"Superhighway redesign will make cycling journeys long and circuitous'

The consultation proposals are here:

https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/roads/wandsworth-town-centre

... with a more detailed map here:

https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/roads/wandsworth-town-centre/user_uploa...

There are certainly some more direct routes that TfL could have taken - particularly for west-bound cyclists heading for Putney Bridge Road, and for eastbound cyclists coming from pretty much anywhere.

Moreover, the main road being avoided certainly isn't narrow. 

Roger Geffen

Policy Director

CTC, the national cycling charity

not my local area but a couple of things  have always concerned me about "quiet routes":

one being that the number of near misses seems to me to be as high on quiet roads as on major roads (purely anecdotal experience) BUT the consequences of the bad driving are much reduced as generally traffic speeds and volumes are lower and more manoevre space is available - so the cyclist KSI rate is reduced (a key indicator for local authorities?)  but cycling is no more attractive as the same type of bad driving is met with

the other is that the reduction of cyclists on main roads encourages a belief in drivers that they simply don't belong there and as a consequence encourages a style of driving that has little concern for cyclists or other vunerable road users

not against segregated cycle facilities they have a place and I like them but they are a fix in urban areas for problems that shouldn't exist

The route may be longer but is it slower? My route to work is now being turned into CS1. It's a great route. Slightly longer than a direct route but fewer traffic lights, less pollution and fewer cars. A superior route to the direct route.

Does Darren Johnson cycle? Does he commute in London by bike? This is just politics for the sake of it.

Any chance you could add some diagrams/maps of actual route and proposed changes so that this story makes some sort of sense to those of us that don't live on the doorstep?

Whilst I need to check the specifics of this change, the phrase "narrow congested streets" can't be used to describe much of Wandworth.  With the massive gyratory system and the urban motorway of Trinity Rd, it's a part of London where the traffic engineers really did tear the place up in the 60's, and created a traffic choked hell with many, many lanes.

Unfortunately, what I do know of the parts of CS8 which runs along the A3205 is that it's similar to the first generation CS7.  Lots of "just blue paint" shared with bus lanes and minimal treatment at the junctions.

Darren Johnson seems to have hit the nail on the head. While I appreciate that trying to retro-fit our narrow congested streets to include infrastructure is hard one needs to be very sensitive to journey length as if the new facilities do not provide a timesaving (which they *might* by allowing free-flowing without start stopping even if they are longer, though I am doubtful this is the case) or if the new route is at a steeper gradient (not an issue here) it will not be used as much as it might.

The trouble with standard modelling (using WEBTag) is that it doesn't take into consideration shortest route preference, indeed, strictly speaking if you can make the route longer, or slow the riders down then you increase the amount of itme that they are engaged in physical activity and therfore the greater the benefit is (owing to reduction in premature death) according to the model.