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London cyclists (CC licensed by Ambernectar 13:Flickr)City planning report recommends squeezing out London motor traffic
A new report produced by Centre for London says that motorists will have to give up residential car parking with greater transport emphasis instead being placed on trains, buses and bikes. The think tank advocates reallocation of space to create more segregated cycle lanes and priority bus lanes.
The BBC reports on The Future of London's Roads and Streets report, which looks at how the capital could tackle the various pressures on its transport system.
It describes a clear hierarchy which would see road space reallocated to deliver adequate pedestrian space, new segregated cycle lanes and priority bus lanes – plus “consideration of where emerging shared mobility services sit in this hierarchy.”
Great emphasis is placed on reclaiming residential car parking space. Escalating charges for more polluting vehicles are recommended, as are incentives for households to give up their permits. It adds: “Using the kerb space hierarchies, boroughs should develop a robust cycle parking strategy including reallocation of kerb space to cycle parking.”
Other recommendations include the introduction a "movement code" to guide interaction between different road users; enforcement of traffic rules by a dedicated body; and expansion of the Oyster card system to include bike hire and taxis.
The report also suggests the introduction of a pre-pay road user pricing system. It says of this: “The scheme needs to reflect the internal and external costs and environmental impacts of journeys, while being fair, and easy to understand and administer.”
Responding to the findings, Val Shawcross, Deputy Mayor for Transport at City Hall, said:
“As the report recommends, it is essential that we encourage more people to cycle and walk as part of their everyday lives, and use public transport as an alternative to car use.
“We have some of the most ambitious plans to reduce dangerous emissions of any city in the world, and we will continue to keep London’s existing and planned road charging schemes under review, ensuring they deliver the best outcomes for our city over the coming years.”
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
Latest Comments
- chrisonabike 46 min 12 sec ago
Apologies - you're quite right! Something about presentation and comprehension...
- wtjs 1 hour 6 min ago
You can find out whether they're lying about 'taking action' by asking them what they actually did. When they refuse to tell you, citing various...
- Bungle_52 1 hour 22 min ago
Blind spots eh. Just a reminder of the lorry driver who was aquitted after killing a cyclist on a roundabout where the jury obviously felt it was...
- GMBasix 1 hour 53 min ago
But don't forget to correct for altitude.
- chrisonabike 5 hours 51 min ago
Also don't forget - Sustrans are a charity *....
- chrisonabike 6 hours 3 min ago
Yes ... but (just due to the large numbers of people affected) this likely would only proceed in the UK at a very ... cautious ... pace....
- EK Spinner 6 hours 20 min ago
Arsehole in the van not with standing, how did they manage to get a risk assessment allowing a race (a group not a TT) group to be competing on ...
- RafaDy 6 hours 16 min ago
I think reviewer completely missed the point here trying to match bike's name with what it can do. Ribble is namin git's bike weirdly, the...
- Moist von Lipwig 9 hours 41 min ago
Bit of googling gone wrong in the article - the JAT is the Junction Assessment Tool, the Joint Approval Team appears to be a coutner terrorism...
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14 comments
Just look at the traffic furniture mess that has been made at either end of Blackfriars bridge. It's been made so compliated. There are lights everywhere and it demotes the road users (especially cyclists) from looking around and using their better judgement. This stretch of road worked fine in the past but they changed it to simply make it more confounding. Elephant & Castle is another example.
Not sure how many people commenting on this actually live in central London but as someone who lives works cycles walks drives and uses public transport in the city, the simple cheap and most effective way to reduce congestion, involving the least disruption and the least need for expensive thinktanks and infrastructure changes would be to ban home deliveries under a certain weight. This would include all items from letters to food shopping to Amazon etc.
Just create centers in each postcode where the public pick up the items and no people wont drive to them if you surround the area with red route lanes.
Probably will never happen because nobody gets a cut of the cake.
There's no reason why the deliveries can't be on cycles, cargo bikes or trikes, is there?
Arguably the scariest thing I've ever read:
"The report also suggests the introduction of a pre-pay road user pricing system."
...
uh-oh... a sneaky way to tax walking and cycling...?
All sounds sensible really. Therefore expect little of this is the near future...
But I thought there was supposed to be a conspiracy to rid the roads of all cyclists for the rise of the robocars? Oh well it is nice to be the in group in this particular bit of futurebollockry.
Responding to the findings, Val Shawcross, Deputy Mayor for Transport at City Hall, muttered something about cycling and walking, then spent a good ten seconds saying that not a single fucking thing would actually change.
In fairness, quite a bit has changed in London in recent times: punitive congestion charge; city bike hire scheme (Boris bikes); cycle superhighways of increasing quality; huge increase in bus lanes and investment in buses. Leading to falling car ownership and huge reductions in car commuting into central London.
Plenty more to be done, sure, but what has happened isn't insignificant.
The congestion charge is, at £11.50 per day, hardly "punitive"; that's about half the cost of a day return train ticket from just outside the M25.
There is some change, but it's excruciatingly slow. And the current Mayor hardly seems to be charging forward... we need to keep the pressure up.
Ding! Nail hit on head. So long this is the case (and train travel etc continues to be an episode of an 1870 horror movie most days), sod all will fundamentally change.
It's not punitive in the slightest; it costs less than the cheapest travel card and costs the same as a zone 5 daily Oyster cap. People who live inside the zone get a 90% discount.
Boris did a lot. Khan has done nothing for cycling. But then he hasn't done a lot about anything as far as I can see. Takes a lot of selfies though.
We should also be persuading people off buses and onto bikes. Judging by the number of miserable faces I see waiting at bus stops, they should be the easiest people to convert.
"Car ownership" (as in vehicles per person) might well be falling very slightly (although only in London), but the increase in the number of people means that the number of cars on the road is still increasing, yes, even in London. Nationally, it's rising by several hundred thousand per year - see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-35312562 and https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/vehicle-licensing-statistics-ja...
Whether or not we consider the congestion charge punitive isn't really the point: it had a significant effect, and London is the only place in the UK to have introduced anything like it. I'd like to see it extended and fewer exemptions but that's not to deny the effect of what has happened.
Car commuting into central London has almost halved this millennium; cycling more than tripled (table TSGB0106). I doubt that has happened anywhere else in the UK.
Extra bus lanes are good for cyclists and bad for car drivers too (unless, of course, they see the light...).
As you note, the already lower average number of cars per household has fallen slightly in London, even as it rose elsewhere (it's now 50% higher). Given the city's population has increased by over 2 million since the mid-80s, it isn't surprising there are more cars in absolute terms. But they are being used less: average distance travelled by car has fallen in from about 4000km pa to 3000km (about half the national average) over the past decade (all from the National Travel Survey).
Khan hasn't done much yet, we agree, and that's a worry. But much has been done in London, more than just about anywhere else in the UK, to promote modal shift away from private car use. Could it be better? Certainly - but it's far from nothing.
Bring it on. About time people were clearly charged the full costs of their motoring.
yep, get as many cars off the roads. It would help with the populations health issues. Legs are for using, not just to stop your arse from dragging on the floor.