The measure “Moped on the Carriageway” (MoC) was introduced in late 1999 as part of the Start-up programme Sustainably Safe. The measure does not automatically apply to all cycle paths. A Road Authority indicates which road segments will be exceptions, in the form of a bicycle/moped path. The borough of Tilburg has chosen for “Moped on the Bicycle/moped path (MoB) on the main roads surrounding the city centre (the ring roads). The borough council considers the mixture of mopeds and the large numbers of motor vehicles on these roads undesirable; with consent of the Cyclists’ Union. There are a lot more situations where the council has made exceptions to the MoC rule. The Cyclists’ Union disputes that there are decisive reasons for these exceptions. Before the notice of objection could lead to further legal procedures, Tilburg and the Cyclists’ Union wanted to hear a second opinion from SWOV. To do this, SWOV applied a number of criteria that, together with Tilburg and the Cyclists’ Union, were selected from a long list of criteria concerning MoC. SWOV tested the exceptions to MoC using the formal criteria “speed limit”, “detour factor”, and “one way traffic”. Using desk research, these criteria were applied to all relevant road segments. Another criterion, called a “bordering crossroad”, involves crossroads having the same regulations on all branches, i.e. either MoC or MoB. SWOV proposed testing the situations against this criterion using photographs to judge disputed crossroads by relatively inexperienced motorists from outside Tilburg. This method had as advantages that all motorists would be confronted with the same stimuli (standardisation) and that more observations could be obtained relatively cheaply. After applying the abovementioned criteria, only the criterion “continuity” was finally applied, for each route of continuous road segments. This final test was also conducted as desk research. This second opinion did not answer the question of which safety consequences have to be taken into account regarding the way in which Tilburg had applied MoC. An analysis of accident data or conflict analysis in traffic situations is the suitable method of answering this question. Such analyses take more time and cost more than was allowed for in this study. The testing of the road segments according to the criteria formulated did not result in a necessity to recommend an alteration of the current regulation in Tilburg. However, one recommendation of a conditional nature can be made. If a speed limit of 60 km/h is to apply to the carriageway of (a road called) the Enschotsebaan, the moped can be moved to the carriageways of this road and of the two connecting road segments. There are a few more fundamental considerations ensuing from our results, but these do not have consequences for each road segment. Tilburg made decisions about MoC/MoB for each road segment individually. SWOV has derived a more general criterion from the various considerations of Tilburg; the criterion that there must be no “bordering crossroad”. It must be concluded that the results of the photograph judging indicate that using the principle “bordering crossroad” is problematic. The method used gave no indications that motorists, as far as the expected position of mopeds on crossing roads is concerned, let themselves be lead by their estimates of the regulation on their ‘own’ road straight ahead. This gives rise to doubts about the suitability of the criterion “bordering crossroad’ for making the decisions about MoC/MoB.
Abstract