City of London agrees a strategy at Bank junction that could see Lombard & Threadneedle Streets closed to motor vehicles: Square Mile shows it is prepared to pull its finger out for pedestrians and for people on bikes and (at last!) acknowledges road narrowing schemes are bad news for safe cycling

Approaching Bank junction on a bike
Hard work on a bike when you've got
taxis scraping past you

It's been an awfully long time coming but after two years of back and forth, the City of London has approved a new strategy for the area around Bank junction.

Bank is the meeting point of six major roads. In the mornings it is rammed with people caged into cattle pens trying to cross the road. It is a traffic-choked, polluted mess and it is a hotspot for collisions - most of which involve cyclist or pedestrian victims. It is difficult to easily cycle through the junction and yet - being at the hub of the Square Mile - it's very difficult to avoid it. In the morning peak hours, 33% of all road traffic through Bank consists of people on bikes.

In the City's own words: "Bank junction has one of the poorest road safety records in the City, particularly in relation to injuries to pedestrians and cyclists and the junction does not work well for any mode of transport."

The Bank area strategy sets the plan for the next five to 10 years. The City first consulted the public about its plans for the area in 2011 and a whopping 900 people took part (and huge thanks to those of you that did so) Four key themes emerged: too much traffic congestion; inadequate provision for pedestrians; not enough provision for cycling and conflict between the different users.

51% of all traffic in rush hour on
Cheapside consists of people on bikes.
But there's now hardly any safe space
left to cycle in, only this tiny gap in the gutter

In its first draft of the Bank strategy, the City of London planned to make Bank work better and more safely for "all road users". It was a sort of wishy-washy strategy that implied nothing much would really change here and that the place would continue to be dominated by and designed for [the minority of] people in motor vehicles. In this first draft, the City genuinely managed to ignore the fact that a significant proportion of respondents think 'there is too much traffic' at Bank junction and simply proposed a do nothing solution to the problem.

I'm delighted to see that the revised strategy that has now been approved is of vastly superior quality. It is honest about the challenges faced at Bank and clear about how it might tackle them.

The new plan considers whether it might be possible to do something quite 'radical' at Bank by closing one of the roads: "the project is likely to require the closure of at least one of the arms of the junction in order to reduce the amount of vehicles flowing through...[in order that] capacity could then be redistributed among other users". In other words, the City of London is considering giving proper equality to the vast majority of people who use this junction on foot - and hopefully on bikes as well, rather than in, say, vans or taxis. This could involve diverting some bus routes to make other routes function better for people on foot or bikes. The same approach is being trialled in Hackney, where TfL and the council are planning to divert buses on Mare Street which has the benefit of creating space for walking and cycling.

The initial proposal included plans to widen the pavements on Lombard Street, for example. This would likely have eliminated the contraflow cycle lane on Lombard Street. The problem here was a) very narrow pavements and b) bikes perceived to be going too fast on this very busy bike route. This was causing a perception that there was conflict between pedestrians and cyclists on this street. Whereas in reality, the actual problem is that there are too many motor vehicles - in particular delivery vans parked in the cycle lanes.

Instead of making the road more intimidating to cycle on by narrowing the carriageway, the City has sensibly recognised the need to prioritise this route as a "predominantly safe cycling and walking route", possibly by means of shared space such as the City has implemented with success in some other areas. This may mean making Lombard Street less accessible for through motor traffic; it should make things better for pedestrians by giving them more space and it should ensure that the route remains a useful and safe link for people on bikes - without forcing bikes into narrow carriageways stuffed with idling vans and taxis.

This is probably the only quarter-decent approach to
Bank junction on a bike. Source: City of London

The City has clearly listened to the number of people who responded to the consultation and objected to its policy of creating dangerously narrow carriageways and now states: "cyclists do not want narrower carriageways ...as they feel this would impact on their safety". This is true up to a point. As I argued a few months ago, the issue of carriageway narrowing is one of proportions. In streets like Cheapside, the carriageway has been narrowed so much that it is now a considerably nastier place to cycle (even though the scheme was originally intended to make it better for cycling). In other streets, such as Kingsland High Street in Dalston, the pavements have been made wider but it works because there is enough room for bikes and passes to safely pass each other. That would not have been the case in the original plans for Bank area.

The strategy has also been updated in one other crucial area. The original draft included a commitment to "reduce conflict and improve road safety for all modes of transport". Nothing wrong with that, you might say. The reality, though, is that cyclists and pedestrians are bearing the brunt of the problems at Bank and form the vast majority of victims of road traffic collisions here and the there is a clear need to improve road safety here for pedestrians and cyclists more than there is for 'all road users'. As the City now admits, the junction is "over-complicated, confusing and dangerous and dominated by vehicular traffic at the expense of pedestrians and cyclists". The City authorities have now updated their commitment to road safety to include a specific commitment to "including cycling provision and safety and to review the current hierarchy of cycle routes, and provision of cycle lanes"

Many people who read this blog took part in the Bank area consultation and wrote to City of London politicians. My own view is that this revised strategy works well. It rightly acknowledges the need to make conditions much better for people on foot. And it also now acknowledges the need to improve conditions for [often exactly the same] people on bikes. It concludes: "There is clear evidence that the pedestrian environment needs improving but this will not be undertaken at the sake of cyclists or vulnerable road users safety". I agree with that.

Is the government planning to cut funding to bicycle infrastructure before it's even started funding anything in the first place? As German TV puts it: "there are no bike networks" here anyhow.

Germany's main TV station came to London last week and devoted a whole section of its main daily news programme to cycling in London. What was the title of this TV feature? The ARD television people looked at how London's cyclists get to work and called it "transport chaos in London". Kind of says it all, really, doesn't it?

Unsurprisingly, the news clip is in German. But I think it's worth watching, just to see the video selections that ARD chooses. And what I think is really interesting are the themes that the German TV crew pick out as being interesting about London. I've tried to summarise those points below because I think it's really informative to have a look at what London looks like from the outside. Bear in mind that Germany, although not nirvana for cycling, is literally decades ahead of the UK on this stuff. The German government is hosting its national cycling summit this week. Can you imagine the UK government hosting a cycling summit? I can't. In Berlin, the local government is aiming for 20% of all journeys to be by bike by 2025. London is aiming for 5%. The Berlin government, and many of Germany's large cities as well as rural areas are building massive bike networks - the sort of thing that the UK seems singularly unable to do.

Biking in Berlin. Normal folk, normal clothes,
normal thing to do. 

We're busy building more and more roads for driving. The Germans have decided that for journeys up to 15km, the bike is the way to go. And they're going all out to build networks to make people choose bike over car for these sorts of journeys. The UK is simply not keeping pace with Germany on this stuff. That is embarrassing enough in its own right. What's even more embarrassing is the weedy response that the UK government published this morning to a petition by The Times newspaper to encourage the government to really get behind cycling. There have been some rumours in industry press that the government might be preparing to launch an "Office of Active Travel" - a sort of mini version of the Department for Transport that would be tasked with building conditions that make it simple for people to chose cycling and walking instead of driving or taking the bus.

Unfortunately, all we've seen from the UK government to date, however, is an unambitious and profoundly disappointing press release published this morning that repeats the message (for probably the tenth time now) that the government is spending lots of money on little projects here and there that might just about make a difference to a few roundabouts and a couple of junctions. No sign of a coherent national strategy and no sign of any standards that it expects local authorities to live up to. Local authorities big and small all around the country are beginning to want to do something about cycling. They look to the Department for Transport for ideas and standards to help them build good bicycle transport infrastructure. As one senior official put it to me today, "there's just a big hole" at the Department for Transport on cycling issues and standards. That seems true from my perspective. The government is all about cars, cars and cars. Oh, and a few scraps for cycling here and there.

So, back to the German news story.

Pull out section in The Telegraph
last weekend. 

What is the first thing it has to say about rush-hour? Well, the very first observation is that there's no bicycle network. Plain and simple, Germany's equivalent of the BBC observes quite correctly that London simply doesn't have what the Germans would call a bike network. And they're right. The reporter goes on to say "bicycles have to mix with with buses, cars and goods vehicles; if you want to travel through this [on a bike] you need courage, skill and, above all, luck". These are hardly conditions that would encourage most people to use a bike.

49 seconds into the clip is the terrifying scene of a cyclist on Cycle Super Highway 7 who is cycling straight ahead. The cycle highway is specifically designed to make cyclists go straight ahead in the (extremely fast) left turn lane for motor vehicles. What happens? A van overtakes, pulls straight across the guy on his bike and proceeds to very nearly kill him. This is institutionalised insanity. There is no way that a bike lane should be designed to deliberately mix flows of people using such hugely incompatible machines and make them use the exact same space to travel in two conflicting directions. That is a recipe for disaster, again and again and again.

I think what really strikes me about this video are the shots of people whizzing along on bikes surrounded by lorries, buses and masses of motor vehicles. Somehow, listening to it all in German and hearing the incredulity of the reporter at just how ludicrous it all is, it makes you realise just exactly that: it is ludicrous that London isn't developing faster and better bike networks.

The report does point to Boris Johnson's vision for real cycle-friendly networks but, as it points out, this is nothing more than a vision for the time being.

And this is where things get really awkward:

Today's Evening Standard carries a report that states things may never even get off the ground:

"The Mayor’s “cycle vision”, published earlier this year, comes with a £913million price tag over 10 years, of which a £640million is subject to approval by the Treasury.  

A split over potential cycling cuts has emerged between the Mayor and Transport for London, which is  prioritising renewal of existing assets, notably the Tube. 

The cycle vision is one of a range of transport programmes considered vulnerable as Chancellor George Osborne prepares to announce public spending cuts at the Comprehensive Spending Review on June 26."

If the government really does want to cut funding for cycling, then we have a real problem on our hands. Funding for cycling hardly exists in this country. The Mayor has made small steps towards cycling in the past few years but his efforts hardly scratch the surface and he is only now beginning to take funding for bicycle infrastructure seriously.

We'll have to watch this very closely and it may, and I stress, may, be time for people to come together again and start showing very clearly just how impatient they are to see things change on London's streets.

Westminster council's new cycling strategy - Good intentions at the start but this isn't a strategy; it's a document for keeping things just as they are at the moment: Polluted, congested and intimidating car-centric roads

Travel to work changes in Westminster. Source
City of Westminster

Last week, Westminster Council published the first draft of its new cycling strategy 2013 - 2026. It’s a strategy that is trying very hard to get things right but is severely compromised by some highly contradictory recommendations and some subjective opinion that is presented as fact.

Firstly, the good stuff: The Council’s cycling vision does contain some pretty bold ambitions. Westminster asserts its intention to become “a national leader in cycling provision, making it safer and more attractive for a greater numberof people, from all backgrounds, to cycle more frequently.” Good stuff.

The document is surprisingly clear about why the Council should support cycling. It is packed with evidence to support Westminster’s premise that more people cycling could help the borough to:

·      sustain its population growth and new jobs

·      ease congestion on its roads

·      offer a viable way to its population of travelling at minimal cost

·      significantly improve the health of its residents, worker & visitors

·      improve local air quality

The fact that the borough so convincingly understands why it should support cycling networks on its streets makes it all the stranger that some of the detail in this strategy is downright dodgy. Here are just a handful of the problems:

Some good things do eventually happen in Westminster.
This new link was built with Sustrans for people 
to walk and cycle under the Westway and opened last week.

The document states “the Council would like to see cycling normalised with more people of all ages and backgrounds participating”. Fantastic. It points out that 42% of all journeys made just by Westminster residents by mechanised transport could easily be made by bike, in other words, great potential to get all sorts of people on bikes. But the document rightly acknowledges that fear of traffic is putting people off using a bike instead of other transport modes: A whopping 64% of people say they won’t cycle here because of safety-related fears.

Backed by a clear motive to get people cycling and a clear explanation of reasons why they don’t cycle, you might assume the Council would conclude it needs to create safe networks which make it easy to chose bike transport. And, to some extent, the Council says it will do this by supporting Boris Johnson’s ambition to build a network of bike Quietways, a central London bike ‘grid’ and further develop the Cycle Super Highways. There are also references to working with Sustrans to create links like the recently opened route under the Westway; a nod to the need for more contraflow cycling (which is now standard in many other inner London boroughs); better coordination with the Royal Parks to enable more cycling through the parks; and a realisation that the borough needs more bike parking both for visitors and on street / on estates. 

What concerns me, however, is that these are only small (albeit very useful) interventions. A far greater chunk of the strategy is about “encouraging road users to show greater consideration for each other”. There's nothing wrong with the general principle of that statement. It's what follows that defies belief: Provided the Council can encourage road users to show greater consideration, says the document, this will "enable safer integration and shared routes rather than a presumption for segregation". No mention of the need to make those 'shared routes' safer so that people don't have to mix with lorries, buses and impatient minicabs. And, oddly, the Council recognises and seems to support TfL's plans to put segregated bike lanes on some of its own main roads through the borough but not on Westminster-controlled roads (92% of the roads in the borough).

Cycling into Westminster over Waterloo
Bridge. Most people just give up. Note how
many people are with their bikes on the
pavement. I can completely understand why.

The strategy continues: “The Council has to take account of the volume of different types of [road] user on different streets and at different times of day”. Well, yes, it does. But it also has to balance those current requirements with the “volume of different types of user” (bicycle, car, van or bus user) it wants to have in the future. And in this particular task, I’m afraid the strategy is a complete failure. It refuses to accept that, in order to achieve its vision of becoming a leader in bicycle transport, things will – over time – need to change on its streets. For every bold statement in this document, there is another statement that slams the entire strategy back towards retaining the status quo. I’m afraid I don’t think that’s good enough.

Take, for example, the Council's statement that the proposed central London bike grid "will build upon existing and proposed sections of the London Cycle Network". In its own right, that might be acceptable but only with some significant improvement to those routes. If you’ve ever cycled from Tottenham Court Road to Paddington on Westminster’s London Cycle Network section, for example, you’ll know that it is a mesh of very fast, very intimidating one way streets with cars parked on either side. In short, exactly not the sort of thing you’d build to encourage cycling. But the Council makes clear that it a) has no intention of reducing speed limits (although it is vague about whether it might use other measures to slow motor vehicle speeds) b) makes very clear it does not intend to move car parking or loading bays and c) will accept segregation on TfL roads but not on the 92% of roads that it controls. That leaves me wondering what Westminster's bike grid is actually going to look like? Just the same as the largely awful London Cycle Network routes that run through central London at the moment, perhaps?

I’m also surprised by the Council’s slightly odd target. The ambition is that 5% of all journeys originating from the borough should be by bike by 2026 (up from 3% currently). In Hackney, however, people already make 6% of journeys by bike, so why is Westminster getting away with a target that doesn’t even match 2013’s reality?  What’s more, the goal is even less than Boris Johnson’s own vision, which is to see 5% of all journeys in London by bike in 2020.

This is what the main Westminster bike
route through Covent Garden looks like every night. Head to tail
full of cars and taxis. The only place to cycle is down the wrong side
of the street. Totally insane. Seems unlikely to change?

The Council dismisses 20mph streets out of hand for the ludicrously irrelevant reason that: “it is considered that a 20 mph limit could have minimal benefit as traffic speeds in the City of Westminster are often below 20 mph already, with the average speed being just 10mph”. That is a statement that entirely misses the point of 20mph and is – in any case – a statement of personal fiction. The point about 20mph streets is that they enable traffic engineers to implement solutions that create equality for pedestrians, cyclists and people in motor vehicles. What’s more, the statement is utterly disingenuous. Take a street like Aldwych. Perhaps the average speed there really is 10mph. But most of the time, I’d hazard people are generally whizzing around it at 35-40mph. Not fun when you mix in thousands of people on bikes who have to change across four or five lanes of fast-moving traffic.

At points, the document veers into the surreal. I kid you not: The Council is going to issue free bells to ‘cyclists’ “encouraging them to make use of their bell to warn pedestrians of their presence” (this despite the fact that the document also notes the Police reports that pedestrians are responsible for 60% of pedestrian/cyclist collisions in the borough – Is the Council proposing to give pedestrians bells as well?) This is Nanny state policy in the extreme and is rightfully criticised by AsEasyAsRidingABikeblog.

Ultimately, I feel this is a very worrying document. Parts of the strategy are extremely well written and I’m impressed by the way in which Westminster sets out its case to encourage more people to cycle.
To be fair, the draft is still very much that - a draft. There are lots of chapters that have yet to be written and we'll see how those develop. But the detail of this strategy as it stands right now seems to promise very little other than piecemeal changes to a few one-way streets and a little bit more bike parking. I'm afraid I don't think that qualifies for becoming a 'national leader in cycling provision'.

Transport for London nails it. Full-scale Dutch cycle designs being tested for roll out in London as early as next year

Testing the new Dutch-style roundabout at the TRL facility

Yesterday, Transport for London lifted the lid on test facilities that were built late last year at the Transport Research Laboratory in Bracknell. Pictured above, TRL's first test roundabout. You can read a useful review on the BBC London website and there's a key point made by one of the TRL engineers on this video: "the car drivers does not get affected by the cyclist in the road". Exactly. Nor does the cyclist 'get affected' by drivers of HGVs or buses as they do at the moment. And, in fact, it's better for pedestrians too. Instead of a traffic island where you are expected to run across the road when you spot a gap, you get zebra crossings. Why? Because you need to slow down motor vehicles to give pedestrians and cyclists the same equal rights to travel through the junction safely as you do to motorists. At the moment, that's not the case. Motorists get priority again and again and again. 

You'll notice the design is very very Dutch, even the give way symbols on the carriageway are Dutch symbols, rather than standard UK road symbols. My understanding is that the plan is to keep refining the scheme and to test more commonplace UK road markings. 

The roundabout is a huge step forward. Late last year, Transport for London proposed a scheme to make the roundabout at the northern end of Lambeth Bridge safer for cycling That proposal was pretty weak. You can read a good review of the original TfL proposal on AsEasyAsRidingABike blog. The roundabouts at either end of Lambeth Bridge have both been touted (unofficially, mind you) as potential locations for a Dutch-style roundabout. Lambeth North is a pig of a roundabout. The southern roundabout is just as dreadful. Pinchpoints, buses, lorries, bikes, taxis all jammed into narrow lanes, full of conflict between different road users. 

Pictured below, a fairly typical morning rush hour at Lambeth North roundabout. Complete chaos for drivers watching out for cyclists; cyclists having no legitimate space on the road; what's even worse is that there is nothing to slow drivers or cyclists down and protect pedestrians at the zebra crossings. 

The key benefits of this new TfL design is that - unlike 99% of roundabouts in UK cities - this design gives pedestrians and cyclists safe, convenient ways to cross the roundabout that are just as safe and just as convenient as for drivers. At the moment, most roundabouts are designed to get drivers around them as quickly as possible and woe betide anyone else who needs to get across them who is on foot or on a bike.

Funnily enough, the National Cycle Manual standards in Ireland contains a variant of this design. The National Transport Authority makes it clear why this sort of infrastructure is necessary: "If we are going to expect a massive increase in cycling, there has to be an increase in the offer for cycling". The same goes for London.

The problem with the Irish design, though, is that is only goes halfway to solving the issues at roundabouts. The Irish design paints some markings on the road where the bike lane is and leaves it for drivers and cyclists to work out who has priority. The TfL design, though, is the real deal. It structures things so that cyclists are clearly protected by the belisha beacons and it makes life easier for drivers by putting pedestrians and cyclists somewhere predictable. The exact opposite of the way the Lambeth Bridge roundabouts work at the moment.

The TRL test facility is also testing bike traffic lights - the sort of traffic lights used all over Europe already - that would allow Transport for London to design junctions so that people on bikes and in motor vehicles can obey different timings on the traffic signals. TfL has already made public that it will consider using these traffic lights at junctions like Bow roundabout, provided the Department for Transport gives the lights approval. I know that a number of other high profile junctions - for example at some of the junctions near London's bridges - might see these bike traffic lights, provided of course, that the DfT gives the go-ahead. 

There's plenty more underway as well in the form of detailed mock-ups of alternative junctions and other traffic signals, as well as more experimentation with segregated bike lanes. TRL has published a full list of the test scenarios on its website. 

The pace of change on London's streets is still incredibly frustrating. Ill-thought through designs like those announced by Westminster council a couple of months ago smack not only of yesterday's road engineering but, even worse, they seem to assume people on bikes behave just like people in cars. They don't. And the TRL test scenarios are clear evidence that Transport for London has realised, just like its colleagues in the Irish Republic, that people on bikes need a different offer on London's streets - an offer that does not treat them the same as one tonne motor vehicles.

If you have any doubts about whether Dutch-style roundabouts actually work or not, have a look at this video of one in operation. All good stuff. Admittedly, this is a rural location by the looks of it, but this is exactly where, in the UK, you'd be faced with some snarling, horrible roundabout that simply makes it impossible for your average person to cycle from A to B.

The Crown Estate - the UK's sixth largest land owner - declares: "Cycling is good for business" and "We agree with you that what cyclists really need are safe and segregated cycle lanes as suggested by the Mayor in his ‘Vision for Cycling’"

Regent Street during recent emergency gas works.
Less pollution, no horrible traffic congestion. 

Over the past fortnight, I have commented on plans to re-design the roads in the streets south of Piccadilly Circus. The works will narrow many of the roads in a way that will make it more hazardous to travel by bicycle than the current hairy arrangements in this area.

I feel strongly that there is an opportunity in this area to create an environment that makes it safer and more convenient to travel here by bicycle. There is sufficient space and sufficient investment in the pipeline to achieve this. The schemes also seem to mean conditions will get worse for significant numbers of bus passengers. As the Evening Standard put it yesterday: "there are fears that the removal of bus lanes, and the shrinking of such busy roads, will boost congestion and leave cyclists even closer to traffic. The plan also runs counter to Boris Johnson’s policy of creating segregated routes to increase cycle safety".

The proposed works are to be and the ultimate design are by Westminster council, however, the funding and overall strategy is led by The Crown Estate. The Estate is a property business that manages property which is owned by the Crown but is not the private property of the monarch. It is the sixth largest landowner in the country and is governed by an Act of Parliament and its profits go to the Treasury for the benefit of the nation.The area around Regents Street and St. James's is directly owned by the Crown Estate. It therefore has a pivotal say in what the heart of the West End looks like and how it works.

The Crown Estate is a significant land owner and developer. What the Crown Estate thinks and does matters not only on Regent Street but around the country. I am delighted that the Peter Bourne, development manager of the Crown Estate has responded to my blog posts in an informative email that contains some highly significant statements.

I will let Peter's email talk for itself but have taken the liberty of bolding the lines that should make local authorities and land owners around the country sit up and take notice. See for yourselves:

Email from Peter Bourne, development manager, The Crown Estate:


"In answer to your original post on 18 April and the subsequent one on yesterday, The Crown Estate are strong supporters of cycling in London and are actively promoting cycling here in the West End.


We have created 500 secure cycle parking spaces, complete with lockers and showers, in our buildings with another 500 on the way in buildings under construction. We have also provided some 100 on street cycle parking stands and are looking to increase this number.

We are also working to reduce traffic and congestion in the local area, for the benefit of both pedestrians and cyclists. 10% of traffic on Regent Street is from goods vehicles, so we created a delivery consolidation scheme that now involves a quarter of the Street’s shops. This award winning project sees retailers bring their goods to a consolidation centre outside of London, from where they are then brought to store by electric lorry. This means 75-80% fewer deliveries, less traffic and less pollution. We have a similar project to reduce office deliveries that uses cargo bikes.

We agree with you that what cyclists really need, however, are safe and segregated cycle lanes as suggested by the Mayor in his ‘Vision for Cycling’. Within days of that report being published we met with Transport for London and proposed a north-south route running from The Mall to Regents Park. There is still some work to be done on this, but we hope that it could be implemented before the end of 2014.

Our support for cycling is part of a wider commitment to sustainability, which is why we are also investing in making Regent Street safer and more welcoming for pedestrians. We also know that the completion of Crossrail and tube network upgrades will bring 20-25% more pedestrians into central London, so wider pavements and improved pedestrian facilities are essential.

Proposed improvements to Lower Regent Street and Haymarket, which your post focuses on, are part of this commitment. They build on the success of the Oxford Circus diagonal crossing and the re-introduction of two-way traffic around Piccadilly Circus, which we also helped design and co-fund. All these schemes seek to better manage congestion and reduce pollution, whilst the new road surfaces and improved traffic easing measures that they bring also benefit cyclists.

The more recent blog makes some specific proposals: “What Westminster needs to do here.”

• Create a two way system for bikes: that is what our north-south routes does; albeit not on Haymarket/Regent Street.
• Bike access from Shaftsbury Avenue to Piccadilly along the current bus- only lane: the scheme proposes this.
• Piccadilly/St James’s bike lanes: the new Boris east-west cycle route will run along Bird Cage Walk and the existing route along The Mall will link into this, in turn (subject to approvals) linking in to our proposed north-south route through Soho and up to Regents Park  to create a fully joined safe network.

We know that traffic, congestion and pollution are amongst the top concerns of businesses, residents and visitors to the West End. So tackling these issues and making the area more welcoming to pedestrians and cyclists alike is good for business as much as it is for the environment and visitors. This strategy drives our investment and our plans for the local area. We hope that this reassures you that The Crown Estate is and will remain a firm supporter of cyclists in London.

We anticipate that your readers would like to see a response from The Crown Estate on the issues you raise. I am therefore proposing to post a version of this note as a comment.

I would like to invite you to visit Regent Street where I would be happy to give you a tour of the cycle friendly schemes we have implemented and brief you on our future proposals, including the north-south cycle route we are working on. Please could you let me know when you could make such a meeting. "

My view: Westminster council is peddling the height of irresponsibility as it designs roads to make people play frogger with lorries and buses when they're on their bikes. It's madness.

The Times's editorial today. 

Today's big news is not actually about Westminster council. It's about the massively impressive work done by the All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group in releasing its Get Britain Cycling report this afternoon.

The Times has written a  hard-hitting editorial covering the work of the APPCG and its report issued today and I'd urge you to read it.

The Times makes two key points. In its editorial, the lead theme is this:

"Cycling has been good for David Cameron. The Prime Minister has used cycling to help brand himself a modern Conservative: young, down to earth and environmentally conscious. Now it is time for him to be good for cycling."

And within its main pages, there is a stinging article by Chris Boardman which concludes, rightly, that "apathy and lack of leadership that will continue to make us fat and our roads unpleasant places". Bang on.

If you do one thing this week to make a difference, please please please sign the petition started by The Times to ask the Prime Minister to implement the recommendations of the Parliamentary report. Click here to the e-petition website; it takes 30 seconds. 

One of the reasons we need this petition is to intervene on schemes like the one being built in the heart of Westminster by Westminster council and sponsored by the Crown Estate.

Westminster Council has presented this scheme as an 'improvement' for cycling. I've seen some documents from the council that even promote the scheme as a 'vast improvement' for cycling. I beg to differ. I think this is a vast improvement for the rental yields of the Crown Estate (and that's absolutely fine, by the way, if that's what the Crown Estate wants to achieve). It is not, however, a 'vast improvement' for cycling.

Snapshot of the planned road narrowing at Haymarket
and Lower Regent Street. Courtesy Westminster Council

I've now had a chance to review the detailed diagrams of the scheme which are available on Westminster's website.

Just to be clear the scheme costs over £8million. Cycling and road safety element of the scheme? Just over £100,000, ie about 1% of the spend will be on cycling and yet Westminster is trying to pass this off as "vast improvements" for cycling. Utter and complete misrepresentation in my book.

What will happen is Lower Regent Street will become between two, three and four lanes wide. Half way along, we'll have two five metre wide lanes northbound with a big traffic island in the middle. Five metres is just enough for two cars to fit side by side or a lorry and a car. So the two lanes will, in reality, become four and cyclists will feel either a) incredibly intimidated by close shave passes or b) won't be able to get anywhere if the traffic's bad because there won't be any space. Get to the junction with Piccadilly, and you have three x narrow lanes and bus stop (ie four lanes) and an insulting sliver of bike lane down the middle of the four lanes that's only just wide enough for a person to squeeze between two buses. This is 1970s road design if ever I saw it. Nice big pavements and lovely granite in the middle of the carriageway, though, which will make it look nice and a little easier for only physically fit people to dart across the road and seek refuge from the traffic halfway across.

No change here. The bike lane leads into a concrete
traffic island. You'll be expected to whizz across the two lanes
on the right of the picture into the 'bike lane' and then
turn left. Insanity on a plate. 

Haymarket is trickier to tell. The plans don't show how wide the lanes will be. But you can see the road has been narrowed considerably. And you'll be expected to cycle down the RIGHT HAND SIDE of three lanes of traffic. If you want to turn into Trafalgar Square, you'll then have to cross the vans, taxis, buses, lorries all bearing down the hill on you at speed and move into the bike lane. Which will still, as now, be a tiny narrow strip in the middle of four lanes of traffic that leads directly into a concrete traffic island. The problem here is a) too much traffic b) traffic changing lanes frequently c) lane changing takes place at speed d) lots of very large motor vehicles, mainly buses and coaches but also HGVs. The scheme provides lovely wide pavements but actually makes the conditions for cycling (currently you at least have the relative safety of a very wide bus lane that keeps you away from the coaches and lorries) even worse than they are no and neglects to improve the hopelessly inadequate junction design.

Cycle towards Trafalgar Square down Cockspur Street? No change - two x 3.3m wide lanes for buses. If there are four or five buses in the street (which is normally the case), you're stuck breathing in bus exhaust and trying not to get squashed. As a senior road traffic policeman explained to me quite carefully once, if that bus hits you at 20mph, you're long gone.

Central London? No chance. This is Berlin, I'm afraid. 

What Westminster needs to do here is create a two-way system for people on bikes and build at a minimum two metre wide bike lanes on Haymarket and no Lower Regent Street. There is ample space for these. The lanes that run between Haymarket and Lower Regent Street should become two-way for people on bikes and remain one way for people in motor vehicles. There needs to be bike access from Shaftesbury Avenue into Piccadilly (at the moment it's buses only even though bikes are allowed to rejoin a hundred yards up the road - oversight or deliberately excluding bikes?) and Piccadilly and St James need bike lanes too. They are essentially impassable on a bike in the morning rush hour and at weekends.

Of course, the other option would be to massively reduce the amount of motor traffic on these streets in the first place. But Westminster's policies are to increase motor traffic, not reduce it. The neighbouring Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea officially labelled Westminster's pro-car policies as "inevitably producing additional traffic congestion within central London". They're right.

My own view is that Westminster is putting rental yields first. It is eliminating the bus lanes; it is pursuing policies that increase motor traffic congestion; it is failing to create safe, convenient routes through central London for cycling and it is expecting pedestrians to leg it across the road onto traffic islands, rather than creating a genuinely civilised shopping environment in which people on foot, on bike and in buses as well as taxis or cars have to fight for space on narrower, fast-moving, heavily polluted, traffic-congested streets.

The money is there, the will is there to change things and there is tonnes of space to get this right. But the direction of travel is backwards. And it is being presented - in my view utterly immorally - as an 'improvement' for cycling when the numbers quite clearly show that is claptrap.

If you want to do something about this, please do one of these things:

Attend the public consultation on Friday morning this week. 

Or write to


Martin Brazier
martin.brazier@thecrownestate.co.uk
The Crown Estate, 16 New Burlinton Place, London W1S 2HX.

Martin Low
mlow@westminster.gov.uk
Commissioner of Transportation
City of Westminster

The Westminster City Council Project Director for the scheme is Mark Allan
mallan@westminster.gov.uk

Sarah Coxhall
sarah.coxall@heartoflondonbid.co.uk
West End Business Improvement District

If you live in Westminster, write to your councillors