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We've now met with Enfield and Kingston to work better together to ensure the mini-Hollands all actually do look like mini-Hollands and not just business-as-usual - which I think the new Tory council in Kingston (the Lib Dems put the bid in) particularly were veering strongly towards.
Interesting point about the Kingston political composition. I don't really seem to hear anything much about it at all, and things have been looking pretty poor there for a while. Hearing that they've gone from a Lib Dem-led council to a Tory one explains a lot.
Enfield council have been warned that they need to get a move on because if the scheme is delayed and a new Mayor who is less sympathetic to cycling is installed in 2016, that money might completely dry up and scupper the concept entirely. Kingston will have been given similar warnings, I'm sure. Can't help thinking they're going for a double whammy in Kingston - cut back the scheme as much as possible so they can say, "look what we did for you in protecting you from the foolish Liberal Democrats", and then once the scheme fails, "look at how this brand new Labour Mayor of London has taken £30m away from you!"
But yes, good work in helping move these along. Just hope we can blast them all through without the venality of local governers ruining it all.
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bothwell
As the Waltham Forest Cycling Campaign's Council Liaison Officer, just thought I'd jump on and add one or two things:
Yup, some roads in the "villagisation" (read: us knicking Hackney's filtered permeability model) weren't properly closed off in trial - as Oliver put it, that's exactly why some roads were busier. We wait to see what final scheme looks like - but vibe in council is good and yup, residents were broadly in favour of it.
Sad to see even cyclists on here flummoxed by the "I/a mate was in a car stuck on the Lea Bridge Road and therefore it must be mini-Holland" cobblers. We had broken traffic lights in several key points for much of the (too short) trial, a closed north circ and a closed Blackwall Tunnel. The engineers have been over the data as best they can and their broad response was "Lea Bridge Road is often messed up - on the days it wasn't messed up, the villagisation trial doesn't seem to have added much traffic to the main roads". Fairly obviously, the capacity and flow of main roads even versus heavily ratrunned side roads is huge.
Ruckholt Road - they're using "cycle separated junctions", priority lights for cyclists and possibly even all-green scramble phases at junctions - the fine detail subject to final modelling and TfL sign-off. That means you should have no points at which you're in danger of being hooked etc. WFCC has a list of remaining problems we have with Ruckholt Road at our mini-Holland page - Alexandra Road is the main remaining issue.
We've now met with Enfield and Kingston to work better together to ensure the mini-Hollands all actually do look like mini-Hollands and not just business-as-usual - which I think the new Tory council in Kingston (the Lib Dems put the bid in) particularly were veering strongly towards.
I'll also be attending the next Hackney CC meet in early Feb - to discuss what can be done about the ends of Ruckholt Road and Lea Bridge Road where they hit the border with Hackney.
What's really important to understand, and has been a huge learning process for me personally from just before the trial to the end of December, is how much people fear and hate change. And how a few voices can dominate. Several thousand people signed the "stop mini Holland in Walthamstow" petition. But their biggest public turnouts have been 100 or so people. Many of them live outside the currently affected areas. Many come from groups that have clear reason to be upset - professional drivers and driving instructors, OAPs with mobility issues etc. Their concerns need answering, sure, but ultimately the reality is most people locally are either semi- in favour of plans or broadly in favour of them so far. A tiny minority of very angry people are intent on making a lot of noise - I'm increasingly ignoring them, as we've moved well beyond the point of sensible issues and discussions to wild conjecture, conspiracy theories and angry ranting.