Sauchiehall Street Avenue Pilot "opened"

September 25th 2019 8 days after offical opening.
There is so much wrong with this street. This is one frame from a video.

A dangerous anti-pedestrian styling exercise.

They have made it easier for cars to corner faster into crossing pedestrians. They removed safety barriers from that corner and replaced with pathetic little poles. ( i mentioned the problem at this corner in a Nov 2017 post )
In a world that will soon be using silent electric cars and too accepting of the promises of self driving vehicles this type of design will be deadly.
The drain cover on the tactiles rendering it useless isnt in the plans
You cant safely sit at the seats as they are too close to the cycleway.
Street clutter reducing the usable pavement. on and on
So much wrong with this. The council was warned about these crossings before building started but the groups were ignored.

(click images for larger versions )

Sauchiehall St: Marketing vs Reality

Never trust the renders used to sell a scheme.

Sauchiehall St August 7th 2019.
( Update to his July 17th post )

Every time there is a compromise it has made things worse for pavement users.

Elmbank Street;
Before: Top Left
Render : Top Right
As Built: Bottom Right

Every change affected pavement users. No seats, more poles and street clutter. More cycle security poles though.
Promotional trees not there.
Removal of good safety barriers in hope that cars etc slow down and let people on the pavement cross safely. A city of pavement and public transport users is being redesigned by drivers and cyclists.At least they didnt put in that crazy non compliant super width zebra thing that is in the renders and included a controlled crossing that was shockingly missing initially .
However they replaced the safety barriers on the other end of the road when they did some realignment during this work so no consistency.
Remember there were not supposed to be shared surfaces in this work.

Dental Hospital:
It is tragic to still see the groups using this render to promote the scheme. They couldn't be bothered to include the bus stop at the Dental Hospital. Securing four bikes was a bigger priority than helping maintain access.

I have complained that the seats are very close to the cycle way. Making them unsafe for some people to use. People with prams, shopping bags, small kids, disabled people etc will find them unsafe.

Looking at them plus the pictures in the Dental Hospital images i do suspect that they may be installed the wrong way round. You can see three different orientations in the pictures , but if they were installed like the render they would have more space. Equally the plans could have been used but they seem to have been for ignored. Going by the appearance that they seem to have used the wrong plans for the end at Renfrew St i doubt they reviewed them.

This ends crossings have just been abandoned;
Getting to the crossing control is difficult for those that need it.

CCA:
It really is an unattractive brown smear of a mini road imposed on the street. Look at the promotional images compared to the built.It reeks of last minute panic to do something to differentiate the areas. In the plans the "Coloured Asphalt Surfacing" is only marked for use at a very small number of areas. Trying to remove snow/ice from that surface is going to be a mess.
You can see another variation of the seats

[Aug9 2019 Changed orientation of these images. Click on image for large version]

I will be excited when this sign finally gets moved .

...and as always assume all the corduroys tactiles are either oriented incorrectly or missing.

Update July 17th 2019 : Sauchiehall St Avenue

As an update to my original post in November 2017 i wrote a twitter thread;

( Update Aug 2019 : The time frame for this started with the previous council and some of the terrible areas ( Exits running to the tactiles at Rose St end, Cycle way blocking crossing at Charing cross ) were addressed by the current council before the start . However the the other failings of the initial design have been made worse by bad implementation. Read my Nov 2017 post for a lot of the issues )

Here is the content of the tweet thread and i might add more information and will mark it as additions;

Credit where it is due @GlasgowCC .When i asked about moving the CCA sign from the pedestrian area back in November 2018 i didnt think it would ever be getting done, but there it is moved . So since ...

.. you are in a fixing things mood how about this sign which is just wrong where it has been installed. Once that is done there is a slightly more serious problem ...

.. every single piece of of corduroy tactile at the segregated cycleway is wrong. They are in as ladder style which indicates a safe place to walk rather than tramline ( 90 degrees rotated ) . @EuansGuide or @RNIBScotland might be interested in this. Also ...

.. there are bits where the tactile is just missing or the cycleway signs are just not there. Randomly along the length so it is not a "still to be finished of fully" thing . Then there are the bits that make no sense ...

.. granted this are was terrible before, at least it was almost level , but by making it a better transition for cars and bikes going up the hill the big bump in the pavement with the tactile perched on top is nonsensical.


i am assuming this is not the way you are going to leave this crossing although its been like this a few weeks now and it looks like a finished surface on both sides


In January i asked about the discrepancy between the drawings used for the TRO and the supposed as built drawings. I see that the cycle way ,as well as the tactile/signage issues, has claimed another 6m or so of pavement

[ Update Aug 1st 2019 . I think i might have figured out what happened here; They built to the 2016/Early 2017 plans instead of the revised plans that were passed by the Council

]

and as another little endangering the pedestrian part the tiny "safety" posts have not all been installed. Considering what was at this corner before it is pretty terrible now. Did no-one notice the drain cover.[Edit July 19th : Having the drain there also destroyed the edge of the tactile ]


identical corners further east get no "safety" posts and vehicles turning onto Sauchiehall St drive over tactile damaging it, see in the drawing how it was curved before. Built in maintenance i guess.


These exits onto the west bound cycle lane are bad. People with prams, small kids , the elderly and impaired are going to have problems. 10/n .. there are more issues but that should be enough to be getting on with


[ Update: July 19th 2019 . I tweeted a video of the Rose St end junction; twitter link ]
[ Additional Aug 2019 . I tweeted some pictures from a video; LINK ]

An Avenue appears

As if by magic.
15th November 2018

Almost a year ago i posted about the , then , forthcoming Sauchiehall Street Avenue Phase 1 . It has now started to appear and i will update this post with the actual appearance of the things i talked about and anything new. ( i cant wait to go over the dangerous Bus shelter designs again )
( 15th November 2018 )
1) When you just ignore the plans.
Artists renders play a large part in the promotion of these schemes. They always show family scenes of sit up bikes trying to invoke continental Europe rather than the racers and mountain bikes bombing along like underpowered motorbikes that we have here.

Camera placement and extreme distortion of renders can show anything you want;
Ignoring that they never show the bins, A boards, signs, lights, direction totems etc etc that are dumped on the pavements.
( NB in the render those tables and chairs should have barriers around them but that would make them look like they were using more pavement space and we cant be honest about that )

But ,you say, that lighting mast was supposed to be moved.

Looks pretty set in there and will be messy to move now as no provision has been left on the median to easily move without digging up slabs again. You know its just pavement users that are going to be inconvenienced so we know the councils attitude to that as long as cyclists , as with other vehicles , get their little uncluttered road.
But, you also say, doesnt that change the viability of the supposed separator strip that was claimed to help impaired people safely navigate this street. Lets forget all of the bins, a-boards etc etc that will also be placed along the strip rendering it useless and remember this as it is immovable. As little as the council cares for pavement users they care even less for impaired pavement users either by disability or age.

2) I will save this for now but this will be partially dug up again to install crossing controls unless they have decided to ignore them as well. If they are leaving the current crossing signal it is on the wrong side and the tactile is the wrong colour for a controlled crossing.The markings are specific colours for a reason and you dont get to change them for aesthetic reasons.
The barriers around the control box make it useless as does leaving the ground unsafe at the base.

The entry and exit to the little cycle road is through the people waiting to cross the road as the plans showed. What fun !!

It doesnt need to be correct if its pretty

As these things do i had a tweet in my timeline;

Uh Oh ! Design by pretty graphics

So lets see where this goes;
It does say run but we would be interested in pedestrians , by far the majority but lets keep an open mind.
Interesting ...

Glasgow In Motion
http://nullmighty-static.com/ubdc/ukcity8/public/

Lets go deeper and see what we can find

Still not at data , lets continue

Oh boy its just strava data with pretty colours.

There used to be good numbers available for the streets and basically showed cyling was 4.9% of pedestrian traffic this is not shown here at all and would enable designs that are dangerous for pedestrians.

What are the real numbers like
I have managed to display a day we have actual data for . I also use this day in an earlier post about the Sauchiehall Street Changes.

Highlighted in red is Sauchiehall street on Sep 2 2014. In these displays they look basically the same. However in the numbers there were 11,000 pedestrians and 500 cyclists. Nothing in this display shows anything like that. This was people standing on the street counting people not relying on them being able to afford the required hardware and subscription and allowing their data to be counted. How do the map labels even apply; are they specific per type or can you compare across displays for a day. These certainly dont show that pedestrians were 20x more than cyclists on this day.

Self selected data from people who game-ify their commutes. A group unrepresentative of the city population that probably barely includes pedestrian of any range of age groups and over emphasises cyclists. Takes no account of practicalities of terrain or reasons for travel. As with all these things when you have descriptors like "Popular, not popular, most popular" etc and no real numbers not even the hiding place of data scoundrels ; percentages
This kind of flashy graphics is used to dazzle people without being critical of the data sourcess.
This is NOT the way to do design and make decisions that will inpact the safety of people..
A waste of time effort and money that can be used to justify unsafe designs.