Cycle lane between traffic lanes ‘better than by kerb’

Councillors in Edinburgh have approved plans to install cycle lanes between two vehicular traffic lanes on a key city centre street.

The lanes will be installed on George Street, which parallels Princes Street, as a temporary measure while consultants devise plans for permanent segregated cycle lanes.  

George Street currently features a trial two-way cycle lane that switches sides of the road half-way along the street. Vehicular traffic is restricted to one-way, also switching directions at the mid-point.

The trial expires this September and consultants (the council will not say who) are now developing designs for permanent changes to the street’s layout, which will feature segregated cycle facilities on a more conventional layout with eastbound facilities on the northern carriageway and westbound facilities on the southern carriageway. 

The council admits it could be “a year or more” before a permanent change is implemented. During this time the street will revert to two lanes of vehicular traffic each way. 

John Bury, Edinburgh’s acting director of services for communities, said the preferred design of an interim solution was “an advisory cycle lane that is not kerbside but sits in between the two lanes of carriageway in each direction”. “It retains a dedicated cycle facility, does not require a Traffic Regulation Order, is cost-effective, and as an interim measure provides a clearly visible and unbroken cycle lane.”

A kerbside advisory cycle lane would be disrupted by loading bays, parking bays, bus stops and taxi stances, he added. “It would have to either skirt round these obstacles, or it would need to be hatched in the spaces between the loading and parking bays and the bus and taxi stances. It would potentially lack clarity visually, be unmistakeably stop-start in nature, and it would be potentially more dangerous as a consequence.”

A cycle lane between traffic lanes has already been implemented between Causewayside and Kings Buildings in the south of the city, which Bury said was “effective, safe and popular”.

Discuss this at Cycle City on the 25 June 2015