Dutch-style roundabout to be reviewed as Cambridge’s worst roundabouts for accidents are revealed
Cambridge’s Dutch-style roundabout is set to be reviewed after more collisions were reported in the three years since it was built compared to the three years beforehand, the Cambridge Independent can reveal.
The new layout on Fendon Road came into use in 2020 offering priority to cyclists and pedestrians, but within days it was temporarily closed after a hit-and-run driver crashed into a zebra crossing beacon.
There have been 10 collisions since it opened after the £2.2million work, three of them serious, compared to six minor incidents from 2017 to 2019.
It comes as cycling campaigners warn “enough is enough”, noting roundabouts in Cambridge where the highest number of collisions have been recorded have remained the “worst junctions for well over a decade”.
Cambridgeshire County Council has said it carries out regular road safety audits at the UK’s first Dutch-style roundabout. But it will now be carrying out “comprehensive camera-based monitoring of vehicle interactions” over 2023-24 to “analyse and learn more about how the junction is working day-to-day”.
A spokesperson for the council said: “As the local highways authority, ensuring road safety is our highest priority.
“Our road safety officers are involved in project development and carry out rigorous safety audits of changes to roundabouts and junctions, both before and after works.”
The Dutch-style roundabout was built in an attempt to improve on the safety record of its predecessor, where there had been 12 collisions involving cars and cyclists between 2012 and 2017.
The roundabout has undergone three road safety audits since its installation.
However, the council said the number of cyclists using the roundabout had increased by almost 50 per cent since 2017 to 11.4 per cent of all traffic users in 2022.
Pedestrian use had also risen in that time by about 30 per cent, the authority added.
Elsewhere in Cambridge, a number of roundabouts have also seen collisions totalling into double figures.
The worst offenders are the roundabouts at the junctions of Barnwell Road, Coldhams Lane and Brooks Road (24 collisions since 2017), Cherry Hinton Road, Mowbray Road and Perne Road (24 collisions) and Barnwell Road, Newmarket Road and Wadloes Road (20 collisions).
Collisions at both locations have happened at various times of the day and have occurred every year since 2017, according to data published on the Cambridgeshire Insights website.
The data is sourced from the police and includes only collisions that involved a vehicle and occurred on a public highway.
Last year, Camcycle launched a campaign for safe junctions, calling for action from local authorities and asking for information from local people on the places they would like to see improved.
One respondent to the petition survey wrote: “Enough is enough. Please stop killing us!”
Anna Williams, communications and community officer at Camcycle, responded: “It’s upsetting to see so many avoidable collisions taking place at our roundabouts. The three roundabouts with the most incidents have been in the list of worst junctions for well over a decade: enough is enough. Better layouts have been proposed for all three; it’s time to get moving on the safer designs and put the needs of people walking, wheeling and cycling first.”
The county council says its road safety team prioritises locations in Cambridgeshire where there have been multiple collisions or where it has received reports of serious injuries or fatalities.
The spokesperson added: “We do this to improve road safety for everyone travelling on our highways, whether they choose to walk, wheel or drive. The annual road safety programme is subject to approval by councillors on our highways and infrastructure committee.”
They added: “Road use – and the way people choose to travel – has varied substantially over the past few years due to the pandemic.”
The county’s Vision Zero Partnership has pledged to eliminate deaths and severe serious injuries on the region’s roads by 2040, but incidents of this nature have actually increased in recent years in both rural and urban locations.
The figures, which have remained largely unchanged over the last decade, place Cambridgeshire in the highest 25 per cent of local authority areas in England for serious collisions. The county ranked 29th out of 147 areas.
Data shows 43 people lost their lives on the county’s roads in 2021 – up from 28 in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, but also higher than the 37 recorded in 2019 and 29 in 2018. And 386 were killed or seriously injured in 2021, compared to 416 in 2017, 383 in 2018, 388 in 2019 and 345 in 2020.
The issue was raised by Edward Leigh, a current member and former chair of the region’s police and crime panel, at its recent annual general meeting. He told the region’s police and crime commissioner Darryl Preston that the Vision Zero Partnership – aimed at reducing road deaths and made up of multiple councils and emergency services – appears to be “under-delivering”.
“I’m not sure whether the partnership can be said to be functioning effectively,” he added, noting road death statistics were “at best, flat”.
“Someone needs to take a lead on rebooting Vision Zero to make sure it has clear objectives and a clear governance structure to achieve them,” he continued. “At the moment it doesn’t feel like it does.”
The lack of improvement in the number of road deaths per year in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough is “shocking”, says Mr Preston.
He said that “we’re still not seeing a drop in fatalities on our roads” and that it’s something his office “will be looking at” in future.
The Greater Cambridge Partnership has plans to make improvements at a number of the high-collision roundabouts.
The GCP’s Cambridge Eastern Access project includes better cycle lanes, new signal-controlled cycle and pedestrian priority junctions, new bus lanes, a floating bus stop and improved footpaths along the length of Newmarket Road to improve safety and reduce congestion.
This will include works to the roundabout at the Newmarket Road junction with Barnwell Road and Wadloes Road.
It has confirmed that both the Coldhams Lane and Cherry Hinton Road roundabouts will be looked at under its Cycling Plus proposals.
They were identified among 13 cycle corridors that have a significant amount of cycle traffic within Cambridge and the Greater Cambridge area and which could benefit from improvements as part of creating a joined-up active travel network.
Under the latest proposals, which were published in March 2021, the Cherry Hinton Road roundabout has been proposed to be redesigned as a Dutch-style roundabout.
However, it was noted: “It is understood that funding is not available to take all these schemes forward now, but this work should be used as an ongoing reference and be reflected on should additional funding opportunities present themselves, which may open up an ability to bring specific schemes forward sooner (ahead of their ranking), linked to wider city initiatives over the next 10 years.”
Plans to upgrade the Coldhams Lane roundabout were paused in 2020 after a review found all the options would take the project “significantly” over budget.
The roundabout connects Coldhams Lane, Brooks Road and Barnwell Road, and is close to a Sainsbury’s superstore and Cambridge Airport.
The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority said it wanted to improve safety on the roundabout, while making it easier to use for pedestrians and cyclists, all without having an adverse effect on traffic flows.
Upgrading the roundabout had formed part of the Combined Authority’s transport programme, which was set back in 2017.
Five options were considered which varied in ambition, from adding additional crossings to creating a Dutch-style roundabout, something similar to, albeit smaller in scale, than the one on Fendon Road, which has segregated cycleways and gives greater priority to non-motorised transport.
The transport authority said the county council commissioned an independent review of the costs, which found all five options could go “significantly above the £2.4m budget still available for construction”.
The cheapest option has been estimated to cost £2.5m, and the most expensive at £6.5m, with at least £5.8m estimated for a Dutch-style option.
An independent report found the cheapest option provided “poor” value for money, and that the cheapest option that provides “high” value for money has an estimated cost of around £3.2m. A Combined Authority report said that after an assessment of the potential to find further funding from the county council, Cambridge City Council, South Cambridgeshire District Council and the GCP, “these discussions have now concluded, and no further funding is currently forthcoming”.
There are not currently any proposals for changes to the Four Lamps roundabout. Under its Cycling Plus consultation, the GCP said that funding is available to make improvements to this roundabout but as yet no plans have come forward since 2020. Despite this, the A1134 north-south corridor (Mowbray Road and Perne Road), which includes the Coldhams Lane roundabout, was flagged to the GCP by consultants as the “top recommended corridor for investment”.
They said: “It has high cycling potential, is deliverable, builds on the recent Dutch roundabout investment, and would increase north-south connectivity through the city, whilst providing a key link between major trip attractors to the east and south of the city.”
But said that “due to the estimated high cost and deliverability compromises” it was not recommended to press ahead “at this time”.
Additional reporting by Joanna Taylor, Local Democracy Reporter.
