National Highways has been accused of a “systemic failure” on cycling provision after freedom of information requests revealed it did not know whether its infrastructure met its own design standards.
The Department for Transport also admitted the government-owned body in charge of trunk roads was using a loophole to deliver substandard shared use paths in rural areas instead.
National Highways has spent £84m on 160 cycling and walking projects since 2015, but has said via written questions and FOIs that it is unable to say exactly what it spent the money on, or the impact of the investment on cycle use and safety.
Without adequate crossing points and safe alternative routes, A-roads and motorways can make local walking and cycling journeys more perilous. National Highways’ cycle traffic design standards (collectively called IAN/CD195) have required, since 2016, the inclusion of high-quality “active travel” infrastructure to mitigate the impact of its roads, but it appears to be leaning heavily on a loophole that states the standards do not apply to shared-use paths.
While National Highways has denied it is using a loophole, last week Richard Holden MP, a minister in the Department for Transport, admitted it was not always applying IAN/CD195 on rural roads and that it was “one of a suite of documents that National Highways has to ensure the most appropriate provision is provided for walkers, cyclists and horse riders.
“As much of National Highways’ network is rural and located away from residential and industrial areas, providing shared-use walking and cycling provision may often be a more proportionate approach for the anticipated levels of usage.”
Transport consultant Phil Jones, a co-author of IAN/CD 195, said that interpretation was “perverse”.
“The thing I tried to get across to them is you should always have a cycle track because cyclists go everywhere, whereas they don’t think of it that way,” he said.
“The potential for cycling between towns is much greater than walking because of the distances, if you’re talking about six or seven miles,” Jones said. “They’re failing to meet the needs of the main active travel user in rural areas.” This suppressed demand for cycling and encouraged cyclists to use the riskier carriageway, where they are not forced to stop at every side road.
While shared cycling and walking paths are considered acceptable in rural areas with lower use levels, shared-use pavements beside trunk roads that require users to give way to fast-moving traffic turning at major junctions and side roads do not meet modern safety standards.
Cycling UK’s policy director, Roger Geffen, said: “National Highways have some really good standards for designing facilities specifically for cycling, but have adopted far worse standards for any cycle facility that is shared with pedestrians or horse riders. This leaves their traffic engineers free to endanger cyclists wherever a ‘shared use’ facility crosses a side-road or junction on the trunk road network, even though this has no benefit for other users of these facilities.”
When asked how many of its schemes had IAN/CD195 as a design requirement, National Highways said it was unable to answer for England as a whole within its 18-hour time limit. A subsequent FoI was limited to a geographical area in the north-east of England. To this, National Highways replied: “I can confirm that we do not hold the information you have requested.”
Jones said this suggested National Highways did not know what they had built for cycling and walking. “In my view this is a systemic failure of National Highways to apply its own standards, which I know from experience of reviewing schemes is leading to poor provision on the ground.”
“They design for shared use, which means in reality a pavement you’re allowed to cycle on. It has few of the attributes of a good cycle route.”
National Highways has delivered a 10-mile high-quality shared cycling and walking route, alongside but largely separate from the rural A27 corridor in East Sussex. This is hailed as a beacon of good practice – albeit where users still give way at side roads – but the standard of delivery is not consistent across England.
The trunk roads body has approved a further £100m of “active travel” projects for the 2020-2025 period, plus additional investment within other funds. There are concerns the investment will be wasted if standards are not applied. England’s current cycling budget is otherwise just £50m a year – £1 a head compared with £23 in Wales and £58 in Scotland – and the government faces a legal challenge over substantial cuts earlier this year meaning it is unlikely to meet the government’s cycling and walking targets, according to a recent National Audit Office (NAO) report.
Geffen said National Highways needed to start counting cycling and walking journeys on its network to assess the impact of its schemes and map its existing active travel routes, as it had recently done for bus stops.
Answering a series of written questions by Ruth Cadbury MP, co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for walking and cycling, the Department for Transport said National Highways was now “proposing to conduct an assessment of active travel integration along its network in order to identify major or complex severance issues, as well as opportunities to connect with wider active travel provision, such as national cycle networks”.
Dr Joanna White, roads development director at National Highways, said: “Active travel is extremely important to us. We are investing more than £105m in active travel schemes for cyclists, walkers and horse-riders. We look at each scheme on its own merits and our design teams follow established standards to determine provision, working with stakeholders and ensuring value for money to the taxpayer.”
