Wizz through that roundabout… The Fendon Road Dutch Style roundabout gives a good level of service for cyclists
The Fendon Road “Dutch Style” roundabout is a new (to the UK) design of roundabout aimed at improving safety for cyclists. Roundabouts may work well for four wheeled vehicles but are a risky form of junction for two wheeled vehicles and a source of delay for pedestrians. The roundabout at Fendon Road in Cambridge consists of a compact roundabout with single lane entries and an annular cycle track around it. The cycle track crosses the arms of the roundabout using cycle priority crossings. The junction was opened in July 2020.
The basic idea is to have a circular cycletrack around the outside of the roundabout with cycle crossings over the arms and a pedestrian path with zebras outside that
Transport Initiatives were commissioned to study the effectiveness of the roundabout in improving conditions for cyclists and pedestrians. We used both fixed and mobile cameras to record interactions between the different user groups. Analysis was a combination of AI and the traditional staring at a screen looking for measurable factors that might influence how the interactions played out. Firstly, most cyclists and pedestrians use the junction correctly. Some cyclists wanting to turn right use the cycletrack in the anticlockwise direction as it’s shorter than going all around the roundabout. Many cyclists with vulnerable loads or those accompanying children use the footways and zebras.
Some cyclists turn right by using the footways and zebras in an anti-clockwise direction. This manoeuvre has a low risk of crashes
A few cyclists insist of cycling the wrong way around the cycletrack. Too few for a robust analysis of their safety but no crashes yet.
Headline Results
- The compliance rate for drivers giving way to cyclists is 88.1% and giving way to pedestrians 94.1%
- The compliance rate improved between the 2020 part of the study and the 2021 part
- The compliance rate at crossings on the roundabout is higher than on stand alone parallel crossings which the roundabout crossings resemble.
- It works better with mild levels of congestion than with free flow traffic – probably because traffic is moving more slowly and because drivers aren’t looking so far ahead.
- Compliance rate for cyclists using the zebras is at least as good as that for cyclists using the cycletrack, in fact the compliance rate appears to be greater if people cycle anti-clockwise around the zebras.
There are problems with larger vehicles blocking the cycletrack. It’s unavoidable with buses but some car drivers block either the zebra or the cycletrack when there is sufficient room for them not to do so.
So, is it safe?
The roundabout design appears to overcome the two big problems with roundabouts for cyclists; traffic entering the roundabout failing to give way to cyclists already on the roundabout and the same basic manoeuvre but with drivers of motor vehicles leaving the roundabout.
But with only one roundabout of this type in the country, and that in a city with a high proportion of cyclists, we can’t say how effective this design will be in other places with fewer cyclists. Therefore we are extremely interested in any chance to study further examples of “Dutch Style” roundabouts particularly any that deviate from the guidance contained in either the Dutch Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic or the English Local Transport Note 1/20. There is a pseudo ‘Dutch Style’ roundabout in North Tyneside and one following the guidance under construction at West Bar in Sheffield.
And there’s more…
Ideally, if you want to build one of these roundabouts you should take note of guidance in Local Transport Note 1/20 Cycle Infrastructure Design ans its diagram 10.37. However there are some issues with this guidance that we have described in this briefing note.
Two other interactions based studies in Cambridgeshire answered the question whether cycling contra-flow in one way streets is safe and also looked at operation of the Huntingdon Road parallel crossing.