The Details
Two of Dumfries’s toughest nuts to crack are the Lockerbie and Annan Roads. Anyone approaching Dumfries from the west by way of the Maxwelltown Path, the north by way of the Caledonian Cycleway or even the south via NCN 7, might feel that Dumfries has a good cycling network with reasonable provision for cyclists of all abilities. However, anyone living to the east of the town would not share this view. The two main routes coming into the town from this direction, the Lockerbie and Annan Roads, have absolutely no provision for bikes at all and are busy, hostile environments for any form of active travel.
This section covers the two roads within the bypass. For onward connections, see the Lockerbie and Lochmaben, and Collin missing links
The alternative bike-friendly route for going east from the town centre (see map) involves an unintuitive, long detour, a steep incline behind the High School and requires a good sense of wayfinding. It also doesn’t easily lead you to or from the town centre and the route is only accessible from Summerpark and the retail park. Anyone on the south side of Lockerbie Road is faced with a busy road to negotiate to enter Summerpark’s shared-use pavements.
This means that people wanting to visit the retail park or who live along either of these roads are more or less forced to drive or use the bus unless they’re very confident cyclists or cycle on the pavement. Lockerbie Road in particular is very hostile to cycling – narrow and busy near the town centre with intimidating roundabouts, and very fast flowing as you get out towards the bypass. This side of town is the most glaring gap in the cycling network and should be a priority for the council to sort out if it wants to encourage more people to cycle. The lack of routes mean that the Peel shopping centre, the Noblehill area and Dumfries High School are disconnected from the town centre for cyclists and so people travelling to or from these places, or even within the Noblehill area, are less likely to choose to cycle. It also means that any improvements to connect Dumfries to villages east of the town would be unsuccessful until this area is improved. Better routes could also offer the town’s eastern residents easier access to Heathhall forest from Lockerbie Road without the need to drive.
Annan Road
The Annan Road does have room for decent cycling provision and this should be the first priority. The options are cycle lanes (i.e. on-road space for bikes) and cycle tracks (where the bikes are physically separated from both cars and pedestrians by means of a raised curb). Badly designed cycle lanes are often worse than useless, especially if they disappear at junctions, cars can either park on them, or they run outside the line of parked cars, putting bikes in danger if a driver opens their door just as they’re trying to cycle past. On the Annan road there is room to put in a decent width of lane – a minimum of 1.5m in both directions, and for extra protection the lane should run along the inside of any parking, keeping bikes away from the traffic. Even better would be a segregated track, of the sort seen below in Glasgow or more recently on New Abbey Road.
This would keep cyclists safe from the traffic, and would be a very visible encouragement to cycle, although such tracks are not cheap to put in. We think that it would be worth creating such a facility in Dumfries to demonstrate that cycling doesn’t have to be confined to old railway lines and river paths – bikes can be given their own space on the main roads as they are the routes that go where people want to go and connect amenities. Such cycle lanes or tracks would need to connect to further infrastructure in the town centre across the railway bridge and could also link to improved infrastructure from Georgetown and along Brooms Road.
Lockerbie Road
The Lockerbie Road is even tougher as there’s simply no room for a solution of this kind. Even drivers tend to avoid it, if they can take the Annan Road instead. A high-quality segregated route on the Annan Road might be enough, but there are other things that can be done on a road like this. The first, and simplest, is to make it a 20mph road, which would instantly make it safer for pedestrians, drivers and cyclists. However, it’s unlikely that this alone would make it attractive to novice cyclists as they would still have to contend with buses and lorries. Further out, where the speed limit goes up to 60mph, there is room for a fully segregated path and this would be the minimum provision we’d recommend given how fast and busy that road is now. The second option is to make it one-way along the narrowest part of the route for cars, but two-way for bikes. This would make space for a contraflow bike lane – but would seriously inconvenience buses on the Lockerbie route, as well as people living by that section of road. Making the road two-way for buses would leave no extra room for bikes, although it would cut down on the traffic for cyclists to contend with and make the road more pleasant for pedestrians as well.
Finally, a more radical solution is ‘filtered permeability’, i.e. closing the Lockerbie Road off part way along its length, with a gate for buses and bikes, but not other traffic. The remainder of the road would still be two-way – but it would only serve the houses and businesses along its length. The radical drop in traffic that this would entail would make it much less hostile to bikes, especially if combined with a 20mph zone. Drivers to the retail parks could still reach them via the cross streets further up, while traffic going to and from Lockerbie would have a slightly longer trip round on the bypass. Residents could still get through on the side streets easily enough – and they would also be able to choose the bike or bus as a more direct alternative, as well as enjoy a much quieter and less polluted environment. The Annan Road would get busier, but not by as much as you might think. Just as when new roads are built they quickly fill up with traffic, when roads are closed, some of the traffic simply disappears as people find alternative ways to get about. We appreciate this proposal is pretty radical. However it is just the sort of approach – cutting through routes for cars, creating them for bikes and buses – that the Dutch have used to create cycling rates of 25% of all journeys – and 50% in some towns and cities. Imagine the difference this would make to Dumfries.
