Cycle Parking

Designing Streets is the first policy statement in Scotland for street design and marks a change in the emphasis of guidance on street design towards place-making and away from a system focused upon the dominance of motor vehicles. It has been created to support the Scottish Government’s place-making agenda and is intended to sit alongside the 2001 planning policy document Designing Places, which sets out government aspirations for design and the role of the planning system in delivering these.

Sustainable travel initiatives have the potential to add real value to the next round of Local Transport Plans (LTP). This guide seeks to complement statutory LTP Guidance by providing support for developing a sustainable travel business case based on the latest evidence and good practice from around the country.

Being more than just cycle and wallking infrastructure, Greenways truely transform urban areas. This guide covers the philosophy, design and construction of Greenways as multi-user paths for commuting and leisure. The distillation of 30 years of Sustrans' path building experience - the Connect2 Greenway Guide is an indispensible tool for anyone involved in the construction, maintenance and promotion of cycling and walking.

The use of motor vehicles within historic town centres raises many conflicts – vehicle access is essential for the local economy to thrive – but it can detract from the character and amenity of the public realm and cause damage to the buildings. This paper explores how local parking arrangements for different classes of vehicle may mitigate this dichotomy. The nature of historic town centres and the definition of the public realm and its main functions are discussed. The Principles defined by the Historic Towns Forum (HTF) for historic street design and maintenance that are most relevant to vehicles are listed. The changing nature of vehicle use in and through our historic towns is noted and the parking provisions which should be attractive to different classes of vehicle users are analysed.

The Streetscape Guidance report gives advice and information to Transport for London staff who look after the design, appearance and upkeep of London's streets and roads.

In 2000,1 the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (now the Department for Transport, DfT) published its strategy for road safety in Tomorrows Roads Safer for Everyone. In this document Mixed Priority Routes were identified as being among the least safe of urban roads. Subsequently, the DfT invited local highway authorities to submit schemes for inclusion in the Mixed Priority Routes (MPR) Road Safety Demonstration Project where DfT grants of up to £1 million were available for each participating authority. The ten schemes selected to be included in the project covered a spectrum of different types of authority and highway characteristics. This document reviews the experience from the ten schemes involved in the Demonstration Project and presents the lessons learned through the project to assist practitioners develop similar successful schemes. This report provides guidance for project managers and senior technical staff who might be involved in the development and delivery of MPR schemes, building on the experience of those that have already been through the process and understand the organisation and delivery issues involved. The MPR schemes have unique technical solutions to the redesign of their streets. It is not the purpose of this document to set out technical solutions. A brochure entitled High Street Renaissance and detailed scheme reports are also published on the DfT website, www.dft.org.uk. Summary Mixed Priority Routes are streets that carry high levels of traffic and also have: a mix of residential use and commercial frontages; a mix of road users, i.e. shoppers, cyclists, bus passengers, schoolchildren; a mix of parking and deliveries; They are not just transport routes. Although dealing with transport and safety is a key element, other concerns associated with the local economy and local communities may also generate an interest in improving the area with economic regeneration and environmental improvements. There are many benefits to be gained from enhancing the high street environment with an integrated approach. The investment is likely to contribute towards assisting the delivery of a range of local authority corporate objectives and targets including: accessibility planning; accident reduction; economic regeneration; Public Service Agreement; quality of life; and sustainability.

Encouraging more people to cycle is increasingly being seen as a vital part of any local authority plan to tackle congestion, improve air quality, promote physical activity and improve accessibility. This design guide brings together and updates guidance previously available in a number of draft Local Transport Notes and other documents. Although its focus is the design of cycle infrastructure, parts of its advice are equally appropriate to improving conditions for pedestrians. The guidance covers England, Wales and Scotland. Where the text refers to highway authorities (for England and Wales), the equivalent term in Scotland is road authorities.

Integration between cycling and public transport offers many of the benefits of convenient door-to-door transport over longer distances that are associated with car use. For operators, encouraging cycling to public transport offers increased passenger catchment compared to walking (typically up to four times the catchment area for the same journey time to the stop), as well as the potential to increase passenger numbers without some of the land-take and parking management issues associated with car travel (over ten cycles can be parked in the space required for one car parking space). In rural areas and some suburban locations, cycle access to stops or in-vehicle carriage may help to increase use and underpin public transport services that are struggling to make a commercial return, as well as offering a low-cost and socially inclusive form of access to cycling in the countryside. As with all sustainable transport promotion, each point at which there is potential 'uncertainty', or risk, in the journey will deter users. This might be in the form of lack of signs to parking areas, lack of security, or uncertainty about the vehicles' capacity to convey cycles, the conditions of carriage, or booking arrangements. It is important, therefore, that signs, vehicle layouts, leaflets and website materials produced by operators, passenger transport executives or local authorities make it easy and clear to users how to combine cycling and public transport.

The inclusion of ‘Sheffield’ type cycle parking stands should be considered in all highway traffic management and maintenance schemes.

The Manual for Streets is a newly prepared guide for those who are responsible for the design of new streets or the re-presentation of existing streets. It supersedes Design Bulletin 32 and ‘Places, Streets and Movement’ and complements Planning Policy Statement 3:Housing and Planning PolicyWales. It was commissioned by the Department forTransport and the Department for Communities and Local Governmentand it is a response to criticism of the quality of housing developments. Its purpose is to encourage street designs which provide an agreeable ambience and influence behaviour for all classes of users – and to do this by achieving a fundamental shift in design culture. Local Authorities are recommended to embrace the principles set out in the Manual within their own standards and guidance.