Town planning and cycling a.k.a bad junctions

An excellent article that could be posted in lots of places:

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/nov/01/secrets-worlds-happiest-cities-commute-property-prices

Just read that article on the guardian and came here to post it. Really interesting stuff.

The ongoing saga of Detroit:

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/apr/03/the-death-of-a-great-american-city-why-does-anyone-still-live-in-detroit

I found it particularly interesting how transportation is becoming more difficult in places.

http://m.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/01/could-these-crazy-intersections-make-us-safer/4467/

Ah, thanks for bumping, hippy, since this needs to be reposted here, too.

Meskel Square, Addis Abeba - YouTube

what are the fixielordz opinions on the redesign of holborn circus? I hate it. the cycle contraflow thing from hatton gardens is terrible

I haven't seen it yet, but the drawings that were circulated a while back were pretty dire.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/02/economist-explains-16

Holborn Circus - I haven't been there since the Crossrail lot reopened the full length of Farringdon Road so had to google for it. Wtf is this?

http://www.visionzerolondon.org/2014/04/scandalous-new-scheme-at-holborn-circus.html

I encountered that no entry sign from Hatton Garden for the first time a while ago when I was on a motorbike. There was nothing further up the road to indicate that Hatton Garden was a dead end now, so I rode all the way down it and then had to turn round and ride all the way back up it again, all the way up to Holborn. I can only assume the advertising agencies and jewellers of Hatton Garden had been campaigning for pedestrianisation or something because they didn't like the traffic noise. Well fuck them, they should have waited until Farringdon Road was reopened.

The statue was a pain, but basically the only thing wrong with that junction was the light phasing which let traffic go from holborn viaduct and new fetter lane at the same time, and occasionally caused a bit of conflict.

holborn?

oh you mean midtown.

get it right.

The City of London traffic planners say there has been a dramatic fall in the number of injury collisions since they removed the statue. But as the whole place has been a work site for most of that time I think it is too early to say.

Ah, thanks for bumping, hippy, since this needs to be reposted here, too.[QUOTE=WillMelling;4209386]They should test them here

Meskel Square, Addis Abeba - YouTube

[/QUOTE] Meskel Square will never be the same now that Chinese engineers are destroying Addis to put in what is laughlingly called a "Light Rail" metro system.

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My god, that Holborn Circus bollocks! Went through there today and even having read the posts above, I was still perplexed and taking my life in my hands. Having negotiated the bizarre arrangement at the bottom of Hatton Garden, going from Charterhouse St to Fetter Lane I did not make it across on green before traffic was setting off from the A40, and I was not going slowly. Utter shite.

A friend of mine just pointed out this very watchable documentary from 1964:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00sydsh/a-city-crowned-with-green

http://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/

My god, that Holborn Circus bollocks! Went through there today and even having read the posts above, I was still perplexed and taking my life in my hands. Having negotiated the bizarre arrangement at the bottom of Hatton Garden, going from Charterhouse St to Fetter Lane I did not make it across on green before traffic was setting off from the A40, and I was not going slowly. Utter shite.

terrible isnt it? I still use it every day and without fail there is always a car or motor bike having to do a u-turn. The contraflow cycle lane is terrible, it forces you to mount the pavement and turn left around the corner on to charterhouse street and then cross the road into the ASL area - it took me ages to work this out, and you often receive abuse from pedestrians for cycling on the pavement.

The real danger is if you are coming from new fetter lane heading east as there is no roundabout anymore and anything coming from charterhouse street heading in the opposite direction just drives straight at you. This happens to me frequently, especially with vehicles heading up hatton garden.

http://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/

terrible isnt it? I still use it every day and without fail there is always a car or motor bike having to do a u-turn. The contraflow cycle lane is terrible, it forces you to mount the pavement and turn left around the corner on to charterhouse street and then cross the road into the ASL area - it took me ages to work this out, and you often receive abuse from pedestrians for cycling on the pavement.

The real danger is if you are coming from new fetter lane heading east as there is no roundabout anymore and anything coming from charterhouse street heading in the opposite direction just drives straight at you. This happens to me frequently, especially with vehicles heading up hatton garden.

The problem is, it never was a roundabout - not technically anyhow - so it was dangerous to assume that standard roundabout rules applied. At least now it's unambiguous (but I agree, troubling to encounter oncoming traffic from that direction, especially towards the end of the traffic light cycle).

how was it not a roundabout? it had a statue in the middle that you had to drive around before you could go on your merry way. I never had any issues using the old junction. Anyway no one else seems to care about it that much so I guess we are stuck with it for the forseeable future. What did they do with the statue I wonder? I can't even remember what it was.

Bloke on a horse. I thought it had come back

Prince Albert.

I had a closer look at Holborn Circus the other day, which I'd been meaning to do for a long time. The basic mistake in the conception of the scheme arises from the difficulty that (as with many large-ish junctions, it's actually two junctions knocked into one.

Obviously, the name's a giveaway that it used to be a proto-roundabout, and a circular layout would still be imaginable, but that original junction shape was obscured a long time ago by building out the northwest corner and 'straightening' the east-west alignment, which has by far the most dominant flows in the junction. In second place is traffic coming from Fetter Lane either towards Charterhouse Street or Holborn Viaduct.

Needless to say, it would not be desirable to return the junction to a roundabout, but the former and present non-roundabout layouts don't work well. I observed constant poorly-resolved conflict between users of all modes.

The problem the engineers were faced with is that while the western part of the junction can make a very simple four-way junction of High Holborn, Fetter Lane, Hatton Garden, and Holborn Viaduct, the north-south alignment through this junction is not dominant, and, in order to accommodate the higher flows from Fetter Lane to Charterhouse Street, they de-prioritised Hatton Garden as only an exit from the junction with very poor provision even for contraflow cycling. I think that this is entirely a mistake and the main reason why the scheme is poor.

There are obviously good parts to the scheme. For instance, filtering St Andrew Street makes sense and greatly reduces the complexity here. Overall, though, the scheme is not a great success because its underlying principle kowtows to prevailing motor traffic flows rather than aiming for what the logical layout here should be.

In the scrappy drawing below, I've obviously taken what is currently available in aerial imagery, which doesn't show the new scheme yet. In addition to what I've drawn in this basic outline, you'd also want to do something with the carriageway width on High Holborn.

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forrum planning bods: how is this scheme faring one year on? http://hackneycitizen.co.uk/2013/05/20/narrow-way-traders-criticise-pedestrianisation-plan/

Lots and lots of moaning in the comments and from traders on the street. What was the actual outcome? Is the scheme still in place?