Turbogate: the fuckup that keeps on giving

The Bedford Turbo Roundabout was already a fuckup-in-progress as soon as it was announced the cycle crossings at the roundabout exits were to be marked "cyclists dismount". Still, there were at least going to be the barriers to reduce cyclists being cut up by aggressively driving cars choosing straight-through routes

What's interesting is that -as David Hembrow regularly observes- the worst parts of Dutch Road infrastructure are being picked up and hailed as fantastic. Shared space is one example, turbo roundabouts the next. Not only are they mediocre bits of the NL roadspace, when brought to the UK they don't come with the rest of the system: bypasses and road blockings to reduce traffic flows into the shared space and viable alternative cycle routes for the roundabouts.

The South Gloucs shared space project ended up resulting in the Great Wall of Filton: a barrier added to stop motorcyclists getting through, and out of fear of pedestrians being hit by speeding cyclists. Even on a back road converted from a rat-run to a quiet road, cyclists aren't welcome.

The Bedford Turbo Roundabout is a mess spiralling down into a blatant abuse of cycling money. Sustrans should be backpedalling manically, using the death of the barriers as a way to exit without admitting that the original design was flawed the moment those blue "cyclists fuck off" signs appeared on the designs. Instead they are making things worse, issuing press releases claiming victory. If this is a victory, it is about as good as one as Blair and Bush's in Iraq, the one only those two still pretend was a a success.

It's not too late for the cycling groups to recover from this one. They need to go the council and say "no cycling cash unless the new proposed DfT signage "elephants feet" crossing goes in and those Dismount signs go out", with some raised road to indicate right of way alongside the belisha beacons. That's imperfect, but an improvement on the current debacle. Could we get it? Not while Sustrans is still giving its support.

Which is why Sustrans needs to be kicked into shape. They have got a good engineering department, and have apparently helped with some of the Bristol infrastructure development. But their campaigning group has got stuck in the late 1990s, giving the seal of approval to unacceptable mediocrity that is never going to encourage mass cycling.

They need to look at their goals and come with a nice metric: cycle routes good enough both for the 8 year old with their grandparent -and the commuter in a hurry. What is being proposed on the turbo roundabout doesn't suit either -and instead is theft of cycling money to improve traffic flow.

We get next to nothing for our infrastructure anyway -now the roundabout builders are stealing it in exchange for some cyclists dismount signs, with Sustrans saying "It's OK, take all of it". If the Bedford Turbo Roundabout gets to keep the cash, every civil engineer with a photo of a motorway junction on their wall be looking at their local cycling funding and thinking "How many cyclists dismount signs do I need to add to get that money for my junction?". Every project going over-budget can see the money and think "what little do I need to do get Sustrans approve me taking it".

And the worst part? Those civil engineers think they are doing the cyclists a favour. They will think the turbogate roundabout is an improvement; they do think that an unlit underpass with barriers and dismount signs acceptable facilities. And they will think that cycling groups that whine about this are ungrateful. Why do they think that? Because Sustrans encourages it.

What have the Romans ever done for us?

To us, the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire, our enemy is the roadbuilders who stick up the new roads, widen the old ones, and add walking and cycling features as an afterthought -one that neglects our needs and is constrained by the inability of the roadbuilders to imagine the needs, care about them, or execute on their own plans.

We call them The Romans. For what have the Romans ever done for us, apart from the roads?


This is the A4174 ring road path, by the UWE entrance. 20 years ago you weren't allowed to cycle here, and as a consequence there was none of this traffic calming stuff up. It was easier to cycle down, and way safer than the ring road.

Since then, the ring road has got busier and wider. This week they opened a new priority lane for buses, one that avoids taking any space from cars.

That worked, didn't it?

Looking the other way, you can see that some of the pedestrians are wearing camouflage and not hi-viz.

This shows a conflict of goals. The motorists and the councils would like all pedestrians to wear hi-viz, obvously. But many of the MoD staff are wearing work clothes designed to keep you alive in war zones, and bright reflective clothing fails then. It went out of fashion when officers stopped wearing red jackets.

The combination of traffic calming and pedestrians whose lives depend on not wearing hi-viz makes for a higher risk environment.

Descending to the roundabout, you can see that it is too narrow to have separation from pedestrians, so we are grateful for the current lack of bollards. Admittedly, the various road signs don't help, and a wider path would actually eliminate the conflict entirely. This would good as the people cycling up the hill are all in uniforms.

Note the different roundabout crossings

1. MOD entrance: light controlled, safe.

2. MOD back entrance and shops -no lights, cars may coming off the main roundabout at speed. There is a traffic island designed for at most one bicycle to wait, limiting the cycle traffic flow to one bicycle every 30s maximum. Everyone cycling across has to look at the traffic, then keep looking in front to see its clear to get off the crossing.

3. Shopping centre entrance. There is a green strip here, and the driver coming off the roundabout did give way. This is unexpected and welcome, as a green line on the ground has no legal force. If you get run over, the car had the right of way.

What did the SGC get wrong here?

The key issue is a focus on motor traffic rather than pedestrian and bicycles, and not making it safe to cross the roundabouts. Pelican lights that would block both the entrance and exit of crossing #2 would make it safe to cross and eliminate the traffic island bottleneck in the middle. That or a zebra crossing would be good. But perhaps they fear the tailbacks created by stopping for pedestrians and cyclists.

3. Again, no formal cycles-have-right-of-way setup at the junction. This time someone was being generous, but you can't rely on it.

The biggest hazard is the main MoD roundabout

• The main road has 50 mph speed limit, people are still in motorway-mode -and not expecting pedestrians or cyclists.
• No pedestrian/cycle crossing lights or scheduled period in the main light sequence.
• The traffic island has room for one bicycle at a time and is already saturated.
• Pedestrians and bicycles are sprinting over, attention split between traffic coming off the roundabout and what they will run or cycle into.

The metric we ask is "would you trust an 11 year old child to use this bicycle path safely". Not with these crossings and paths we don't.