Sustaining the Momentum

Good urban planning and effective infrastructure keeps traffic and people moving, while providing pleasant, safe and efficient routes between destinations. It also makes cities enjoyable in their own right, and makes streets places to savour rather than just through routes. By employing sustainable transport policies across Northern Ireland, we can provide for nicer communities and improve public health. We can sustain the momentum of modern green living. This is Ellen Murray's transport engineering, infrastructure and sustainable transport blog. It's mostly a collection of interesting articles and demonstrations of effective infrastructure and urban planning. It is also an outlet for volunteer work with Sustrans NI and the improvements to the National Cycle Network that come with it.

[preludetorevolution]

Bicycle parking in Belfast city centre | While recognising the draft Bicycle Strategy for Northern Ireland has the potential for real change over the next few years, it’s bloody obvious that a rapid expansion of good quality bicycle parking is desperately needed in Belfast. Right now.

[ellenfromnowon]

Time for a fun roads fact!

Red “No Entry” signs are used across the UK for all relevant road sections with unidirectional traffic. In England, Scotland and Wales, motorway sliproads end just like any other unidirectional road, and have “No Entry” signs too. But in Northern Ireland, we go one step further and put red alternating “wig-wag” style lights on both sides of the road, similar to red flashing lights at a level crossing. They have historically been fitted with standard traffic signal bulbs but are now being retrofitted with LED aspects, as seen above. Only a handful of motorways in the UK have these lights, and they’re all in Northern Ireland (M1, M12, M2, M22, M3, M5). No non-motorway roads have such lights fitted.

Isn’t that cool?

[ellenfromnowon]

People on bikes in Belfast! There’s a mass cycle (several hundred people!) happening this Friday, 20th of June at 8AM, from Gasworks to City Hall via the City Centre streets. Should be a brilliant morning! 

Free hot breakfast at the City Hall too! :D

See you there!

[sustainingthemomentum]

Enabling active travel and independent mobility

There's a big demographic change between people on bikes in the UK, and people on bikes in the Netherlands and other places more accommodating to bikes.

However, it's not just the young, fit people that benefit - the elderly, the very young, the disabled - everyone gains access to very cheap, clean and sociable independent mobility. Even if you're a total sceptic when it comes to climate issues, the benefits of active travel infrastructure are obvious.

[ellenfromnowon]

I wrote a thing about the recent closure of the main cycle commuting route into Belfast, and how it affects accessibility and transport within the city, and how the posted diversion are absolute shambles.

Have a read!

[sustainingthemomentum]

Murder Machines: Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year

“At some point, we decided that somebody on a bike or on foot is not traffic, but an obstruction to traffic.”

 This is a great article on how streets in America transformed from the domain of the pedestrian to the racetrack of the automobile in the 20th Century through lobbying by the automobile industry. Although many countries are now undoing the decades of compromises in city design to accommodate the car, there is plenty more to be done.

[jubjubjubjub-deactivated2019052]

[sustainingthemomentum]

This is a great video showing junction design examples in the Netherlands, and how a holistic approach to cycling and walking infrastructure across entire urban areas can create safe and pleasant spaces for both motorists and vulnerable road users, while providing short junction waiting times and honouring desire lines of all road users.

[lastreetsblog]

This image from NYC’s Zero Vision campaign re-tells the basics. The slower the car speed, the higher a chance a pedestrian crash victim will survive.

[sustainingthemomentum]

Remember, E = ½m(v^2), so doubling the speed has an absolutely enormous effect on the energy pedestrians must dissipate in a collision. This is the main benefit of introducing 20mph (30km/h) speed limits across urban areas - much better safety statistics. In addition, 20mph limits help reduce carbon emissions, improve safety for cyclists, mobility scooters and other vulnerable road users, as well as reducing the ambient noise of the area, leading to more pleasant residential and urban areas.

[sustainingthemomentum]

Transport Poverty in the UK

"Transport poverty" is the habitual use of unsuitable public and private transport solutions due to the failure of the transport system's design to accommodate sustainable and active solutions such as cycling and walking. The (Alternative) Department for Transport blog shows how the UK's shockingly bad state of cycling and pedestrian infrastructure makes for crowded cities and impoverished transport options.

[sustainingthemomentum]

How the car industry outlawed crossing the road

Interesting article by the BBC on how the rise of motorised private cars restricted pedestrians' right to the road in the United States. In the UK, there is no law forbidding crossing the road in any place, but the Highway Code (Rules for Pedestrians) advises pedestrians to cross at crossings if possible, or to use a place where they can clearly see in all directions if not. Pedestrians are of course forbidden on motorways and special roads.

[jkcivil]

Bikes Lanes Aren't Just Safer For Cyclists. They're Good For Business, Too

[sustainingthemomentum]

Building extensive bike lane infrastructure in the U.S. will require convincing a key constituent: local businesses. Luckily the data’s all there on…

Interesting article on the impact of cycle infrastructure on local business in cities.

[sustainingthemomentum]

Two transport revolutions in the Netherlands - a quick video showing the two major changes in road infrastructure mentality in the Netherlands from the beginning of the 20th Century to the beginning of the 21st Century - from narrow, cobbled streets dominated by horses and pedestrians, to automobile-ruled asphalt expanses, to slow and pleasant streets dominated by pedestrians and cyclists again.

The United Kingdom should take some tips from this mentality of prioritising streets as places to live and not through-routes - we would benefit massively as a result.

[sustainingthemomentum]

The great local roads researcher Wesley Johnson has released a new book on the 1960s plans of the NI Government for a Belfast Urban Motorway, and looks at the social and transport effects it had. The BUM (what an acronym) lives on today as the A12 Westlink, though it's only a shadow of the ambitious (but reckless in hindsight) plans of the '60s.

[sustainingthemomentum]

A great video by Network Rail explaining the basics of switches and crossings on the UK rail network.

[sustainingthemomentum]

The History of the London Overground - a short video explaining the basics of the LO. It is essentially an infomercial for Transport for London but it's quite interesting.

[sustainingthemomentum]

Belfast's cycling community often jokes about how our cycle lanes often give way to anything and everything, and often to nothing, but I'm fairly sure that this claims the prize of "shortest length of cycle lane before having to give way".