Centralised discussion space for TfL plans and cycling in London

Consultation on "Direct Vision Standard" for HGVs
https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/roads/direct-vision-standards-phase-2/
(not sure where best to put this)

Not sure if this is the best place for this.
I was pleased to see in the summer that they were redesigning the junction at New North Road/Eagle Wharf Road/Poole Street to accommodate the new Royal Mail delivery office.
My heart sank when I attempted to turn right into Eagle Wharf road coming south over the canal on Monday.
TFL or whoever designed it had a chance to do it properly but no. A cyclist now has to wait in the middle of the road with two lanes of cars coming at you from both ways trying to change lanes with no provision whatsoever. It's a fucking disaster and it's only a matter of time before a cyclist is killed or seriously injured here.
Incidentally, this was the same junction I crashed into a Lambo all those years ago. It was shit then and it's even worse now. What a joke

Sounds like you need to move :-D

Not sure where to post this but it was interesting
https://www.facebook.com/vjsonline/videos/822706887931860/

I was popping by the royal mail depot the other day and i agree - its a missed opportunity / a shambles. If you live in the area or even if you don't, it's worth writing an email / letter to councillors in the area requesting their thoughts and actions, and putting an FOI request in to see the road safety audit on the new and "improved" layout...

Priory lane has caused quite a few road rage incidents with idiots not understanding why cyclist don't use a worthless piece of cycle track on the pavement.
Looks like it may go on the road now.
Consultation
http://www.wandsworth.gov.uk/news/article/14325/comment_on_priory_lane_cycle_route_proposals

Anyone got any thoughts on this. Not quite sure if this is better then what's currently there.

Priory lane thoughts>>>>>
https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/315731/

Thanks. Interesting thoughts on there.
I was hoping for tracks both sides but it's not going to happen and south bound is down hill and most cyclist keep a good speed and don't annoy thetraffic by obstructing and slowing the journey times by milliseconds.

I think it's good overall as it creates legitimacy for not using the existing lane but then I'm plenty quick enough. The ideal solution would involve buying land from the golf course to make more space and discouraging it's use (and the Park) as a rat run.

Looks like the golf course is part of the roehampton club, I doubt it will ever change.

Maybe I'm mad, by I quite like the changes that have been made at the south end of Waterloo bridge where they've turned the old roundabout into a peninsular.

If you want to go fast you can still stick to the road... but the cycle lanes actually seem to work quite well to protect vulnerable cyclists. So much so that I've starting thinking about using it as a commuting route in preference to Carlyle lane /Lower Marsh.

Before the changes I'd never have taken my son near the place.

Looking forward to seeing how Lambeth North junction, and the Lambeth bridge junctions, turn out in practice.

Having just spent the weekend in Amsterdam, I found this quite an interesting video about some of the history behind why cycling hasn't taken off in the same way in London:
https://youtu.be/gohSeOYheXg

So, the Oxford Street saga rumbles on:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/sadiq-khans-plan-to-make-oxford-street-trafficfree-is-halted-by-council-a3825131.html

As I said somewhere in this thread or elsewhere, I'll be very surprised if it gets 'pedestrianised' in the foreseeable future.

There is, of course, the wildcard of Labour potentially winning Westminster next week, as a poll suggested a little while ago, but currently the polls predict that the Tories will hold on to it and Wandsworth. Still, polls, eh? Anyway, were Labour to win Westminster, the chances of the Oxford Street project would obviously be rather improved.

None of that changes the fact that the question of how cycling along it would fare then remains unresolved.

Which party do I vote for in Lambeth if my only real council-level concern is cycling infrastructure?

I would say greens but they tend to just be all over the A23 for pedestrian safety rather than borough wide stuff or even cycling stuff. Most seem to have noticed if they clump together and give a general positive "active travel" response they can just ignore cycling questions. I know where I am in Streatham the greens are claiming to have a fighting chance at winning so putting extra effort into the area. Lots of bits seem to be Labour safe seats so little in the way of pledges to change or do anything beyond keep the status quo.

I'm in Streatham Wells ward.

In terms of what Labour are pledging, their manifesto says this

We’ve led London on cycling, being recognised by winning the award for
...
We’ve redesigned dozens of dangerous junctions including in Stockwell,
Kennington and Vauxhall, with further work planned at Waterloo
roundabout and Westminster Bridge Road. We will work with cyclists on
incorporating the recommendations from our Healthy Routes programme
into the forthcoming Lambeth Transport Strategy to make roads quieter
and safer. We will open over ten miles of new, safe cycling routes and
will campaign for funding for the Streatham to Peckham Quietway.

We successfully campaigned to bring Santander cycle hire bikes to
Brixton and will push for the extension of cycle hire bikes across the
rest of the borough. We introduced secure cycle hangars to our streets
with over 220 hangars already delivered. To meet the growing demand
for secure cycle parking we will double the number of bike hangars,
providing 1,000 additional cycle hangar spaces over the next four
years.

The LDs make the same bike hangars pledge, and everything else I've found is just nice noises about safer streets and active travel, as you say.

I'd like cycle hire bikes in Streatham - would give me a nice option when I'm going out after work. Even the edge of Tooting Common would be close enough.

I'm Streatham Hill ward, most of the action here on transport is around the bus garage creating dangerous conditions on the A23 and speeding on the A23. Had driver flip a car over the other week outside the bus garage. The rest of the roads they see as safeish enough to not bother.

I can't see the hire bikes coming up the hill on account of most people using them for 1 way trips down the hill and it being bad for keeping the docks full. Will end up with more ofo bikes and whatever slowly coming this way and I'd be inclined to join up with them just for them sort of rides.

Must be other issues, which party is going to clean up the most dog poop is a huge issue...

Agree about the bikes and the hill - but I could see them eventually extending along CS7/Q5 and getting as far as the southeast corner of the Tooting Bec Common. Close enough!

The dog mess is indeed an issue...

Thanks to Khan dithering most cycle improvements are fucked. He's allowed the anti side to build up a big head of steam so that even tfl schemes are being choked.

That's exactly what's happened most recently with cs9.

As expected by yours truly:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/plans-to-pedestrianise-oxford-street-off-the-table-for-good-westminster-council-announces-a3858181.html

A bit embarrassing for Khan. His lackluster attempts to promote healthy transport now appear to focus on buses.

There are certain political topics that just don't die. 'Pedestrianising' Oxford Street is something that has been talked about for decades. I can remember it being talked about in the 90s, Livingstone tried to come up with a viable plan and failed, and Khan, of course, tried, too. He'll try again. While at the moment this has been kicked into the long grass for (allegedly) political reasons again, the obvious obstacle that still hasn't been addressed is what to actually do.

The main impetus for this initiative has been the prediction of total pedestrian overcrowding in Oxford Street as a result of the nonsensical building of Crossrail (a policy from decades ago intended to stimulate then-dying Central London which became thoroughly obsolete around 15 years ago at least). However, Oxford Street remains, and (I think) will always remain, a vital overground transport corridor, just like all high streets--hugely important historically-grown extremely multi-functional centres. Very few high streets will be pedestrianised successfully without a new high motor traffic capacity bypass being built, with fairly disastrous results--witness Ilford, for example (dozens more in London alone). Exceptions are only oddities like Mare Street Narroway. Needless to say, if only people stopped making so many pointless car-based journeys, the whole thing would be a lot easier in most cases, but there, too, Oxford Street is an exception, as existing overground traffic there simply can't be accommodated in parallel alignments.

Finally, at the top of the reduce-reuse (re-route)-recycle (shift mode) hierarchy also applicable in transportation, you have the question whether said overground traffic couldn't be reduced. After all, doesn't Crossrail mean that people will be arriving more by train than by bus? Most likely not, as greater concentration of transport capacity than before usually doesn't mean that the same number of people/trips just get distributed differently between different modes, but that far more people turn up, which is obviously the main, oft-proven problem with 'predict and provide' or, in the case of Crossrail, just generate far more completely unnecessary overcrowding for the hell of it, because Livingstone for some utterly bizarre reason managed to twist Gordon Brown's arm just before the financial crisis (when Crossrail funding really should have been cancelled but probably wasn't because Brown may have thought that business now really needed government stimulus), benefiting mainly landowners in Central London (mostly Tory supporters, I'd guess) while drawing traffic, and business, away from smaller centres elsewhere in London, ultimately increasing the need to travel, again.

I expect that if and when a Labour government comes in, there will be an attempt to overrule Westminster by means of primary legislation, but that's still some way off. I still doubt it would work even then.

Another thing to note is that the Oxford Street stuff is only a small part of that Roads Task Force 'idea' of building additional highway capacity around the edges (e.g., bypasses, underground ring roads, also hiding existing roads underground and building new city quarters on top) while 'humanising' the centre. I always thought this general approach was utter, utter nonsense.

There's a tremendous continuity in London's politics in some ways, and the Mayor of London currently has far too few powers to change certain things. The London Plan has only succeeded in being swept along with predictable things, like all the Central London overdevelopment nonsense that Livingstone started. The Mayor's Transport Strategy is generally not a very good document, most of the time failing to be sufficiently strategic, and when it is somewhat strategic, that tends to be based on very old policies (e.g., Livingstone's two flagship policies of Congestion Charging and Bus Priority, of which only the latter worked very well). When Livingstone had run out of ideas, he started to scrabble around for new ones that weren't very well thought out, e.g. the numerous conceptual mistakes he made about the Western Extension. Johnson had absolutely no ideas whatsoever and was negligent and lazy, which set London back a very long way in transportation as well as in all other topics. Khan is very unimaginative, which is standard for city mayors (and not at all unusual for lawyers, who tend to have other strengths), making bad decisions like the Silvertown Tunnel and undoubtedly soon other Roads Task Force crap (being unimaginative means that he lets processes like this run once they've started instead of intervening creatively and re-imagining what needs to be done), but obviously hampered by his lack of money, e.g. getting no external TfL funding. He's still a far better mayor than Johnson, but an organ-grinder's monkey would have made a better mayor than Johnson.