Cycle campaigning

Do LCC keep an eye on TFL's MajorSchemes? The redevelopment of Mitcham Town Centre is one, and includes a set of cycle paths, that look particuarly poorly designed to me, but I'd like some more experienced eyes over it, and views from you folks would mean a lot to me.

Webpage with details here - http://www.merton.gov.uk/community-living/areas-wards/mitcham/rediscovermitcham.htm
Brochure with more details here - http://www.merton.gov.uk/community-living/areas-wards/mitcham/rediscover_mitcham_part_2-mb1forprint_small-2.pdf

The plans are on Page 5.

I'm mostly looking at the cycle path to the north of both Upper Green East and West.

The drawings on pages 10/11 make it look like it's single bike width both ways, and to get to the westbound route, you'd have to use a toucan crossing, coming off of the road to do so. I'm not sure whats the best suggestion to make on this, I personally think that making it east bound only, but retaining the double width would be best, but am open to suggestions.

Local campaigners are against the bus lane (seeing it as spliting the historic green area), and the addtional street round the side, which seems to be targeted as short term parking (which given the amount of unused council Car Parks in the area is really my biggest bugbear on the whole thing). Anyhow, any views/ideas welcomed!

The Merton group will have had some input on that.

http://lcc.org.uk/boroughs/merton

Impossible to comment on it much without some local knowledge and being plugged into local politics.

Obviously, I and others could produce reams of comments of a general nature, but I wouldn't know the context without more study. A proposal that might look very bad in one place might be a step in the right direction in another.

The operative assumption is clearly that much access to the town centre will be by private car, especially, as you say, if there is unused car parking capacity.

Unifying public spaces would certainly be desirable, but it seems that this is the price they want to pay for good bus accessibility.

Again, hard to judge unless you know the area well and you've had a lot of conversations. Do get in touch with the Merton group if you want to get involved in this sort of thing. If truth be told, though, most local groups will struggle to influence major schemes much.

OK, so Local LCC groups won't have the influence to change this. Surely this is where the central group should be getting involved too? In a "this isn't juat a local issue to you, you need to get this right, and the whole of london cycling is now watching you" sort of a manner. Councils hate big outside groups watching them do things, and do change things because of that.

Are there really no suggested design specs for cycle routes that cycling groups have come up with? Nothing about suggested widths? Nothing about how stupid it is to expect cylists to stop, cross a road at some really slow lights, and then have to do the same at the other end? really? there's no cycling campaign that dares to stick its neck out over large planning proposals like this and go "acutally, what you're offering there is shit, how about doing this?" And yes, I know that it's tough to find the time to do it. but maybe if someone found the time to do it for the bigge schemes, those drawing up the smaller ones might learn something, and get them right.

Does "Love London: Go Dutch" not have any design statements? This is a key site where the Mayor is putting in a lot of the cash, and it's not really up to the Go Dutch vision LCC promoted. Or do you think that it is? If not, why are LCC relying on MCC to be the ones standing up and shouting? I've seen nothing in the local papers from either of them, which is a death by silence.