The day the cycle track met the bus stop

Picture a wide footway with a cycle track running along it. Lovely. Then, every few hundred metres, a bus stop. Not so lovely, because a bus stop is where everyone wants the same three metres of kerb at the same time.

The bus wants to pull in tight. The cyclist wants to keep going without swerving into the carriageway. The person with the pushchair, the white cane or the shopping wants to get from the shelter to the bus door without anything whistling past them.

One answer is the bus stop bypass. The track swings round the back of the stop, the shelter sits on its own island, and the bus pulls up to that island like it always did. The cyclist never meets the bus and the passenger crosses the track once, at a point where everyone can see each other.

That's the theory, and it's a good one. It's also one of the more contested bits of active travel design, and rightly so. Blind and partially sighted passengers in particular have made the point that a crossing you can't hear coming is not a crossing you can use with confidence, and several authorities have paused new ones while the guidance catches up. We don't think that's a reason to abandon the idea. We do think it's a reason to take each one seriously rather than drop in a standard detail and move on.

So the detail gets a great deal of thought. A proper raised crossing across the track, with tactile paving that actually lines up. Geometry that slows riders down on the approach rather than just asking nicely. Enough room on the island for a shelter, a flag, a ramp and a queue, which is rarely as much room as anyone hoped. Sightlines in both directions. And a conversation with local access groups before the drawing is finished, not after.

Where there's no room for an island, there's the "boarder" version, where the track rises to footway level and runs across the front of the stop. It asks more of everyone, so it has to earn its place.

The good ones feel unremarkable. The bus arrives, people get on, a bike glides past behind the shelter, and nobody thinks about it. That's the aim, and it takes more work than it looks.

If you've got a route with a bus stop in the way and you'd like it thought through properly, give us a shout.