London’s Cycleway network hit 450 kilometres earlier this month.
This milestone marks a 5x growth of the network in a decade, with bike lanes in the UK capital now longer than the Tube network and the Eurostar route from London to Paris.
But as London’s Cycleways continue to grow, scrutiny is mounting over who the network actually serves. From the social safety of cycle lanes for women to how passable they are for trike users and what the wave of autonomous vehicles could mean, Zag sits down with London’s Walking and Cycling Commissioner Will Norman to hear what he’s doing to ensure the Cycleway network is truly functional for all.
Zag Daily: Transport for London (TfL) is aiming for 40% of Londoners to live within 400 metres of a Cycleway by 2030. Have you set a distance-based target for the network?
Will Norman: “No and I’ll tell you why. If we put in a distance-based target, everybody’s focus and all the investment goes towards how long these bike lanes are rather than how many people they actually serve. In some parts of London, it’d be relatively easy to build a network that doesn’t really go anywhere, doesn’t connect to anything and isn’t very well used. For me, it’s the wrong target to have.
“What we really need are bike lanes that communities can access. The target should be on what makes the most impact for Londoners and what lets most Londoners cycle safely. Saying that we want 500 kilometres by whenever is the wrong motivation. We know that over the last 10 years, there’s been around 30 to 40 kilometres of bike lanes built relatively consistently. My focus is on the density of that, because what I want is most Londoners feeling like they are able to access and use the cycle network safely.”
Zag Daily: How are cyclists travelling the 400m to these Cycleways? Are they walking with their bike or are they cycling on routes without Cycleways?
Will Norman: “It’s usually cycling but not on a Cycleway, like on quieter residential streets. We have similar targets for bus stops and train stations which cover how near we want Londoners to be to these points. It’s a normal process. We can’t say that everybody will live on a bike lane because that will mean that all 14,000 kilometres of London streets will have a bike lane which is an unrealistic target and I’m not sure a desirable one. We want people to be able to easily access the network and that’s often through quieter, residential streets.”
Zag Daily: How much focus is TfL placing on Cycleways that connect outer London neighbourhoods, rather than routes that link back to the city?
Will Norman: “That’s been one of the big changes. If you look back at the cycle plan we inherited in 2016, the idea was to essentially have a clock face where Cycleway 6 went north and south and Cycleway 3 was east and west. So we covered the three o’clock, the nine o’clock and then we added the others, all of which went into the city of London.
“We then conducted an analysis to see where there’s most demand for cycling and that data led to the network’s evolution which now includes many more orbital routes rather than just coming into central London. We know there’s heavy demand for the radial routes because people work in the centre but if we only focused on those then we wouldn’t reach all of London’s communities. So there’s more investment in outer London than inner London at the moment. Since 2016, there’s been a fundamental change in the way the bike network has been designed to include those orbital routes and include town centres, rather than everything just coming into central London.”
Zag Daily: More investment in outer London than in inner London – will that trend continue until 2040?
Will Norman: “I think so, yes. We want a safe cycle network across all of London. The boroughs control most of the roads so that requires working with them to plug the gaps. At the moment, there is a greater investment in outer London than inner London because that’s where the need is and that’s where we’re expecting it to stay.”
Zag Daily: How does TfL’s criteria determine which kinds of bike lanes are built where – for example whether a bike lane is physically protected or not?
Will Norman: “If there is a heavily trafficked road, then it needs protected cycleways. This applies to lanes like on Embankment or Blackfriars Bridge or Lambeth Bridge. We define roads in terms of the number of cars per hour. If it doesn’t meet the criteria to classify as a quiet road, then it needs a protected cycle lane.”
Zag Daily: Can you give an indication of how much of the TfL Cycleway is physically protected?
Will Norman: “No, we don’t count that anymore. There are two ways to protect cyclists – either protect them by placing them on quieter roads, or through protected bike lanes. On busy roads like around Embankment, protected bike lanes work best. It’s difficult to make roads like that quieter through a modal filter. It’s a main road, so it’s where protected bike lanes work best. As the network builds, we want the ability to flex and say that this bike lane from A to B will work best going along this road, while this is a main road so it will need a protected bike lane. Or this is a more direct route and this is a route that will avoid a very dangerous junction or a railway bridge. We want the method to be the most effective way of protecting cyclists, depending on the kind of road it’s on.”
Zag Daily: A study from the London Cycling Campaign last year found that nearly one quarter of TfL Cycleways are “socially unsafe” after dark, with these routes “effectively unusable” for parts of the day and year. How do you respond?
Will Norman: “I wouldn’t agree that they are unusable. For a lot of people, having cycle lanes in parks and in non-traffic spaces is actually highly desirable. Many people learn to ride their bikes for the first time in parks and where there’s no traffic whatsoever. Learning to ride a bike in a busy bike lane isn’t actually a very pleasant experience and probably shouldn’t be encouraged because it puts the person learning to ride their bike for the first time – and people cycling in that bike lane – at risk. So having cycle infrastructure in non-trafficked areas is, for some people, very much something they’d like.”
Zag Daily: Are you taking any action to address the social safety of the Cycleway network?
Will Norman: “Yes. Feeling safe in terms of protection from traffic is the biggest barrier that stops people cycling but having a space that is socially safe is also exceptionally important, particularly for women. Having access to a ‘physically safe’ bike lane in the park in the day is very different to having access to that at night. This is why we’ve been supporting upgrades of existing routes, such as with lighting or CCTV. The most recent upgrades were on Cycleway 49 in Ealing. We’re also upgrading routes along canal towpaths which are popular in outer London. Canal towpaths made up a significant portion of that finding from the London Cycling Campaign.
“Addressing social safety isn’t just about upgrading the routes themselves. It’s also about providing safe alternatives. For example, there’s a Cycleway route that goes through Hyde Park. But recognising that the park closes at night, it’s not a particularly nice route. Even during the day in the summer, it can be very busy with people walking with their kids or their dogs, so it doesn’t necessarily make for a great cycle route at peak time for pedestrians either. This is why we have the Park Lane route as a parallel route. We recognise that off-road routes work some of the time, but for other times where people don’t feel safe using them, alternative routes are really important. As part of that, we’re working with the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) to develop a new women’s safety auditing process that will be built into designing, planning and managing public spaces and cycle networks. More than 70 audits have now been completed by 50 women and TfL and MOPAC are now reviewing the findings to consider how these audits can be used to ensure that women’s safety is part of the design process going forward.”
Zag Daily: How is TfL incorporating older riders and people with disabilities into its Cycleway planning?
Will Norman: “Early on when I started this job, I went out with Wheels for Wellbeing and experienced riding adaptive cycles and tricycles on different types of infrastructure. If a trike has a very steep leaning camber, it can be very scary because you feel as though you’re going to tip over. This is one example that TfL engineers have looked into and we’re ensuring that those considerations are built into the bike lane network where possible.
“For the width of bike lanes, we use the UK’s LTN 1/20 guidance to ensure that, where we can, lanes are wide enough for two trikes to pass each other. That isn’t always possible because of the constraints of London’s streets. But we do our utmost to ensure that lanes are open to all types of cycles, not only for older people and people with disabilities but for cargo bike and family bike riders as well as users of other adaptive cycles.”
Zag Daily: Do you know what proportion of the Cycleway network is wide enough for two trikes to pass each other?
Will Norman: “No because trikes vary in size. If you’ve got a three-seater trike, that’s a very different kettle of fish compared with a single tricycle. So the tricycle is not the measurement of currency. Where possible, we make the bike lanes as wide as we possibly can. There are minimum widths for cycle lanes which are included in our criteria which we, and the boroughs, have to follow while building out the bike lane network.”
Zag Daily: Autonomous vehicles have entered London’s streets. What’s your approach to AVs and how these vehicles could impact cyclists and other vulnerable road users?
Will Norman: “This is something that we need to be wary of. There are opportunities as well as challenges. We’ve been very clear that safety is our top priority. That’s why the Mayor has put so much investment into both the Safe and Healthy Streets vision and Vision Zero. New technologies bring new opportunities. On London roads, speed is a contributing factor in more than 50% of all fatal collisions. Distracted drivers, drinks and drugs are all significant problems. Now, autonomous vehicles, in theory, should eliminate those risks because an autonomous vehicle won’t be drinking, won’t be using drugs and is designed to stick to the speed limit. So these new technologies have potential for safety outcomes.
“But there are also risks. For example, how do these things act in complicated road environments? London is very busy. We don’t have jaywalking laws. It’s very different from an American grid city. While the DfT are managing and running the process, we’re working closely with them to ensure that these things are safe for all of London’s road users – people walking, people cycling, people using motorbikes, all road users. While the opportunities are there, we need to be very careful of the new risks introduced by AVs because that’s the last thing we need on the busy roads we have like in London.
Zag Daily: Do you personally have a specific requirement you want to see autonomous vehicles uphold in terms of how they interact with vulnerable road users?
Will Norman: “They just need to be safe. There’s nothing specific. They need to work and they need to demonstrate that they are safe for people walking and cycling. They need to work at crossings. They need to recognise where cyclists are. They need to take into account bike lanes and pedestrian infrastructure. Otherwise, we can’t have them on London’s roads.”
