There’s a lot to read, research and review right now in the world of new, cycle-friendly infrastructure design, but you’ll find at least one familiar character doggedly plodding his way through from one version to the next – the dimensioned cyclist.

I don’t know when he first appeared, perhaps there’s a bike-infra historian out there who does? I got into this campaigning game in about 2008 and at that time he could be found wobbling around in a 1m envelope with his twin brother in figure 2.2 of the DfT’s LTN2/08: Cycle Infrastructure Design.

The last four years of austerity have clearly had an effect in London because he’s had to move with the times and confine his elbows to 75cm, his space budget slashed in figure 3.2 of the Draft London Cycling Design Standards by a whopping 25% (along with the graphics budget).

Meanwhile, Sustrans, always aware of gender balance in its publications, has chosen to illustrate the width required by cyclists in its new design handbook with his sisters. Progress indeed.

Now, if I were to spend an afternoon flicking through the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges, God forbid, how likely is it I’d come across a whole section devoted to the dimensions of one of the most common cars on the roads today like the Ford Fiesta? Along with a footnote about larger, less common, but more problematic vehicle types to design for such as vans and lorries? The motoring equivalent of this…

2.6.1 Highway designers consider the dimensions of motor vehicles and their swept paths to determine carriageway widths, junction dimensions and parking layouts. The sizes and swept paths of cycles are usually irrelevant in the design of on­road cycle routes, but there are occasions where they need to be considered. Examples include the approach to a cycle gap, or the interface between the carriageway and an off­road cycle route. Failure to provide the room a cyclist requires can make some routes inaccessible or difficult to use, particularly for disabled cyclists, tandem or trailer users and parents transporting young children by bicycle.

For comic effect I’m being a tad unfair to Local Transport Note 2/08 because it does mention the dimensions of a couple of other bike types, but my point is you won’t find a dimensioned drawing of any other bike type. Neither does it make them easy to picture or design for.

Why are cycle infrastructure design gurus obsessed with diagrams of one type of bike? Is it because other bike types are too difficult to draw? Does showing a handcyclist in primary position feel too uncomfortable? Are bike cargo companies just a fad and not worth consideration in future cycle networks? I’d really like to know because along with other inclusive bike users it’s making my cycling life bloody miserable and turning me into a very grumpy bike-bore at parties.

But hold on a second, section 2.6.1 appears to hold the answer to the problem of designing properly for different bike types – swept path analysis. As far as I know, despite it being a commonly used tool available to highway engineers and urban designers in their chosen CAD systems, nobody applies it to model the larger inclusive bike types in cycle infrastructure design. Just think of all that computing power and graphical game playing fun going to waste!

So bike-infra bods, how about we put a stop to this perverse practice of dimensioning the stereotypical cyclist and set about properly integrating inclusive bike types into the design workflow? Embrace equality and build an accessible environment for everyone – you know you want to 🙂