The lovely summer rides led by the great Mr Jones have resumed.
They are organised on a fortnightly basis, typically on Wednesday or Thursday, starting at 6.30pm and lasting about ~2h.
The pace is gentle and its rhythm given by Mr Jones' historical.
Please look for the next rides on https://www.towerhamletswheelers.org.uk/diary and see https://www.towerhamletswheelers.org.uk/contact/email-groups to register to the mailing list to be informed of the next one.
We have joined together with Better Streets for Tower Hamlets and the borough Living Streets branch to run a walking and cycling hustings on the evening of Thursday 21 April. You are warmly invited to attend and pose your questions to representatives of parties standing for election across the borough in May.
Mayor John Biggs (Labour) has confirmed he will attend, as have mayoral candidates Rabina Khan (Liberal Democrat) and Eliott Weaver (Conservative), alongside Green Party representative Alistair Polson.
The hustings will take place on Thursday 21 April in the Conference Room at the Bernie Cameron Community Centre, 32 Merchant St E3 4LX (please note the change of location from that first advertised). We ask you to arrive from 7pm for a prompt start at 7.15pm, with the event to finish at 8.45pm.
Previous cycling hustings in 2014 and walking-and-cycling hustings 2018 were both lively features of the election campaign, so please do come along and bring your active travel-related questions with you.
The borough is currently consulting on ambitious low-traffic neighbourhood proposals for Bow. It's really heartening to see such good plans being put forward, which prioritise walking, cycling, public transport and community above private car use. However there has already been some vocal opposition to the scheme, and it won’t go ahead unless supporters also make their voices clearly heard.
Please please please make sure you respond to the consultation by Wednesday 29 July. We suggest that you tick “very supportive” in relation to every proposal, and ask for all closure points to be 24/7 (much of the worst driving in Bow is in the evening). Then tell all your friends and family in the area to do likewise:
Click here to respond to the consultation
If you have time to ask for improvements to make the scheme even better, we suggest that you use the comments boxes to ask for the following:
Email Bow’s councillors
Local councillors will be receiving plenty of emails from people who don’t want any restrictions on private car use. For this scheme to move forward, there also needs to be support, so please do go ahead and email them to tell them it’s great! In particular, it’s worth saying that the closure points need to operate 24/7: this is a key area where the scheme risks being watered down, but its benefits will be dramatically lessened if through traffic is allowed to stream through Bow every evening and weekend.
Please email your support to all five Bow councillors alongside borough-wide public realm leads Dan Tomlinson and Abdal Ullah. If you live or work in Bow make sure you mention it, but if not you can still email to say you’re a visitor and that these proposals will make you much more likely to visit the area’s shops, pubs and restaurants. The councillors’ email addresses are as follows (you should be able to copy and paste them as a block):
amina.ali@towerhamlets.gov.uk; Cllr.Rachel.Blake@towerhamlets.gov.uk; Cllr.marc.francis@towerhamlets.gov.uk; Cllr.Asmak.Begum@towerhamlets.gov.uk; Val.Whitehead@towerhamlets.gov.uk; Dan.Tomlinson@towerhamlets.gov.uk; Abdal.Ullah@towerhamlets.gov.uk;
Fears, myths and worries
You might have heard some folks saying this scheme or schemes like this will lead to Armageddon. You might believe some of the myths that have built up around “low traffic neighbourhoods”. Hopefully you don’t, but if you do or know anyone who does, there is a helpful myth-buster page on the Better Streets for Tower Hamlets website.
We have published our call to LBTH and TfL to act in the face of the pandemic, to reshape our streets with a people focussed approach.
We identify measures that are urgently needed:
We also list an initial 20 areas that should be considered a priority for social distancing and call for an emergency increase in bike parking.
Plans for the Barkantine Liveable Streets scheme are currently out for consultation, closing on Wednesday 19th February.
After carrying out site visits and discussions amongst committee members the consensus was that the proposals are very good, with only a small number of extra asks to make in order to improve this already very good plan further.
We therefore suggest that you tick “very supportive” in relation to every proposal in the consultation (scroll right down to the bottom of the page to find the questionnaire) – and then get all your friends and family in the area to do the same.
Make the scheme even better
Although the scheme is very good, below are a couple of areas where it could be further improved. If you have the time, please use the free text boxes to ask for the following:
If you are interested in more details of the scheme, there is some discussion on Cyclescape, but the most important thing is that as many people as possible fill in the consultation with supportive responses. Please do share as widely as you can.
Plans for the Bethnal Green Liveable Streets scheme are currently out for consultation, closing on Monday 25 November. The proposals were discussed at the last Tower Hamlets Wheelers meeting, and the consensus was that they were excellent – perhaps some of the best plans the borough has ever put forward – and will be a real game-changer for active travel in the area. We therefore suggest that you tick “very supportive” in relation to every proposal in the consultation (scroll right down to the bottom of the page to find the questionnaire) – and then get all your friends and family in the area to do the same.
Make the scheme even better
Although the scheme is very good, there are several areas where it could be made even better. If you have time, please use the free text boxes to ask for the following:
If you are interested in more of the details of the scheme, there is some discussion on Cyclescape. But the most important thing is that as many people as possible fill in the consultation with supportive responses. Please do share as widely as you can.
Our borough has recently published its draft transport strategy 2019-41. The good news is that it’s really positive and ambitious on cutting car use and boosting walking and cycling. But in order for it to get adopted without being watered down, it needs your support today. The survey closes on Sunday 15 September.
Basically, fill it in for your personal transport choices and info, and with...
Q10: please tick “yes” throughout to support all six of the draft strategy’s priorities.
Q11 and/or Q15, where there are spaces to put in extra text, consider putting any of the below in your own words, as well as your own ideas too!
Tower Hamlets Wheelers had a good night at the Campaigner Awards at the London Cycling Campaign AGM on Thursday 18 October.
The group as a whole won the Best Campaign Initiative award in relation to our campaign on the May 2018 Mayoral and local elections and subsequent engagement with councillors. This included our producing a detailed cycling manifesto setting out what we would like to see achieved in the borough by 2022, which comprised three main asks for the council: significant new cycle routes, low traffic neighbourhoods, and bicycle parking. Copies of the manifesto were distributed to all mayoral candidates and current councillors, and the content received an overwhelmingly positive response. The culmination of our local election campaign was organising the Tower Hamlets Cycling and Walking Mayoral Hustings at Limehouse Town Hall in April. Five of the six mayoral candidates, representing all the major parties, attended the event and publicly signed up to the manifesto. Since the election, our interaction with local councillors has increased markedly, and the positive response to the manifesto has increased our focus on political lobbying.
In addition to this award, Keith Jones individually won a well-deserved highly commended award in the Best Rides and Ride leader category for leading a range of well-attended rides, including a full-day ride to Thamesmead, the East End Suffragette history ride, and his revival of the summer evening Afterworker Rides.
There is a proposal currently out for consultation to improve road safety and reduce traffic around the Malmesbury Primary School and Central Foundation Girls' School in Bow. We strongly support these principles. However, the proposed scheme, which primarily consists of new one-way streets, is not good enough. It could easily be made a lot better by making the relevant streets no-through roads and part-time School Streets – a far more ambitious and effective approach. And we are particularly concerned that the new one-way streets do not include any proposal for contraflow cycling nor, in one case, any mitigation for the increased speeds which one-way operation can encourage.
Please do respond by Friday 29 June to ask the borough to do a lot better for these streets; you can either use the webform on the consultation website (scroll to the bottom) or email towerhamlets.consultation@projectcentre.co.uk with your thoughts. If you would like any inspiration, our consultation response is below.
The Tower Hamlets Wheelers consultation response:
We strongly support the principle of reducing through traffic and mitigating its negative impacts in residential streets across Tower Hamlets. We also agree that streets around schools should be particular priorities for this. However, we do not believe that the proposed scheme meets the desired objectives, and we cannot therefore support it. We have significant concerns and suggestions for major improvements as follows:
The run-up to the local elections 2018 was a busy time for Tower Hamlets Wheelers. It included our hosting a lively and well-attended cycling and walking mayoral hustings, and we also published the Tower Hamlets Cycling Manifesto 2018–22: this set out our positive vision for cycling in the borough over the next four years, and six of the seven mayoral candidates (including the re-elected incumbent, John Biggs) committed to this.
The election on 3 May resulted in Labour doubling their council seats to 42 (reducing the opposition to just three councillors). Winning a substantial majority can give parties the confidence to implement their manifestoes vigorously, including the more controversial bits – so what pledges did the Labour manifesto contain in relation to cycling, walking and traffic management in our borough?
“We will be the best place in London to walk and cycle”
Labour’s manifesto contained this laudable statement of intent which – if achieved against a context of recent major improvements in some other London boroughs – would represent huge progress. So, more specifically, how might the new administration actually deliver this result by 2022?
One major manifesto pledge is that the five corridors identified in TfL’s Strategic Cycling Analysis as having strong potential for cycling would be implemented as high-quality routes: this would include three new north–south routes, a new east–west route to the north of CS2, and a shorter cycling link up the west side of the Isle of Dogs. If these are completed to a genuinely high standard, with fully protected space on main roads or (where no main roads are available) substantial traffic reduction on minor roads, they would represent a major advance for cycling in the borough.
Another pledge is to start bringing low-traffic neighbourhoods to half the borough by 2022. If this pledge is achieved and the quality of implementation is to a similar standard as that seen in the now-famous Waltham Forest Mini-Holland scheme, this would represent a great benefit not just to cycling but also to walking and local residents. There is, however, a caveat that such schemes will be introduced “where residents want them”: whilst public engagement is certainly important, we will be urging the new administration to proactively lead the conversation on these issues with residents rather than merely responding to campaigns; and the new administration will also need to accept the inevitability that even the best, most carefully-consulted schemes will never achieve unanimity of opinion. This issue may therefore require our borough’s politicians to lead their communities from the front and take some decisions with which not everyone will agree.
On bike parking, the Labour manifesto pledges 100 new bike hangars, each of which will house six bikes. Given the enormous latent demand for secure residents’ bike parking, this is unlikely to be enough; however, the Mayor did subsequently commit to our own Tower Hamlets Cycling Manifesto, which ups his commitment to 300 (by comparison with other boroughs, this is not an unreasonable ask: adding 300 hangars would still leave Tower Hamlets with fewer hangars in 2022 than Hackney has today, and the new administration in Islington has committed to installing 400 hangars over its term).
Other relevant manifesto commitments include the following: making it harder for commuters from elsewhere to park their cars in the borough; using the new Local Plan and Green Grid Strategy to increase the number of walking and cycling routes; continuing to invest in Quietways; supporting the northern alignment of the proposed Canary Wharf to Rotherhithe walking and cycling bridge; applying the London Cycling Design Standards to all new roadwork schemes; ensuring all cycling schemes will cater for non-standard cycles; allowing owners of non-standard cycles to rent garages in which to store them; maintaining the borough’s 20mph speed limit and taking action to ensure that it is better enforced; aiming to introduce “School Streets” (where motor vehicles are banned at drop off and pick up times) around half the borough’s primary schools; continuing to oppose new motor vehicle bridges to and from Fish Island; increasing public bike parking; and working with commercial landlords to increase visitor and resident bike parking.
The rest of the council chamber
The one remaining People’s Alliance councillor, Rabina Khan, was also a mayoral candidate and she committed to the Tower Hamlets Cycling Manifesto. The other two councillors are Conservatives; their mayoral candidate, Anwara Ali, also committed to our Manifesto. We hope that these campaigning commitments will lead to an opposition which supports the governing party where it proposes high-quality cycling schemes, and pushes it to do better if it does not.
In conclusion
These manifesto commitments sit on top of existing positive commitments in the borough’s 2016 cycling strategy and, if achieved, they will represent a further major advance. However, the proof will be seen with the quality of what the new administration actually delivers and the enthusiasm with which it does so.
Five Tower Hamlets mayoral candidates faced residents' questions for the first time this election season on Thursday, 5 April, appearing at the Cycling and Walking Hustings arranged by the borough's cycling campaign group Tower Hamlets Wheelers. The current Mayor, John Biggs (Labour), was joined in Limehouse Town Hall by Anwara Ali (Conservative), Elaine Bagshaw (Liberal Democrat), Ciaran Jebb (Green) and Rabina Khan (People's Alliance of Tower Hamlets). Ohid Ahmed (Aspire) was invited, but was unable to attend.
The organisers opened the event by explaining why it makes sense to deal with cycling and walking together: making London work well for cycling is increasingly being recognised by City Hall and Transport for London as naturally going hand-in-hand with making it good for walking too. This is reflected in the fact that the 32-borough London Cycling Campaign ask for the borough elections, called "My Liveable London", is being made jointly with its pedestrian equivalent Living Streets.
The candidates each made a short opening statement. Anwara Ali, a GP in the borough, spoke passionately about the public health benefits of increasing active travel. Elaine Bagshaw offered a personal perspective, talking about how her experiences as a relatively new cyclist in Tower Hamlets had opened her eyes to the need for greatly improved cycling infrastructure, as did John Biggs, who mentioned that one of his first acts upon election had been to give up the mayoral car in favour of walking to engagements across the borough. Ciaran Jebb said that Tower Hamlets - a borough where almost two-thirds of households do not have a car - was far too dominated by motor traffic. Finishing up the introductions, Rabina Khan expressed a strong desire to get many more people, especially teenagers, cycling in the borough.
Questions from the 50-strong audience included the extent to which candidates would be willing to push through schemes that would remove space from cars to provide infrastructure for cycling; how they would undertake to stop rat running; how they would improve conditions specifically for walking in the borough; how cycling and walking improvements would be funded; and how - in the light of recent attacks, including "bike jackings" - social safety on off-road walking and cycling routes could be improved.
Candidates' answers were generally well-informed and positive. A negative note did come in relation to privately-run dockless bike-sharing schemes, such as Ofo, where all five candidates expressed scepticism as to their value - although no candidate went as far as to rule out their arrival in Tower Hamlets over the coming four years.
One questioner asked if Victoria Park park could be kept open at night; its current closure at dusk is a long-running problem for cyclists, particularly on short winter days, given that there are no low-traffic or off-road alternative routes. Ciaran Jebb wanted to keep the park open, suggesting that the borough could implement an innovative solution such as solar-charged motion-activated lighting, but the other four candidates were non-committal, citing reservations about the cost and visual impact of installing lighting. There was, however, some support expressed for improvements to cycling provision on parallel roads.
Overall, all five candidates spoke very favourably about improving conditions for cycling and walking, to such an extent that perhaps the main complaint on social media and in the room was that too little distinguished them from one another!
#THHustings well this has all been very civilised but I'm not sure if voters are any clearer. All major candidates support principles and talk a good game, very few answers separated them and then not by much...
— Paul Brocklehurst (@paulbrock) April 5, 2018
There were, however, a handful of tangible differences in commitments and focus. Anwara Ali was alone in opposing the planned Canary Wharf to Rotherhithe walking and cycling bridge, citing value-for-money concerns, and John Biggs conspicuously did not quite go as far as to commit to asking TfL to complete Cycle Superhighway 2 past Whitechapel Market. And, in response to a question about how to stop inconsiderate cycling causing discomfort to pedestrians, Ciaran Jebb was notably the only candidate to make the well-received point that installing high-quality cycling infrastructure would not only reduce such conflict directly, but also indirectly, through greatly broadening the demographic of people who cycle (thus increasing the numbers of slow, casual cyclists).
The Wheelers had asked all candidates to sign up to their Tower Hamlets Cycling Manifesto, which comprises a set of 12 principles and three deliverables (five strategic new cycling routes, low-traffic neighbourhoods for half the borough, and a significant increase in secure bicycle parking for residents). Anwara Ali, Elaine Bagshaw, and Ciaran Jebb had signed up beforehand, and John Biggs and Rabina Khan signed up there and then: a clean sweep of the candidates who were present.
There was an overall feeling of candidates saying "yes, yes, yes" to get our votes. One good question from the audience tried to get candidates to say with limited funds what would they drop
— ManOnThe339 (@ManOnThe339) April 6, 2018
It was heartening that all five candidates seemed to genuinely understand many of the issues and appreciate the widespread benefits of improving conditions for cycling and walking in the borough. However it is, of course, just four weeks before an election, and candidates in full-on vote-winning mode are unlikely to be inclined to say "no" to anyone. Perhaps the toughest question came right at the end: how highly would walking and cycling rank among all the pressures that the Mayor would face and, if pushed by competing priorities, which of Cycling Manifesto asks would the candidates drop? The candidates all struggled to give a clear answer to this, with the consensus appearing to be that the asks were sufficiently reasonable it should not be necessary to drop any.
The three asks to which the candidates signed up do, however, go significantly further than the candidates' pre-existing commitments. To take the most easily quantifiable of the three, the Cycling Manifesto requires 300 on-street bike hangars to be installed by 2022 (which would, incidentally, still leave Tower Hamlets with slightly fewer bike hangars in 2022 than Hackney has today); this represents a major increase on John Biggs' and Rabina Khan's previously-stated commitments (100 and 120 hangars respectively). And the other two asks (low-traffic neighbourhoods for half the borough, and five strategic new cycling routes) would, if completed to a suitably high standard, be even greater undertakings for the incoming borough administration and - given the extent of the interventions involved - also be likely to attract a degree of controversy in some areas.
overall, all the parties done good at #thhustings. However as you've pointed out before, the proof comes when they have to champion specific schemes and are facing vocal opposition. Right now Tower Hamlets is relatively uncontroversial (on cycling at least!)
— Paul Brocklehurst (@paulbrock) April 6, 2018
The proof of the successful candidate's commitment will, of course, come with delivery. If one of the five candidates who has signed up to the Cycling Manifesto wins the election, we should be able to expect Tower Hamlets to be a significantly better place for cycling and walking in 2022 than it is today. The Wheelers will look forward to working with the incoming administration over the next four years to support the implementation of the promises which were made in Limehouse on Thursday.
Tower Hamlets Wheelers, the borough group of the London Cycling Campaign, has today launched the Tower Hamlets Cycling Manifesto. The Manifesto sets out our positive vision for cycling – and, more broadly, a better quality of life – in the borough over the course of the 2018-22 administration. It contains 12 principles and three deliverables to which we are asking all mayoral candidates to agree.
Tower Hamlets Wheelers is also announcing two campaigning events in the run-up to election. On the evening of Thursday 5 April, we will be hosting the Tower Hamlets Cycling and Walking Mayoral Hustings at Limehouse Town Hall. We warmly invite all to attend. And on Saturday 14 April, we will be at the Farmers’ Market at Stepney City Farm, talking to people about what they think would help cycling in the borough.
Tower Hamlets Wheelers committee member Julie Plichon said:
"We are publishing the Tower Hamlets Cycling Manifesto to set out a positive vision of what we would like to see the 2018-22 borough administration achieve.
"We are asking all mayoral candidates to agree to the 12 principles contained in the Manifesto and, crucially, to commit to delivering our three specific asks by 2022.
"Our first ask is that the five routes in Tower Hamlets identified by Transport for London in its Strategic Cycling Analysis as having particularly high cycling potential are planned and completed by 2022.
"Our second ask is for low-traffic neighbourhoods: we would like the 2018-22 administration to apply for Transport for London Liveable Neighbourhoods funding. This should be used to bring forward ambitious area-wide traffic management schemes which would keep through traffic on main roads and make residential streets safe and pleasant places to live, play, walk and cycle.
"Finally, we are asking the incoming administration to significantly increase secure residents’ bicycle parking, by installing 75 on-street Bike Hangars a year and working with social landlords to increase secure bicycle parking on estates".
Tower Hamlets Wheelers committee member Alex Jenkins said:
"What we are asking for isn’t really for the benefit of the one-in-ten of Tower Hamlets residents who are already regular cyclists. Instead, we are trying to create the conditions whereby the other 90% of the borough’s population have cycling made available to them as a comfortable, convenient and safe transport option.
"We should be ambitious about the cycling rate which can be achieved: around 41% of trips across Greater London could be cycled, and Transport for London analysis showing that Tower Hamlets may have the highest potential for cycling of any London borough – which means our potential is even higher. However, current cycling rates barely scratch the surface of this.
"To unlock this suppressed demand, new cycling infrastructure in Tower Hamlets should be so attractive, safe and inclusive that it entices those who do not yet cycle, rather than simply making the roads safer for existing cyclists."
Tower Hamlets Wheelers committee member Owen Pearson said:
"Radically increasing the number of journeys made by bicycle should be a major part of the solution for many of the challenges our borough faces. Cycling can help deal with all sorts of challenges such as inactivity, obesity, pollution, inequality, poor access to transport, a rapidly-increasing population, and congestion.
"Tower Hamlets is the fifth-worst local authority area for particulate pollution the UK, with over 8% of deaths in the borough attributable to long-term exposure. Shifting journeys from polluting modes to cycling and walking could be a major part of improving our air quality.
"The population of Tower Hamlets is growing rapidly, with an 86% increase projected between 2000 and 2026. Cycling is one of the most space-efficient uses of the road, and therefore an ideal way of getting around an increasingly densely-populated borough."
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
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