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Cambridge CYCLOPS junction (Active Travel England)“Safe, efficient, and easy to use”: Cycling junctions “keep everyone protected with no impact on drivers” says Active Travel England, amid hysteria over “chaotic” new layout with 36 traffic lights
A week after a new cycling and walking-friendly roundabout in Cambridge was criticised by one local driving instructor as “chaotic” and “too distracting”, with residents claiming that the layout was responsible for increasing congestion in the area, Active Travel England has released a new video defending the design, arguing that it is “safe” and “efficient”, while having no impact on motorists.
According to the executive agency responsible for cycling, walking, and wheeling in England, CYCLOPS (Cycle Optimised Protected Signals) junctions, the second of which has recently been installed in Cambridge, and other signalised junctions, provide cyclists and other vulnerable road users with a segregated route across an otherwise intimidating and potentially dangerous intersection, “keep everyone protected”, and are “easy to use”.
This month sees the completion of the final phase of a £31.9m safety improvement scheme on Cambridge’s Milton Road, where 90 cyclists were involved in collisions between March 2013 and April 2018.
Launched in 2022, the Greater Cambridge Partnership, a collaborative body in charge of the scheme made up of local businesses, the city and county councils, and academics, says the project “aims to improve public transport, cycling, and walking infrastructure to make these sustainable travel options a more attractive alternative to the car”.
Improvements have included the installation of continuous protected cycleways and footpaths, 14 new Copenhagen crossings to provide priority for cyclists and pedestrians, other footpath and cycleway upgrades, a new CYCLOPS junction (the second of its kind in the city) at King’s Hedges, and a new signalised roundabout linking Milton Road with Highworth Avenue and Elizabeth Way.
It’s the latter two of these – focusing on offering segregated routes for cyclists and pedestrians at busy junctions – which have caused consternation among some locals, who argue their plethora of lights and different surfaces are “distracting”.
For instance, the upgraded roundabout layout, which according to the Greater Cambridge Partnership accommodates “different users of Milton Road to ensure everyone can move freely and securely in buses, cars, on bicycles, wheels, or on foot”, has been variously described as “Blackpool Illuminations” and the “birthday cake roundabout”.
Last week, Cambridge-based driving instructor Sue Papworth told the BBC that the roundabout’s “complicated” layout was causing congestion and a “lot of anger” among locals.
“There are too many distractions by way of traffic lights,” she said. “We’ve now got cycle lanes that are going both ways round the roundabout [and] because of the confusion you’ve really got to expect the unexpected.
“We’ve got a signalised parallel crossing that allows people to walk and cycle across the road separately, special paved and coloured surfaces that separate the crossings, and it’s just too distracting. There’s too much to look at.”
And earlier this year, the new CYCLOPS junction on the Milton Road, which was completed last month, came in for ridicule in the national press after the Greater Cambridge Partnership released a YouTube tutorial detailing the layout, prompting the Daily Mail and Telegraph to describe the junction as “so confusing that council bosses have made a video guide explaining how to use it”.
The city council’s Conservative group also blamed the junction for “causing chaos for cyclists, pedestrians and drivers alike” and potentially leading to “extra confusion”.
However, in an apparent bid to counter the hysteria currently surrounding the new road layouts in Cambridge, Active Travel England has released a video-based defence of its CYCLOPS junctions, featuring footage of them being used by cyclists, pedestrians, and motorists alike.
“Have you spotted a CYCLOPs junction recently?” the government body posted on social media on Thursday.
“They’re safe, innovative, efficient, and easy to use. They work by separating pedestrians and cyclists from motor traffic, keeping everyone protected. Smooth turns for cyclists, with shorter crossings for those walking and wheeling, all with no impact on drivers.
“By separating people walking, wheeling and cycling from motor traffic, we can make routes safer and easier to use for all road users, just like this one in Cambridge.”
According to Active Travel England’s own guidance, “protected junctions, including CYCLOPS junctions, are increasingly being implemented to entirely separate the movements of all modes of transport within the junction.
“This approach reduces the likelihood of conflicts and simplifies the operation of the junction into fewer stages, resulting in a more efficient traffic flow.”
However, Cambridge isn’t the only place where their implementation has proven controversial.
In August, Leicestershire County Council’s plan to introduce the county’s first CYCLOPS junction, “reducing areas of conflict” and “optimising traffic flow”, was met with a vocal backlash from an outspoken portion of the community who inundated the local authority’s Facebook post about the project with comments about “road tax”, it being “a waste of money”, and concerns that car parking spaces could be lost.
And in January, driving instructor Ashley Neal – who uploads videos to his YouTube following of 150,000 subscribers, often tackling topics concerning cycling and cyclist safety – echoed those concerns about expenditure, claiming that the new CYCLOPS layout in St Helens was an “absolutely awful waste of time and money” and “utterly pointless”.
While he was very positive about the junction from a motorist’s perspective, calling it “super straightforward” and “dead simple” to use, Neal expressed much criticism while cycling across it, largely due to the “ridiculous” wait times, regularly in excess of two minutes at traffic lights.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
Latest Comments
- chrisonabike 4 min 39 sec ago
You're going to have to add "new / shiny" to that list. My new Cube was nicked from "secure" storage for my flats *....
- brooksby 6 min 14 sec ago
I wear jeans for my six mile each way commute, during the colder months. I have chinos too....
- quiff 6 min 24 sec ago
I think momove's middle paragraph was sarcastic....
- Velophaart_95 6 min 48 sec ago
For that money you can buy a Mason, a Fairlight and still have plenty of change.........
- brooksby 8 min 9 sec ago
I think that they're saying they won't feel guilty for driving a car instead of cycling for so long as we continue to build new buildings. Or...
- brooksby 16 min 40 sec ago
Now they need to put that arrested individual in one of those hanging cages alongside the Path and perhaps next to one of the CCTV cameras, pour...
- mdavidford 24 min 4 sec ago
I'm not sure commercial success is even particularly high on his list of priorities for it - it's much more about the leverage it gives him for...
- mdavidford 31 min 15 sec ago
Well, that or gambling. Though arguably that's a fine distinction.
- the little onion 3 hours 41 min ago
Rather artistic photo of this (driverless) car that has ended up on its roof on a dead straight road in Bradford....
- slc 5 hours 21 min ago
No doubt it will catch on in Plymouth, but it is Devon, where everything happens 10 years later. Not least the buses....
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19 comments
BBC news article on this implies anyone cycling on the road, rather than using the cycle area, is riding incorrectly!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgz6q59z25o
Just noticed this. I work in Cambridge, cycling in three times a week and driving twice. When I drive this is on my route. Disclaimer - not yet cycled around it. But it is causing significant and unnecessary queues of traffic, with huge knock on effects to surrounding junctions, including blockages on other junctions which are dangerous to cycle around. When driving, you sit at a red light for ages when there is plainly no pedestrian or cyclist in sight to your right. This design is not the solution. Nor, IMHO, is any solution that involves taking two years to remodel a roundabout...
Well, send us a review when you've cycled it!
(I've not yet had the chance to try one of these, I've used some Dutch versions.)
It does seeem the UK suffers from "dumb lights" (it's not clear to me whether this is "legal" or convention or we simply won't fund cycle detection loops? Civil engineer blogger Ranty Highwayman doesn't seem to have the answer either [1] [2] )
And ultimately traffic lights are because drivers...
I went round the Milton Rd signalised junction (is it CYCLOPS?) and I think there are too many traffic lights, but these may all be required by "laws". So if one or two fail I don't think they'll be replaced (eg 4 red lights greet motorists at the entrances to the junction.) I suspect that legislation will be updated over the next few years to simplify things, and I do think that wherever possible, things should be simplified, because often simpler is safer. But there's a balance to be struck, and we haven't found it yet. Early days!
Thanks for the review! If it's this one it appears to be the Cyclops design (compare that to the Dutch urban cycle-priority roundabout here).
As you say we may need to iterate to "get there from here". Without familiarity (which means experiencing these regularly) and without lots of cyclists (which requires infra in some places) it would probably be difficult to "go Dutch" in a single bound - too much push-back.
Best hope is that the designs "along the way" meet minimum criteria of safety and convenience and don't have too many problems of their own. Oh, and ideally aren't too tricky to convert to "the real thing" when we're ready for it in a generation or several...
In the how to use it video there's a car encroaching on the ASL (Bike Box)...
Accurate "how-to" then 😂
Yes Sue, it would be a good idea if you encouraged those learning to drive a tonne+ steel killing machine always to expect the unexpected while in charge of it. If that's too much effort or beyond their ability then maybe they shouldn't be driving.
I dunno but I always thought that more vehicles on the road created more traffic jams but hey I'm sure a driving 'instructor' knows better.
I dunno but that layout looks easy to understand to me but hey I'm sure a driving 'instructor' knows better.
And I dunno but traffic lights are sort of meant to be distracting so drivers stop and go when they indicate but hey I'm sure a driving 'instructor' knows better.
I certainly welcome the notion that we should finally start to tackle junctions in the UK. I've not tried one myself but some people I'd trust (like the Ranty Highwayman who's ridden and written about them e.g. here) think these are fine *.
Still can't help thinking of the contrast between UK and Dutch junction design processes though:
NL: draw in the carriageway (narrow as possible), add separate cycle tracks which allow safe cycling without losing too much speed and which cross the carriageway at right angles. The other "features" (like "protective islands" in the corners) just emerge naturally from the design.
UK: First take a proven design - well that wasn't invented here, so it needs changing obviously because the UK is different! It's true, we don't have much traffic detection and smart signal phasing in the UK, so probably we need more signals. Oh! - won't you think of the pedestrians around those packs of dangerous cyclists?! OK - add "slow" markings and zebra crossings over the cycle paths for pedestrians. What about those "protective islands", they seem important but what are they doing? Aha - let's have the pedestrians play "pirates" - they can hop onto them to protect them from the cycling sharks! Make them bigger and add tactiles etc. What about the cycle features? Perhaps we already have ASLs and cycle lanes (it's not like there are going to be separated cycle tracks everywhere!). Well why not keep those - choice is good, right? (and some existing cyclists are already moaning "stuff it, we'll just cycle on the road..."). Add markings (arrows directing cyclists round junction, give way markings where cycle tracks join). What colour should we have the cycle tracks? Red, no, green! No, red ... Wow - this is really innovative, we should give this a cool name ...
* Although I did look at an example and I think - relative to the Dutch version the UK version either takes more space OR requires that cyclists travelling straight will have to turn more sharply. Also pedestrians need to interact with cyclists slightly more often than in the Dutch design when summed over all possible movements. For instance pedestrians going straight on cross paths with BOTH cyclists turning left AND with those going straight. (The "pro" for this is put as "pedestrians crossing the carriageway have shorter crossings" - and in the UK where currently it's mostly just cars and pedestrians I guess this is a sensible choice if only because of the politics).
From what I read a while back about this design is that it makes it more flexible and more efficient within UK law. All traffic movements at junctions have to be light seperated so we cannot have diagonal crossing of bikes like this in NL https://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2014/05/the-best-traffic-light-sol..., but we can with pedestrians called a scramble.
Therefore the advantage of having the pedestrian crossings on the inside is the junction could allow diagonal crossing of pedestrians meaning a pedestrian could cross to the opposing corner in the same time as a cyclist going straight and right.
I think there *are* UK legal features which make things more tricky.
BUT are you sure this is one? Ranty Highwayman has a post on this (pretty much a subject matter expert) and wasn't sure that there was actually a specific legal barrier here (although "pairs of diagonal cycle movements are frowned upon").
Yes - it's less far for pedestrians to cross if they wanted to do so diagonally AND there is an all-ways green for pedestrians (which is a choice, not standard I think, both here and in NL).
That''s a choice though. In the UK while there are currently some "green all ways for pedestrians" phases in many cases (depending on the size of the crossing / time) you may need to be very fleet of foot / feeling lucky to even consider this.
Also note that the Dutch don't always use "all ways green" - sometimes the timing of the lights are set so that you can only cross one arm but then those turning left (equivalent of UK right turn) get a green light next in sequence.
So I'd say the UK one is more a workaround to avoid any possible push-back because "but UK laws!" and so we can sell this as pedestrian-friendly (not just for cyclists!). I would still lean towards the Dutch style (which has the benefit of being extremely well tested...). But of course initially in the UK we always have "why should we favour cyclists? There are barely any / they're all entitled agressive men / dangerous scofflaws..."
Of course the real battle is to get any real improvments for vulnerable road users at junctions - apart from borderline junk "bike boxes" (ASLs) and "two stage turn markings" and marginal "cyclist early release" lights...
They work by separating pedestrians and cyclists from motor traffic, keeping everyone protected.
Heaven forbid that pedestrians and cyclists should be safe! Especially if it inconveniences one driver by one second, or they imagine it does.
And in January, driving instructor Ashley Neal echoed those concerns about expenditure, claiming that the new CYCLOPS layout in St Helens was an “absolutely awful waste of time and money” and “utterly pointless”.
Mr Motonormativity himself. When he hears how much is spent on a single junction to make it easier for drivers and how utterly pointless that is, the new CYCLOPS schemes will seem like the best value for money ever and more pointy than the most pointy thing ever.
I read a comment on twxtter the other day claiming Mr Neal was one of the best pro-cycling voices.
Also if anyone has recommendations for getting coffee stains off the ceiling they'd be welcome.
I'm quite prepared to give Ashley the benefit of broader perspective to offset a car-centric view, even if he doesn't always appreciate it. However, his comments on that junction do reasonably point out that pedestrians/cyclists are unnecessarily delayed by timings for pedestrian/cyclist-triggered crossing phases.
Yep - I watched that video and I agreed with him that it seemed like a lot of money had been spent in a way that wasn't particularly going to incentivise cycling.
Agreed, Sometimes i think the nuance of such opinions gets lost in the all cycling infra must be good and youre wrong to criticise it passionate cyclist view of the world.
But since he spends most of his time in the car...
Luckily an easy fix - we could simply reduce the green cycle time for the motorists. (If only we had the bravery).
What would the Dutch do? I think they've invested in "smarter" signals which can adjust depending on approaching flows of traffic including cyclists. But of course then it's a choice of "who gets prioritised if the flow of motor traffic keeps coming" (we know the UK answer...)
Probably if there were so many motor vehicles that wait times for cyclists and pedestrians were too long, they'd look at motor traffic reduction. Or even - if that is somehow "not possible" at the location - stump up the (far greater) cash for a fully grade-separated solution - hey presto, very safe AND convenient for all. (I'm guessing the first here).
It's the vicious circle or "metastable point" we're at. Lots of people driving *, not many pedestrians crossing the roads and a tiny number cycling. So "it doesn't make sense" to do anything other than allocate the lion's share of the space and time for those in motor vehicles - after all, where's the demand? Picture people's joy at being sat at the lights in their cars in a big queue, waiting because a couple of cyclists had arrived to cross.
Then since the place is full of motor traffic that ensures that it's not convenient and/or doesn't feel safe (or certainly not pleasant) for walking or cycling, which keeps demand low...
* Or at least motor vehicles taking up lots of space. This is one of the main drawbacks with private motor vehicles, they're a very space-inefficient transport mode compared to everything else.