Friday 7 September 2012

How to CROWize Burggasse

There have been some alterations to the junction of Burggasse by the MQ.  There are calls for a bike box to be installed however there is no way an 8 year old child should be encouraged to cycle in the middle of this junction.  Even confident adult cyclists would not find this in any way a pleasant experience.


Assuming we can not provide separate route for bikes or change the traffic patterns and we must have a solution for bikes here what would it look like if the Dutch did it?


We have a big junction with through roads and tram lines running through the middle of it.  Separation with traffic control or grade separation is required for this type of situation. Using traffic control lights would fit best here as they are already installed and it would require minimal changes and space compared to grade separation.  The junction could look something like this.


This does not remove any pedestrian or car space but uses the existing space as per the explanation in this video.



The Traffic lights can be used to TCS (Traffic Control Separate) so that conflict is minimal. The sequence could look like this.



Where the lines cross there is conflict.  So pedestrians and bikes have some conflict. Right turning cars also have some conflict with bikes and pedestrians.  By increasing the number of light phases this conflict can be eliminated but this also reduces the capacity of the junction. So a compromise is needed. This is just a simple 2 phase sequence that does not allow some motor traffic turns.  More complex sequences and traffic routing would have to be used to optimise this but I hope this is enough to demonstrate the principle.


1 comment:

  1. Great follow up video about this type of junction design here:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HDN9fUlqU8

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