The end of cycling in Waltham Forest

What’s happening here?

The re-allocation of street space along a large section of the B160 (Wood Street) in north Walthamstow, that’s what. All the way from Wood Street station to the A104 (Lea Bridge Road).

By the look of it this involves the construction of the first segregated cycle paths to Dutch design standards in London. And look! In the second pic there’s even a blue London Cycle Network sign.

But I’m afraid this is not what it’s all about. These roadworks are about seizing large tracts of the footway and cycle lane in order to build… parking bays. The cycle lane will then be moved closer to the centre of the carriageway, on a road where in this section vehicle speeds are in excess of 30 mph. A road which is currently not particularly pleasant to cycle on will become even more dangerous and off-putting. The danger of ‘dooring’ is being institutionally created.



























It is unbelievable that at this stage in our history, with all we know about climate change, air pollution and ill-health, not to mention the reasons why most people are deterred from cycling, that car dependency is being vigorously promoted in this way. But schemes like this are proliferating in Waltham Forest, and specifically on just the kind of routes with the greatest potential for segregated cycle paths.

If the day is ever to come when we get Dutch-style cycling infrastructure it will need to start on major routes that form the basis of a convenient and direct cycle grid. Yet that possibility is being aborted before birth by the systematic reallocation of street space from pedestrians and cyclists to motorists. The Forest Road Corridor Scheme marked a major assault on the future of mass cycling, squeezing cyclists between lorries and parking bays. I blogged about it here and here and here.

Now there’s the Wood Street Corridor Scheme shown here. And there’s more of this in the pipeline. Yet the only place you will read about any of this is here.

What is the response locally or London-wide to a scheme like this? Silence. The London Cycling Campaign is essentially complicit in this kind of engineering. The local LCC branch is fixated on on-road cycle lanes and has no objection in principle to cycle lanes running between parking bays and overtaking traffic.

At a London-wide level the LCC contains senior figures such as David Love, who speaks for numerous campaigners when he says

Sure, segregation would be great but in London at least there's no room and no money so it's not going to happen. Campaigning for behaviour change is more realistic right now.

The ‘behaviour change’ which Love seeks is for drivers to pass cyclists giving them a minimum of 3 feet. Needless to say this doesn’t happen on Wood Street now and is even less likely to happen once the Wood Street corridor scheme is completed. In fact the only safe way to cycle along this road will then be to ignore the cycle lane and ‘take the road’, which will be perceived by some drivers as a wilful attempt to obstruct them, resulting in the kind of bellicose and dangerous behaviour which the Cycling Lawyer and numerous other helmet-cam cyclists have repeatedly filmed.

There’s no space and there’s no money – that’s the mantra of the British cycling establishment whenever the subject of Dutch-style segregation is raised. But as these photographs vividly illustrate, there is the space. The parking bays which are being created could just as easily have been turned into safe, segregated cycle paths. But car-centric schemes like this have the enthusiastic support of Transport for London, with which both the London Cycling Campaign and Sustrans collaborate in promoting the fantasy that cycling in Outer London is ripe for expansion and can be achieved not through infrastructure but 'soft' measures like cycle training and posters of beautiful people on bicycles.

How much is this scheme costing? I used the Freedom of Information Act to find out. Answer: £450,000. Another massive subsidy for car owners and car users. And the end result is perfectly simple: cycling is made even more unpleasant, dangerous and stressful on this road, which has now been opened up for double parking.

Cycling will never flourish in an environment like this and it may well decline. You will certainly NEVER get mass cycling or significant modal share on a road where the conditions are like this (below). Schemes like this mark the end of cycling in Waltham Forest, except for a tiny fringe minority of hardcore vehicular cyclists.




























No surprise, then, that today’s news brings the revelation

The UK is one of the unhealthiest nations in Europe for some health indicators, data suggests.

The UK as a whole scored particularly badly on obesity, being the fattest nation of all.

No surprise, then, that a new report from the Department for Transport reveals yet again that

Safety concerns / ‘too much traffic’ were a key barrier to cycling.

And even more interestingly

For every three respondents who had tried cycling to work, two had reverted back to using their car.

(Hat tip to Cycalogical for spotting the publication of this new report.)

No surprise, either, that at the recent Cyclenation conference of cycle campaigners in Edinburgh, Ashok Sinha, the new Chief Executive of the London Cycling Campaign, brought the cheering news that

Cycling has come onto the political agenda, and is backed in high places.

How reassuring.

Spot the bike advert

A year ago this massively obstructive advertising panel was installed across the pavement in a busy section of High Road Leyton with a high pedestrian flow.

It is currently being used to advertise a BMX bike, which is sold by Tesco, whose superstore in Leytonstone has a huge amount of car parking and just four bike stands, which are cheap, tacky and far too close to each other.

This advert is alongside a cycle lane which is obstructed by legally parked cars.

Life really doesn’t get much more richly textured than this, does it?

Two London women cyclists down

Police are appealing for information after a cyclist was left fighting for life when she was hit by a van at Marble Arch.

The 29-year-old woman is in a critical condition after colliding with a security van carrying cash at 8.50am. Police are contacting her next of kin.

The 46-year-old van driver was arrested on suspicion of careless driving

Mark of ibikelondon writes about this collision here.

Meanwhile in the London Borough of Sutton

A female cyclist has been rushed to hospital after a collision with a car.

London Ambulance Service said the 46-year-old suffered neck and leg injuries when the smash took place at 6.45am in Lower Morden Lane

Various commentators said that last Thursday’s student protests witnessed ‘the worst violence London has seen for many years’. Which is a classic example of the way in which journalists and politicians sanitise and marginalise the greatest form of violence in London, namely that which occurs in road crashes, which far exceeds gang shootings, youths with knives, terrorism, or demonstrations:

3,227 people were killed or seriously injured on London’s roads in 2009

That's nine or ten a day, including 204 people killed in 2008 and 184 in 2009. It might be argued that in a city populated by 7.5 million people that's not an awful lot, but if comparable numbers were killed or seriously injured on London's Underground or Overground networks each year there would be uproar

140 of the 184 people who died following collisions in 2009 were pedestrians, cyclists or motorcyclists

Pedal cyclist casualties [of all severities] showed a 14% increase in inner London, and a 16% increase in outer London.

When the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police states that he is determined to get to grips with violence I am less than impressed, because he is a man who like his predecessors regards road traffic policing as a very low priority, and he is a man quite at ease with the fact that up to 13 per cent of London drivers are uninsured and therefore driving unlawfully. But then the Commissioner and the Met’s Commanders all enjoy the luxury of a chauffeur-driven limo lifestyle, which detaches them from the reality that their policies impose on those most vulnerable to them – pedestrians and cyclists.

And if the Met was remotely concerned about threats posed to the safety of all Londoners there would be a massive police raid on the Thames Materials depot, with every driver coming in and out regularly tested for drink and drugs and every lorry checked daily to see that it was in a roadworthy condition and fully in compliance with the law.

Woops! I was forgetting. "At the moment, people assume - quite correctly - that they can take drugs and drive a vehicle with little chance of being caught and convicted.

another reason why Cllr Clyde Loakes should go

I am now into my fourth year of recording the regular obstruction of cycle stands by rubbish sacks, something which the council shows no interest at all in preventing – hardly surprising when staff employed by its contractor Kier are persistent offenders.

This example was outside The World of Catering, 684-692 Lea Bridge Road, yesterday.

Footnote

Obviously the folk at Truth Will Out don’t read this blog. They say

Only a year ago local newspaper comments pages, bloggers (many suspected to be Labour supporters) and Labour leaflets were attacking the man responsible for our streets, former Lib Dem Cllr Bob Belam, for the alleged poor refuse collection and street sweeping services.

Truth Will Out point outs, reasonably enough, that things are no better under the new Labour council, but grumbles that there are now No bloggers complaining of dirty streets

Not true! Take a look here, here and here.

Vandalism in Walthamstow High Street

A bed of plants in a concrete tray put there by the council to beautify Walthamstow and also keep vehicles off the Arcade site has been clumsily dragged to one side, detaching it from its base, with some of the plants tipped on the ground. Who did this?

Someone who wanted to create access in order to drive a large vehicle into the Arcade site, is my guess.

Look at that pretty carousel! It was brought here on a massive transporter, through this gap.

‘a complete lack of understanding of cycling in the Netherlands’

(Above) Cycling infrastructure, the A112 southbound.

The fundamentalists have remained in charge, wouldn’t you say? Look at the date on this:

The sad thing about this discussion is that we, that is cyclists' lobby, have been here before - more than once indeed. And we are in real danger that the fundamentalists, that is those who oppose segregated facilities, will again leave us as a lobby isolated and, much worse, end up with cycling itself constrained as a minority, crank interest.

Which is exactly where the CTC and LCC have taken us since those words were written ten years and one month ago. Cycling has flat-lined nationally and modal share remains risible in London, which is supposed to be experiencing a boom. The bubble may already have burst in Hackney (we won't know until next year's TfL figures if the collapse in cycling's modal share there is continuing or is temporary).

Over at Cyclists in the City they note

Here's a classic indication that nothing much is going to change:

"Projects implemented within the cycling revolution programme will nevertheless be designed with the needs of all road users in mind."

What that last bit means is cycle infrastructure squashed into motor traffic lanes and bicycle traffic put on pavements as at Queen Street. It means continuing to wobble over to the right hand lane on Blackfriars Bridge while a large proportion of the motor traffic whizz past at 45mph.

The enviro-crime that Waltham Forest council colludes with

Every day, all over the London Borough of Waltham Forest, crimes and anti-social behaviour are very visibly committed, to the complete indifference of the agencies which might put a stop to it. I allude to obstruction of the footway by shopkeepers’ ‘A’ boards (so-called because from the side they look like the letter A). Shopkeepers have no right to obstruct the footway with advertising boards but they do, on a colossal scale. I recently used the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to ask the council:

Could you tell me how many successful prosecutions there were by the council in 2009 (or the most recent 12 months for figures are available) for obstruction of the footway by 'A' boards

Back came the answer:

I can confirm that there have been no prosecutions with regard to ‘A’ Boards

Which explains why the kind of obstruction shown in the last photograph here is still continuing one year later (see below).

So there you have it. Despite its perpetual bluster about waging war on enviro-crime, Waltham Forest council colludes with blatant obstruction of the footway which occurs on a daily basis, to the detriment of blind pedestrians, people in wheelchairs, people pushing pushchairs and prams, and pedestrians in general.

When you look at photographs of streets in Denmark and the Netherlands, the striking thing isn’t just the number of cyclists but also the amazingly uncluttered streets and the pleasant walking environment.

This blog calls on Councillor Clyde Loakes to resign! He is the person most responsible for this scandal, and the hypocrisy of him posing in the Town Square as the valiant defender of a better street environment is beyond belief.



























191 Forest Road, Walthamstow, E17 6HE