Botley Road danger spot to be improved

Plans to rebuild Oxford station look to be great news for cyclists. The notorious Botley Road railway bridge is to be replaced in 2017, and there’ll be full room underneath for cycle lanes and wider pavements. The current underpass was named by Sustrans as one of the ten worst cycling blackspots in Britain.

Bike-supporting local councillor Susanna Pressel told the Oxford Mail: “Ever since I first became councillor 18 years ago, this has been the one thing people here have been clamouring for”.

Bike projects win design prizes

A couple of ingenious bike projects picked up the honours at the A' Design Awards last week. The Icon E-Flyer, an electric bicycle with a low-slung motorbike-style appearance, won the gold award in the Vehicle, Mobility & Transportation Design category. There was a platinum award, too, for Smartstreets’ clever bike parking, which can be fixed to any lamp-post or signpost. (But would you really want to carry two D-locks around with you?

Riverside path to be upgraded

Worcester City Council is to upgrade the Severnside path at Diglis, between the oil dock and river locks, for cyclists and walkers. The path will link to the new Diglis Bridge and an improved path through the playing fields, as part of a £900,000 scheme.

Plans released by the council also show tree removal to improve cyclists’ views over the river.

Could overnight deliveries make streets safer for cyclists?

The Government is encouraging hauliers to make more out-of-hours deliveries – potentially making the streets safer for cyclists at busy times.

The ‘Quiet Deliveries’ initiative particularly targets construction lorries, responsible for numerous fatal cycling accidents in London. But with no legal compulsion to the ‘guidance’, it remains to be seen whether HGV owners will change their habits.

The scheme draws on the experience of the 2012 London Olympics. According to Transport Minister Stephen Hammond:

“The 2012 Games proved that with the right planning, we could reduce the number of delivery vehicles on the road at key times when roads are likely to be more congested, such as rush hour. This helps to free up peak time road space for other road users.”

Lorry operators are encouraged to reschedule deliveries outside the normal working day, into the ‘shoulders’ of the day (before the morning rush and after the evening peak) and potentially further into the night. For their customers, reduced congestion means delivery times will be more certain: for cyclists, it takes lorries off the roads during peak commuter times.

But as the guidance anticipates, such changes won’t always be popular with local residents, who may have their quiet evenings disturbed by increased traffic. The Government recommends that HGV operators upgrade their fleets to have quieter engines, and re-educate their drivers to manoeuvre more efficiently and use the horn less – which may be easier to say than to achieve.

One promising aspect of the scheme, however, is that it puts the onus on local councils (through the planning system) to encourage or require this approach. The London Cycling Campaign has already demonstrated a talent for lobbying London boroughs to improve HGV standards, and has now persuaded every single one to offer its drivers “Safer Urban Driving” courses – suggesting that this approach could be adopted by the more enlightened councils.

Cycle campaigners can find full details of the scheme on gov.uk.

Meanwhile, LCC is lobbying the Department for Transport and EU to make Safer Urban Driving courses compulsory for all lorry drivers.

“Street View for bikes”: new on our journey-planner

How busy is that street? How muddy is that bridleway? Planning a bike route just got easier with the latest addition to cycle.travel’s journey-planner.

You can now view over 3 million photos of paths, tracks, roads and landmarks while planning your route. Just click on any section of your planned route, and you can open a photo window:

We were inspired to create this feature after noticing that “what’s the surface on this cycleway?” was one of the most commonly asked questions on bike forums. Although Google’s Street View will show you photos of roads, the Street View car fortunately doesn’t venture down bridleways or cycle paths.

So, instead, we turned to the wonderful community photo project Geograph, which collects photos of every corner of the British Isles. From family-friendly railway paths to rugged trails in the Scottish Highlands, Geograph’s 12,000 contributors have snapped it all.

Coupled with cycle.travel’s unique cartography, which shows cycle path surfaces in three clear styles (tarmac, firm, or muddy), this makes it easier than ever to plan a country ride or a quick shortcut through town. And if the planned route follows a path you’d rather avoid, it’s easy to change – just drag the route onto another road or path with your mouse.

Try it now: click ‘Map’ above and get started.

Improved circular routes

We’ve also upgraded the popular ‘circular route’ function on our journey-planner.

You can now add ‘via’ points into circular routes, and drag them around like any other route. Too long? Too short? Just drag the markers around until you have the perfect route.

Logged-in users can save routes, download GPX files, and print PDFs of clear, bike-specific mapping.