London lorry ban. Promises, promises.

The Met Police response to the shocking number of recent cyclist deaths in London was to put officers on the streets (see cyclinglawyerlondon.blogspot.com). The Mayor’s response was to consider banning lorries from rush hour London. That was the headline, but was this a commitment, a new commitment, a serious commitment or just a headline?

As an initial response, Boris’s comments on cyclists wearing headphones earlier in the week did not amount to much of a policy solution and when Olympic cycling champion Chris Boardman joined the call for a ban on peak hour HGV traffic, the pressure to do something became intense.

So the Mayor told the London Assembly yesterday he would look into a ban. “We need to dig into this a lot” is what he was quoted as actually saying. And to be fair it is not an easy matter banning traffic from our capital. It needs political will, careful study, and planning. The case needs to be made out, in terms of risk and benefit, and the cost and other consequences assessed. The problem is that the Mayor has already committed to doing this digging: he promised as much in his Vision for Cycling document in London in March. The commitment then was to “work out how we can get HGVs out of traffic at the busiest times of the day, when they are most likely to come into conflict with cyclists”. It went further: “we will study the experience from cities such as Paris and Dublin, where lorries of a certain size are restricted from certain parts of the city or at certain times of the day”.

So presumably much of this work has now been carried out, some 8 months on? Not if yesterday’s Mayoral Question Time was anything to go by. There was more reference to “looking at other cities” and “working out how it would work” and “not ruling it out”. All future tense, nothing actually done.

So is a lorry ban a worthwhile or achievable solution to all these cycling casualties?

HGVs make up 5% of London’s traffic but account for more than 50% of cyclist fatalities; of the 14 cyclist deaths in London so far this year, 9 involved a lorry, so the case for action is already made.

But banning lorries isn’t the only option. There are several possible solutions, and to be fair, the Mayor’s Vision document set out the other initiatives, on better safety equipment on lorries, cycle awareness training for lorry drivers, reviewing criminal law penalties and improving segregation, and describes the strands of work that he had commissioned. All of these ideas, or a combination of them, may be part of the answer, but when 20 tonne lorries and bikes are in close proximity there is only so much that can be done to keep them apart.

So the option of a ban is perhaps the most draconian solution, and may well need central government legislation, but at least it has the potential to remove the danger at source.

Opponents of a ban argue that it is unworkable and that it will damage the local economy. Retailers and construction sites need to be supplied, and if not at rush hour then at other times, so lorries cannot be kept entirely out of the way.

Proponents of a ban point to Paris and Dublin, where restrictions have been in force for some years. Dublin has operated special restrictions since 2007 to keep the heaviest Dublin port lorries out of the city’s streets, with 5 axle trucks being banned from part of the city from 7 am to 7 pm daily.

In Paris most HGVs over 7.5 tonnes are not allowed inside the city’s ring road between 6 and 10 am on Mondays and after 4 pm on Fridays or at weekends. The longest articulated lorries are banned, and for lorries smaller than that (but still 29m2) the time restriction is proportionate to the size of the vehicle, with some heavy trucks being allowed in the city only at night and others only in the evening. It is reported that there were no cycling fatalities in Paris last year.

Intelligence is the key: finding out how the Paris restrictions work. Surely the Mayor’s cycling Czar Andrew Gilligan has been over to Paris to study how their restrictions operate, how they have affected casualty rates, whether and how they can be translated to London. If not why not? If so when does he report back and what is the plan?

And intelligence applies to our own experience in London. If TfL were to collate information on those types of lorry involved in these fatal accidents then they may find that a particular type of lorry, such as construction site trucks, are implicated. They will then know to impose restrictions on that particular type of vehicle. If it is articulated lorries then restrict those vehicles to particular routes and particular times. Similarly, collating information on time of accident will inform the debate about whether lorries should be banned at rush hour.

This is not a simple issue but it is an important one. The Mayor has rightly stuck his neck out in favour of promoting cycling in London, but must now deliver on his promises to make it safer.

This blog was written for and appears on www.londonremade.com

Cycling fatalities and police checkpoints

The appalling number of cyclist fatalities in London the last few days has provoked a constructive response from the Met, if not the Mayor.

Recognising that the majority of these accidents involve lorries, the police yesterday conducted a bike safety operation in central London, setting up checkpoints and stopping lorry drivers and cyclists. According to the Evening Standard the majority of lorry drivers committed one or more offences, mostly to do with driver’s hours. It seems that cyclists were also stopped in the interests of balanced PR, and warned or advised about wearing cycling helmets and headphones.

Most cyclists in London would accept that i) we have an image problem with many drivers in terms of safe riding and obeying the rules of the road and ii) that staying safe is something that we have some control over, so if the police are looking to highlight cyclist safety awareness as part of a campaign to clamp down on lorry driver offences then that is a pill we would surely swallow.

It does not help though that the Mayor chose to highlight the danger of cycling with headphones – which really only endanger the user - rather than the glaring and real danger of HGVs on London’s streets. He left the impression of wanting to create a debate over a side issue rather than delivering on his promises to tackle the problem of lorries killing and maiming cyclists.

Of course the police action may just be a one off, to give the impression of action in a very bad news week, and it remains to be seen how they follow it up. If they are serious about making a difference these check points should be expanded and repeated.

The police should also, in conjunction with TfL and London Boroughs, set up a unit to investigate all lorry-cyclist incidents involving death or serious injury and to collate data and intelligence on the cause of such accidents and how they can be avoided. There will be patterns, and lorry driver hours, on-vehicle safety features (or lack), segregation and driver education are likely to be issues that emerge. This sort of intelligent investigation should be standard if the issue of cycling fatalities is to be taken seriously.