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I posted at the weekend how Southwark councillors are looking to make the borough’s roads safer for people to cycle on. What I didn’t
realise was that in doing so, I had stepped into a political rift between
different political parties within the council.
The Labour controlled council seems to be getting its cycling plans rather mixed up. And LibDem councillors are attacking the council (quite justifiably, in my view) for being 'anti-cyclist'. Earlier in the year, the local newspaper Southwark News commented that the Labour council has transport 'plans that will see cycle lanes in the borough removed'.
The Labour leader of Southwark Council Peter John was in touch straight away after I posted about his cycling strategy at the weekend and has offered to meet and discuss his views. I look forward to meeting him. All the more so now that Ken Livingstone has come out and stated definitively that he believes there is space in London for proper bike infrastructure. He told the Guardian yesterday: "In some places you can put in separation. Most of our roads are wide enough to do that". Southwark now seems seriously out of step.
Southwark recently published its investment plan for transport
in the borough. There is a lot that is worthy in that plan. For example, it is
admirable that Southwark is standing up to Boris Johnson’s number one road
policy, which is to allow more car traffic to travel through London as quickly
as possible. Southwark states that the Mayor’s policy may increase the share of motor vehicles on London’s roads and ‘therefore reduce cycling levels’. It proposes to challenge Johnson’s policy by ‘prioritising cycling’ when it designs street improvement schemes.
Reading the detail of the Southwark plan, however, I was
surprised that the council’s strategy targets a significant reduction in the
growth rate of cycling. In 2006/7, cycling accounted for 2.9% of all journeys
starting in Southwark and is expected to increase to 4.0% by 2013/4. For some
odd reason, the plan is for that rate of growth to collapse after 2014 and to
only shuffle towards a piffling 5% by 2025/6. In other words, the rate at which
more people take up cycling is expected to slump in 2015 and continue to slump
thereafter. This seems like a serious lack of vision from the council.
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Cycle Super Highway in Southwark |
What’s more, the Southwark plan suggests the council has
significantly lower expectations than its northern neighbour, the City of
London. The City authorities anticipate 10% of all people working in the Square
Mile to bike to work by 2020. That compares with Southwark’s plan for only 5%
of its residents to cycle by 2025.
Furthermore, the City of London has committed very clearly
to the creation of high-quality routes through the Square Mile where people
will be given greater priority if they travel by bicycle.
The Southwark plan is commendable for making clear that it
intends to prioritise cycling. However, close reading of the Southwark
investment plan is that ‘prioritisation’ will consist primarily of training and
educational events. In other words, it neglects to commit the council to
creating clear and meaningful routes where people are given greater priority if
they travel by bicycle.
Southwark believes that 47% of trips on its roads could be
made by bicycle. I don’t believe that a commitment to education and a general
statement about investment priorities is anywhere near enough to generate the
conditions that would amount to 47% of trips being made by bicycle.
It seems that, deep down, Southwark’s politicians know this
too. The Southwark plan asks itself this killer question (I hope not literally):
To me the answer is very clear. I wouldn’t send my child out
on Southwark’s roads and nor would most head teachers want me to (see this excellent post by Kennington People on Bikes for more on that). They feel too
dangerous.
And we can see just how dangerous. Although cycling accounts
for only 2.9% of all trips originating in the borough, 20% of the people killed
or seriously injured on Southwark’s roads are cycling. What’s more, Southwark
knows how risky its roads are:
What this map shows is that to get pretty much anywhere in
Southwark, you need to be trained to bikeability level 3 (and personally, I
would question some of these ratings. Some of these roads are considerably
tougher than that.). In my view, this is like asking your kids to pass exams equivalent to the
Advanced Institute of Motorists just to get to school.
I'm exaggerating slightly but to make this point: Southwark is asking children and their parents to fling
themselves around multiple-lane gyratories, to have confidence tackling right
hand turns, often against four lanes of motor traffic. Southwark is also
implying that, in order to cycle from one neighbourhood to the other, people
must be trained to a significantly higher degree than to do the same journey by car.
The fact is that Southwark’s pro-cycling rhetoric is
completely and utterly undone by the facts on the ground. The council wants to
encourage cycling. It believes 47% of all trips could be made by bicycle on its
roads. It believes there would be huge benefits for its residents and business
in the borough were that to happen. But it has very little on offer in order to
make that a reality.
I don’t believe that should be the case.
Karl Cracken does an excellent job here of describing, very succinctly, the three basic essentials that might genuinely encourage people to opt for a bicycle trip instead of a car trip. He says that people need safe, convenient and direct routes. If their bike routes meet these three criteria, they will more likely cycle than drive. I don't see any of these three must-haves in the Southwark transport plan.
It is a crying shame to see a council that has been, in the
past a true leader in cycling, set itself on a trajectory that will do very
little to encourage more people to cycling and that, I believe, will do equally
little to bring down the borough’s poor record on cycling safety.