The challenges of applying cycling design guidance

Hancock, Liam; Parkin, John

Abstract

Cycle infrastructure provides a means for everyday travel by a mode which is efficient, benign to the environment and confers health benefits on the user. The UK Department for Transport has a funding stream dedicated to providing grants to English highway authorities to construct cycle infrastructure in accordance with guidance in Local Transport Note 1/20 Cycle Infrastructure Design. The guidance was published in 2020 and is beginning to be used widely. This paper investigates the challenges of applying the guidance. Thirteen semi-structured interviews were undertaken with politicians, managers, engineers, and cycle users. While there is ambition to deliver appropriate schemes, and there is an inspectorate, Active Travel England, to assist in ensuring the schemes comply with the guidance, there are constraints revealed by the participants. These include the limitations of short-Term and medium scale funding preventing larger scale outcomes, lack of understanding of the extent to which a designer can adopt relaxations from the guidance, and skills shortages. It is encouraging to find that participants were aware of the fundamental need to separate cycle traffic both from motor traffic, and from pedestrians.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 29, 2023
• Online Publication Date: May 2, 2023
• Publication Date: Dec 31, 2024
• Deposit Date: Jun 15, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 28, 2023
• Journal: Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers: Transport
• Print ISSN: 0965-092X
• Electronic ISSN: 1751-7710
• Publisher: Thomas Telford
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 177
• Issue: 7
• Pages: 494-503
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1680/jtran.22.00068
• Keywords: Transportation, Civil and Structural Engineering; Cycle infrastructure design funding skills UN SDG 11: Sustainable cities and communities
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10782068
• Publisher URL: https://www.icevirtuallibrary.com/doi/10.1680/jtran.22.00068