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

Submitted the questionnaire.

yep good post. thanks.

i will read the document and comment.

I've attempted to summarise some of the main elements of this big report for cyclists:
Small steps forward instead of strides in Today's cycle plan - hope it helps encourage some people to take action

yep good post. thanks.

i will read the document and comment.

you clearly didn't see that it was 300+pages long did you?

http://crapwalthamforest.blogspot.com/2009/10/boris-johnsons-flawed-transport-vision.html

is a somewhat (rightly?) scathing review of said document. Don't let it influence you cough

yes the document isdull dull dull. everything for everyone.

i think that if you really want to influence this policy go protest in front of tfl with a megaphone better approach than submitting comments online!.

yes the document isdull dull dull. everything for everyone.

i think that if you really want to influence this policy go protest in front of tfl with a megaphone better approach than submitting comments online!.

i'm highly tempted to agree with you. however, have been involved in my fair share of protests over the years, i am of the opinion that you might as well use every possible opportunity to get your voice heard - which includes responding to the survey. in particular, i'm planning on using the free text bit to voice my thoughts!!

also, for those of you who are slightly more patient (i.e. can wait a month or two before sending in your response) i and a few others have just about completed a paper regarding cycling fatalities in london based upon the police stats19 dataset. we will be submitting it in the next week to 10 days (currently waiting back on people having sent around an almost-final draft) and i would hope that it gets published within about 4-6 weeks of submission.

also, for those of you who are slightly more patient (i.e. can wait a month or two before sending in your response) i and a few others have just about completed a paper regarding cycling fatalities in london based upon the police stats19 dataset. we will be submitting it in the next week to 10 days (currently waiting back on people having sent around an almost-final draft) and i would hope that it gets published within about 4-6 weeks of submission.

Hi d0cA, did you try to talk to me about this on the Circle Line ride? Apologies that I was so absent-minded. I got distracted by a couple of things at once. Didn't recognise you in the dark and meant to ask again later, but couldn't find you any more.

That article is missing the point a bit.
Take a while to watch the traffic in central london during the day. Barely any of it is private cars. It's all cabs, commercials, chauffeur hires, etc.
that battle has seemingly been won.

@oli, yep, was me :) just sent you a pm about it.

@bluequinn: i'm not sure which article you are referring to.

Mayor of London wants to get the percentage of trips done by bike from 2% to 5% by 2026.

I can find two problems with that..

1. Brussels took their bike modal share from 1% to 6% in 5 years.
   
2. EU Commission is hoping to set targets of 15% bike modal share by 2015.
   **(Edit: Think it is 15% by 2020 now I double checked)
   **
   So why exactly can Brussels take their bike share from 1% to 6% in 5 and we need over 3 times longer to achieve this. Also why is 5% called a "cycling revolution" so much for Boris the "cycling mayor" more like Boris the "try to please everyone but end up making everyone unhappy mayor"
   

1. EU Commission is hoping to set targets of 15% bike modal share by 2015.
   
   

do you have a reference for that?

thanks,

-- d0cA

do you have a reference for that?

thanks,

-- d0cA

Yeah - http://bikeportland.org/2009/07/13/what-can-europe-learn-from-portland-about-bikes-a-conversation-about-eu-transport-policy/
Type in the two quotes I mentioned.

Also: http://ecf.com/3644_1 (regarding taking cycling to 15% to save huge amount of CO2)
Also: http://www.velo-city2009.com/charter-brussels.html - the charter that says 15% of transport should be done by bike.

d0cA - if you feel strongly about this c**p transport policy maybe we should get together to discuss what we could do?

@ andreaskam - thanks for the links! will do a bit of further research into them as i can (have already started).

about getting together to discuss - yeah, maybe, but i'm not quite sure what we'd do - perhaps we can start discussion on here, or maybe a thread on the private forum (where it's not so google-able)? let me know what you are thinking...

It depends on whether you want to discuss it on the forum or through the Action Group. I'd recommend the latter. I think Velocio set up the mailing lists specifically so that the Action Group discussions could be separate.

Wider... not separate.

LFGSS is fine and dandy, but it's not LFGSS's action group. Nor does it belong to any other group... it's independent and includes people who belong to multiple other groups.

Thanks, that's what I meant.

yeah, agree about the Action Group - although thought that was primarily against HGVs rather than about the Transport Strategy, hence why I suggested the forum. Happy to be corrected, though :-)

I was just thinking because it's important to compile research about deaths. The Action Group may be mainly about HGV deaths and serious injuries, but those are closely linked to other deaths.

I will be sharing the data I have once it is published, don't worry!