Cycle Lanes of Croydon

As I recently blogged, Croydon – A cycling borough, Croydon will be receiving extra funding from the mayor to improve cycling in the borough. I’ve heard that this funding may well be coming to the council over a 3 year period which is going to equate to roughly £150,000 to spend per year on cycling.

The aim of the money is to make Croydon (and other boroughs that receive money) a cycling town. A place where people start to cycle instead of using other forms of transport but to achieve this Croydon Council will need to spend the money wisely on facilities and projects that will be beneficial to cycling and not harm it.

Over the next few months I will be making video logs of current cycle facilities that Croydon has and any new work which takes place. It seems from experience that any new facilities put in are done so in small segments, and are of no benefit to cyclists.

For example:

Said videos will be included in a youtube playlist found here.

Edit: Small spelling mistake 🙂


14 thoughts on “Cycle Lanes of Croydon

  1. That’s the improvement? The bit of narrow pavement with the lamp posts in the middle? And they spent the cycling budget on this? This is just going to be another disaster.

    If you don’t have some kind of local pressure group prepared to denounce such plans as a waste of time and space, you need one.

    1. It is kind of an improvement for pedestrians. The removal the railings and increase in pavement size should make them safer and should slow the traffic down.
      Incouraging cyclists to travel on the pavement next to a crossing in my mind is stupid.

      1. Will do 🙂 Didn’t you also capture that one with the contra-flow on Cedar Road that was blocked and you ended up in a argument with the driver?
        I was watching someone ride along Wellesley Road the other day and he actually used the tram line to get into the bus lane!….it beggers belief when you have a perfectly good road and the normal entrance to the bus lane!

  2. Do the people designing and installing these things ever cycle? All this will to is add to the number of deaths and injuries caused by galvanised steel street furniture. F*cking mindless.

  3. You only need to look at my Cyclelane Improvement video (could it be included in here or on the playlist?) to see what they clearly have no idea what to do! I guess we can hope that they use some of the budget and redo the sorry bit of cycle lane on Wellesley Road that dumps you on the tramlines 😀

    1. I pan on doing all around east croydon and wellesley road.
      Aaaah yes your lovely video of that shrinking cycle lane. I shall add that to the playlist. Any more examples you see if stupid cycling facilties, old or new, do video 🙂

  4. Why do they do this ? They could refer to any number of examples of good practice from elsewhere. One which immediately comes to mind is this, which shows a pedestrian crossing which works for pedestrians, with cycle paths which work for cyclists, and the whole thing isn’t designed to confuse drivers either. Or this which shows how both pedestrians and cyclists can cross busy roads with no problems and no excessive delays.

    Due to the Tesco van it’s a bit unclear, are pedestrians expected to wait twice to cross the road here ? If so, why ? There would be much more room for a proper design of cycle lane if the extra delay for pedestrians was not included.

    1. I think the problems with this particular crossing is linking any cycling facility up with what is already there. If you look at this view (the old junction is 180degrees behind this) you can see a lovely stretch of parked cars for quite some distance, and along side it a stretch of painted cycle lane. Without a re-design of the road system and parking spaces, I doubt any infrastructure which caters for all road users will not be possible.

      You are correct in thinking this crossing is split. It is not uncommon for Croydon to have such facilties for pedestrians and there are several like it on this particular road. What is espcially surprising is the lack of pedestrians that cross here. I think it would be perfectly possible to install a crossing that goes all the way across and just increase the delay to make sure elderly people can get across in time. Little delay will be had to drivers in questions and with more road space made avaliable there could be a chance for better cycling infrastructure. I’m not too bothered about behind able to pass the light when it is red.

      I look at the amazing infrastructure you have but I can’t see it happening on the urban streets we have in Greater London without some drastic change to mentality and allocated road space.
      Further down that road, I suspect that some good segregation could be put in place if a small amount of space is taken away from the park cars. But I doubt the local council has the kind of people that can design, plan and build such a facility.

      1. Thanks for the additional links. They’re quite telling. This is a residential street. People step out onto it from their front doors every day, yet even here crossing the road gets such low priority that you’re only supposed to do it where there is a designed facility, and that facility is designed in such a way that it makes crossing the road take much longer than it should.

        That’s truly appalling. Even on a residential street, where people live, and perhaps try to get some sleep sometimes, speed of through traffic is the most important thing in the planners’ minds. That’s what the planners have prioritized over everything else. That’s a tragedy on many levels.

        The door zone cycle lanes and weird stuff around the crossing are merely extra cream on top.

        It’s a wide road with plenty of space. I think it’s quite easy to see what the Dutch would do with this. If it were over here, the motor vehicles lanes would be made a lot narrower so cars travelling in both directions would have to take a lot more care about each other – this slows them down, whatever the posted speed limit. Residential car parking would probably stay for at least most of the houses, but it would move out past the cycle lane, and you’d have a segregated cycle path alongside the pavement.

        They’d plant a few extra trees, the ugly railings would go away, the whole thing would be resurfaced, buses which stop would perhaps block motor traffic in the same direction but not get in the way of bikes, noise and fumes would be reduced for residents. I think it could end up looking a lot like Groningerstraat.

        You’re right, though, there’s no change coming unless there is a drastic change to mentality. And no change to mentality will happen unless people are shown what is possible and they start to ask for it.

  5. That’s a great piece David, that junction is just marvellous! I can say hand on heart if we had facilities like that over here I’d have no problems taking the older kids out for rides on it. At present if I do want to cycle with them I’m left with the equally problematic issues of either having them ride on the road (just about doable with my 10 year old, wouldn’t trust the others) with me acting as a “rear guard” or riding on the pavement with them/them on the pavement me following in the road. Neither of which are ideal or should be necessary! Unfortunately we have a government who are only too happy to pander to the motoring majority rather then thinking about the wider community. I have no problem with cars, but I don’t see why other road users (although that doesn’t quite feel like the right word as pedestrians should be included) have to be marginalized as their expense.

  6. You may already have spotted this, but it is an amusing piece by a cyclist from New York fined for not cycling in a bike lane.

  7. The design shown in Gaz’s video is amazingly awful. A short narrow cyclepath obstructed by three (!!) posts. I hope someone is jumping up and down on those responsible.

    I can understand a car-centric design that ignores everyone else. I don’t like it, but I understand it.

    I don’t understand why even the most ignorant designer builds a cyclce path then dangerously blocks it. Perhaps a FOI request could shed light.

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