it will never provide anywhere near the level of service provided by the existing and comprehensive motoring network. 

Fortunately, BCP council has been very successful at levering investment for infrastructure projects in recent years. Some of the legacy network has been improved and new connections are being made, both with cycle tracks on main roads and with filtered streets. It shows that yet again, local authorities need steady funding in order to build their capacity for delivery as do their supply chains.

So, at last, what did we see? Let's start at Glenfurness Avenue and specifically, a bridge over the railway (above). You can see a pretty narrow road bridge which would have been pretty awful to cycle on and previously, people walking would have been crammed on a narrow footbridge to the east.

The council has provided not one, but two new parallel bridges for walking and cycling over the railway which is part of longer term plans for a strategic route between Bournemouth town centre and Ferndown. The photograph above shows the arrangement of the bridges which provide a continuation of the footway on both sides of the street.

Crucially, as the two bridges are identical, they also provide with-flow cycling space on both sides of the street which connects to new cycle tracks and then existing lanes on both sides of the railway. On their own, the bridges and the short sections of cycle track won't change the world, but the council has invested at a location which is vital to provide future connectivity and even locally, the new bridges are enabling local trips. 

A pair of bridges on their own won't deliver a cycling network and there will be people saying that nobody uses them, but it's the kind of thing that has to be built before we have any hope of wider delivery. Drivers have taken over the original bridge and have the roads either side; we have to create that safe cycling space before we can even start to match the level of service driving has.

While the bridges at Glenfurness Avenue are important investments, they are probably not that sexy to the non-transport person, and for some cycle track action we had a look at Ringwood Road in Poole, a busy A-road dual carriageway (A3049). The work on the road was still in progress, but even then, we saw people using the new layout, including the two children travelling independently in the photograph above. 

The project required the narrowing of the traffic lanes across the dual carriageway and the movement of the central reserve to the north-west to free space for the cycle track. It would have been very easy to have retained the previous status of a shared-use path and so the investment has released clear space for walking and wheeling, as well as new crossings and a 30mph speed limit. 

The photograph above is at the junction with Loewy Crescent, which is a cul-de-sac serving less than 40 dwellings. Ideally, a junction like this would either be closed to motors or made exit only because drivers turning in from a higher speed environment (notwithstanding the 30mph limit) are less likely to want to stop on a dual carriageway to let people cycling pass. 

This is not an option with a cul-de-sac of course and so controlling the speed of drivers turning left into the side street relies on the kerbed buffer to the main carriageway and the "corner" of where the footway meets the side street carriageway. This creates the turning radius which controls speed. Perhaps the buffer could have been increased locally with a little bit of a bending out of the cycle track from the main road and the turning radius a little tighter, but the drivers we observed seemed to cope OK.

To the north-east, the A3049 corridor becomes Wallisdown Road which has seen significant investment in the last few years to create strategic and protected cycling space. The photograph above shows two-way cycle tracks on both sides of the street which had the speed limit reduced from 40mph to 30mph (I'll come back to the shared space area later).

The project provides access to an extensive employment area and connections to Bournemouth University. I won't link to it, but the investment of money and space for cycling upset the clickbaiting local newspaper and of course the Daily Mail which whinged that cyclists and pedestrians have 33 feet of space with motorists squeezing onto a 21 feet wide street. I assume the use of "feet" plays to their shrinking readership. 

It's 10 metres vs 6.4 metres in units I understand, but in the 5 metres each side of the carriageway, we're getting a footway and a 2-way cycle track which is an efficient use of space and anyway, who cares what the right wing press thinks.

The section of shared-use path I mentioned above comes from compromise. The designers couldn't reduce the carriageway any further and still needed to accommodate a bus stop which has given rise to a feature that I have never seen in the UK, but which is common in the Netherlands, and which is a kerbed passenger island (above).

The general UK practice would be to have a shelter plonked in the shared-use path somewhere with pedestrians, passengers and cyclists sharing. We don't really want to have shared space, but the use of a kerbed passenger island is actually useful conceptually. People getting on a bus are interested in doing that and their mind may not be on people cycling. Equally, people getting off the bus have their minds on making sure they have their bags, shopping, children etc and so haven't quite changed from a passenger to a pedestrian yet. 

It is an idea that Professor Nick Tyler of University College London terms "pedenger", and giving people space to transition from passenger to pedestrian leans into the concept and which is why having people cross cycling space from a bus stop or shelter creates worry for some people. The photograph above is a Dutch layout which provides "pedenger" space and whilst the cycle track is mainly for cycling, it is also walking space for those who need it. My criticism of the council's design is it really should have been paved in light grey block paving or similar to give it good contrast to the shared area.

While mentioning materials, I should mention another phase of the Wallisdown Road corridor project to the south-east which has me in a quandary. The photograph above is actually of a footway and not a cycle track (that is to be added to the right) and I say this because the surface has been machine-laid and is definitely the smoothest footway I have seen in the UK.

The flipside is that the council is (in common with most UK projects) using asphalt for footways which stems from a perception that they are easier to maintain than concrete element or flag paving, but in which we lose making footways a distinct colour. 

I mourn this loss of distinctiveness. I would also say that for this section, there is a parallel service road to the south-west which might have been best for the walking route which would have meant the main road only needed a cycle track rather than both a cycle track and a footway for this section (with there being a pair of with-flow cycle tracks under construction).

Back over to Poole and we had a look at Wimborne Road, a busy north-south B-road which is a strategic cycling route having some basic cycle lanes improved. The photograph above is the junction with Tatnum Road and Garland Road which is exactly where investment should be targeted as junctions are the riskier places for cycling. The carriageway width and junction side streets have been tightened up, cycle tracks added and new green estate provided.

Further north and the junction with the A35 Fernside Road has been redesigned for a better walking, wheeling and cycling experience, including the filtering of Darbys Lane (see above). This was a Covid-19 filter which has been incorporated into the new layout with motor access provided from an alternative location which is an example of the motoring and cycling networks being unravelled from each other, with Darbys Lane providing access to a quieter set of residential streets.

The photograph is a little closer to the main junction and shows how the redesigned filter operates as a two-way cycle track which splits at the traffic signals to become with-flow cycle tracks on Wimborne Road in the distance. There is also access to the long filtered Mellstock Road to the west of the junction as well as extensive greening.

I doubt many would wish to cycle on the A35 Fernside Road, but the junction design at least provides a protected transition to the carriageway, albeit from a bit of shared space (above) and access to the junction for cyclists (below), although I would have much preferred to see asphalt to asphalt tie-ins and some of the tactile paving is of the wrong type!

This post is only really a snapshot of what I saw on my afternoon's cycle around as there were lots of other large and small projects underway in the council's area. The important thing to take away is that BCP Council has been consistently planning and delivering using grant funding which has enabled it (and the supply chain) to grow skills, capacity and pipeline, and this is vital if we are going to deliver elsewhere. There is of course so much to do, but addressing 100 years of increasingly prioritising driving won't be addressed overnight.

Oh, and did I mention that lots of the new stuff has red cycle tracks which is, of course, the correct colour? #TeamRed