At last week's West End Community Council meeting, it was pointed out that on the Riverside Drive cycle route, there's a lack of markings on the pathway to differentiate pedestrians from cyclists. I took up the matter with the Director of Planning & Transportation and here's his response :
Riverside Drive cycle route is part of Dundee's 26 mile long Green Circular and is also part of the National Cycle Network which has hundreds of routes running throughout the UK. Many parts of these routes are shared with pedestrians.
The main reasons to why there is no such segregation of pedestrians and cyclists at Riverside Drive are as follows:
Volume of bicycle/pedestrian traffic is just not high enough for segregation.
The average width of the Riverside Drive section is 2.5m with some sections less than 2.5m in width. No known problems have occurred. When you combine this width with the volume of pedestrian/cycle traffic then there is adequate space for give and take between pedestrian/cycle movements.
If a white line were to be incorporated to form segregation then how is this to be enforced? Police resources are already stretched and this would fall into very low priority for them.
The current widths of the cycleway would not permit segregation as design width could not be achieved for the appropriate lanes on the narrower sections.
Links throughout the city joining onto this route have no segregation facilities in place. No such pedestrian/conflict has occurred there.
There has to be some level of respect for both users of the path. The Tay Road Bridge walkway for example is 2.5m wide and edged with a 1.5m high barrier. It is promoted as a shared use, is part of the National Cycling Network and no segregation line is used. This has worked well for many years and pedestrian/cycle traffic is high on this route compared to Riverside Drive.
Our accident records show no reported collisions between pedestrian/cyclists on this section of cycle route or any other part of the route itself.