SW London: Priory Lane consultation - Closes 16 Feb 2018

Many will know Priory lane for local shop owners in 4x4 having viral video rants. It appears the council has recognised the conflict created by the existing infra for bikes and peds and proposed:

The proposals aim to improve pedestrian facilities by removing the
cycle track from the footway and providing a constant footway width of
2.0m. Likewise the introduction of a northbound advisory cycle lane along the entire length of Priory Lane and associated changes to the
highway layout aims to assist cycling and safety. Installation of
cycle friendly speed tables/junctions are also proposed in this scheme
to accentuate the 20mph speed limit in Priory Lane. Southbound cycles
will be integrated with motor traffic. Road markings with the cycle
symbol will be installed to raise awareness of the presence and
legitimacy of cyclists on the carriageway.

Survey link.

The proposals sound interesting but won't an advisory cycle lane encourage more high-speed passes from motorists "in their lane"? Right now most drivers hang back politely behind cyclists in the carriageway.

Average speed cameras would be a better measure, along with banning motorised commuter traffic from the park.

It does on paper seem backward, take away a dedicated cycle lane and move it back onto the roads. Although not a fan of the current lane due to the surface, side roads and fairly consistent punctures. I think the main hope is to create that legitimacy for being on the road in the first place.

And totally agree on banning motor vehicles from rat running in the park.

Thanks for highlighting have given this a response. I think a key element is getting rid of the cycle lane which causes more damage that it helps and then enforce a strict 20mph limit.

The speed humps/platforms should help keep the speed down a bit (they tend, IMHO, to make some people keep to the limit which then forces other drivers to do the same).

The existing cycle path was a poor surface and interrupted at every junction, it also took up a huge amount of footway space at some points.

I'm broadly in support of the changes although in the "other comments" box I mentioned two things:

a) Require support from the Police for tolerating considerate cycling on the footway (for people who want to take children to the park for example) according to the Home Secretary's guidelines from 1999 (which were reinforced in 2014).

b) I also mentioned that consideration should be put to somehow stopping RP being used as a through route for motor vehicles.

(Something along the lines of a ANPR camera enforced congestion charge for people who exit the park by a different gate that they enter it by within a certain time limit, i.e.

• enter by Roehampton gate and leave by Roehampton gate 5 minutes later = ok
  
• enter by Roehampton gate and leave by a Richmond gate 2 hours later = ok
  
• enter by Roehampton gate and leave by Richmond gate 20 minutes later = charged
  )
  

won't an advisory cycle lane encourage more high-speed passes from motorists "in their lane"?

They're removing the road centreline to try to avoid this. That makes some sense since close passes are often because motorists try to squeeze past cyclists while staying in their lane. With no centreline the hope is (I guess) that motorists will only pass when there's actually space.

A few things occurred to me:

Why is the bike lane being left on the pavement at the north end of Priory lane? How will that work for cyclists that want to turn left (West) onto Upper Richmond Road? Will they have to leave the cycle lane to join the flow of cars? Obviously that needs to be possible for cyclists who want to turn right, but I can't see any advantage vs. putting the bike lane on the carriageway.

Does a constant 2.0m pavement involve changing the pavement width? If so, is it getting narrower to allow room on the carriageway for the bike lane?

If it's worth having a bike lane northbound, why not southbound? If the aim is to provide a more usable bike route for people who are less comfortable/slower, why is that only important in one direction?

Will there be more signage or cameras to indicate/enforce the 20mph limit? The main aim has to be to stop this being a rat run, either from the park itself or between Upper Richmond Road and Roehampton lane. Speculatively, I think that people actually going to/from the park will generally be calmer and slower (than people just passing through) so making the road more residential and less convenient for rat-running might shift the balance in that direction.

At the moment when you're cycling northbound you have to choose between 2 pretty rubbish options: 1. ride on the cycle lane on the pavement and deal with unpredictable pedestrians, poor surface, driveways, junctions, lack of priority etc or 2. ride on the carriageway and get drivers breathing down your neck because they want to join the queue to turn on to Upper Richmond Road as quickly as possible.

If the cycle lane is in the carriageway I think it might make things more straightforward and if it's a reasonably wide decent cycle lane (i.e. not a faded, dotted white line about 90cm from the kerb) it might (along with the other changes) alter driver behaviour/attitude.

It's not a bad attempt at a scheme there, but it won't solve one of the main problems (the biggest problem, of course, is its alignment as a rat-run between major streets) that stretch of Priory Lane has, which is the absence of a footway on one side for most of its length. This changes the ambience of the street very much for the worse, as drivers feel they only have to pay attention to one side. That problem won't be so bad for drivers going northbound, but those going southbound will pay much less attention to cyclists on their own side and much more attention (while going faster than they should) to the northern side. I don't know where the crashes and close passes occur, but I'd guess they're mostly southbound. It's very difficult to solve this problem, as buying more land on the non-footway side is unlikely to be possible (and would cost a bomb), and re-aligning kerbs within the existing envelope of the street would likewise be extremely expensive (you have to reconstruct all the drainage) and would not result in adequately wide footways either side.

Layouts with advisory cycle lanes are generally to be avoided, but the exception to that rule is the type of layout in which either side of the carriageway has an advisory cycle lane without a centre line. While far from ideal, that works quite well when insufficient carriageway width is available for proper wide kerb lanes and vehicle flows are not too high. My guess is that they've judged flows to be too high for this type of layout to successfully deal with the head-on conflict it causes between drivers when cyclists are present, but I certainly don't think the proposed layout, while undoubtedly an improvement, will really work.

I think the plans proposed are loads better than what is there at the moment. The current scheme is almost perfectly designed to piss everyone off.

I think the pavement should be left as wide as possible and be clearly marked as shared use to allow less confident riders to use the pavement, but not be required to stick to the half width strip nearest the curb. By also having the cycle lane on the carriageway heading north, it would be clear that you are welcome to cycle where you like. and can pick the most appropriate based on your speed and confidence.