Coast Road – Going Backwards

Capita are currently on site resurfacing footways alongside the Coast Road, at both ends close to Billy Mill and close to the Wills Building.  This is supposed to be a “cycling” scheme, with money coming via Newcastle’s Cycle City Ambition Programme.

Narrow shared use footways where bikes and pedestrians are corralled into inadequate fenced off space?  In 2017?  Surely not?

To say that North Tyneside Cycling Campaign are disappointed with this project is putting it mildly.  The Cycle City Ambition Funding, is “our” money, it came from central government resulting from a hard fought campaign for investment in “Space for Cycling“.

What should be happening on the Coast Road? (stay with us, this gets a bit technical)

In 2016 the Standards for Highways for cycling alongside roads like this were completely rewritten.  The excellent “IAN 195/16” at last makes it clear that shared use footways are no longer a design option, bikes are recognised as vehicles capable of “significant speed”, the absolute bare minimum is now a separate footway and a wide cycle track.

How wide you can get the footway and the cycle track depends on physical constraints.  You’ll see from the photo that a grass bank (containing a gas main) on the left, and the embankment down to the main carriageway of the coast road constrain the available width of the slip road, footway and cycle track.  A designer should be aiming for 2 metres for the footway, 2.5 (minimum) for the cycle track, and between 3 and 4 metres for the slip road.

2017 – ignoring standards

The width here is tight, but there’s just about room to do a proper job (as the cones demonstrate), so how have the Capita Engineers chosen to allocate this available width?

The slip road itself dates from a 1970’s design when a motorway standard dual carriageway was planned all the way to the coast.  These days it points at a set of traffic lights with a 40mph limit beyond, perhaps it doesn’t need to be quite as wide?  But nope, apparently this slip road is staying as wide as it’s ever been (once the cones are removed).

They’ve also chosen to leave in the steel guardrail fencing.  On very high speed roads this is understandable, but alongside narrower slower traffic lanes it no longer offers any safety benefit.  But nope, the guardrail is staying, and taking up nearly a metre of space by the time you add handlebar clearance.

It’s obvious from the construction underway that the design engineers haven’t even tried to design a decent cycle track.   Frankly, what benefit to the borough is there in spending money like this?  Are people really going to start riding to school or work in large numbers when they are dumped into a narrow channel with pedestrians and dog walkers?

From our discussions with the council the following is clear:

• Capita have invested absolutely nothing in training their engineers in bicycle infrastructure design, not a cent.  They have even failed to take up free training offered via other local authorities.
• Capita don’t understand the new design standard, in most cases haven’t read it and don’t understand that they should be using it.  None of their work has been reviewed against the new standard.
• Capita and the council as a whole do not understand the damage they are doing by wasting cycling funding in producing poor quality schemes.  Building to this quality may well rule out our borough getting further investment regionally.

After the May election we’ll be wanting to sit down with whoever takes the Transport Cabinet Portfolio and discuss this.  North Tyneside have gone from building their first good schemes 18 months ago into a spiral of decline, our money is being wasted, it’s just not good enough.

We’re going backwards.

2014 – getting it right

2017 – ignoring standards