Mayor's Transport Policy - Public Consultation - please contribute!

Hello all,

Today, the Mayor of London has released his new Transport Strategy for public consultation. The consultation period opens today and runs until January 12th, 2010 (i.e. for the next 3 months), so now is your opportunity to let your thoughts be known!!

The consultation is available at: http://www.london.gov.uk/shaping-london/ - under the Mayor's Transport Strategy (center of the page).

From my first glance, there seems to be two ways of contributing your opinion:

• filling in a survey/quick questionnaire: you can view the questions, although to complete it properly, you will need to first validate your email;
  
• sending an email response with your thoughts to: mts@london.gov.uk (you can include your comments in a file as long as it is in one of the following formats: Word doc, Adobe PDF or Rich Text Format)
  
  
  

Key points about the proposed strategy

The proposed strategy is available online for download. You can either download selected chapters, or download the whole document (pdf - 23MB). I have not yet read the whole document (if and when I do, I shall try to update this post) but I have read the section in the Transport Proposals chapter (pdf - 8.9MB) that relates to cycling in London. This comprises 7 pages (of the 337 page document!) and contains 8 proposals (out of 129). However, there is not a single mention of reducing cyclist fatalities...

There is, however, one small sub-proposal (part 'g' of Proposal 54) that talks about "[d]elivering road enhancements to make cycling safer and easier, including managing car access to residential areas, through physical or design measures, to create pleasant and safer cycling environments," as another section altogether that details with cyclist safety - section 5.15.5. But that section, even thought mentioning the huge problem caused by HGVs, does not offer any real solutions. It only talks about enhancing the use of sideguards on HGVs (in part, by lobbying the government to change legislation), as well as trying to increase the number of freight vehicles with “electronic warning devices that detect cyclists”. Will these changes really help?

One other key fact that I have picked up from my initial perusal of the document relates to the Mayor's aims: an increase in cycling in London from the current level of approximately 2%, to a level of 5% by 2026.

Key points related to the survey

If you are answering the questionnaire, you are given the option to tick boxes related to what you think are the most important benefits for each category. For cycling, these options are:

• Providing more secure cycle parking
  
• Introducing specially designated Cycle Superhighways
  
• Introducing Cycle Hire Schemes
  
• Providing more cycle training
  

• Other (please specify)

                                                                                                                       You will note there are no options related to improving the safety of cycling in London!
  

You may also be interested in the options for freight (i.e. goods vehicles); they are:

• Promoting use of the Thames and other waterways for freight
  
• Encouraging out-of-hours delivery
  
• Building more centres to transfer freight to cleaner vehicles for local deliveries
  
• Other (please specify)
  
  

There are also two proposals at the bottom. One relates to the possibility of introducing "a fair system of road user charging to reduce congestion" (without stating what the interpretation of "fair" might be) and the other "proposes to remove the Western Extension of the Congestion Charging scheme."

Next, there is a free text area where you may say what you like! I am not going to say any more about that here, as there are plenty of other threads on this forum related to the ongoing debate around cycle safety in London, as well as the 'See me, save me' campaign.

I hope this information is useful to you all.

-- d0cA