Cycleblog

How wide should a cycle lane be?
Richard Carter sent an e-mail to the DoT website asking about standards for cycle lanes, not expecting to get a lot back, but actually received a really helpful reply from them.

He writes: What they did was send me a copy of their cycling bibliography, saying that 'one of the publications [in it] is 'Cycle-friendly infrastructure - Guidlines for planning and design,' which costs �15. That might have been the end of it, he could simply have said bugger off and buy the thing. But he went on to say this:

'Very briefly, the guidance stipulates a cycle lane width of 2m wherever possible with a recommended minimum width of 1.5m. Unfortunately, in most circumstances, 2m is difficult to achieve and 1.5m seems to have become the norm in practice. Smaller widths than 1.5m are often encountered on the network. If a lane has to be provided less than 1.5m wide, it is best limited to short stretches, such as where there is a lead-in to an advanced stop line reservoir at traffic lights."

Now, reality is rather different, of course, but I thought this was really good as a standard, even if the miserable buggers who are actually supposed to implement the guidance take no damn notice of it at all.