Brent Cyclists call for Quintain and Brent Council to act to secure safe cycling after Fulton Road/Olympic Way accident

I am grateful to Brent Cyclists LINK for permission to repost this article from their website. Tghis evening football fans will be streaming across the Fulton Road/Olympic Way junction to attend tonight's football match.

Ariel view of Olympic Way/Fulton Road junction

Cyclist injured at Olympic Way junction

We hear a sad report of a hit-and-run collision today at the junction of Fulton Road and Olympic Way, with a 15-year old cyclist injured. These details come from the Brent & Kilburn Times. 

Scene of the incident photographed by our member Charlie Fernandes

While we do not know full details of this incident, it is clear that the design of the junction of Fulton Road, where it crosses the pedestrian and cycle only route of Olympic Way, is very poor. 

Olympic Way has huge pedestrian traffic, which will only increase with the current large-scale building of homes in the area. Fulton Road has fairly low vehicular traffic, yet the crossing is confused with a design that visually implies priority for motor traffic.

Fulton Road and Olympic Way junction photographed late 2015. The junction was then on a raised table, which is now gone, and the new road surface is lighter in colour at the junction, though the painted markings are the same.

As seen in the picture, give-way lines for vehicles on Fulton Road mean that they should give way to pedestrians and cyclists using Olympic Way, but this design is highly non-standard for the UK, motorists do not expect to have to give way to pedestrains without a marked pedestrain crossing (i.e. a zebra), and observation of the junction shows that generally they do not. As seen in the picture, pedestrians are wary of this junction and take it that motorists have priority. The surfacing, tarmac for the road with pink tiling and grey tactile paving for the pedestrian and cycle route, and the presence of the double yellow lines all along Fulton Road, re-enforce the impression that the road is continuous and the pedestrain and cycle route, Olympic Way, is interrupted. The removal of the raised table after utility works this year has further re-enforced the default vehicle priority.

We believe that with the increasing population and activity in this area this junction will be an increasing hazard. It need to be changed: either a wide zebra crossing should be marked through the junction, the full width of Olympic Way, or, better, Fulton Road should be closed as a motor vehicle through-route.

More widely in the Wembley Park regenation area there is a problem of designs that do not properly recognise the need to have designated space for flows of cyclists. On Olympic Way and the new quasi-shared space of Olympic Park Boulevard, cycling is allowed but mixed up with pedestrain flows. This only does not cause major problems at the moment because the flows of cyclists are low. It is likely to cause problems in the future. We are calling on the developers, Quintain, and Brent Council, to implement adequate dedicated cycle paths within the development area that are clearly differentiated from pedestrian sapce, as well as from motor vehicle space.