Designing for Cyclists
Cycling England is keen to encourage and promote a cycle-friendly infrastructure, which aims to make general highway conditions safer and more convenient for cyclists.
Such infrastructure focuses on strategies to increase safety for cyclists through reduction in traffic volumes and speed, or the redesign of road junctions. It also looks at specific measures that may be needed to assist cyclists, such as cycle lanes, links through road closures, road crossings, vehicle restricted areas and off road routes. Associated with these are issues of maintenance, prioritising schemes, selecting routes, quality of implementation, signing and cycle parking.
The design criteria for a high quality cycle route can be summarised by five Core Principles. The route should be: Convenient; Accessible; Safe; Comfortable; and Attractive.
HIERARCHY OF PROVISION
Cycling England and the Department for Transport recommend adopting a hierarchical approach to establishing a cycle-friendly infrastructure. Measures should be selected according to the following preferred hierarchy:
- Traffic reduction
- Speed reduction
- Tackle problem sites
- Redistribute the carriageway
- Provide segregated facilities
HIERARCHY OF USERS
Applying this "hierarchy of solutions" should be supported by the adoption of a 'hierarchy of users' which gives priority to measures that benefit the more vulnerable road users:
- Pedestrians and disabled people
- Cyclists
- Public transport users
- Motorcyclists and taxis
- Commercial and business vehicles
- Car borne shoppers
- Car borne commuters and visitors
USEFUL RESOURCES
Cycling England has developed a Design Checklist, linked to concise design guidance and examples, to assist local authorities and consultants in the design of high quality infrastructure.
Cycling England's gallery of photographs, provides visual examples of good practice for various aspects of cycle-friendly infrastructure.
The site also contains a range of current references on cycle friendly infrastructure. You can also access the new Manual for Streets.
CYCLE AUDIT AND CYCLE REVIEW
The Department for Transport has also produced detailed guidance on the practice of carrying out 'Cycle Audit' on new schemes and a 'Cycle Review' on existing networks. 'Cycle Audit' and ‘Cycle Review’ provide valuable tools for making the existing highway network, and proposed changes to it, more cycle-friendly. These are defined as follows:
- Cycle Audit is a systematic process, applied to planned changes to the transport network, which is designed to ensure that opportunities to encourage cycling are considered comprehensively and that cycling conditions are not inadvertently made worse.
Cycle Review is a systematic process applied to existing transport networks, which is designed to identify their positive and negative attributes for cycling and to assess ways in which those networks could be changed in order to encourage cycling.
Useful Resources
