March's edition of our bicycle maintenance workshop was the 10th anniversary of it being held at Limehouse Town Hall. In this month's edition we'll get round to celebrating this milestone.
At 12.30pm we will take a break from our usual bike maintenance proceedings to have a short celebration. No doubt that will mean there will be even more cake than usual!
Saturday, 20 April 11.00am until 3.00pm
Limehouse Town Hall, 646 Commercial Road E14 7HA
We had a quick look in the Vision for Cycling in London to see what's in it for east London. Published in early March the Mayor of London's document is described by LCC as, "one of the most ambitious plans to promote cycling ever produced by a major UK political leader".
Tower Hamlets has two Cycle Superhighways, major barriers to continuous cycling journeys, busy towpaths and a great deal of London's lorry traffic on busy main roads. How will the specifics affect us?
Johnson intends to double cycling over the next ten years. Cycling journeys will be delivered on a 'tube network for the bike', a linked system across London of Superhighways for fast commuting traffic on main roads and Quietways for more leisurely journeys on a network of less busy roads and parks. The 'bike Crossrail', an east-west segregated highway from Barking to west London linked to local routes, will be delivered by 2016.
The existing CS will be 'substantially' improved and some rerouted onto roads 'more easily convertible into genuinely high-quality cycle routes'. The document promises that, 'timid, half-hearted improvements are out we will do things at least adequately, or not at all.'
The new segregated east-west route will link to CS3 at Tower Gateway (from Victoria Embankment and through the City). We welcome that Tower gyratory will be tackled but are concerned that CS3 from Tower Gateway to Poplar is described as 'one of the most successful stretches' of a superhighway. We need to make sure that it gets the improvement it needs for cyclists and pedestrians through a permeability scheme. Such schemes are recognised elsewhere in the document as essential for the delivery of the 'Quietways'. 'Quietway CS3' will be our demand.
Safety aspects. This document stresses that cycling is a safe activity but that serious incidents and deaths 'happen disproportionately'. At busy junctions and contact with lorries, hence the Mayor's safety strategy focuses on these points.
"Better Junctions" - there is a committment to improve financial resources for the junction review programme and a focus on the worst junctions. Tower and Aldgate will be tackled in the next three years. Better Junctions design options are currently on the table for Aldgate gyratory and Whitechapel High Street (western end) and may therefore go back to the drawing board. There is specific mention of Mile End Road/Burdett Road junction as one of the current schemes to be reworked as it doesn't meet the ambitions set by the Mayor's 'vision'.
Amongst a raft of measures for safer lorries and vans, the Mayor commits to participation in the comprehensive review established by British Cycling "of how the criminal justice system functions when people are hurt and killed on the roads". We have seen how east London cyclists such as Svitlana Tereschenko and Mary Bower were let down by the judicial process and welcome this review.
The Mayor recognises the benefits of 20mph limits on TLRN roads but intends to implement on a case-by-case basis. We welcome the introduction of "major safety education campaigns, ...which will address road user behaviour and encourage Londoners to share the road safely".
As a borough with a substantial towpath system we note the Mayor's intention to work with Canal & River Trust to invest in towpaths, so that less crowded stretches can be used as 'Quietways' or by creating additional parallel routes to lessen commuting cycle use.
Olympic Park has a very small mention as one of the new schemes the Mayor aims to improve by working in partnership.
Boris Johnson also said in his Vision for Cycling: “We will trial allowing bikes off-peak on the DLR” – after years of campaigning to allow this by politicians and cycling groups.
Further reading:
Representatives from Tower Hamlets Wheelers and the London Cycling Campaign (LCC) today urged LB Tower Hamlets to publicly engage and lead on reducing the danger from lorries in the borough.
Meeting outside the Town Hall, a letter was handed to Councillor Shahid Ali, Cabinet Member for Environment and Jamie Blake, Director Public Realm asking for the council's support of the LCC's Safer Lorries, Safer Cycling pledge.
The letter highlighted that large lorries are involved in about half the cyclist fatalities in London and in the past two years, five out of the fourteen cyclist deaths involving large lorries happened in LB Tower Hamlets.
At the start of the Safer Lorries campaign, an initial assessment by the LCC of each London borough regarding their commitment to lorry safety gave Tower Hamlets the lowest ranking. With the delivery of today's letter, Wheelers and LCC have now opened a dialogue with the council to work towards improving this ranking and ultimately supporting this campaign's pledge.
Photo by Chas.
Tower Hamlets Cycling Club run a variety of cycling sessions for the local community. They aim to break down barriers towards cycling by providing club bikes for all and running sessions which meet community needs. Current sessions include:
Women Only Beginners - Saturdays 10-12
Women Only Confident Riders - Saturdays 1-3
Seniors - Tuesdays 11-1
Deaf Adults - Wednesdays 12-2 / Sundays 1-3
Home Ed Kids BMX - Thursdays 10-12
Bike Maintenance - various times, contact Club for details
Girls BMX - Sundays 9.30-11.30
Sessions are based from Mile End Park. For further information, contact Lakhdar Djelloul on 07949 692439 or email towerhamletscyclingclub@yahoo.co.uk.
At the end of 2012, THW was consulted by LB Tower Hamlets on a scheme for the western end of Bethnal Green (between St Matthew's Row and Shacklewell Street). It involves the road being narrowed and cycle tracks built either side of the road in between the parking bays and pavement.
We responded objecting to the proposed plans for numerous reasons e.g. lack of reasoning for the need to take cyclists off the road for this short section, creating new dangers at the track entry and exit points, convoluted route of the cycle tracks (winding around trees...). Overall we consider it a waste of money.
At the beginning of March, THW reps met with LBTH officers on site at Bethnal Green Road to discuss our concerns further. The construction work though had already begun and we're left still being unclear why the council wants to build this facility and narrow the road.
The road narrowing part of the scheme is the same as was recently implemented at the western end of Roman Road. We weren't consulted on that work but again since using it are unclear of who it is meant to be benefiting.
Looking forward we welcome that we are being invited earlier on in the process for intended works at the eastern end of Bethnal Green Road. We will continue to hope we can influence the traffic planning so that schemes properly consider pedestrians and cyclists.
Some good news from LBTH for cycling permeability in the borough. Bromley High Street, currently one-way for traffic is to be made two-way for cyclists. The traffic management orders required for this change are currently being processed. There will also be some on-street work required e.g. appropriate signage and a short contra-flow cycle track at the northern end approaching the A11.
We look forward to similar such schemes opening up more direct routes for cyclists around the borough.
Transport for London has produced the final response to their consultation regarding their plans to redesign the Mile End Rd/Grove Rd/Burdett Rd junction. Despite London Cycling Campaign (CCC), THW and Queen Mary University (QMU) proposing simple changes to improve conditions for cyclists and pedestrians in addition to their proposal, they are going ahead with their original plans. Both Wheelers and QMU believe more could have been done and that the consultation process was flawed.
Over 15,000 people work and study at QMU Mile End campus, and many travel through the junction as cyclists and pedestrians. TfL’s held a consultation event at QMU, which was meant to run 11-2 but they left at 12.30, their reason being “not a single person had attended to speak to us about the scheme”. We know many people from QMU, and from outside, who went after 12.30. Having run this type of event before, TfL and their partners must know people are most likely to visit during their lunch break. This is not effective consultation.
After the Queen Mary U debacle, THW handed out TfL’s information to over 150 cyclists at the junction from 7.30-9.30 one morning and also posted info and links to well over 500 people on our email group, mailing list and Facebook page. We aren’t there to do TfL’s work for them but did so because we believe cyclists using the junction should have the opportunity to comment and would have relevant points to make about cycling and cyclists’ safety there.
TfL posted info to 3130 addresses in the area but the responses they received totalled 109. We wonder how many of these resulted from Wheelers’ efforts.
We appreciate TfL has to consider many viewpoints, not least managerial and political but Boris Johnson endorsed the Go Dutch principles. So, if TfL haven’t managed to work out the best way to implement them at this junction, a simple crossroads, how effective will their efforts be at the other junctions along CS2, and at Bow roundabout, not to mention across the rest of London? Are they really serving the needs of cyclists adequately.
LCC’s response to the consultation sums it up: ‘Mayor Boris Johnson pledged to make London’s streets “as safe and inviting for cycling as they are in Holland ” in response to LCC’s Love London, Go Dutch campaign. The pledge applies to Cycle Superhighway 2, which is an important route in this respect. We believe that the proposed changes provide some substantial improvements but fall short of the standard that could be achieved.’
Wheelers think some of the figures in TfL’s report may be incorrect, that some of the comments and conclusions recorded in the report are wrong, and we also believe the consultation process to have been inadequate considering the junction’s importance, the danger it poses to vulnerable road users, and the scale of the planned works.
THW are considering our response to TfL’s report. If you have comments to make, please send them to this group by replying or to me, david@towerhamletswheelers.org.uk
Further reading - LCC's post Junction of Grove Road/Burdett Road and Mile End Road isn't going Dutch
Lorry crashes are the number one cause of cyclist fatalities. Please write to your council today (using the online tool at lcc.org.uk/pages/safer-lorries) to help reduce the death toll on our streets.
The London Cycling Campaign has released a progress report on its Safer Lorries, Safer Cycling campaign and it's not good reading for those cycling in Tower Hamlets. Our council has been given the lowest possible mark for their inaction on committing to use the safest lorries and best-trained drivers.
The LCC's summary report is below together with links to the campaign pages and actions. Write to LBTH today to let them know that you think they should be leading on improving lorry safety on our borough's roads.
LCC Safer Lorries, Safer Cycling: Only two councils in London have committed to using the safest lorries and best-trained drivers, even though half of cyclist deaths in the capital involve lorries.
See the rating for all councils on our borough map
The shocking fact is that - while Islington and Waltham Forest councils have committed to the highest standards of lorry safety - a total of 10 councils have done almost nothing to protect cyclists from lorry danger:
Barking & Dagenham, Barnet, Bexley, Croydon, Greenwich, Kingston upon Thames, Merton, Richmond upon Thames, Tower Hamlets and Wandsworth.
We applaud Waltham Forest and Islington councils for committing to our Safer Lorries pledge, and hope your pressure can persuade many more councils to take our pledge too.
LCC chief executive Ashok Sinha said, "Our councils have a duty to only use the safest lorries and best-trained drivers.
"The inaction of the 10 worst councils stands in sharp contrast to the great work on lorry safety being done by the best councils and other major lorry transport users such as Transport for London."
Yet despite this, 10 London boroughs are putting cyclist lives at risk daily by using inadequately equipped lorries and under-trained drivers.
Another 20 councils, despite taking some steps towards improving lorry safety, have failed to match the standards demanded by our Safer Lorries pledge.
TfL have launched a consultation on the Bow to Stratford section of Cycle Superhighway Route 2 (CS2). The consultation closes on 11th February 2013 and Wheelers are contributing to the London Cycling Campaign's response.
The LCC's view is that there are many good things to say about the design, which makes efforts to incorporate the kind of thought for cycling facilities that LCC is campaigning about in Love London, Go Dutch. There are also flaws, such as the failure to deal with the one-wy system of stratford High Street.
These TfL proposals are not an 'extension' to CS2 as claimed but the second of the three original sections proposed in 2010. No date has been given for the third section from Stratford to Ilford.
Figures released from the 2011 census show that Tower Hamlets is the fourth highest local authority in the country in terms of proportion of households with no cars or vans. Top is the City of London, followed by Islington then Hackney then Tower Hamlets. The proportion of households without vehicles is about 63%, allowing for my maths. That means that car owners in Tower Hamlets are a minority of the population.
We need to further research the figure from the 2001 census but we think that this is an increase of 3%. Of course in Tower Hamlets this non-car owning population includes those who choose not to own a car as well as those who can't afford to.
As to the usually resident population the census estimate was 254,100 residents (March 2011). This is a 29.6% increase on the 2001 census results.
Thanks to our consultant demographic historian Humphrey Southall.
Tower Hamlets Wheelers have been invited by the public consulation facilitators for the Wood Wharf redevelopment onto the community stakeholders forum. Wood Wharf is an area on the Isle of Dogs to the east of Canary Wharf off Preston's Road.
Local LCC member Mark Lomas has been active on the development proposals, arguing for space for sustainable transport initiatives and maximising shared space for pedestrians and cyclists. THW committee members visited the consultation event at Canary Wharf on 8 December to add our name to those opinions.
This development, amongst others, adds to the debate about access to and through the Isle of Dogs for cyclists, which could be substantially improved.
If you are an LCC member living and/or working on the Isle of Dogs and could be involved in activities such as surveying routes and lobbying councillors then please get in touch with David Allison (dave@towerhamletswheelers.org.uk).