I did warn potentially boring posts would follow...
These are stills taken from video of me just cycling by using the new section of CS7. As you approach the traffic light for cyclists turning left goes in and out of view obscured by the lamp posts. No council in it's right mind would do this to traffic signals for drivers so why allow it with cyclists?
With many cyclists using this cycle super highway route each day it won't be too long before a pedestrian is waiting for a green man to cross at the same time as a cyclist is approaching and is unlucky enough to have the lights change just as they vanish behind the lamp post. Pedestrian steps forward, cyclist hits them in the back/side and both are sure the light was green for them the whole time they could see it.
To add to the mix while the left lights are obscured from view the right lights that change independently are visible.
One possible solution would be to place both left and right lights in the middle. They then will both be visible for the entire approach and hopefully be more intuitive for cyclists to read. I have quickly mocked up an image, it's not that hard to picture.
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| 50 yards or so = obscured by lamp post |
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| 30 yards or so = visible again |
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| 15-20 yards = visible |
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| 15-10 yards obscured |
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| Less than 5 yards from stop line = visible again |
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| At the stop line = lower lights visible |
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| Possible solution? |
OMG they have actually managed to make this junction into an even worse nightmare than it was before. Corralling cyclists who are northbound on CS7 into the left hand side of a big sweeping left turn is completely counter-intuitive and inappropriate, and leaves only a tiny concrete-edged narrow single lane for any sane-minded assertive cyclists to share with 2 lanes of merging vehicle traffic. Accident waiting to happen.
ReplyDeleteI'm really not sure what to think about that yet, I'll hopefully be passing that way soon when it's more busy and I can see how it's working or not working more as it was a bit dead the lunchtime I passed.
DeleteI think if you are using the road and asserting yourself in primary position and whatnot then you shouldn't really have any more/less issue here than any other road. You adapt your riding style as needed which I think is still possible here unless I'm missing something.
During rushour traffic it would be interesting to see if all the cyclists passing could safely fit within the black tarmac area to wait at the cyclists lights and go a given direction. It looked reasonably large but I'm sure we have all seen the images of ASLs totally full along sections of CS7. Once that space fills will cyclists be discouraged not to use the segregated area or wait in orderly lines going back onto the blue CS7 part. Question of capacity I guess.
I'm sure I'll have more observations the more I use it.