STOP THE TROLLEYBUS !

This photograph along with others, is currently being displayed on a giant screen at Waterloo Station. It was taken by local resident Dawn Carey Jones and shows the exact location on Monument Moor that Metro is proposing for a trolleybus stop. The exhibition is called ‘The Big Picture’ and has been organised by Friends of the Earth to highlight the things that make our world amazing. The story behind Dawn’s photograph was the subject of an article in today’s Yorkshire Evening Post.

When Councillor Richard Lewis was interviewed recently by Radio Aire, he described parts of Woodhouse Moor as ‘grim.’ I would like to ask Councillor Lewis which is grimmer, the grass trees and flowers that currently occupy this part of the Moor, or the broad expanse of concrete that will form the raised trolleybus stop that’s being proposed by Metro?

The above aerial photograph shows a group of trees on Woodhouse Moor that have been cut down within the last month. They were located immediately adjacent to a proposed NGT trolleybus stop. The diagram below shows the relevant section of the NGT route plans.

This is perhaps the latest example of Metro and Leeds City Council preparing the ground for the trolleybus scheme. Early last year, they sought permission to close vehicular access to Weetwood Lane supposedly on safety grounds (closure of vehicular access to Weetwood Lane is part of the NGT proposals). And prior to that, the council closed the children’s playground located on the part of the Moor between Woodhouse Street and Woodhouse Cliff (the playground lies in the path of a new access road required by the NGT proposals).

Cllr Richard Lewis (photo courtesy of Yorkshire post Newspapers)

In an interview broadcast on the 10th March on Radio Aire, Councillor Richard Lewis, the head of Highways said about the trolleybus scheme:

“One of the problems there’s been for Headingley is it has always wanted to say “No” to whatever ideas have come along so that Headingley Bypass – no we don’t want it; Supertram – no we don’t want it; NGT – no we don’t want it…

“Yes we are losing 300 trees and that’s absolutely regrettable, but we will be replacing I think it’s on a 5 to one basis. That is something I would rather we didn’t see but you can’t do any major scheme without some changes to the environment…

“There are a lot of pluses that come with it as well in terms of us getting a pocket park down at St Michael’s church which is a big improvement; improvements to Woodhouse Moor, part of it is fairly grim for an urban environment…

“You’ve got electric vehicles so you’re taking all the pollution out that that produces. You’ve also got the fact that you’ve got traffic moving more quickly. All the modelling is telling us now that we will be reducing all the pollution on this route.”

Since 2008, the National Transit Database of the Federal Transit Administration has included extremely detailed urban passenger transport accident statistics.¹

The table below has been produced using data extracted from the National Transit Database: Safety and Security Time Series Data. ²

The table shows that whereas on average between 2008 and 2013, trolleybuses travelled 0.60% of the urban vehicle miles travelled by all buses, they accounted for 1.32% of the injuries to cyclists, and 2.20% of the injuries to pedestrians.

This means that a trolleybus is twice as likely as a motor bus to injure a cyclist, and three and a half times as likely as a motor bus to injure a pedestrian.

The following graph illustrates the much higher trolleybus injury rate.

Of the 571 trolleybuses currently operating in the United States (APTA 2012),³ just 119 or 20% are articulated vehicles, which suggests that some factor other than the length of the vehicle is responsible for the significantly higher injury rate of trolleybuses. A possible explanation for the higher injury rate is supplied by Barry J Simpson in Urban Public Transport Today (1994)⁴

“They are also much quieter than buses, which may be a blessing environmentally but can be a hazard to pedestrians, especially the blind, cyclists and others who may detect a bus coming from behind by sound rather than sight, hence their unfortunate nickname, ‘whispering death’.”

As well as being known as ‘Whispering Death’ in Australia, trolleybuses were known as ‘Silent Death’ and ‘Granny Killers’ in the UK.

References

Councillor James Lewis (photo courtesy of Yorkshire Post Newspapers)

In a sensational development, the chair of Metro, Councillor James Lewis has revealed that Labour councillors were whipped to support the trolleybus in the council votes that took place on the 1st July and 13th November 2013. Even though many Labour councillors are known to oppose the scheme, not one voted against it in the two votes. In an interview with Neil Hudson, reported in today’s Yorkshire Evening Post, Councillor Lewis admitted there was a Labour whip but added: “That is only to put the whole thing to a public inquiry. When the Government offered us the £175m, they were pretty clear it had to be for this project, so there’s no real chance of it being used for something else.

“That’s not to say we want to implement a defective system, we want it to be the best for Leeds, to improve transport in the city.

“It’s not a scheme that’s just been plucked off the shelf. We think if the scheme is approved, it will be 2019 or 2020 before it is up and running.”

MP George Mudie (photo courtesy of Yorkshire Post Newspapers)

Today’s article also included an interview with MP George Mudie who claims the ruling Labour group on Leeds City Council imposed a three-line whip on the issue, forcing its councillors to vote in favour of the plans. Mr Mudie is vociferous in his criticism of the scheme. He said: “It’s a third rate scheme that’s going to cause untold damage to parts of Leeds. When I see the amount being spent in the capital on things like the Jubilee Line extension and the Crossrail underground line, which is costing something like £16bn, I think it’s a scandal Leeds is having to settle for a trolleybus.
“There would have been a whip for Labour councillors in Leeds when they voted on it. Luckily, their whip does not extend to me. For me, an underground for Leeds is the number one system, Supertram was the second choice, what we’ve got now is third rate.”

To read the complete article, please click on this link, and for a breakdown of how councillors voted on the 1st July and the 13th November, please click on this link, and this link.

If the trolleybus scheme is given the go-ahead, it will almost certainly rule out the possibility of us getting an underground or tram system, and will commit this city to trolleybuses for the foreseeable future. Is it right for a whip to be imposed on councillors when they are making a decision with such important consequences?

Robert Goodwill on a fact finding mission to Rio de Janeiro (November 2013)

During a parliamentary debate on the 11th March 2008, opposition MP Robert Goodwill (now Transport Minister Robert Goodwill) said:

Leeds is now considering a trolley bus scheme — a second best scheme — which will share the same infrastructure as the cars and buses.

But a year later, Mr Goodwill had changed his mind about the trolleybus. At a meeting on the 29th October 2009 of the parliamentary Yorkshire and Humber Regional Grand Committee attended by fellow MP Greg Mulholland, Mr Goodwill said:

Leeds is the largest city in Europe that does not have its own rapid transit scheme. In 2001, the Government gave provisional approval for a supertram scheme in Leeds. In the light of that, work was undertaken on assessing bids, procurement and roadworks to provide the necessary infrastructure. However, the Government called a halt to the project in 2005. Despite being cancelled, significant public funds were spent on the project. On 20 December, the former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), stated:

“Around £39 million of public sector finance has been spent on Leeds Supertram. Of this, around £5 million has been spent on construction costs with around a further £14 million on land and property purchase. In 2004–05 the Department provided £6 million to the promoters of Leeds Supertram for scheme development costs, including advance works.”—[Official Report, 20 December 2005; Vol. 440, c. 2916W.]

That is money down the drain because of the inability of the Government to deliver the funding for a project that they encouraged Leeds city council to go ahead with. Leeds is now looking at—I hope it will go forward with this—a trolley bus scheme. Why was it not given the signal that it should go ahead with a trolley bus scheme from the start, rather than all that money being wasted?

I wonder who changed Mr Goodwill’s mind.

Reference

Transcript of committee meeting
Extract from House of Commons debate 11.3.08

Robert Goodwill being interviewed this morning on ITV

Transport Minister Robert Goodwill gave evidence today to the House of Commons Transport Committee about the efforts the government is making to lessen the dangers to cyclists.

I was in Leeds on Monday cycling around the streets looking at some of the good things and bad things.

As a person who has enjoyed cycling for a number of years in North Yorkshire, and who for six or seven years has been commuting by cycle to Parliament, I hope people will appreciate that I am not just a Johnny-come-lately to the cycling fraternity.

It is important that truck drivers understand the problems that cyclists face and cyclists understand the problems that truck drivers face. Indeed, if you have driven a truck you will know how dangerous it is to ride down the inside of a lorry that is waiting at traffic lights. There is a blind spot on an articulated truck round about where the drive wheel is, where it is very difficult to see where people are. We can do more in terms of forward stop zones for cycles, and maybe also look at how we could have an advance signal so that cyclists can get away before trucks start.

I saw the roundabout at Lambeth where a lot of money had been spent putting a cycle path through the middle, but the signalling was so confusing that no cyclists were using it.

A good argument is the safety in numbers argument. If you have a lot of cyclists on the streets, drivers look out for them because they expect to see them. In Leeds, where I was on Monday, there were very few cyclists out on the streets, and therefore motorists and lorry drivers might be tempted not to look out for them all the time.

It has to be said that we have a lot to learn from the continent—places like Denmark and Holland; they have roundabouts in Holland that are particularly easy for cyclists to use. I hope that we can share some of the best practice we have seen on the continent to further build on that.

As you probably know, we are delivering a large number of infrastructure schemes—pinch-point schemes and major schemes around the country. We are spending three times as much as the previous Government did on road schemes. We are determined to make sure that where we deliver these schemes we make them cycle-friendly.

Certainly, as we deliver schemes up and down the country, we need to be intelligent in the way we ensure that not only do we not discourage cyclists but we put in infrastructure that will encourage cyclists to use it.

We have given Cambridgeshire county council permission to trial an early start signal for cyclists as an alternative way of allowing cyclists priority at traffic lights. Manchester is looking at a similar scheme. If the results are good, we would seek to spread good practice around the country.

Measures being considered include, as I think I mentioned, removing the requirement for a lead-in lane for cyclists at advance stop lines; making it easier for highway authorities to install advance stop lines at junctions; having new traffic lights to give cyclists a head start at junctions; options for joint crossings for use by both pedestrians and cyclists; options for bigger cycle boxes or advance stop lines, to accommodate the growth of cycling and make it safer for cyclists at junctions; and removing the requirement from traffic orders for mandatory cycle lanes and exemptions for cyclists such as “No right turn except cycles”. This will all make it easier for local authorities to install cycle facilities.

There is also the possibility of looking at Dutch-style roundabouts, where cyclists can circumnavigate the roundabout in a safe way.

I was at a meeting in Leeds with a lot of cycling groups and other groups on Monday. They were sharing best practice. A lot of local authorities were there from all over the country, learning from each other about what does and does not work. The Department has a part to play in disseminating that type of best practice.

You can read a full transcript of what Mr Goodwill said to the Transport Committee here. And you can listen to extracts of what he said here.

Robert Goodwill in Leeds with Living Streets chief executive Robert Armstrong (2 December 2013)

Transport Minister Robert Goodwill is hosting a two-day conference on cycling at the Crown Plaza hotel in Leeds. The event is called the Cycling Networks Fit for Growth Confernce and is being attended by 115 people including New York’s Department of Transportation policy director Jon Orcutt. Here is the text of Mr Goodwill’s speech to the conference:

I would like to thank West Yorkshire PTE and ADEPT for their support in organising this event bringing together so many of you with so much expertise from local authorities.

In August the Prime Minister set out his ambition to put Britain on a level-footing with countries known for higher levels of cycling like Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.

The purpose of this event is to understand what needs to be done to move beyond incremental improvement.

I think that means we need to do at least 2 things.

First, we have to move beyond thinking about transport in silos to planning transport networks.

That means putting cycling provision in, designed by people who actually understand cycling, from the start.

Second, we need to get much better at making the case for increasing cycling infrastructure to existing car and van drivers.

Road traffic in Great Britain has grown by 85% since 1980, from 169 to 313 billion vehicle miles. The majority of the growth has been in car traffic which has risen by 86% in that time, from 134 to 249 billion vehicle miles.

That’s meant our roads have become increasingly congested.

If we do nothing, traffic jams will increase by around 30 percent in the period to 2025.

If left unchecked, the rising cost of this congestion could waste an extra £22 billion worth of time every year in England by 2025 and increase costs to business by over £10 billion a year.

To continue to grow our economy, that means we need to do more to help people choose alternative forms of transport.

We’re here today (2 December 2013) because we all agree cycling will be an essential part of that mix.

There are signs people are already choosing to cycle more. In London cycle journeys grew by 79% between 2001 and 2011. Car journeys fell by 37% over a similar period.

But London is unusual. The overall number of people who travel to work by bike was static between 2001 and 2011.

To go further we need to improve cycle safety and, by doing so, tackle the perception held by many that cycling is simply too dangerous.

Estimates from my department show that, per million miles cycled, the number of cyclists killed or seriously injured has fallen by 33% since the 1990s.

But the rate of injury has recently increased again, even while all road accidents are continuing to fall.

In London, cyclists made up 22% of all casualties on the roads in 2012, up from just 10% in 2006.

We are cutting red tape to make it easier for you to put cycle infrastructure in place.

We have made it simpler to put in place 20mph limits and zones.

We have also made it easier to install contra-flow cycling, and signs which say ‘no entry except cycles’.

We want to go further and the new traffic signs regulation will include:

trialling shared use cycle and zebra crossings
use of ‘elephant’s footprint’ markings for signalised junctions

We will also be working with TfL’s to see what can be done to promote their updated London cycling design standards.

And we’ll also be working with TfL on off-street trials to give cyclists better priority at junctions and with Cambridge and Manchester on their trials of cycle filter signals.

But – working together – we need to do more.

The Prime Minister’s said in August local authorities need to ‘up your game’ in the delivery of cycle friendly infrastructure.

The fact is that over the past twenty years or so a great deal of money has been spent on cycling infrastructure.

But frankly a lot of it has been wasted.

Poor quality infrastructure has been put in place which is inadequate to give people confidence to cycle.

With apologies to Talking Heads, all too often we’ve built ‘the cycle path to nowhere’.

In Tower Hamlets there is actually a cycle path on the pavement with parking meters running through the centre.

That’s a slalom, not a cycle route.

In Britain, most cyclists are still young men: two-thirds of women say the roads are too dangerous to cycle on.

If we are to get real shifts in behaviour, we will also have to make cycling something everyone, particularly women, older people and children, can aspire to do as the easiest way of getting about locally.

That means we need a continuous cycle network which will make cycling an easy choice for shorter journeys.

But we also need to get better at explaining to people who are currently sat in traffic that increasing cycling provision doesn’t mean an increase in jams.

Only last week the BBC’s ‘One Show’ was describing it as a battle between drivers and cyclists on Britain’s streets.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The average car trip is just 8.5 miles. That means a large number of car journeys will be far shorter, a distance most people could easily manage by bike.

So we need a simple, consistent message: the more people cycling the fewer jams for everyone else.

Achieving this isn’t impossible.

There are many examples of cities around the world that have seen increasing car ownership and declining rates of cycling, often to levels as low as we find in the UK.

However these places have doubled or quadrupled cycling in the past decade by putting in place high quality cycling infrastructure.

Places like Nantes, New York City, and Seville.

All cities that 10 years ago had cycle rates lower than in most UK towns. We can make similar changes in UK cities.

Next year we will host the Tour de France. On July 5 the Grand Depart will take place for the first time in Yorkshire.

With a Briton as the current holder of the Yellow Jersey.

There will be a lot of attention on cycling over the next few months. Let’s use that opportunity to start a cycling revolution.

Where there are barriers in your way, I want to help remove them.

Where the department can help you do more, we will.

Reference

road.cc article 7.12.13