Brian Deegan Talk to York Cycle Campaign
Brian Deegan gave a talk at the York Cycle Campaign AGM yesterday evening. He is Head of Inspections at Active Travel England, and he shouldn’t be confused with Brian Deegan the American motor racing driver!
This isn’t a comprehensive review of the talk, but here are six things Brian spoke about. Apologies if I misheard or misunderstood anything.
1) All By Myself
Brian said that for the time being it is just him looking at designs, and he has reviewed around 600 of them.
However, he has got 21 people arriving soon, and there will eventually be a team of 30 inspectors. They want to get to the stage where there are too many schemes for them to inspect, but for the moment that’s not the case.
2) Critical Issues
He talked about critical issues, and said there are 13 of them to look out for (or 15 on streets where there are trams).
One example was in a pedestrian area with a 20mm raised kerb that wasn’t differentiated in colour from the paving. That creates a trip hazard.
He gave a cycling example of a traffic lane with a width of 3.2 to 3.9m, which creates a risk for cyclists of being hit by an overtaking car. The standard lane width in the UK is 3.65m, which is about as bad as you can get.
It’s better to provide less width, so overtaking clearly isn’t possible, or more width.
Manual for Streets v3 is just about to come out, and it will be a key reference document for Active Travel England in respect of critical issues, along with LTN 1/20.
3) The Magic Combo for Mode Shift
Brian was in London earlier on in his career, and while he was implementing schemes he did a lot of learning and evidence-gathering to find out what enables modal shift, and what doesn’t.
He said:
- Low Traffic Neighbourhoods/modal filters work well and in some cases doubled cycling rates, but used on their own there was an increase in collisions
- shared use pavements are the most effective way of putting people off cycling. Shared use schemes saw cycling rates drop below that of similar control areas where nothing was done
The magic combination is modal filters together with other measures such as crossings. That is what has been successful in mini-Hollands.
4) Political Support and Cycling Champions
Political support is very important, so the Councillor who is Cycling Champion is vital.
5) Three Keys to Getting Things Done
Leading on from point 4, according to Brian the three keys to getting things done are:
- local political support for active travel
- technical expertise of council officers and consultants
- support from local people/demand for active travel improvements
6) Attitude of Campaigners
I felt there was some implied criticism from Brian of campaigners who just whinge and aren’t positive enough. I think that is largely unfair and unrealistic.
Most campaigners are constructive and prepared to give up their free time to contribute in any way that’s needed.
The reason why we sometimes feel beaten down and pessimistic is that despite all our contributions, despite all our efforts, despite all the time we give up, despite promises from Councillors, despite promises from council officers, NOTHING GETS DONE.
We are not imagining this. Some of us have spent years and years banging our heads against brick walls and getting nowhere. The solution is not ‘be more positive’.
It makes me think of the old saying:
‘Have a positive attitude! It may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to be well worth the effort.’
old saying
But we’ve already got a positive attitude and we’re already trying to annoy people with it – it’s just that most of the time it is getting us nowhere.
I’m sure it’s a very different experience for an active travel professional dealing with councils. They probably genuinely listen to what you say, take account of it, and make changes to their schemes as a result. We’re often saying exactly the same things, and councils are listening but not listening, asssuming we don’t know what we’re talking about.
If you hold the purse strings for active travel funding, councils probably listen even more.
Brian thinks active travel projects will get moving in York, and there will be significant achievements in the next 18 months or couple of years.
I hope he is right. If he can achieve that in York, Harrogate, Knaresborough and the rest of England, then I’m happy for him to say what he likes about cycle campaigners.