“A textbook example of terrible highway design”: Council blasted after “serious downgrade” at popular roundabout leaves cyclists and pedestrians with no safe route to hospital

Cyclists in Norwich have slammed the council after “improvements” at a busy roundabout have resulted in a “serious downgrade” for the most vulnerable road users, with missing controlled road crossings at blind bends with fast-moving traffic, narrow shared pathways for pedestrians and cyclists, and “counter-intuitive” road access to hospital — all now a feature in what has been described as a “textbook example of terrible highway design”.

The Colney Lane roundabout, next to the University of East Anglia campus, acts as the main entrance to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, where two of the city’s Pedalways – the Purple and Pink routes – meet.

In 2023, Norfolk County Council announced plans worth £1 million to make changes to the roundabout, specifically to enable the road to carry more traffic. The original plans shown to Norwich Cycling Campaign removed the current cycle route around the southern side of the roundabout and replaced it with a route around the north, including a toucan crossing on the northern arm of Colney Lane.

But following subsequent discussions, the campaign was assured by the council that both the northern and the southern cycle routes would be part of the scheme as recent as September. However, owing to the poor quality of the images shown, the campaign decided to file a Freedom of Information request to obtain a copy of the approved plans.

Upon receiving the full details of the new scheme, cyclists were shocked to find out that both the southern and northern cycle lanes are not being kept. Having crossed over at the Toucan, cyclists are expected to dismount for the crossing of the main hospital access road and walk their bikes all the way around to the cycle track by the southern arm.

> “What is being built is not fit for purpose”: NHS workers join cyclists in slamming “last-minute changes” to roadworks plan which severs popular cycling route at busy roundabout, instead adding more lanes to encourage “more and faster” motor traffic

Colney Lane roundabout (credit: Norwich Cycling Campaign/Peter Silburn)

Despite opposition from not just cyclists, but also several NHS workers who criticised the council’s plans to sever the popular cycling route, instead adding more lanes to encourage “more and faster” motor traffic, the works at the junction were carried out.

Norwich Cycling Campaign told road.cc: “The works at the junction are now largely finished, so you can now get a sense of just how dangerous it really is.”

The group have put together a video showing the different parts of the altered junction and juxtaposed it with the previous layout, highlighting the several dangerous crossings and poorly thought-out cycling and walking ways.

They wrote: “The project represents a serious downgrade of access to the hospital for anyone not using a motor vehicle.

“We show what the route used to be like in early 2023, before it was ‘improved’ and what it's like now. Norfolk County Council described these changes as an ‘enhancement’ of the walking and cycling routes, nothing could be further from the truth.

“The two new routes contain difficult and downright dangerous crossings of busy roads, totally unsuited to people with vision or mobility issues (this is on the access to the hospital remember) and a long standing and heavily used route is not catered for at all, leaving people to cross at a place made vastly more dangerous by these ‘improvements’.

“The shared use pavements are far too narrow, and the routes are indirect and not intuitive.  There are also two bus stops located close to an official but third-rate crossing point of a fast, busy main road, making it even more dangerous.”

Colney Lane severed cycle route (credit: Norwich Cycling Campaign)

In the video, the area is described as: “There are three lanes of traffic here, and it’s an extremely fast, busy road, which is really, really dangerous to get across. This is almost a textbook example of terrible highway design.”

> "Space taken for cars to drive faster... cyclists and pedestrians just brushed aside": Controversial changes make roundabout "considerably more dangerous", NHS staff and cycling campaign warn — as council accused of ignoring its own safety audit

When the video, which has gathered over 1,000 views so far, was shared on social media, the response was visceral, with the changes being described as “mindless”, “stupidity from Norfolk County Council” and “an outrage”.

Mark Philpotts, a civil engineer and sustainable mobility design specialist who blogs under the name of ‘The Ranty Highwayman’, described the junction as: “It is an 8-minute masterclass on all that is wrong about UK roundabout design, and how a series of design decisions has transformed an OK-ish layout into something which I don't think is hyperbole to describe as deadly.

He also added that the video made him “wince” and that it should “should be used as training material for designers to show them everything that’s bad about UK roundabout design”.

Peter Silburn, chair of the Norwich Cycling Campaign, said: “As it is, there is no safe route to the hospital, and neither of the two routes is accessible to people with vision or mobility issues due to the dangerous uncontrolled road crossings.

“It is truly perplexing that even now, five years after the introduction of national guidelines for building cycling infrastructure, Norfolk County Council would force something like this through. It’s all well and good if you’re driving, but pedestrians and cyclists were all but ignored. It’s not just bad, it’s so obviously bad.”

> Campaigners accuse council of “ignoring evidence” after allowing traffic on bus and cycle lane which halved collision numbers and reduced journey times

Colney Lane roundabout crossing (credit: Norwich Cycling Campaign)

The comments under the video also agreed with the cycling group’s assessment. One person said: “The 2023 version was reasonably well-done, although of course suffering from the usual high-speed UK roundabout design, which is inherently adding risk for active travel users. Pretty remarkable how much worse they’ve managed to make it, given that they did apparently know something about cycle infrastructure in the past.”

Another person commented: “Calling this ‘walking and cycling improvements’ is disingenuous at best from those involved in its creation, and not the first time I’ve seen this happen to legitimise a road scheme. It needs to be stamped out.”

Last month, cyclists had accused the local authority of ignoring its own safety audit and making the junction “considerably more dangerous and inconvenient for anyone not in a car”, with Silburn adding that the changes “make a mockery” of the idea they were introduced to improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists.

He argued that “space has been taken to widen the road for cars to drive faster” while “cyclists and pedestrians have been just brushed aside out of the way”.