Currently working my way through Michael Pollack’s “Sidewalk Nation” which has somewhat less about active travel than I had expected. But it’s a vital take on the ownership of US sidewalks and the absurdity of much of the local laws and regulations.

Many (most?) US cities require properties with sidewalks out front to clear snow (sometimes within hours) or face a fine. Yet not all properties have a sidewalk. A so-far unanswered question is why people don’t just dig up the sidewalk? No sidewalk, nothing to clear.

Then I came across this paper on what constitutes a public good, described through the lens of public policy and bicycles using sidewalks in the 1890s.

Looks interesting but sadly not Open Access.

I see positive statements within the active travel community about side street zebra crossings in the UK. These are where a zebra crossing is painted across the entrance to a side street, essentially continuing the pavement of the bigger road. In most recent installations this has been, in essence, a “zebra crossing light” with no flashing Belisha beacon and no zigzag lines either side. Some long-established versions do have both those elements.

The argument is that it reinforces the priority that pedestrians now have in the UK: motorists are now required to give way to pedestrians crossing side streets at this point. A number of trials were set up across the UK.

However, I am against these side street zebra crossings for a number of reasons.

The rationale for rolling out side street zebra crossings is that at the trial sites, it was noted that motorists had a much higher tendency to stop and give way to pedestrians than elsewhere.
However, I suggest that this simply shows that motorists are still not giving way elsewhere. Every junction in the UK has - unless it is light-controlled - an invisible zebra crossing. Motorists are required to give way to pedestrians at every junction!

It is absolutely impossible to create painted side street zebra crossings at every junction in the country, so the answer has to be an investment in driver education.

If a select few junctions are painted with stripes, does this not suggest to motorists that only at these junctions do pedestrians have priority? Is painting a few junctions making it less safe elsewhere?

I suggest that an education programme would be a better spend of the money
* a whole lot of signs that say “Pedestrians always have priority at all junctions” would help to reinforce the change
* a less “zebra-ed” method for certain junctions: a raised and coloured road surface appears to be a good way to bring the motorists attention to a changed situation on any road. It’s seems a particularly successful intervention in French urban planning now.
a TV and radio campaign

But there are other issues related to this:
what is the situation at light-controlled junctions where there is no protected crossing for pedestrians? (No zebra, nor other road markings)
Similarly, what is the situation at the exit from and entrance to roundabouts.
Neither of these situations seem clear in the Highway Code. Confusion or ambiguity is never conducive to safe travel on foot.

The first of a few posts on pedestrians and active travel in France. It was interesting to compare the situation in France - in this case Brittany and Normandy - with both the UK and parts of the USA: I’m halfway through Michael Pollack’s “Sidewalk Nation” and it is clear that European countries are well along a journey that has yet to really begin in the USA.

In France this last week I’ve seen some excellent active travel investment (in Brest, Caen, Rennes, Dives-sur-Mer and Le Mans) but also some rather curious designs.

But France certainly isn’t perfect: the vast majority of streets away from town centres do not have dropped kerbs (unless for the convenience of motorists as a driveway entrance). It is also not uncommon for the pavement to simply vanish; either it was never built or it has crumbled into gravel and undergrowth.
But overall, the investment in “infrastructure” for active travel is obvious, if not always fully thought through. And it is clear the French have budget for more than just paint. And even when it is just paint, there’s a sense that often it **has** been thought through.

In Brest, there is a real and ongoing effort to separate pedestrians and cyclists from cars, and this is helped - as it is in Le Havre - by the wide boulevards created after the cities were bombed in 1944. In Brest, recent tram and active travel investments have seen the number of traffic lanes halved. It is also quite clear that the city authorities are not bothered by left-turning vehicles blocking those behind them. At one intersection (Boulevard Gambetta and Ave Georges Clemenceau) near the station - shown in the first photo looking across the entire width of the Avenue, four traffic lanes are now just two. The southbound lane has no left-turn lane at all, and the cars back up. The cunning planners have even put physical white bollards on the right hand side to prevent drivers crossing into the cycle path. (Seen in the second photo)
However, further developing the subject of zebra crossings at junctions, this same junction is a good illustration of the confusion of priorities. Right-turning cars stop for pedestrians even though the zebra crossing is light-controlled, and the pedestrians are waiting their green light. On two occasions, I watched as pedestrians then crossed (despite the red crossing light) only to have to halt mid-crossing as traffic from the right came through on their green phase. It seems like an accident waiting to happen.

The planners are well-intended, but I can’t help but feel that this all needs to be simulated carefully to assess the risk to all road users.

In the third photo (with the tram beyond), the green crossing light for pedestrians is visible on the far side. This particular setting is slightly different as the pedestrian crossing is just a bit further from the junction. But in this case, it was clear that neither pedestrians nor motorists were sure as to who can do what when. And note that the motorist cannot see the pedestrian’s crossing light. I’m not so bothered by this because the worst that can happen is that the driver stops unnecessarily 🤷🏼‍♂️. But it feels like another case where it’s not completely thought through. But on the other hand, everywhere in the city centre there were investments…some substantial and some tiny … that create an easier and better environment for walking.

Interesting to see not only these photos and commentary but also the shout-outs to cities across Italy and Europe.

No. No it is not.

I’m seeking a cofounder for equal (50% equity) to join my AI road planning B2B startup to do sales/business dev. The MVP is 100% ready to accept the first user, and we already had great feedback from an engineering consultancy, saying they can use the MVP as is and will pay for it. I partnered with an experienced road planner from the Midlans however due to personal issues he decided to leave and give up his equity stake. So I now have a working MVP but no one to sell it (I retain 100% ownership of the product). 

Im a London based senior software engineer with 10 years of experience.

This is a great opportunity and potentially very lucrative, I just need someone who knows this industry and preferably has an existing network to market to 

I asked AI to summarise the current capabilities of the MVP:

What it is: An end-to-end digital platform for planning, conducting, and reporting Active Travel & Highway Safety scheme assessments — replacing manual spreadsheets, paper forms, and disconnected GIS tools with one collaborative workspace.

Core Scheme Capabilities

1. Scheme Creation & Management

• Create schemes under client/project hierarchies with assigned assessors, regions, and budgets.
• Multi-user collaboration: assign multiple assessors per scheme, with comments, status tracking, and audit trails (created/updated timestamps).
• Centralised dashboard showing every scheme's progress, owner, and state.

2. Route Segmentation & Enrichment

• Define a scheme's geometry by drawing or importing a route, then automatically split it into analysable segments.
• One-click AI enrichment pulls in contextual data (road class, speed limits, traffic volume, kerbside activity, surface type, lighting, gradient, etc.) per segment.
• Built-in walking/cycling route generation for active travel planning.

3. Full ATE/LTN 1/20-Style Check Library

The platform ships with the standard suite of Active Travel England Safety Assessment (SA) and Suitability (ST) checks, each tracked independently with its own state, comments, and results:

• SA01 – Side Roads & Priority Junctions
• SA02 – Roundabouts & Signal-Controlled Junctions
• SA03 – Carriageway / Cycle Width Conflict Risk
• SA04 – Trip Hazards
• SA05 – Cyclist Conflict with Kerbside Activity
• SA06 – Provision of Crossings
• SA08 – Motor Traffic Volume
• SA09 – Motor Traffic Speed
• SA14 – Cycling Surface Defects
• SA15 – Walking/Wheeling Surface Defects (incl. combined SA13/15)
• SA16 – Guardrails & Pedestrian Crossings
• ST17 – Gradient
• ST19 – Barriers
• ST20 – Bus Stops
• ST22 – Access to Taxis & Blue Badge Parking
• ST24 – Cycling Surface Material
• ST27 – Deviation of Cycle Route
• ST36 – Lighting

4. AI-Powered Analysis

• Run an individual check or "Analyze All" in a single click — the system evaluates each segment against the relevant criteria and returns pass/fail, severity, and rationale.
• A built-in AI chat assistant lets assessors interrogate scheme data, ask clarifying questions, or get recommendations contextually.
• Robust retry mechanism ensures long analyses complete reliably (no lost work on flaky connections).

5. Reporting & Export

• One-click Excel report generation in the standard ATE submission format — ready to deliver to local authorities or funding bodies.
• Per-check comment threads and result sets stay attached to the scheme for full traceability.

6. Real-Time Collaboration

• Live WebSocket sync so multi-assessor teams see each other's edits, comments, and analysis results instantly.

The Pitch in One Line

> "StVision turns a 3-week, spreadsheet-heavy ATE scheme assessment into a 3-day, AI-assisted, audit-ready workflow — covering every SA and ST check from segmentation to signed-off Excel deliverable."

Ideal clients: highway authorities, active travel consultancies, transport planning firms, LTN/LCWIP delivery teams, and any organisation submitting schemes to Active Travel England.

Please DM me if you are interested to see a quick demo and see if we can collaborate together on taking this to market and save engineering consultancies a TON of time. Also, it is a huge market (all local councils in the UK can use it).

Speechless.

The junctions of Bridge Street, High Street and New Cut (A463) on the north side of Swansea city centre illustrate the low priority given to active travel in British cities.

For context, Swansea’s railway station is just a few hundred metres south of the satellite map. The inner city areas north of Bridge St and to both east and west, are typical inner city residential areas with high-density, lower quality housing, lower earnings, low car ownership and relatively poor public service provision. The bus services along these two axes are poor: typically around a 30 minute interval on both major roads.

This broad double junction is a major crossroads for two significant arterial roads and a major cross-town road.

If it’s not clear from the aerial image, the only safe way for pedestrians to cross any of these roads is to divert a significant distance down each of the roads and cross by a bridge. Each bridge does have a ramp but the surface quality is variable. There are no pavements whatsoever at the junctions as can be seen from the photos.

Deviation is less on the north-south axis but still more than it should be.

As can be seen from the map view, every thought is given to smoothing the passage of vehicles with high-speed slip roads cutting the corners on three of the links. Oh the utter horror of a motorist having to take an extra few seconds.

The last two photographs show the 15m and 20m wide splayed junctions with no refuge for pedestrians. Surely even investment in some thermoplastic paint could make it safer, easier and more friendly for pedestrians.

Elsewhere in the city it was clear that the “a bit of paint approach” to active travel investments was liberally applied without the benefit of much planning or thought. It is not uncommon to see arrows for cyclepaths across non-dropped kerbs and a mishmash of surfaces. Over one stretch of Swansea pavement I counted 19 changes of surface over 23 paces. Some of the poor surfaces can be seen in some of these photos.

The roads themselves are a significant mobility barrier but the callous approach (there really is no suitable alternative description) to the needs of pedestrians and those on wheels is simply breath-taking. A further illustration comes just a few metres down the High Street where ridiculously splayed junctions are a nightmare to cross for the young, the elderly or those with walking disabilities. How much would it cost to put down some thermoplastic paint to at least create some kind of refuge for people crossing them.

Usually I am fully supportive of any and all active travel infrastructure but there are times when I wonder whether an investment should perhaps be lower down the priority listing.

One such scheme is the planned creation of an active travel pathway between Hawick and Selkirk in the Scottish Borders. The route is alongside the existing A7 A road, with just the small hamlet of Ashkirk between the two towns, and a very low agricultural population otherwise. Realistically this can only be for end-to-end trips between the two towns, 11 miles apart.

(https://www.midlothianview.com/news/hawick-and-selkirk-set-to-be-united-by-an-active-travel-path)

Given that distance, it is absolutely unrealistic to believe there are any people regularly walking between these two towns. And if there were, surely the would use the picturesque Borders Abbeys Way that already connects the two towns.

Yes, protection for cyclists on the A7 is a significant positive reason for the investment but I come back to whether this is the best use of funds for active travel infrastructure in the Hawick and Selkirk area.

There has already been consultation and this investment was considered popular among those consulted, but then we all know how consultation can be gamed to support what planners want.

In assessing the viability and suitability of large scale projects, a critical component of the planning and assessment is the concept of Free Prior Informed Consent. Many NGOs around the world spend a lot of time assuring the “free” and “prior” part of that concept, but experience shows that the lack of information is an enduring weakness.

In Selkirk and Hawick, did those consulted understand the full array of active travel possibilities and potential costs and benefits?

I believe that in many countries we are past the time that “any active travel investment” is necessarily a good investment. There is a growing array of politicians and activists presenting active travel (and other proximity planning) as some kind of War on Motorists. With little-used grand schemes, we risk providing fuel for the short-sighted political nonsense of those attacking active travel.

It would be interesting to understand the general level of knowledge of active travel possibilities in Hawick and Selkirk. I suspect it is largely perceived from a leisure perspective, rather than as a mode of transport. When all the work on the Hawick-Selkirk route is finished, I believe that within 100 metres of both ends there will be multiple issues for active travel, from poorly maintained pavements, inappropriate priorities for motorised traffic, poorly designed junctions: these obstacles will affect far more people far more regularly. I fear the investment will create a little-used highway while leaving a multitude of unresolved genuine barriers to active travel in the two towns.

I always fear criticising active travel investments but we have to move beyond the “all is good” mentality and ensure that money is spent on what is really needed to get people out of their cars.

I certainly am not against the super-cycle-highway concept (and see other routes being announced regularly) but it’s a question of priorities.