The challenges of applying cycling design guidance

Abstract

Cycle infrastructure provides a means for everyday travel by a mode that is efficient, benign to the environment and confers health benefits on the user. The UK Department for Transport has a funding stream dedicated to providing grants to English highway authorities to construct cycle infrastructure in accordance with guidance in Local Transport Note 1/20 Cycle Infrastructure Design. This guidance was published in 2020 and is beginning to be widely used. The challenges of applying the guidance are investigated in this paper. For this study, 13 semi-structured interviews were undertaken with politicians, managers, engineers and cycle users. The interview results revealed that, although there is ambition to deliver appropriate schemes and there is an inspectorate (Active Travel England) to assist in ensuring schemes comply with the guidance, there are constraints. These include the limitations of short-term and medium-scale funding preventing larger-scale outcomes, a lack of understanding of the extent to which a designer can adopt relaxations from the guidance and skills shortages. It was, however, encouraging to find that the participants were aware of the fundamental need to separate cycle traffic from both motor traffic and pedestrians.