Cycle planning expert Lingwood to leave Oxfordshire

Patrick Lingwood, pioneer of England’s first pedestrian and cyclist friendly ‘turbo-roundabout’, is retiring from Oxfordshire County Council after a long career in cycle planning. Most recently, Lingwood has played a key role in rolling out Low Traffic Neighbourhoods in Oxford.

He began his transport planning career during the 1990s, when he managed the Oxford cycle campaign group Cyclox. As a member of the Oxford City cycling sub-committee, he commented on several hundred cycle scheme proposals for Oxford. This cemented his lifelong interest in understanding the impact of cycle scheme designs on cycling levels and safety. 

Lingwood gained a distinction in a transport planning MSc at Oxford Brookes University in 1998, which included award-winning research into the impact of local shopping centres on travel behaviour. He was then at university for two years, researching cycling and walking and the impact of the introduction of Local Transport Plans.  

Eager to put research into practice, he moved into local government, preparing walking and cycling design standards for Wokingham Council, before taking on the role of English Regional Cycling Development Team (ERCDT) Co-ordinator for South East England in 2002. ERCDT was a DfT initiative to encourage local authorities to implement high quality cycling schemes in support of National Cycling Strategy (NCS) targets.

Working with 13 local authorities, he provided guidance and assessments which resulted in substantial improvements, with one authority winning the national award for best improvement. 

When ERCDT ceased to be funded after Government abandoned its NCS target in 2005, he set up a transport consultancy (Transport Initiatives) with colleagues. Outputs included preparation of updated national cycling design guidance LTN 2/08 for the DfT, for which he prepared in particular the sections on roundabouts, signalised junctions, and geometric requirements for cyclists. 

Lingwood then joined Bedfordshire County Council where he developed cycle networks for every town in the county. This led to a successful bid for Leighton-Linslade to become one of the 12 new Cycle City and Towns funded by the DfT.

In 2009, he joined the DfT to manage the £55m budget for Cycle City and Towns programme, as well as advising ministers on all matters related to cycling infrastructure and policy. 

He was also a member of the programme and development group preparing public health guidance (PH41) on walking and cycling for the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE). 

Lingwood then moved to Bedford Borough unitary authority in 2011. During his time at the council he designed and secured funding for England’s first and still only turbo-roundabout for a roundabout, with around 35,000 vehicle movements and 3,000 pedestrian crossings a day. The roundabout re-design has led to fewer casualties and a substantial increase in cycling and walking, said Lingwood.

The roundabout won three national awards (TPM 2015, CIHT 2015 and National Transport Awards 2016). In 2015, Lingwood organised a conference with Landor LINKS on Modern Roundabouts, with presentations from local and international speakers, highlighting innovative roundabout designs. 

In 2018, he moved to Oxfordshire County Council as Active Travel Team leader. Achievements included the adoption of the “million cycle trips” a week target for 2030, preparing the Active Travel Strategy which embedded a radical policy programme to achieve the cycling targets, and preparing the Oxford Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Plan (LCWIP), which the DfT assessors called a “truly exceptional and extraordinary LCWIP”. 

In 2021/22, using Emergency Active Travel Funding (tranches 1 and 2), he introduced a comprehensive suite of measures to transform the South East quadrant of Oxford. These included six Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and the transformation of the five main radial roads using the innovative 'Quickways' design. 

The Quickways included the removal of around 500 parking spaces and provision of continuous cycle lanes or cycle symbols along the entire lengths of the roads (10km in total). Twelve months continuous data showed that the Quickways led to around 1000 new cycling trips per day in the following year and an approximate 40% reduction in cyclist casualties, said Lingwood. 

Lingwood is retiring from Oxfordshire County Council at the end of 2024. He said his priority will now be to concentrate on research, surveying European cycling towns and preparing journal articles on cycling and walking. 

“Since 1996, successive UK Governments have set targets to increase cycling without any success. Underlying this failure is a fundamental misunderstanding of the process that drives change in cycling levels,” Lingwood said. “I feel now my greatest contribution can be to publicise and embed Dutch and international evidence into English policy and practice at a national scale.”