 Hello and welcome to Urban Cycling Institute series on the crow manual so today We are going to talk about chapter 7 with my guest mark Phil Potts who is joining us from the UK. Hi, Mark All right. How we doing? Good And today just to give you a bit of a sense of what we'll talk about is we'll start with chapter 7 the crow manual and then we'll hop over to Mark's most recent blog post about lessons that he took away from the urban Urban Cycling Institute's unraveling the Cycling City course and some reflections on on how cities can change in light of that and then We will hop over to some of the slides that Mark has put together for a Previous conference that he wants to share with you So let's hop over to chapter 7 of the the crow manual And and I just want to read to you a bit for those listening by audio today The first paragraph right and this chapter is about implementing Implementation maintenance and furnishings the chapter starts with saying Infrastructure and other facilities for bicycle traffic are pretty much Exclusively determined and designed for by traffic engineers boom that is who makes the implementation of these things happen I continue quote the implementation and maintenance of these designs are undertaken by the operational services of Decentralized authorities and its contractors enlisted by these services. So Mark You are a traffic engineer by trade, correct? Is that a accurate reflection of how work gets done in the real world that traffic engineers implement the design manual? I Think that's pretty similar here in the UK Lots of things get done get built and forgotten about by the traffic and highways guys And then it's always the poor maintenance team that have to pick up the pieces when it goes wrong You know leaves collected in the gut all the usual things that we see Yeah, so so that's you guys are really on the front lines According to this document and so as someone who is on the front line I got some some quite a quite juicy questions for you Because you know chapter 7 is one of those chapters where I don't know the it's it's more practical and not everyone Tack what we want to tackle you on the street design and intersection design. Those are the most popular ones Those are the most flashy chapters chapters 3 and 4 But chapter 7 really gets down to the nitty-gritty So I wanted to start with Let's go to chapter 7 Point one here and it talks about you know road surfacing right and under road surfacing and under user requirements This manual gives four points right the the evenness the skid resistance and texture the drainage and the rolling resistance so You know these are very nitty-gritty detailed But as someone who who rides a bicycle we know that even something as mundane as skid resistance right in the texture of the road You can really feel it especially when it's winter. So during your career. What are some of the? Ways that you've tackled let's let's start with winter maintenance. I don't know how much snow you get there But what are some special considerations that? People should consider when when it comes to winter maintenance and snow because that's a popular excuse of people not being able to cycle I Guess from our point of view here in London this year or the year just gone. We haven't had a winter as such I don't think the temperature has got below zero very often, but yeah when we do have snow here certainly in London in the southeast of England We don't cope generally We're not getting up for it, but other parts of country lots of rural counties up into Scotland You know they get a snow every year and they can cope with it I mean for me as somebody who cycles It takes a lot to stop me cycling So even if it's there's snow on the ground ice on the ground. I'm still out cycling every year for the winter maintenance points if you generally there's You know Grittel or is going out sorting the streets, you know the main roads bus routes that kind of thing So it's perhaps more of a challenge if you're having to get from a residential area out onto some of the main roads Especially we have hills here in London. I will know you guys over in the Leatherlands don't when you're in the Leatherlands Such like like us and London itself. It's very flat in the center, but while I live out on the edge I'm about 50 meters higher than central London Hills are a consideration in the winter if things aren't been sorted or gritted So yeah, I think user experience varies across the country with that Yeah another piece that I found just astounding in the Leatherlands is This this idea of evenness, you know It's it that is some a piece of detailed design that I have not seen in most other places So for example when you when you transition from a footway to the pavement You know having the curbs Completely flesh with the ground or just the basic maintenance on the the evenness of the the pavement itself That must come with quite a few technical challenges. So in your in your work. What kind of challenges are those? I Think the key thing for me is traditionally in the UK. We've laid new carriageway surfaces, so you know the road surface itself will be laid by machine Footways and other surfaces tended to be laid by hand And the problem is laying by hand is you don't get great surface regularity So if you know you're going along the path or the cycle track or whatever And you're vibrating all the way down, you know, even with some really good guys have built it so for wheeled vehicles because cycles are wheeled vehicles We should be machine laying the infrastructure. It makes so much difference I mean if you're going a long distance You know some some of the poles in London compared to poles in Netherlands. It's a different world, isn't it? It is and I want to read this quote here and the Crow manual observes under evenness that quote with The increase in bicycle speeds bracket e-bikes racing bikes and bracket User requirements in terms of evenness are becoming even more demanding So that that goes to say that You know, especially for for the users who are who are traveling faster That the technical requirements at least is much more like those for automobile traffic We think of you know the German Autobahn, right cars going at 200 kilometers an hour. You need to have a very even surface What what I kind of wonder here is that you know in in a previous livestream We talked about This paving stones versus asphalt, right? So with asphalt and you said machine laying you can get a very smooth surface But I think perhaps the cost the aesthetic cost of that is maybe you don't get the Environmental design that you would like, you know, like I know that London especially has has their own Urban design guidelines where like the footway is paved in a certain way and if you use asphalt It loses some of that like unique character. So, do you know how that trade-off is being made or is it just in general all asphalt these days? Again experience varies so London Administratively you've got 33 boroughs including the city of London. We have transport for London, which also has about 5% of the road network so Whilst TfL has its own design standards for its network each local authority each borough have its Individual standards as well. So City of London, for example tends to be very high quality materials everywhere Go out into the outer borough some of the suburbs, you know where we've got big Sort of highway estates, but not a lot of money Asphalt tends to rule so the street I live we're lucky. We've got old-fashioned paving slabs concrete paving slabs Which look very nice But you certainly wouldn't want to cycle on them. I think the other the other problem we have as well in London is and I guess the UK We can't agree on basic standards So, you know you go to Manchester or some parts of Greater Manchester and green surfacing issues cycle tracks Other parts of the country is red TfL tends to use just ordinary black asphalt So even that basic level of you know, what color do we use isn't really sorted out in the UK The surface the surface itself Whatever color it is Has to be smooth that that's absolute key. Yeah And and that I think it's not covered in chapter 7 But in a earlier chapter we definitely talked about this way finding aspect And I think the the surfacing has much to do with that for example The London super highway network had the pleasure of talking with a few practitioners who were working In the right at the traffic authority that the the regional Transport authority of London. Yes a transport for London transport for London Yeah, and he talked about the complications of all working through all these burls and especially if you have a long-distance cycle network Then it becomes really challenging because you're trying to standardize These colors these way finding points that actually move throughout Jurisdiction lines and I've heard the same story from Copenhagen heard the same story from you know places like Brussels like as soon as you Move beyond the regional level standardization becomes quite important I Want to actually take a look at these pictures here because These pictures kind of depict The the different types of paving stones be and the different types of asphalt being used here in the Netherlands and I think in these pictures there's also a depiction of the various Target uses right so some of these are clearly for recreational uses for example the top right where you know that the Paving it that in a way that blends into nature is more important than for example in the top left or the bottom right where it's it's clearly completely for a functional use so so there are many approaches to this seemingly simple problem of paving and And that's something to be aware of I think for our audience that there is more than just asphalt that there's options out there and sometimes it's more than just the Traffic engineering the smoothness criteria. It's also the criteria that was covered You know back in the the previous chapters were you know wayfinding and design are important. I Want to move ahead to chapter Sorry chapter seven point section seven point two actually Some point to it's it's a few places ahead Oh, you know what before we got there Let's let's get into the idea of costs. This is page number 177 Under section I so ABCDF g hi And it it this is where I think when I talk with practitioners There's there's a lot of discussion over you know For example the fact that red asphalt costs in most countries like a few times more than just normal asphalt And I'll read a little section from here under costs and it says cost comparisons awfully unjustly consider investments costs only an Accurate cost comparison is only possible if all lifecycle costs are taken into consideration Hence the costs of minor and major maintenance work annual management including winter maintenance, which we just talked about and weeding and the residual value or Demolition costs at the end of the planned lifecycle were also need to be included I think it's interesting that this section also talks about the demolition costs Because we tend to forget that infrastructure is actually quite alive and gets Updated quite frequently So I don't know if you you've worked with you know ripping up old asphalt, but do you know? Whether that's that's a major consideration Perhaps at the very end of the cycle of what kind of materials are easier to dispose of what kind of materials are more recyclable in that regards I mean certainly with Asheville when that's being replaced you know planed out and taken away a Hello, a lot of the material is recycled into new Asheville Yeah, we've got some very high recycling rates for that in the UK industry and I assume that's the same in lots of places You know lots of people describe the road network as a linear quarry almost so you know if you can recover the materials You're reducing the capital cost of what's going back and if it's a big scheme And that doesn't matter so much if it's you know, whatever color the asphalt is It's the fact that it's got the right stone content and it's usable We don't use it so much in the UK, but your block paving is used all over the Netherlands You can pick it up relay it you can have utility go through it that could be relayed And if it's really failed that can go through a crushing plant and be reused You know it's secondary aggregates as well So I don't think people worry so much about it because kind of implicit that You know there is a life to the surfacing it'll you know and the curls whatever it'll be replaced but probably I'd say cycling infrastructure Without last lots of people if it's done The first time, you know, yeah, those pills get resurfaced Every other main road will be every seven to ten years, especially the ones with the big lorries on them. Yeah, absolutely So but you know that material has a value there. Yeah recycling. Absolutely. It's very cool That's something as sustainability becomes more of a theme, right then this whole life cycle investment in terms of Recycling materials also comes into play. So that's that's very cool We have sustainable transportation and then we have sustainable infrastructure ideally that can also support that transportation Yeah, um, I want to jump ahead to seven point one point five We talked a bit earlier in the introduction about the transitions between the surface and the verge Right and here in the manual actually it says that it could actually be a safety issue So I'm the second paragraph of seven point one point five You will see it says I quote in particular the difference in height between the Psychopath and the verge is important when it comes to preventing single vehicle bicycle accidents a Verge can be worn down by tires for example creating an elongated pothole Right next to the psychopath Another option is to have the asphalt on the psychopath a little higher than the verge The edge of the surfacing can begin to crumble and crack due to Subsidience on part of the verge for example, it is important that the edge of the surface is beveled off Concrete in particular can sometimes have sharp edges even with minor differences in height These make it tricky to get back off the verge and onto the surfacing And it's interesting to see safety in this regard mentioned right because we usually think of I guess places with less cyclists Safety in relation to motorized vehicles and crashes, but here this manner actually extensively treats Single vehicle accidents as well. So because of the number of elderly people cycling here in the Netherlands Do you have any comments about how the design of infrastructure in the UK kind of also tries to mitigate these issues? Or is it not really a big issue at the moment? I don't I don't think we have enough people cycling in those situations Perhaps we're talking more rural places than the nerve here. So urban tends to be curves everywhere. Yeah, which come with their own risks and issues Certainly where you've got surfaces paved which end at the verge So there's no curb restraints or anything you do get this crumbling weeds coming in You know grass growing things start and break up So some good practice would be to extend the sort of the low pavement layers out beyond where the surfacing would be To make sure the last year the support continues all the way out I guess the other problem you have in those situations is they're often used You know by maintenance vehicles cutting hedgerows back Even sort of people breaking down Bouncing up on you know from the roads. Yeah broken down vehicles So, you know loading at the edges there can be an issue where it's not cycle traffic. You know, it's other people doing other things I don't really think it comes up a huge amount in the UK But certainly, you know, if you don't deal with edges properly, they'll just collapse with and fall away for sure Yeah, so the lifetime of a bicycle infrastructure Could have more to do with this light erosion than any catastrophic damage, right? That's it could be erosion. It could be an issue with how things constructing in the first place It's not the traffic causing the problem. Yeah, so I cycles don't impart load Exactly. Yeah, and something it's like the the road damage is like to the to the cube or fourth power of Yeah, yeah, that's so so we have a very that's why it's so important to keep These trucks under the weight limit, but we have no such issues with with cycling at all because it's such a light vehicle I want to move on to material for markings and I think We talked about pavement surfaces. This is seven point one point eight We talked about pavement surfaces and and the coloring of pavements I want to get your take on Markings, right? I will read a section here from seven point one point eight Markings I quote are intended to guide road users and to clarify traffic situations It is for that reason. It is essential for markings to be properly situated recognizable and visible This particularly applies to markings for cycling facility They must make clear where other road users could expect cyclists to be in In addition, there are markings that primarily have a function for the cyclists themselves Edge lines this this is something interesting. They're experimenting with the Netherlands is is the edge lines to delineate the road alignment and the central markings on bidirectional cycle paths to make it clear that oncoming traffic can be expected and one piece of research has shown that Going back to this single vehicle crashes idea that elderly people actually have quite a difficult time In low light in recognizing where the edge of the cycle path is So they've started to put in these edge markings that we just saw in this photo in the design manual As for the center line, I was I was wondering what is kind of trending here They're in London. What kind of markings are you using? Is it like white markings paint or are you forgoing markings all together? I think as usually these things opinion is divided. Yeah, lots of the decent cycle super highway schemes in central London Bidirectional but generally they're not marked with a center line And I think the idea there is is to try and capture the fact they're often tidal Center lines will come in at key safety critical points My own view is if it's a bidirectional track, it should have a center line because it reminds people that it's bidirectional and if somebody's trying to overtake a slower cyclist Then they realize they have to again over here pull over back to the left Because you got oncoming cyclists. I think it's a bit of an issue sometimes with the urban design people who Want to try and minimize road markings clutter that kind of thing But you know, I think it's more of a think rather than having any data to back it up in the UK I think it's good practice to have the center line Certainly my experience of cycling in the Netherlands on bidirectional tracks were that having center lines were helpful And it's interesting that you mentioned for urban designers. It's it's a matter of aesthetics and clutter Whereas for for the engineers that that the center line is is a matter of you know utility and function And that's something I've been doing research on and exploring how we frame the different Language that we use to describe right the the various traffic devices that we use for example stop sign could be Vital to the safety of of an intersection, but at the same time, you know having too many signs Could be this idea of clutter Interestingly that in the next section the crow manual where it mentions plants and and and verges It also mentions the trade-off between having the lots of greenery But also having the disadvantages listed being that greenery sometimes gets in the way It requires maintenance and you don't get as good sight lines with greenery How is the how do you feel actually because you've been about London with how Greenery is being implemented. I guess it's like within the city in general, but more specifically next to cycle ways I mean doesn't strike me that there's any Grand plan for it. You know if the street being retrofitted It's nice to get greenery and it's nice to get trees and so that often happens We should you know should certainly do more of it So there's the good example in Stratford in East London, which has had a big geriatric unbundled The greenery has been incorporated with sustainable drainage system So that's a really good way of incorporating a good drainage system and the greenery And of course if you're designing something carefully, then you can mitigate for tree roots and other maintenance issues Although I think we do struggle sometimes with the fact that leaves fall every autumn You know, we don't tend to clear them up quickly enough in many places So, you know, let's have greenery where we can as much as possible. Yeah, it's good for an attractive experience, isn't it? It is ideally but also maintenance, right? I want to jump ahead to lighting actually so Lighting it talks about lighting in tunnels. It talks about lighting on road sections and it talks about how lighting interacts with These markings to help guide people as they progress on the path So I pulled up a picture here of the it's a Ryan vial pad between Arnhem and Nijmegen in the Netherlands Where they've actually used lighting as a branding tool much like wayfinding and signs So suddenly that that they've used this in this picture like the three a two-chain link With some colors in there their lighting to also indicate to people, you know If they notice it that it's it's also part of the the bicycle highway in that section Do you in in the London context? Do you see the lighting for bicycle infrastructure as being more similar to the lighting used for? pedestrian walkways or do you usually just make do with these high-mast street lighting? Is there any attention paid to like the unique pedestrian scale of bicycle infrastructure? Again, it varies with location But you know with the cycle superhighway type treatments long big rows Then you have a general road lighting system, which you know illuminates everything You know the the photo in in the manual there, you know We will do similar in that situation if it's away from a main road And you know actually the design standards for lighting Would apply in the same way as it would for most traffic to cycle traffic because you're after a certain level of luminance you'd highlighting Your risk points or interaction points that might be task lighting at crossings of big roads So I don't think we have anything special particularly in the UK or London It's again, it's about the function of the light. I mean certainly things like white light LED is really helpful For color definition. You can you know, it's better to pick out other people coming to you Yeah, whether we go to the expense of having nice Interesting or clever lighting at the top sometimes we do big schemes, but generally it's quite utilitarian Okay Let's let's flip over to the signage actually let's do 7.4 and then 7.5 and wrap this up The signage there's a couple of photos here actually about What signage looks like in the Netherlands? And and I know that because for my conversation with the bicycle planners working at transport for London in the UK that the London also invest in quite a bit of effort into pedestrian as well as cycling signage Especially related to the cycle cycle superhighway system Are you guys taking inspiration for the Dutch example and also a question is how does this signage get designed? You know like who comes up with it and are there standards and what kind of considerations Do you guys put in for the design of good wayfinding good signage? so the in general we've got some fairly prescribed standards for science signs lines Traffic signals all these kind of things anywhere in the UK. So we have a big book of regulations, which it does apply across the country So we can't make things up as we go along and for the way finding that's really helpful because we have to be consistent What we don't have is the Dutch system using nodes, which oh, that's interesting actually Right. Yeah, we tend to have a destination system Which has its roots, you know from from decades ago in managing motor traffic So I'm going from A to B. I'll be following the destination signage all the way along And that can be an issue if there's a missing sign or something you can get lost quite easily the cycle superhighways It's quite interesting because they've got Almost like a tube map by the side of the road every so often so You're going from you know out to London into central London. You'll be going past different Localities, you'll have a time to the next one time to the center. So time-based Signage is quite helpful to try and promote it a bit I suppose So if you're driving or you're stuck in the traffic jam You see the cycle sign actually it's only 10 minutes to cycle and might get out You know out of the car onto the bike I think we've had a big issue in the UK of being very root-centric anyway rather network-centric And that probably translates into the signs that we have at the moment But unless it's you know something special like the cycle superhighways. It's a very straightforward standard Yes, blue signs with white text, you know fairly straightforward fairly cheap to implement and probably not used properly enough in many cases Yeah, it's fear of getting losses next is an issue Well, let's go ahead to 7.5 a personal safety now I know in most places around the world that the predominant issue is that of traffic safety Right and and I'm afraid that what gets missed in that conversation is by focusing on the motor vehicle this idea of Social safety gets gets missed Right like for example, if we talk about lighting if we talk about Road marking if we talk about signage, it's all about Making sure that people are protected from you know collisions, right? The purpose of lighting is to make sure other car drivers see you and that you can see cars coming The purpose of signage is to help people Understand and safely cross an intersection, but this idea of personal safety then puts extra emphasis on Okay, so once we've established these basic I guess traffic safety features we can start thinking a bit more about What it means for for example a woman cycling alone at night special needs of people's disabilities And that gets us into a whole you know other discussion about about what cycling infrastructure is and who is it for? What I know you you're very opinionated on on aspects related to this So so perhaps you can give us a rant about the importance of you know personal safety and taking it into consideration Of the needs of the user perspective Yeah, I mean, I guess it's not odd things have in this chapter of crow anyway because it's almost a bolt-on here, isn't it? Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, but I think again with a UK context to it there's there's been a You know bike clashes and we've had all over the world where we're trying to put cycle routes along main roads Because that's where the shop star the schools and all these kind of things but instead We route everybody down back streets and canal paths And green waves things like this So, you know what might be fine during the middle of the day for everybody a relatively quiet route As soon as the sun sets and it's dark even with street lighting. There's fewer people around it feels less safe for sure You know, there are sporadic cases of you know muggers ambushing people as well on these quiet routes So I think for personal safety You know that that's almost something that should be built into how you develop your network from the start, you know people will Revert to type almost and think well It's less comfortable. It's less safe on the main road, but actually I feel a lot safer from a personal point of view I'm gonna stick to the main road the back street might be you know might feel nicer away from traffic But that's balanced against the thing being dark, you know, very few people around on that kind of thing So, yeah, we've got to tackle everything really You know, we've got to build the networks not so much the routes I think and then personal safety comes big into that I would say Yeah, and it's a it's a nice and inclusive way to to think about How how the approach that we use to designing cycling infrastructure and and finally 7.5 is the brief bit about other facilities Talks about here rest areas shelters And whoa bottle banks Bottle banks are cited at least five meters from the edge of the surfacing to avoid collisions with the obstacle Not quite sure what that means. Do you know what that means? Bottle banks I'm guessing that's um, I guess from the dutch experience because everybody does everything by bike Um, you you will take your bottles for the bottle bank and there's always somebody that drops a bottle Ah for the glass, okay You know, and you you could puncture your tire, uh, yeah, yeah, okay. I see yeah, but yeah, there are other things Yeah, I'm not so convinced about shelters perhaps but You know decent places to park cycles, you know secure overlooked Thanks, mark And I think that was a very informative coverage of chapter 7 of the crow manual It's quite a lot in there a lot of details And uh, it's very good to hear from a practitioner who who knows the details of the trade trade So we'll hop over now to a presentation that was delivered by mark philpots to the future build a session On the critical infrastructure stage and he did this presentation on behalf of screco Um, I thought it would be interesting for him to walk you through this presentation It touches on a lot of overlapping themes with uh, the themes that we discussed in chapter 7 So stay tuned and then at the very end of the presentation We'll then hop over and have a brief chat about his blog post. So take it away mark Okay, thanks george. So this was a presentation that I put together as part of the day job with swecco Um at the future build conference and it was just a really quick overview of So impacts on uh design with maintenance materials and street works as it says, um You know, we're doing a lot of retrofitting work reimagining streets rebuilding streets So I thought it'd be good to share this with you guys So, um, well, that's me. You've you've been introduced. So I'll just blast through there. Um, that's that's us during the day One of the biggest firms you've never heard of but we've got experience across the whole of northern europe including the Netherlands. So You know quite a good heritage there so in terms of Actually, um, you're building infrastructure for maintenance and management. We've heard the five principles coherence directness attractiveness safety and comfort Um, I think most people listen to this has probably heard of those and they overlap a lot. They contradict sometimes And so how do those requirements get framed in material choices and how do we maintain our asset? Um, how do the impacts on the way we deal with utility works? You know other works such as developments or building works that kind of thing So taking each of those five, um, in turn, um, I've used coherence here, which is sort of the UK interpretation, but it's the same thing um, so a coherent piece of infrastructure Looks at walking and cycling on the network level We recognize that people have destinations on main roads that we can't accommodate everything with back streets, which is a bit of a UK issue Um, sometimes we have to invest to deal with significant barriers and things have to be legible joined up You know, so you go between maintenance boundaries and its consistent Um, and that can include going to private areas and all these kind of things. So everything needs to be seen That's that's what we're aiming at And the photograph shown there is in london. It's in northern forest. So we can do red surfacing, which is fantastic So some implications Will be that, you know Users can understand what's expected of them. Um, and that's helped by consistency of materials and detailing That what we build is durable. It's well detailed Um, it's easy to maintain and so cyclical maintenance is going through doing sweeping doing the weed clearance Major maintenance is where we go in and resurface and do, you know, major repairs So, you know, we're trying to design to make that easy Um, a key walking and cycling routes could be taken out of use by works Um, and that will impact the coherence I'm going to need to be very careful with bespoke materials and detailing Which can be harder to maintain and for utility companies to reinstate afterwards So with directness, this can be more localized. We're accommodating people's desire lines We should be giving people the, you know, direct route which can be between destinations or through individual junctions The directness can be thought of as time and distance. So, you know, people may go slightly longer routes if it's quicker But that can add to, you know, physical effort for the trip Photo there is just maintaining some directness. Um On on this particular cycle track for building works So Yeah, so directness is maintained through worksites We want materials that can be reinstated quickly so we can get things back in service And it's where we put utility chambers. So, you know, if a utility has to stop open up the chamber to do some maintenance work Does that really impact on how people can move through the space? And if we're planning work unlike that photo there We're looking after people Yeah, this particular example, I think had sort of like a 500 meter diversion Which is yeah pretty poor Attracted this we did talk a little bit earlier about getting landscaping in so Yeah, nice example there from Stratford in East London, which is a drainage area and landscaped Get some greener into the street So we don't have to use expensive materials to look good. It doesn't have to always be the case And materials are not there to compete with the street. If we've got some great architecture, that's what we're concentrating on Good detailing to avoid Failure rubbish traps, you know, potholes ponding of water that kind of thing Um, yeah and keeping clutter to a minimum only put stuff into the street that has a use And if it's got more than one use even better Um and difficult to maintain materials with awkward detailing means it will degrade and therefore the attractiveness is reduced Certainly in the uk I guess everywhere it's got tight maintenance budgets So if things are difficult to maintain or expensive to maintain, um, you know, that's the first thing that gets cut And poor maintained streets will lose the sense of place and people won't want to use it. So, you know, it doesn't feel quite as nice With safety we covered the whole thing about, um, you know People falling off the cycle with the verges a little while ago So, you know, it's not just about people being safe in traffic. It's about the infrastructure not failing in a way that makes, um People fall off the cycle We recognize that people do make mistakes And that people want protection Um and safety is objective. It's you know, it can be casualty data, but it's also about the things that people feel this objective safety And first of all maintenance materials We use forgiving kerb so you can see in the diagram there or the photo there We do have a forgiving kerb using the uk Which is quite good We want to prevent damage to cycling surfaces and walking surfaces by lorries and people parking And poor maintenance Uh reinstatements We're managing tree roots and we're using appropriate species for the situation in the space We want good grip and you know appropriate lighting for situation And comfort, um, we talked about having you know Good surface regularity so people aren't being vibrated as they cycle along. So You know, that's where you get machine laid surfaces Um, we want to feel protected from traffic And unless we've got a very low walking and cycling flow As we have in this particular photo we we're about separating walking and cycling modes Um, you know gentle ramps Limiting times that people need to stop. This is the flow we were talking about earlier Um, and you know decent legibility away finding Um, yeah an example of not what to do here. Um, that's a route into a park So a quite significant trip So good attention to ironwork smooth surfaces flush curve at pedestrian crossings Ashfield to asphalt transition. So if you're going between a cycle track in a carriageway, that's what we need Uh, and signage that's well maintained and robust and lastly there good surface water management Um, so all the photos so far have been of the uk, but here's one of uh, you trekked um Just to demonstrate some well laid machine laid red asphalt there, um, which is the right color if you ask me Uh, but asphalt is easy for maintenance. It's easy for utility repairs. It's great for transitions between carriageways Uh, and the cycle tracks. So you've got a tie in just there um And you know red or a color is good for distinguishing cycle tracks from other surfaces Um, you know, we can patch it up and keep it going for a while Use black for for whole repairs and eventually we'll resurface anyway. So, you know, the argument's about not using color kind of falls away there Module paving is great. Um, it's good for footways Easy to sit, you know to reinstate perhaps less attractive for cycle tracks Um, and the thing that tends to destroy our surfaces or h-u-v buses You know great photo of a failure there that's taken ages to repair And temporary repairs can affect the comfort of people walking and cycling So if we're designing from scratch, we need to consider putting utilities into easy to get to places um places that are not going to be taking infrastructure out of surface service Lighting can be accessed easily. So folding columns are quite good for cycle tracks and footways Uh, and that's me. So that's the day job there with the link to my LinkedIn account and an email address So that's it quick boost to stop tour Wow Thank you very much mark, uh for the presentation now. I want to uh, hop over to a blog post that you recently wrote on Your blog that the ranty high women. Um, and this was written on on the 5th of april called titled go with the flow And uh in in this blog post you you talk about, you know, wearing some corona virus times and and how How you've been reading up on the the latest in in how New ideas from bicycle infrastructure and and and cycling in cities So do you want to share with us a bit about your your personal I guess journey and learning about some new things about cycling in the past few weeks Well, I guess I mean the blog has been something going for a while and it's a way of Crystallizing, you know stuff. I've read stuff. I've learned Um, you know, I learned through doing so actually doing some writing has been quite good for me Um, and I think with the whole coronavirus thing You know, it's thrown everybody Work has shoved everybody out into their homes Um, you know, we're all adapting very very quickly. So It took me two three weeks to get back into writing properly and go with the flow was, you know As you said, it's been inspired by a few things that happened last week So we've had various talks come out We've had digital world bike, which was which was great Um, and it got me thinking so this whole idea of flow I don't know it It's when you're in the zone, perhaps, you know, so you're not thinking about cycling It's all very pleasant and the photo I used was actually next to a Out to london trunk road, which takes 46,000 vehicles a day Um and cycling along that path, which is you know, it's not a fantastically wide or well maintained path But I'm going along this big old trunk road. I can hear the birds singing I can look around see the greenery. So I've got it up right bike. So You know, it's probably the closest I've been to cycling in rural netherlands for a while Um, you know going through this area, you can see there's houses on both sides, but there are rural sections And I think yeah, just I mean the zone there. I'm doing a Utility trip. It's the kind of thing that we want people to feel Every time they do cycle whether it's urban or rural And it's just a way, you know crystallizing those thoughts into a blog post Yeah, and uh, you're you're active on the blog you're active on Twitter as well Is there anywhere else that that we can find you on on the internet sphere? Um, I'm on linkedin, uh sporadically, but generally the blog and twitter is where I spend most of my time and probably too much time like anybody um But yeah, it's just just a way of exploring ideas and and certainly social media has been fantastic over the last few weeks Keeping in touch with people that I know You can take stuff offline and have a conversation as well. So yeah, just keep the ideas circulating really Yeah, uh, and the people can find you at uh at the The ranty highwayman uh on twitter I'll put a I'll put a link in the youtube description below And also uh marks available on linkedin. So if you want to get in touch with him, you know, that's what he does Plus, uh, he has a blog post a blog um that he maintains called The ranty highwayman dot blog spot dot com which I'll also link to In the description below. So mark, thank you very much for this conversation and it's really good to have you on today No, thank you george. All right. Take care