Category Archives: Campaign

We ask the tricky questions so you don’t have to. (No.3) Updated

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Following a conversation on Twitter, triggered by @twickerman, we wrote to ask Richmond Council why there’s a roadworks sign here. As Twickerman observed, it’s dangerous for cyclists, and it’s not even a particularly important notification, either.

So we asked the council to explain it. Here’s their letter:

Dear …

Thank you for your enquiry regarding the works currently ongoing in Twickenham Town Centre and in particular the Men at Work “End” sign.I will ask my Engineer to inspect the works to ensure it is correct and appropriately placed.

Unfortunately, removal of this sign is not possible as road works have to be signed and guarded to an acceptable level (Traffic Signs manual Chapter 8), failure to comply could lead to prosecution.I trust this answers your enquiry but please do not hesitate to contact me should you require any further information regarding these works.

Regards
… Senior Engineer, Highways and TransportEnvironment Directorate

(You can read the Traffic Signs Manual here. If you do, don’t forget to read this bit:
“O3.14.6 Where there is cycle provision, such as cycle lanes or tracks, efforts should be made to keep these open or to provide an acceptable alternative during the road works. They should not be blocked by signs, debris, plant etc.”)

To be honest, we didn’t think this particularly satisfactory. Given how much traffic can be pushed through this area at peak times, it seems woefully inappropriate to place signs like this. So we’ve written back to them, asking for some more details about what they normally do to ensure signs and appropriately placed (or at least more appropriately than this!).

Since then, we’ve been told of a second sign, on the opposite side:
We’ll keep on at the council to find out what’s going on here: it seems madness that one can claim fear of prosecution for putting signs in places that make cycling more dangerous and unpleasant than it already is!

And if you look at what happens in other countries, or even elsewhere in London, it isn’t impossible to think ahead and accommodate all road users when planning road works.

If you see something like this, let us know, and use Richmond Council’s fault reports page.

Update

The council has advised us over Twitter that the very poor signage in Twickenham will be fixed today, so credit to them for some fairly swift action. You can see the full thread on Twitter here.

Consultation Watch – Elsinore Way / A316

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TfL would like to make it a bit more grim for cycling and walking along the south side of the A316 apparently. (Consultation here, deadline to respond Friday 21 June.)

This is where the A316 runs by a little road called Elsinore Way

And, basically, they’re going to remove part of the cycle lane and pavement, make you jink to the right, beside the tree, then jink back out after the junction. (Here’s their PDF of the plan.)

You can view our initial view of the plan, and another local view on Cyclescape, here. We think this plan is a bad idea for a number of reasons, and we’d like you to get in touch with TfL (fill in the form or email them at STEngagement@tfl.gov.uk) to ask them to reconsider.

Key points you might want to make:

1. The fact that poor driving means people are over-running the kerb is not a reason to change the road layout.

2. This new design brings cyclists and pedestrians into serious conflict on what would otherwise by a reasonably quick, simple route for both.

3. Making it wider just invites people to take the junction faster – that can’t be a good thing when children could be happily running home from school down here. (Let alone anyone else using the pavement.)

4. There’s a perfectly simple, cheap solution: mark the eastbound side (FOUR LANES WIDE at this point) for longer vehicles to take a wider turning, using signs or road markings.

So check it out on Cyclescape, and then please tell TfL you’d rather not have another cycling facility spoiled for the sake of a few drivers who struggle to manage their vehicles. Deadline to respond is Friday 21 June.

River Crane Consultation

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Outside of the borough (it’s a Hounslow consultation) but one which affects a route used by many local people to walk and cycle along.

River Crane Railway Underpass Closure Consultation - Deadline Sunday 9 June

Consultation proposals - click for full document

The river crane is hidden gem in our borough and beyond (and this article about its history is fascinating) and has the potential to provide a quiet off road route all the way from Twickenham to Hanworth Park, Bedfont Lakes and even to Heathrow Airport as part of Hounslow Council’s exciting Greenway proposals. Friends of the River Crane (FORCE) have been really effective in recognising the potential of this area and really opening it up for everyone to enjoy. The London Green Grid 2012 also identified the creation of Crane Riverside Park as “a continuous, accessible link between Hounslow Heath & Twickenham Station”.

There are known issues with illegal motorbike use on the site of the former Feltham Marshalling Yards and surrounding open land and Hounslow Council is proposing to tackle the problem by closing off access along the Crane valley path.

Access under the railway proposed for closure blocking a vital link

Along with FORCE we have several concerns about these proposals:

  • This is an important link for pedestrians and cyclists to get past the railway line
  • New cycle paths are proposed for the adjacent open spaces linking de Brome Fields and Pevensey Nature reserve with Hanworth Park and Crane Park and this will be an important link to them
  • It conflicts with the current application to register a footpath through the site
  • It will not be effective in keeping out motorbikes (6 were observed coming through the gate at Pevensey Road in a 4 hour period in January)
  • Once it is closed it will be difficult to open it up again

We support FORCE’s approach of working to engage with local people who live in the area around Pevensey Road. A more effective method of dealing with the problem of motorcycles is to make the open space more attractive to local people so that they use it. So rather than close this route, developing a cycle path through to Feltham Marshalling Yards to join up with sites upstream would also help with this.

In addition, the council have already agreed to improvements to fencing and providing quad bikes to police officers to patrol the area (meeting minutes) so closure of this key path seems over the top.

A diagram is available showing the proposals – River Crane Consultation Document

We would ask you to take 2 minutes to contact the council to object to the closure of this vital link and highlight the additional considerations we’ve listed above along with any concerns of your own. Responses to the consultation are to be sent by email to leisure@hounslow.gov.uk. Do copy us on info@richmondlcc.co.uk so we can have an idea of how many people have contacted the council. We will also be sending a submission from RCC. Deadline is Sunday 9 June.

Review of Cycle Parking at Railway Stations

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Unbelievably, it is now three years since our last audit of cycle parking provision at the 14 railway stations in the borough. These two quotes from the DfT’s 2009 Better Rail Stations report (PDF) are as applicable now as then:

“Although half the nation owns a bicycle and 60% live within a 15-minute ride of a station, only 2% of passengers currently use their cycle to access the local station.”
Source – Dft

Compare this to the Netherlands where:

“All major stations in Holland provide extensive cycle parking, usually based around a cycle hub which also offers additional secure storage for a fee of about £1 a day, together with repairs and cycle hire for as little as £3 a day. A typical Dutch intercity station would store 4,000 cycles, but at Leiden this rises to 9,000 and the plan is to more than double this to 22,000 in the near future.” Source – Dft

Although a lot has changed since 2010, we are a long way from meeting the aspirations from that report (in fact, when you look at the National Rail website cycle section, it’s more about telling you what you can’t do – cycling and parking isn’t even mentioned under ‘Getting to and from the Station’ – see Kew Gardens example). South West Trains have been rolling out secure compounds with swipe card access at a number of stations and changes to Richmond railway station have removed the railings that were previously used by many. It is therefore a good time to carry out a new audit to update the information we have and to identify where changes are needed. Two recent examples illustrate this:

Lack of cycle parking space at Kew Gardens railway station

At Kew Gardens station, we were recently alerted by a local resident that cycle parking demand continues to outstrip supply and it is often impossible to find a space, leading to missed trains. Even two years ago we found this to be the case, with demand outstripping supply by nearly 50%. With parking provision for only 34 bikes, it is well short of the 250 spaces that would be needed to meet the DfT’s only target of 5% of passengers arriving by bicycle. Kew Gardens station is managed by London Underground – we’re asking everyone to raise it via their online form and to contact London Assembly Members – Tony Arbour (GLA Member for the area tony.arbour@london.gov.uk ) and Caroline Pidgeon (GLA Member for Transport – caroline.pidgeon@london.gov.uk) and also the Council’s Cycling Champion, Cllr Harborne (Cllr.KHarborne@richmond.gov.uk), to make the push for additional parking at this and other stations where needed (cc us in so we have a record)

New secure parking at Hampton station

Existing cycle parking marked for removal at Hampton Station

Narrow access along platform to Hampton secure compound

At Hampton station we were notified by a regular user of the station that South West Trains are taking out all existing parking provision and replacing it with a single secure parking compound on one platform only.

The secure parking is welcome and it is great to see SWT extend it to more stations but not everyone wants to use it (particularly if their bike is of low value), nor is it convenient if it is only on one platform and you’re rushing to catch a train on the other one.

Additionally, since the new enclosed racks at the west end of Platform 1 are to be the only racks, then ALL cyclists, on entering the station, will be forced along about 3 or 4 metres of the very narrowest part of the platform, conflicting with passengers standing there and cyclists coming the other way, creating safety problems that currently do not occur.

Cycle parking at Hampton station is currently at over 100% capacity – there is no reason why the existing provision can’t be kept to supplement the secure compound – as is the case at many stations with secure compounds e.g. Twickenham.

We have raised this issue with SWT and we encourage all of you who use this station to email their Customer Relations team: customerrelations@swtrains.co.uk

We know there are many more issues out there, so we’re asking for volunteers to review each of the 14 borough stations – counting up current racks and how many are occupied, and noting down any issues, such as poorly installed stands (e.g. too close), poor lighting, poor access. If you would like to join in, email us at info@richmondlcc.co.uk with which station you’re interested in and we’ll pass on some guidance and a simple one pager to fill in when you carry out your audit (like this example). We plan to complete this by end of June.

Reporting the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

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We seem to be going through a real time of change for cycling in the UK. In March, Mayor Boris Johnson launched The Mayor’s Vision for Cycling in London and in April the House of Commons inquiry published the Get Britain Cycling report. Along with The Times’s Cities Safe for Cycling campaign, you’d be forgiven for thinking the hard work was done. Or not.  As seasoned campaigner David Hembrow points out – now is the time for serious campaigning to start.  After all we have had already had a National Cycling Strategy (1996), a National Cycle Plan for England (2010), and the London Cycle Network come and go – with precious little to show for it… except examples such as this (more here):

A local farcility

Now we have a real opportunity to influence decision makers in the council and TfL. Outer London boroughs are being invited to bid to be ‘mini-Hollands’ as part of the Mayor’s cycling vision and the council will soon be developing it’s next Local Implementation Plans (LIP) outlining how they will implement TfL’s transport policy, including on cycling, in the borough. (this will be LIP3 – LIP2 is on LBRuT’s website, and here is the submission we made to the LIP2 consultation)

So where do you and I and RCC fit into this? We’ve previously used our ‘Veloteers’ to be our eyes and ears on the ground across the borough, and it has worked to good effect in the Twickenham town centre proposals and other recent consultations. But now we need to up our game.  As the actual users of the cycling infrastructure in the borough, we have the knowledge of where changes need to be made – our challenge is to gather this knowledge and use it to influence the decision makers.

Cyclescape in Action - Click on the picture to see more details on this example

To do this in a more effective way, we are adopting an online campaigning tool called Cyclescape (richmondlcc.cyclescape.org), developed by the sample people who brought you the Cyclestreets route planner (richmond.cyclestreets.net). This simple map based tool allows issues to be logged and collated in a much more powerful and structured way than before. (You can read more about it here). It allows us to engage with the council and TfL with a structured body of evidence cataloguing the issues and constraints that need to be addressed if we are to truly “get Richmond cycling”. But first we need everyone to start logging issues and suggestions for improvements.

So how do you get involved? Cyclescape is a very simple tool and it works like this:

  1. Sign up for a Cyclescape account – its free! (Link to sign up)
  2. Have a look through the existing issues – you can leave a comment with your own observations against them (Example of a discussion of an issue involving a cycle lane)
  3. Log a new issue – add a photo (optional – but so helpful if you do) and a description of why it’s a problem. (Link to log an issue)

When anyone logs a new issue in the Richmond Upon Thames borough, we at RCC get an email notification. We will confirm back to you that we have seen your issue (as most of us have day jobs, we aim to do this within two weeks). We will continually collate these issues and feed them into our ongoing discussions with the council and TfL. You can also set your preferences to be notified of any issues raised in your particular area of interest.

We are asking everyone to focus on the following priority areas which we’ve selected to be in alignment with the Mayor’s Cycling Vision:
  1. Safety issues across the borough (e.g. pinch points, dangerous junctions, parking in cycle lanes)
  2. Examples of poor infrastructure (e.g. poorly designed cycle lanes or shared use paths)
  3. Opportunities to improve permeability and interconnecting “Quiet Ways” via:
    1. Having contraflows in one way streets
    2. Opening up paths to shared use
    3. Creating new cycle tracks
    4. Dealing with other obstructions and issues
  4. Bicycle parking (either insufficient or not present)
  5. Signage (where signage for key routes is poor or missing or cyclist dismount signs where not warranted)

We cannot promise that the issue you raise will be immediately addressed.  What it will do is build the case for change. For example, you can send a link relating to a particular issue to your local councillor. It will allow us to maintain a history of what has been said and done in respect of each item.

Is that how you lock your bike??

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Have you had your bike tea leafed yet? Because the downside of being a borough where lots of people cycle is that there’s lots of bikes being stolen.

So here’s some key tips from the Police who attended the Cycling Liaison Group. You’ve probably heard a lot of these before, but we were surprised at how some obvious ones are still being ignored by locals.

  • Lock it to something solid 
  • Lock it through the frame
  • Spend some money on your lock. You don’t need to spend the earth on it, but you can be fairly sure that if you spend less than £20 on it, it probably won’t do a very good job for you
  • Lock it to a proper stand – British Transport Police told us that more bikes are stolen from ‘ad-hoc’ locking places like railings, than proper stands.

And, ideally, use two locks. This might be a bit of a pain, but putting two locks on a bike and following the above rules is really the best way to go about making sure no-one nicks your wheels. We’ve collated lots of advice on trying to avoid becoming another theft statistic on our bike security page.

Here’s Carlton Reid (from BikeBiz) with a video outlining all the key tips.

And finally, don’t give up hope! London Cyclist has some tips on looking for a lost bike

Quiet Routes in Richmond

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The borough is hoping for Boris’ cycle funding. To do that it will need to construct a network of quiet routes to the standard of the Mayor’s Vision. The good new is that we are lucky in having some good sections already (eg due to Royal Parks) the bad news is that they are not joined up to each other or to town centres.

I have sketched out my view of the current state of play.

Green = good

Blue = OK ish / some improvements desirable ,

Purple = significant improvements needed (closing rat-runs or improved segregation)

Red = No provision at the moment needs major rethink.

These are a bit broad-brush but I would be interested in other people’s opinions. Are there acceptable alternative routes to the ones I have marked in red ?

Get Britain Cycling – Bringing it closer to home

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On Wednesday 24 April, the House of Commons inquiry published the Get Britain Cycling report, making 18 bold recommendations to make Britain’s streets safer and more inviting. The journalists at the Times responsible for the Cities Safe for Cycling Campaign launched a petition urging the Prime Minister to implement the report’s recommendations. (read our previous post on The Times campaign)

Locally the findings of the report are very relevant, as anyone who has followed the challenges with the Twickenham town centre changes or our current campaign for cycling to school will have seen.

We’re asking everyone to take 2 minutes to sign the petition but more importantly, ask your family and friends to sign as well. This isn’t just for those of us who cycle already – it’s for everyone out there who would like to cycle, to the shops, to their place of work, to school with their kids, but who don’t feel our current streets and roads make it safe to do so.

The petition can be found here – http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/49196

And you can read the full report online (PDF 2.3MB)

We also want to take the campaign local. Things are improving, we’ve been involved in meetings to make improvements to the Twickenham town centre change but there is lots of potential to really make our borough a much nicer place to live and cycle in.

We want you to write to your councillor and ask for their support to make our streets safer as part of the Get Britain Cycling report findings – you can find a list of local councillors here (there is even a nifty tool to find out who represents you). It doesn’t need to be long, just highlight the points of the Get Britain Cycling report and how that relates to the borough..

We will also be bringing that message to the council, but it is individual contact that makes the difference. Let us know about what response you get and we’ll share it here.

Articles on The Get Britain Cycling report

“The way we travel now is killing us. We’re the fattest nation in Western Europe — 30 per cent of our children are overweight or obese and 30,000 people a year are dying from obesity-related illnesses.” – Chris Boardman writes in The Times

“Leadership from the top required if we are to increase cycling” – Carlton Reid reviews the report for BikeBiz

“Each and every concerned cyclist, would-be bike rider, and proud parent who dreams of a better country for their children has to today step up to be the change they want to see.” – Mark, from ibikelondon on the need for change

“The money is there, the will is there to change things and there is tonnes of space to get this right. But the direction of travel is backwards.” – Danny, from Cyclists in the City on the need for real change at the local council level

We ask the tricky questions so you don’t have to. (No.2)

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Upper Richmond Road West has been on the receiving end of an awful lot of tarmac in the last couple of weeks, and is now beautifully finished.

Which is nice, but there was a big consultation last year, and RCC took the opportunity to look at some of the issues with that stretch of road. This is a busy road, which serves five local schools, as well as a number of other local amenities, and it was being consulted on because it’s an accident blackspot.

So you can imagine that we were very worried that the many responses we’re aware of, which were deeply critical of the proposed plans, have been ignored.

We decided to ask the council what’s going on … 

And luckily it turns out that this is all about making use of allocated funds before the new financial year – TfL had provided the cash to resurface, and no decision has apparently been made about the consultation results yet …

It’s taken quite a while to get what is pretty simple information out of the council, but they have explained the current situation – now we’re just waiting to hear the outcome of the consultation.

A number of people have contacted us about this, so please don’t be shy telling the council that you think this stretch of road needs fixing, and copy us in!