Cycling with buses in Hackney

Hackney has a lot of buses and therefore a lot of bus lanes. Cycling is allowed in all of these bus lanes and whilst this might be slightly better than cycling on the main carriageway, sharing space with buses is still not a comfortable experience that most of the population of the borough are willing to take up. There have been claims in the past that buses are more dangerous than lorries to cyclists in London and I wondered just what the collision and injury rate is in Hackney between buses and people cycling. A few years ago I wrote about cycle injuries and fatalities in Hackney over a ten year period from 2004-2014. I have gone back to the raw data and have extracted all collisions within the borough involving someone cycling and a bus that caused an injury and have plotted them all onto a  map:

click here to view the map

I've included the age and sex of the person injured or killed, along with the severity of their injuries and a brief description of the collision itself (these descriptions are lifted directly off the police report and not my own words). Here is a breakdown of the statistics:

There were a total of 81 collisions within that ten year period involving bikes and buses in Hackney that resulted in an injury to the person cycling. 11 of these were serious injuries and 70 resulted in slight injuries to the cyclist. There was one fatality which was Dan Harris, who was killed by a Stagecoach bus ferrying journalists from the Olympic Park during the Olympic games in 2012. This highlights that not all of these collisions will involve TFL buses running scheduled route services but as in this case may be the same contractors running other services, such as rail replacement buses.

Over 80% of the collisions occurred on A roads, which is not surprising as that is where the majority of buses run. As for the roads these collisions took place on 27 of them, exactly a third, occurred on the A10. I have previously already reported that the A10 is the most dangerous road for cycling in the borough with 28% of ALL cycling collisions resulting in serous or fatal injuries to the person cycling occurring on this road.

A woman cycles with her child on the pavement along the A10 in Hackney. Would you cycle with your children in that wide bus lane on a road with such horrific casualty statistics?

The A10 in Haggerston, a narrow pavement alongside five wide lanes for motor traffic. If you want to encourage families to cycle then don't design roads where cycling on the pavement is the most attractive option 

The A10 in Dalston Kingsland, described as "an ideal road layout" by a former co-ordinator of the Hackney cycling campaign

Cyclist in a collision with a bus on Kingsland Road this morning. Luckily no serious injuries. Cycle safe my friends! pic.twitter.com/LmMv5ySKSm

— Good News Hackney (@GoodNewsHackney) July 20, 2017

The A107 was the next road with the worst bus/bike casualty record with 15 collisions; 6 on Mare Street, 6 on Lower Clapton Road and 3 on Upper Clapton Road. As for the 11 collisions which resulted in serious injuries, 5 of these occurred on the A10. 

Statistics on the age and sex of all those involved in the collisions is similar to the breakdown of all cycle collisions and is dominated by young men, with two thirds of the casualties male. Nearly half were aged in their twenties with nearly 80% aged between 20 and 39. Five were children; two sixteen year olds, a twelve year old, a ten year old and an eight year old. 

As for the 11 who suffered serious injuries 9 were male and two female. Five were in their twenties, four in their thirties and two aged above 40.

Following a long campaign by Tom Kearney Transport for London have been publishing details of bus collisions online since 2014. Whilst these reports do not give the exact location of the collision we can extract data that shows where someone cycling has been injured by a bus in Hackney. Three more people were injured after the data above in the second half of 2014, four in 2015, six in 2016 and three in 2017, up to the end of September as Q4 data has still not been published.

Another issue with cycling in bus lanes is that buses generally travel faster than people cycling but stop often, and so buses and cyclists often leapfrog each other, with people cycling often having to pull out of the bus lanes to overtake them at bus stops. 

There were numerous collisions reported where this happened, which obviously would not have been the case if there were protected cycle lanes available to use, inside of the bus lanes. 

"Serious injury - lorry tried overtaking cycle who was overtaking a bus causing a collision. Old Street / Hoxton Street"
"Slight injury - cyclist overtaking stationary bus is hit from behind by a car which stops but fails to give details. A10 / Arcola Street"
"Slight injury - car overtaking stationary bus when cyclist also attempts to overtake bus causing a collision. Hackney Road / Cremer Street"

TfL’s Strategic Cycling Analysis has identified this route as requiring high quality cycle infrastructure to unlock huge cycling potential. Protected cycle tracks with bus stop bypasses will be an essential component. pic.twitter.com/efHunRMWte

— Tab (@mum_on_bike) February 24, 2018

Above: Seven Sisters Road where in a recent consultation 69% of respondents called for segregated cycle tracks

Collisions also occur due to having to share the bus lanes with taxis and motorbikes

"Slight injury - cyclist in bus lane overtaken and clipped by motorcycle. Seven Sisters Road / Blackstock Road"
"Slight injury - taxi pulled into bus lane and failed to observe cyclist. Seven Sisters Road / Amhurst Park"

Clearly with this level of casualties involving bikes and buses, just in Hackney alone, we should not treat bus lanes as adequate cycling infrastructure and should try to separate the two modes wherever possible. This is especially important if the council is committed to their 2014-2024 cycling plan, with the ultimate aim to "make cycling a normal, safe and attractive choice for travel and recreation for our residents and addressing barriers that prevent other residents from taking up cycling" and to "make Hackney's roads the most attractive and safest in the UK where it is second nature for everyone, no matter what their age, to cycle"

Schoolchildren and buses safely separated in Utrecht, the Netherlands

If Hackney is serious about having 9% of all school children aged 5-15 cycling to school within little over a decade then clearly protected cycle tracks must be built on busy bus corridors, unless they want to hugely increase the level of illegal pavement cycling



Even if Hackney did manage to hit the levels of cycling they are aiming for, with 20% of all journeys and 30% of all journeys to work made by bike, then that would severely slow down the bus network as bus lanes would be swamped with people cycling

Separating people cycling and buses leads to safer cycling conditions and speeds up bus journeys. I also uses buses often in Hackney and want a more efficient bus service as the current average speed of most bus routes in Hackney is around 6 or 7mph

The council rightly puts the safety of people walking and cycling above the speed of buses in their road user hierarchy



But this does not necessarily mean slowing down buses. There are clearly many main roads in the borough that are wide enough for cycle tracks to be accommodated alongside bus lanes

Mare Street

Other measures could also be taken and recently Hackney Council announced that they wanted to install a bus gate on Amhurst Road, along with protected cycle tracks on Mare Street. Making Amhurst Road a through route for buses and cycling only, with access maintained for residents and business deliveries, would mean no need for the westbound bus lane freeing up space for protected cycle tracks

Amhurst Road

Kinkerstraat in Amsterdam. When I visited this street in 2016 it was just a normal road with no cycling infrastructure. When I returned a year later cycle lanes had been added with the road only open in one direction to buses and trams

Installing cycle tracks can also be an opportunity to upgrade the entire street and improve the environment for pedestrians as well 

Continuous footway and cycle track past a side road in Amsterdam. This design gives pedestrians and cyclists priority over motor vehicles and slows down motor traffic as it turns into and out of the side road. This type of infrastructure improves safety for all road users

The Living in Hackney Scrutiny Commission will meet on Monday to discuss protected cycle tracks in the borough, chaired by labour councillor Sharon Patrick, who recently expressed concerns about floating bus stops

@hackney_cycling what about pedestrian sharing bus stop with bikes lane not good ideal.

— Sharon Patrick (@ccc759cf65f84fd) August 29, 2017

She is right to be concerned about the Wick Road plans where the cycle tracks disappear behind almost all of the bus stops to become a shared space area. It is perfectly possible to create a floating bus stop which does not cause conflict with pedestrians getting on or off buses. 

"In order to increase the borough's cycling levels the borough will need to target currently non-cycling residents that view cycling to be less appealing than other modes of transport." The Hackney Council cycling plan

Floating bus stops are an essential requirement to keep cyclists safe, rather than expecting them to overtake buses within streams of traffic 

A father cycling with his son on CS2 near Whitechapel approaching a floating bus stop. Were it not there he would have to overtake that bus, in front of the lorry

Whilst it is perfectly reasonable for the chair of the Living in Hackney Scrutiny Commission to be concerned with pedestrian safety at floating bus stops (and there are plenty of examples available to ease those concerns) I hope she is equally concerned with cycling casualties. 15 cyclists have been killed in Hackney since 2005, with hundreds seriously injured and nearly a hundred injured by bus collisions. I hope all seven Hackney labour councillors on the committee are also concerned by these figures and support protected cycle tracks on the main roads in the borough to help reduce casualties and enable cycling in Hackney to be possible for the many and not the few

Converting roundabouts into crossroads

Last year The Times newspaper published a map of the most dangerous road junctions for cycle collisions in the UK. At the top of this list was Stratford High Street where it meets the Warton Road junction, which is where the extension to Cycle Superhighway 2 was built in 2013. Various vocal opponents of segregated cycle facilities used this article as an opportunity to criticise the route, with Hackney councillor Vincent Stops the most prominent at doing so again and again. This was despite it repeatedly being pointed out to him that this section is actually not segregated at all and had been widely criticised after the CS2 extension was opened by both cycle campaigners and the London Cycling Campaign. What I have not yet seen Vincent Stops do is mention that, according to the same report, the seventh most dangerous junction in the UK for cycling is located in the borough of Hackney and is on the route of the soon-to-be-renamed Cycle Superhighway 1, at the junction of Pitfield Street, Hyde Road, Whitmore Road and Hoxton Street. This road junction was a roundabout for many years and the Hackney Cycling campaign were calling for it to be turned back into a crossroads as far back as 2005, with nearly £600,000 spent doing so in 2011.

Before and after images from google earth

This being a Hackney Council led scheme the carriageway was, despite the space available and both roads assigned as cycle routes, not provided with any dedicated cycle infrastructure and was rebuilt as a very narrow road forcing people to adopt a 'vehicular cycling' middle-of-the-road position, with the remodelled pavements becoming absolutely bloody enormous. Even though this is a junction where the LCN+ cycle route 10 and LCN+ cycle route 16 cross there are no restrictions for motor traffic on all four roads in the immediate area so it is a very busy junction with motor traffic continually crossing all four arms of the junction. It is especially busy with cars going east-west, using this as a rat run between the A10 and New North Road, whilst most cyclists want to go north-south using this as a route between the North of the borough and Central London. The changes were widely criticised at the time with accusations that the junction was now more dangerous and a collision occurring within a month of the new layout opening with the local tenants association blaming the new layout for people jumping the give way and shooting across the junction. This is backed up by the person who leaves a comment at the end of this Loving Dalston piece with similar remarks from another person here. I have to agree and have witnessed several near collisions right in front of me whilst cycling along here and I was also struck by a car myself  recently (although at very low speed) who failed to give way as I travelled north to pick my daughter up from Nursery. Confirming, if I ever needed it to be, that I will never, ever cycle along Cycle Superhighway 1 with her, as this road is simply far too dangerous.

A lot of cars don't even bother to slow down as they cross East to West across Pitfield Street, despite the give way markings

Hackney Council recently responded to a freedom of information request on road traffic collisions in the borough and the data provided confirms The Times report about this being the most dangerous junction for people cycling in Hackney. In the three year period from the beginning of 2012 (nearly a year after the roundabout was removed) to the end of 2014 there were 14 casualties for cyclists at this junction, the highest amount by quite some distance, more than double the amount of cycling casualties than any other junction in the borough. It was also the fourth most dangerous junction in the entire borough for collisions of all types.

I've also had a look through the details of the cycling casualties occurring at this junction since the new layout and they tell a similar story, here are a sample of them:

• 04/07/2012 10:53 - Car and Cycle. V1 FAILED TO GIVEWAY AND CROSSED PEDAL CYCLIST V2'S PATH. Casualty Reference: Male, 34
• 06/07/2012 08:00 - Van or goods <3.5 tonnes and cycle. V1 FAILED TO GIVEWAY AND HIT PEDAL CYCLIST V2. Casualty Reference: Female, 30
• 23/07/2012 18:20 - Motorcycle and cycle. MOTORCYCLIST V2 FAILED TO GIVEWAY AND HIT PEDAL CYCLIST. Casualty Reference: Male, 30
• 16/07/2013 11:00 - Cycle and car. V2 MOVED ACROSS JUNCTION AND COLLIDED WITH V1. Casualty Reference: Male, 25
• 29/01/2014 16:15 - Car and cycle. V1 NOT LOOKING PROPERLY PULLED AWAY AND COLLIDED WITH V2. Casualty Reference: Female, 24
• 26/03/2014 06:36 - Car and cycle. V1 FAILED TO GIVEWAY AND COLLIDED WITH V2. Casualty Reference: Female, 29
• 08/05/2014 08:00 - Car and cycle.  V1 MOVED OFF AT JUNCTION ACROSS PASSING V2'S PATH. Casualty Reference: Male, 24
• 08/05/2014 13:30 - Van or goods <3.5 tonnes and cycle. V1 FAILED TO GIVEWAY AND CROSSED JUNCTION COLLIDING WITH V2. Casualty Reference: Female, 28
• 15/05/2014 07:54 - Car and cycle. V1 MOVED OF AT JUNCTION ACROSS PATH OF V2 CAUSING COLLISION. Casualty Reference: Male, 48

The chair of the Hackney Cycling Campaign at the time of these changes, Trevor Parsons, responded to criticism of this scheme in a local councillors blog defending this scheme, although with some odd comments about a bakery and a pub previously being at this location. Several local residents and users of this junction responded that in their opinion this scheme did not make conditions safer at all.

The same junction in Victorian times when it wasn't even a crossroads. It had a pub, a post office and a bakery but, more importantly for road safety, no white vans racing through at high speed. 

Here is what Vincent Stops had to say about these changes in his blog

 In Hackney we think about cycle journeys, not cycle routes.The changes at Britannia Roundabout on Pitfield Street demonstrates the philosophy better than most. It's a scheme that was 100% driven by the Hackney Cyclists group, but 95% of the benefits accrue to the local residents and pedestrians in terms of a better street environment.

So, 100% delivered by the local cycling campaign group and the result is a junction which is the more than twice as dangerous for people cycling than any other junction in the borough and the seventh most dangerous junction to cycle through in the entire United Kingdom.  In the draft vision for Shoreditch the call was for the Old Street roundabout to be replaced by a crossroads, something which will not now happen although it will still be significantly improved with more space for pedestrians and safe protected cycle tracks through it. Whilst the vision talks about 'new development on the corners of the crossroads', 'new public space', demolishing 'poor quality buildings' and even narrowing Old Street east of the crossroads to 'release more land for development' it doesn't once mention any actual provision for people cycling. Just as Trevor Parsons focuses on wider footways, trees and seating areas at the Pitfield Street crossroads it seems some cycling campaigners have public realm very high in their thoughts but don't always consider looking at creating cycle specific measures which could improve the safety of people cycling.

One thing that struck me during my trip to the Netherlands last year were how much of a joy it was to use roundabouts. I almost always had priority so no slowing down taking me out of my stride and I always felt safe using them. I was often surprised when using the google maps street view feature to look at junctions I had cycled on to find that many of the roundabouts I had used had recently been built to replace a crossroads.

Just one junction of many I passed through that had been hugely improved by replacing the crossroads with a roundabout. Priority and safe conditions for people walking and cycling, improved public realm and five lanes of motor traffic reduced to two lanes.

This is something the Dutch have been doing for several decades due to the increased safety of roundabouts, as detailed in this post from Paul James and his version of what a Dutch style British roundabout could look like would have been a much better design for Pitfield Street

Dedicated cycle tracks with priority for pedestrians and cyclists across all of the arms of the roundabout at all times, with single exit and entrance for vehicles on each arm as well. This would have been a much safer design for this junction, particularly as both roads are cycle routes and one of them a "cycle superhighway". We could have even kept the sculpture in the middle of the roundabout!

A cycle track in Amsterdam at a junction I stopped at last year, a similar treatment would have been a much better solution at a roundabout at Pitfield Street. Clear priority for pedestrians and a level, easy to cross cycle track . No trip hazards here! 

Proposals in some of the draft vision for Hackney documents and some of the "ward asks" from the Hackney Cycling Campaign in 2014 are for roundabouts to be replaced by crossroads and turning the Lea Bridge Roundabout into a signalled crossroads may well be a big improvement, as long as it has protected space for cycling. However in other areas it may well be more beneficial to either keep a redesigned roundabout in place or even convert some crossroads into roundabouts, based on classic Dutch roundabout design, to increase safety for people walking and cycling whilst also improving public realm. One thing the Hackney cycling campaign should never do again is campaign to spend over half a million pounds replacing a busy junction without ensuring safety for cyclists is a priority, especially if space is available for dedicated cycle tracks. Simply calling for roundabouts to be removed is not an adequate measure if the junction is to remain the most dangerous junction in the borough and in the top ten of the most dangerous junctions for people on bikes in the UK.

Ten years of serious and fatal cycle collisions in Hackney

At the end of last year I wrote about fatal and serious cycle collisions within Hackney from 2009-2014. I have since acquired the same statistics for cycle collisions from 2004-2009 and so now have a complete breakdown of all 2095 collisions within Hackney involving people cycling that caused some kind of an injury for the ten year period up to the end of June 2014. Of these 2095 collisions 283 of them resulted in either serious or fatal injuries to the person cycling and I have mapped all of those collisions here:

Click here to view the map

Once again I've included the vehicles involved, age and sex of the person injured or killed and a brief description of the collision itself (again please note that these descriptions are lifted directly off the police report and not my own words). Here is a breakdown of the statistics:

Of those 283 collisions 271 resulted in serious injuries with 12 of them fatal. 65% of the collisions occurred on the main roads and 35% on B or unclassified roads.

Once again the A10 is the worst road in the borough by quite some distance for serious collisions with a staggering 28% of all cycling KSIs occurring on it. The A10 is a clear desire line for people cycling in the borough as it is a direct route though the heart of Hackney linking Stamford Hill, Stoke Newington, Dalston, Haggerston, Shoreditch and the City together within a few miles . I know I used this quote from the Hackney Council cycling plan in the last post but it is worth repeating here:

It is inevitable that cyclists will continue to use our busy high streets and strategic roads that carry high volumes of vehicular traffic because often they are the most direct and quickest routes.

I'll save my thoughts on the recently announced Cycle 'Superhighway' 1 for another time. The Shoreditch Triangle, Green Lanes and Mare Street in Hackney Central were also other collision blackspots

Statistics on the age and sex of those involved in the collisions is not that surprising: 42% were aged 18-29, 26% were aged 30-39 and 7% were children. 72% were male and 28% female.  If you've spent any time on a street corner in Hackney watching the demographic of people cycling then it will not come as any great surprise that over 70% of people involved in these collisions were both male and under the age of 40.

As for the type of vehicles involved in the 'serious injury' collisions more than 70% involved people cycling being struck by a car with buses, lorries, vans and two cyclists colliding all accounting for about 5% each.

As for the twelve fatal collisions six of them, precisely 50%, occurred on the A10. Two were on the A106, one on the A102, one on the B113 Morning Lane (the point where it is a dual carriageway outside Tesco) and one occurred on Broadway Market. Five of the people killed were aged 18-29, six were in their thirties with the death in Broadway Market classed as "age unknown". Eight were male and four were female. As for vehicles involved again it is probably no great surprise that a Lorry was involved in just over half of the deaths, two involved a car and one each for bus, taxi and two cycles colliding. The fatal collision on Broadway Market was the fatal collision which involved two bicycles colliding; whilst the main roads in the borough are the most dangerous for people cycling, these tragic collisions can still occur in the most unlikely of circumstances.

Please take time to view the map and feel free to use it for your own research. In the eight months since this data was collated another two people cycling in Hackney have lost their lives and no doubt many more have suffered serious injuries. Lets hope that Hackney can learn from other countries and make improvements to the roads where these collisions occur.

Serious and fatal cycle collisions in Hackney 2009-2014

Last week I came across this freedom of information request made to Hackney council requesting a full list of all cycle related collisions within Hackney. The council in response provided a document containing all reported 1297 cycle collisions for the five year period up to June 2014, with locations, sex and age of the persons involved, a brief description of the cause and whether the injury was slight, serious or fatal. I have taken all of the 164 collisions that resulted in serious injury to the person cycling and the four cycle fatalities within the borough over this five-year period and mapped them here:

Click here for an updated post on ten years of collisions

I've included the vehicles involved, age and sex of the person injured or killed and a brief description of the collision itself (please note that these descriptions are lifted directly off the council document and not my own words). Please do take a minute or two to have a look at the map to see where the collisions have occurred in the borough. Some of the accident statistics are extremely interesting:

65% of all serious and fatal collisions were reported on A roads, with the other 35% on B roads and unclassified roads. This backs up the councils own admission in their recent cycling plan:

the majority of serious [cycling] accidents occur on our busier roads with high traffic flows and often multiple bus routes

A breakdown of those main roads show that a staggering  27% of all of the 164 collisions that caused serious injury occurred on one road in particular; the A10. This road was also singled out by the council in the cycling plan as the road with a high number of cycle collisions and they vowed to "continue to lobby TfL and work with them to resolve the cyclist accident problems along the A10 corridor in Hackney." Except of course TFL wanted to build a cycle superhighway down the A10 but Hackney council blocked it preferring instead to plan for an indirect "super quietway" on minor roads alongside the A10. They obviously feel the way to deal with the high number of casualties on this road is to remove people cycling from the A10 leaving it reserved for buses, private motor vehicles and the small minority of vehicular cyclists who are still happy to use it. However because the A10 slices through the very centre of Tottenham, Stamford Hill, Stoke Newington, Dalston, Haggerston, Shoreditch and the City within a few short miles people cycling will continue to use it as not only is it direct but also a place where people live, work and play. As the council pointed out in the cycling plan:

It is inevitable that cyclists will continue to use our busy high streets and strategic roads that carry high volumes of vehicular traffic because often they are the most direct and quickest routes.

The A10 was also the location of one of the four fatalities within the borough in this period. Not included in this map is the four additional cycle fatalities that occurred on the A10 in Hackney between 2006-2010.

Statistics on the age and sex of the people involved in these collisions is also interesting. 73% of the people suffering serious injuries were male and 27% female. 45% were aged 18-29, 28% were aged 30-39, 15% 40-49 and 5% were in their fifties. Only two were aged over 60, the eldest being a 71 year old male and only three were aged under 18, the youngest a 7 year old boy hit by a left turning tipper truck. This backs up the statistics that most people cycling in Hackney are relatively young and mostly male. Of the four fatalities there was an even split, two male and two female with all four aged in their 20's.

As for other vehicles involved in these collisions I was surprised that 75% of all serious injuries involved a cycle and a car. I've always been more careful when cycling in the vicinity of lorries and buses in the borough but whilst it is true that you're more likely to be killed cycling by a lorry or bus, a car is much more likely to cause you serious injury. Next on the list was buses involved in 5% of all serious injuries followed by Vans, lorries, taxi's, people falling from cycles without colliding with any other vehicles, and motorbikes.

Recently a group of us who live and cycle in Hackney formed a new group, Hackney people on bikes. We've compiled a letter to the Hackney Cycling Campaign and representatives from our group will be attending their meeting this Wednesday to discuss our concerns.

We think that whilst Hackney has had some success in catering for people cycling on some of the minor roads in the borough we want main roads within Hackney, the roads that cause the most serious accidents to people cycling, to gain Dutch style protected cycle tracks. We believe that whilst Hackney does have the highest mode share in London for people cycling (approximately 6%) we should be looking at other counties, and the Netherlands in particular, to copy their measures that have resulted in much higher rates of people cycling and much lower accident rates. We believe that people cycling in Hackney should not have to share space with buses and that fast one-way systems should only be returned to two way if high quality cycle tracks are also built. We want the most dangerous road in Hackney, the A10, to have a cycle superhighway installed on it, rather than only catering for people cycling if they use indirect back routes. We believe that installing cycle tracks on the A10 is the only way to stop the killing of people who choose to use it to cycle on and it needs cycle tracks due to the high volume of motor traffic on it, as voted for by LCC members in the 2013 AGM.

We're also concerned by some recent publications from the Hackney cycling campaign, including describing the highly dangerous A10 as "ideal" and the very safe cycle tracks on Waterden road in the Olympic Park as "poor quality cycle provision" that has "no place in Hackney". We want Hackney to be a place where people can cycle no matter what their age or sex and we acknowledge that whilst reducing the impact of motor traffic on minor roads in the borough goes some way to achieving this the separation of people cycling and motor vehicles on the main roads within the borough is needed to make cycling in Hackney truly safe and inviting for all.