‘Went Ketrin’ today; looked at segregated cycleway @NNHighways have finally given us. I’ve ridden it; I must say @SmithersJason was right this morning, it’s bold and ambitious.
To pass this crap off as ‘meaningful reallocation of road space’ is a bold and ambitious claim. THREAD!

St Mary’s Road is a main route towards Kettering town centre from the East. At its Western end, it meets the London road, at a traffic light controlled, multi lane junction. At the eastern end it picks up traffic from a sizeable area of housing. Cycling segregation? Good plan.

Previously, the road was similar to others in Northants. A narrow, painted advisory cycle lane which petered out as soon as the going hot tough. This has formed the basis for a scheme to install wands. It’s been done with wands without a trial using cones, it’s worth saying.

Let’s take a first ride, heading out of town. It doesn’t begin until several hundred yards after the main road. That was clearly put on the ‘too difficult’ pile. Nobody’s swept it, and now the wands have been glued to the bases, I don’t know how @NNHighways propose to sweep it.

1100mm design spec is not wide enough and the wands encroach (only) into the cycling lane, which is not flush with that verge - indeed it has kerbstones in places. LTN 1/20 pp42-43 says an absolute minimum of 1500mm at a pinch point, and then add 200mm for ‘fixed objects’.

See those storm drain grates, too? Best part of a third of the width of the available surface... Going down that hill on some of my bikes I’d be expecting to be doing almost the speed limit, by dip at the bottom. I’d have to take the lane; this isn’t safe.

In any event, at the end of the wands, the remainder of the old line has been scrubbed out and without warning to either party, motorists and cyclists are thrown back together at 30mph, headed towards hatching, junctions and a pedestrian refuge. You’re on your own again.

Let’s turn round and come back up, then, as if we’re going into town and have made it to the arbitrary point where it begins. Suspend disbelief about the question of whether the need to get this far will induce modal shift to cycling or not... #NetworkBenefits

I must admit I would be more likely to use this side, going slower uphill, but it’s still deficient and there’s loads of space to enable the provision of a proper width lane here. I’d suggest that a bi-directional cycleway up this side, might be a better solution.

Can’t quite get my head round what they’ve done at the sides roads...

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