New Cycling Infrastructure – Lake Street and Heath Road

Good news – Leighton Buzzard is in the midst of getting some new cycling infrastructure built! A new painted cycle lane on Lake Street close to the high street, and a shared cycle lane and pedestrian footway between between Kemsley Drive and Heath Park Road on Heath Road. We’d like to go over our thoughts on these changes to road layout, and why we support their implementation.

Lake Street Painted cycle lane

We’ve seen a lot of social media discussion regarding this new cycle lane, some of it negative. Here’s our take on it.

This road has been a signed two-way road for cyclists since mid-2020. Those who are now concerned about this perhaps have not noticed this to be the case unfortunately. Several of our members have occasionally encountered this not noticing these signs (including yours truly!) when riding south on Lake Street as sometimes drivers would appear rather perplexed that cyclists would be riding towards them on the other side of the road. The signs have been up since 2020, as can be seen below. The road has been two way for decades, and there’s been bikes, buses and cars going down Lake Street, and pedestrians crossing the road. It would of course be safer if all the parking on Lake Street was parallel to the traffic.

Ideally we would have a properly segregated cycle lane which would entirely separate bicycle riders and drivers, but we’ve got some paint instead. At the very least, this paint more clearly shows that cyclists are indeed permitted to ride south on Lake Street. This should at least help avoid any confusion in the future.

Leighton Buzzard already has a few cycling two-way roads for cyclists, such as Hockliffe Street and Church Road. So far as we are aware these have not been involved in any road traffic collisions. We know for a fact that neither have caused significant social media “buzz” in recent weeks – it would seem people don’t mind them.

The position of the cycle lane is as good as it could be without a major redesign of the whole street. The cycle lane cannot be right up against the parked cars, as this would mean putting riders in a dangerous situation, whether that’s from drivers opening their car doors without looking, or drivers driving (or even reversing) in to the path of riders. To be as safe as possible the cycle lane has to be against the centre line of the street.

Advice from motoring experts and organisations recommends that reversing into a parking space is better as it makes your car more manoeuvrable and gives you better visibility of traffic while reversing, and again when it is time to leave. We accept that not everyone wants to reverse into parking spaces, so by having the cycle lane positioned away from, the parked cars at least gives the cyclist and car driver a chance to see and react to any developing situation.

This is also an important route for anyone wanting to ride their bike from the centre of town, heading south-east. Good urban infrastructure design means making the transport modes we want to encourage as convenient as possible. That often means one-way for drivers, and both directions for cyclists. As ever, the more people that cycle, the fewer people that drive and we stand a chance of our road network coping.

Finally on this subject, please do not tell other road users whether they are in danger or not – this is for them to decide for themselves. Any cyclist who feels this “new” cycle lane is unsafe is quite capable of choosing to avoid it for themselves. Every one of us decides regularly what is safe to do, and what is not, it’s not the place of other people to decide that for us. Clearly, cyclists pose no physical danger to drivers of cars. It’s up to all road users to make sure they don’t cause danger to other road users – that applies to drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians. Bear in mind that drivers have the most responsibility on the road as their actions can cause the most harm.

Heath Road – New Walking and Cycling Route and Lane Narrowing

The scheme to create a good cycling link between Leighton Buzzard and Heath and Reach is progressing. Starting on the 6th of March, works will be undertaken between Kemsley Drive and Heath Park Road on Heath Road to both narrow the carriageway and introduce a wider shared cycling and walking route between the two junctions.

We’d prefer to see a truly segregated cycle track on this road, but after mocking up what that would look like on StreetMix it rapidly becomes clear that this is simply not possible while maintaining two way traffic on the main carriageway given the width of the space available. One alternative option could be a cycle route on a road running parallel to Heath Road, but sadly such a road does not exist. A shared space cycle/walking track is the best option available to us on Heath Road.

We’d like to agree with pretty much everything stated in Central Bedfordshire Council’s page on the works, which can be found here. This improvement will provide good access for residents to both the schools served by this section (Dovery Down Lower School and Heathwood Lower school) not forgetting Adams Bottom playground a bit further south. Providing safe routes such as this one helps parents and their children make local trips sustainably.

We suspect that some residents will be concerned that somehow narrowing the carriageway will be a problem, we’d also like to ease those concerns, by pointing out that narrowing carriageways has several benefits, such as making it easier for pedestrians to cross the road itself, but also slowing traffic down.

We’re really looking forward to this improvement on Heath Road, as it’ll make it easier for local residents to choose cycling over driving for their short trips, which will in turn improve their health, the local air quality, road safety, and save them money in the process too.