The Roundabout Of Discord

Various concerns around Elephant and Castle roundabout. Will the renovated infrastructure improve safety of cyclists at this notoriously dangerous junction? 

The infamous roundabout under renovation.

Improving cyclist’s safety at Elephant and Castle northern roundabout was not the utmost priority in TfL’s renovation project, an investigation can reveal.
However the new design seems to offer some positive improvements in cycling conditions at the junction.

This investigation can also reveal that the renovation project:

• Was not considered, in concert and effectively with cycling campaigners.

• Does not entirely eliminate some of the danger points raised by cycling campaigners.

Understanding what lies behind and around Elephant and Castle northern junction is pivotal. “It’s the most amazing public transport node” describes Jeremy Leach of Southwark Living Streets Group.

He campaigned through a long time in conjunction with other groups for the whole area to be re-looked at and made safer. “Everything is being done on the basis that you will get there by either public transport or by foot from the surrounding area” he continues. At the intersection of several important routes, it is a landing-place for many Londoners with two nearby universities, a shopping centre, and a soon-to-open leisure centre.

Unfortunately, Elephant and Castle northern roundabout is also Britain’s most dangerous road junction. Recently published road accident figures from the Department for Transport revealed that there have been 59 accidents occurring at the junction in the five-year period between 2010 and 2014, leaving 63 people injured or dead.

“The really vulnerable group has been cyclist there” Jeremy leach tells us.

Cyclist safety has undeniably been a great concern at Elephant and Castle, and the northern roundabout has often been described as London’s most dangerous junctions for cyclist.

A great illustration of this came from The Times nationwide survey asking its readership to designate what they believe is the most perilous road section in the country. The infamous northern roundabout at Elephant and Castle emerged on the top of the ranking.

The insurance company Aviva, helped solidify that dismal reputation by compiling five years’ worth of police road traffic accident data within the M25.

The study revealed that between 2009 and 2013, there were 80 traffic incidents reported to the police involving cyclists at Elephant and Castle junction, while the second-most dangerous location in London, Trafalgar Square, saw ‘just’ 46 cycling incidents during the same period.

The roundabout is currently undergoing a much-welcomed renovation with an overall budget of £25m. But for Jeremy Leach “none of this is happening in isolation…

All around the inner ring road, places like Vauxhall, places like Old Street, there’s regeneration going on” he explains, and Elephant and Castle junction is at the heart of it.

Transport for London intent to play a role in this and wants reduce the impact traffic has on the area to support the wider regeneration plans. “It’s been the real focus for TfL, how good do we balance all this sort of movement, this throughput of enormous sums of vehicle with the fact that people want to live in place not dangerous and not totally unpleasant.”

However given the dangerousness of the old roundabout for cyclists, culminating in May 2014 with the death of a 47 year-old man in a collision with a lorry, improvements in cycling conditions should have been the top priority when designing the new junction.

Yet, cyclists are only mentioned 4th in TfL’s objectives for the roundabout renovation, with this wording:

“As well as improving facilities for all roads users and the need to improve safety at the junction we also want to find a better balance between the needs of drivers and those of pedestrians and cyclists.” Elephant & Castle Northern Roundabout Consultation Report March 2014.

For Ryan Reynolds, who fiercely campaigned against the renovation, under the slogan ‘Say No to The Bodge’, this is not an insignificant detail and does reflect TfL’s priorities.

“It wasn’t their main objective he says regarding the improvement of cycling at the junction “the proposal was partly funded by and organised over many years by Southwark Council, Lend Lease, other local land owners included London College of Communication, London South Bank University as well as TfL. They wanted to do something that would maximise the appeal of their investments and land value.”

Mr Reynolds support that TfL’s project is “appearing to improve cycle safety but there is “evidence that TfL didn’t put cycling safety at the top of the list.”

The northern junction is at the crossroad of many busy cycle routes, with an estimate of 1500 cyclists on the roads at peak hour, and much more in the years to come with the new North-South Cycle Superhighway. Previous cycling facilities implemented by Boris Johnson were limited and inadequate, “the first sets of cycling facilities in the first administration of his were very poor, cycle superhighways were genuinely just paint on the road. They were a number of deaths” says Jeremy Leach.

TfL’s proposed new layout for the northern junction at the Elephant and Castle does offer some general improvements in cycling conditions:

• First and foremost: the roundabout has been removed on December 5^th 2015. Instead the new junction consists of up to 6 lanes of two-way motor traffic around three sides of a new public space. It will be impossible to turn left from Newington Causeway into New Kent Road and vice versa. This will force part of the general traffic to find alternative route. TfL states that “changing the way traffic moves around the area is expected to reduce collisions by a third.”

Roundabouts are particularly dangerous for cyclists. Almost two thirds of cyclists killed or seriously injured were involved in collisions at, or near, those sorts of road junctions. “The fact that vehicle can’t race round so fast-it is slower there now, quitter there now-I think that is for the better” says Jeremy Leach.

• Dedicated cycle lanes through the junction will be provided; previous cycling facilities were limited and inadequate. Moreover the left foot-way at Elephant and Castle Road will be widened to create an off-road cycle track. This segregated cycle path might help reduce risks of conflict between cyclists and motorists. “I think segregation is absolutely the right way to go agrees Jeremy Leach I mean the reason why the reason cycling in Holland is prevalent is because they’ve built separate facilities for cycling”. Although evidences are limited it seems segregated space does improve overall safety for cyclists. Danish studies taken from the European Transport Safety Council Report of 1999 have shown that there was a 35% reduction in cyclist accidents when implementing segregated cycle lanes on a particular section of road.

• The bus stop towards Camberwell -serving 16 bus routes, with up to 90 buses per hour at peak times- would be relocated from outside the shopping centre to Walworth Road. Evidently the size of the vehicle involved in an accident with a cyclist is a key factor in determining the severity of injuries. Moreover buses are a greater threat for cyclist on the roads, partly due to the difficulty for bus drivers to look properly. Indeed, 33% of buses involved in cyclist accidents failed to see the cyclist. This relocation which would reduce risks of collision with buses cutting in and out of their lane and would generally improve safety for cyclists on this busy stretch of road.

80 per cent of public members who responded to TfL’s consultation supported those fundamental aspects of the design. However, comments accompanied to the consultation responses were overwhelmingly requesting for further cycle improvements. This should be put in relation with the intense campaigning of several cycling organisations.

“London Cycling Campaign said the proposal was inadequate during the first round of consultation” indicates Richard Reynolds. He also notes that London’s leading cycling organisation wasn’t part of the core Strategic Stakeholder Group during the consultation period. “This was only developers, the council, London College of Communication, LSBU and TfL” he adds.

Although they were sidelined, London Cycling Campaign (LCC) maintained their standpoint: the design did not sufficiently address safety issues for cyclist.

In a publication titled “We urge supporters to tell Transport for London that plans for Elephant and Castle fail to provide safe passage for cycling” they have extensively critiqued both option of the design, citing the extreme dangerousness of Option A with potential ‘left hooks’ -motor traffic turning left across the cyclist’s path- collisions, and the lurking possibility of conflict between pedestrians and cyclists in Option B of the design.

When contacted for this investigation, Charlie Holland, blogger and an LCC campaigner revealed that Southwark Cyclist too, have raised concerns during the consultation, and even developed an alternative design in partnership with LCC’s Infrastructure Review Group.

Their design advocates for better signalling and light controls at all sides of the junction, to prevent conflicts between left turning vehicles and bicycles; this being the most common cause of cyclist collision according to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.

“We spent endless amount of time in meetings with them, trying to tell them they ‘cocked-up’ the design, and they didn’t listen to it” shouts Andy Cawdell, a prominent campaigner at Southwark Cyclists.

However, he and his colleagues had not been heard and they have reiterated their disapproval of the design in early December following a joint TfL and Police cycle ride around the partly-opened junction, during which they made some alarming observations: “The radius of the junction into St George’s road as you come north has been decreased, so traffic goes around there faster, so making the ‘left hook’ more dangerous for cyclists” tells Mr Cawdell, he goes even further and states: “TfL are in two completely different bits, there’s the bit that is entirely circle friendly, and the bit that sits in front of their ‘bloody’ computer models, and oh yeah, if we do this like this, it’ll good ! It’s the latter bit who did the junction and they go it completely wrong!”

“TfL is such a monster, a big beast, once they’ve decided what they’re going to do, they do it and they don’t do tons of consultations, they don’t listen that much, recognizes Jeremy Leach but the big change was to get them to say we’re going to have this idea of segregation rather than expecting you to share the road and that’s the big change that happened”.

In spite of all, and as Mr Holland rightly points out; the new scheme is not yet complete.

At the time of the investigation, work is still proceeding at the location and only a portion of the junction is completed with the whole renovation scheduled to be fully achieved by summer 2016. Mr Holland admits it is too early to say how well the new junction will work and he waits to see the final scheme in operation.

This investigation and its findings which emanate essentially from the study of TfL’s design, experts input and from the first user’s feedback more moderately, is thus meant to continue until it can be unequivocally confirmed that cyclist’s safety has improved at the now-bygone Elephant and Castle roundabout.