Greater Manchester Cycling Design Guidance & Standards

Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) have recently released the Greater Manchester Cycling Design Guidance & Standards.  This document should set the ‘standard’ for cycling infrastructure to be delivered across Greater Manchester as part of the Velocity 2025 programme and beyond. The Introduction to this document is listed below and you can access the PDF version here.

Love Your Bike will be formally responding to the Design guide and would welcome any comments / suggestions you would like to send in.  Please contact us via  gmloveyourbike@gmail.com

1.1 Context
Transport for Greater Manchester has aspirations to secure at least a 300% increase in the levels of cycling across the city region by 2025. This will be achieved through the Vélocity 2025 programme which aims to deliver a cycling culture and infrastructure across Greater Manchester that will make cycling a mainstream, everyday and aspirational form of transport for all, regardless of age or ability. The first phase of the Vélocity programme consists of investment in a number of key routes and interchanges, supplemented through the recently awarded Cycle City
Ambition Grant (CCAG) funding from the Department for Transport.

To ensure consistent and high quality implementation of cycling infrastructure as part of the Vélocity 2025 programme, this Greater Manchester Cycling Design Guidance and Standards document (hereafter GMCDGS) has been developed in collaboration with the Greater Manchester District Authority partners. It is recognised that the GMCDGS will be a “live” document, extended and updated as required and made available in electronic format.

1.2 Key Design Criteria
As widely stated across a range of cycling design guidance, the key design criteria for successful and effective cycling infrastructure are safety, coherence, directness, attractiveness and comfort. In the context of Vélocity 2025, elaboration on these key design criteria is provided below:

– Safety – cycling infrastructure must cater for all age groups (ages 8-80) and the full range of cycling abilities. To achieve this ‘Family Network’, the Vélocity aspiration is therefore to provide largely segregated cycle facilities whereby cyclists are separated from other road users. Safety considerations include ensuring that new cycling infrastructure does not adversely affect pedestrians, in particular vulnerable pedestrians such as those with mobility impairment.

– Coherence – the cycle route must be easy to find and intuitive to navigate; be consistent in quality; and offer route continuity and completeness. The need for route completeness can be likened to the approach adopted for public transport systems. For example, at a pinch-point, the LRT track cannot simply stop and re-start beyond; it has to be continuous. For the same reason, it is not acceptable to leave gaps in cycle route provision. [Emphasis added] Where available highway widths are restricted for short sections, the objective should be to maintain the cycle facility, potentially through localised widening. Road signs such as “Cyclists Dismount” or “End” of cycle lane should not be used. Provision of high quality and continuous cycle routes with effective way-finding creates a “No Excuses Zone” for catchment populations within reasonable cycling distances to consider cycling a practical and viable mode of transport.

– Directness – the cycle facilities must be direct in terms of both distance and time. Cycle routes need to serve key desire lines, connecting origins to destinations end-to-end without significant detour or delay.

– Attractiveness – the cycling environment along a route should be pleasant and interesting to encourage the full range of cyclists including beginners, recreational cyclists and commuter cyclists. Furthermore, there should be good levels of natural surveillance and, where appropriate, street lighting in order to promote personal safety.

– Comfort – cycling infrastructure should be designed, built and maintained for ease of use and for comfort. This means application of high quality surface treatment and seeking to minimise the number of times it is necessary to stop or conflict with other road users.
Practitioners need to ensure that design decisions aimed at addressing one design principle do not have an unduly negative impact on the others. For example, the most convenient route might not always be the safest option, or an attractive route could involve such detours as to make it relatively inaccessible.

Full PDF document available.