The following are recent designs proposed by the Camden Cycling Campaign. We welcome feedback on how they could be improved.

• Camden Park Road/Camden Road Crossing
• Royal College Street
• Seven Stations Link.

Two-way segregated cycle crossing for Camden Road

Submitted to Council: June 1998.

Camden Road is a Traffic Director controlled Red Route with moderate to high traffic volumes, and runs from Camden Town up towards Holloway. There is already a cycle route running parallel to Camden Road via North Villas (see right hand side of diagram), but no (safe) cycle crossings of the Red Route for over a mile in either direction.

Torriano Avenue is an excessively wide one way street which attracts considerable amounts of through traffic, and is currently being considered for traffic calming measures. There are three schools (we believe shortly to be reduced to two) in Torriano Avenue, so the scheme should gain extra brownie points for dovetailing with the Safe Routes to Schools initiative.

Click to view a larger image of the plan.

Royal College Street

Preliminary design 2/2/98. Construction complete (but without the junction speed tables) March 2000. See our Case Study on the Royal College Street scheme.

Royal College street is one way northbound, with a 50 metre section of two way cycle route build in the mid 1980s half way along it; Royal College Street carries considerable volumes of through traffic. The aim is to provide a two way physically segregated cycle route from the original short segregated facility (north of the Pratt Street junction) down to Crowndale Road, and thus onto the popular Somers Town route to Bloomsbury. The new segregated track is approximately 500 metres long. This is the first stage of the design process, which in particular seeks to address council safety concerns at junctions.

Royal College Street Overview - Crowndale Road to Georgiana Street junctions

There are two options for the southern section of the road (left end of the diagram) - either use of the wide pavement for a cycle track, or use the carriageway. The latter requires further traffic islands with illuminated bollards (DETR requirement), and the possible relocation of the bus stands to outside the cycle track; we are currently assessing whether the bus shelters can remain on the pavement, or should be moved onto the island.

Click to view a larger image of the plan.

Royal College Street - Plender Street junction

Plender Street is two way; the street has a fairly high residential population at this location. The section to the south (right hand side of the diagram) makes use of the wide pavement (option 1). Following debate within the Campaign we agreed that pavement space should only be reallocated to cyclists when there was insufficient carriageway space; as Royal College Street is the scheme has been implemented using road space for the track instead.

Click to view a larger image of the plan.

Junction Detail: 8/6/99

To read about the Seven Stations Link

© Copyright Paul Gasson, Camden Cycling Campaign 1999