Cycling UK Forum

Ealing has followed through with its junk science approach of treating consultations with uncontrolled responses as referendums and bottled it on almost all of them:

https://www.ealing.gov.uk/news/article/ ... _residents

'Fully committed' though!

I wonder if they’ve been told to think hard before doing anything?

They were on the dft's naughty list (i.e. funding withheld pending further discussions) if that's what you're meaning?

I doubt that this approach will get them off the hook, the last letter on active travel funding was quite clear on the need to weigh evidence over (perceived) consensus and stresses the need to robustly ascertain public opinion with, eg, professional polling methods.

If they lose all their transport funding, they’ll only have themselves to blame…

Edit: it sounds like they’re delaying removal of the LTNs because they’re afraid of that very thing.

Well Ealing did eventually follow through, voting in cabinet the other night to remove most of them. They're attempting to justify it on the basis that they did not improve air quality despite that not being a key purpose of them and that other metrics monitored were positive.

I'm not even sure how they can judge air quality at all. Official figures are an annual average and normally take a couple of months at least to produce after that year as various checks & normalisations have to be done. Further, local air pollution can be heavily influenced by that year's weather conditions making single year comparisons unreliable.

I think they're being rather optimistic if they think this weak excuse is going to fly with the dft/tfl

Stevek76 wrote: ↑24 Sep 2021, 7:27pmI think they're being rather optimistic if they think this weak excuse is going to fly with the dft/tfl

Aye, though it’ll be interesting to see how much teeth the DfT threats actually have.

For as long as Shapps has Andrew Gilligan breathing down his neck.

ChrisButch wrote: ↑25 Sep 2021, 2:59pm For as long as Shapps has Andrew Gilligan breathing down his neck.

How do you mean?

I mean that the DfT's current enthusiasm for active travel will last only as long as it's driven from the top. Shapps is making the right noises, but I doubt his heart's in it. But as long as Gilligan remains as the enforcer, there's reason for optimism.

"Birmingham has announced what it calls a “transformative” transport plan that will see the car-centric city becoming a super-sized low-traffic neighbourhood.":
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... ghbourhood

Jonathan

Jdsk wrote: ↑4 Oct 2021, 6:27pm "Birmingham has announced what it calls a “transformative” transport plan that will see the car-centric city becoming a super-sized low-traffic neighbourhood.":
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... ghbourhood

Jonathan

This looks amazing. Let’s hope it’s a success so other cities come under pressure to follow suit…

Good to see they've followed through. Sort of had some faith that they would as Birmingham have actually been fairly decent with facing down motoring opposition of late. Where other councils (Bristol, Manchester etc) have flapped about trying to wriggle out of a class D CAZ (ie charging private cars), Birmingham just accepted and got on with it spending time on dealing with the consequences.

I think it is due to Birmingham being one of the cities that went most aggressively pro car in the 1970s that they were one of the first places to see the futility of that approach. They have been taking out a lot of the auto-centric infrastructure from the city centre for quite a long time now.

DfT "Gear Change: One Year On":
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... ear-on.pdf

Jonathan

Jdsk wrote: ↑29 Oct 2021, 6:20pm DfT "Gear Change: One Year On":
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... ear-on.pdf

It's got a section titled "A Year Of Achievement" so at least we aren't expecting this to be a serious objective review from the table of contents.

The Prime Minister's Foreward is horrible: "The roads are festooned with people wearing colours not found in nature. Hundreds of new schemes have created safe space for people to cycle and walk, supported pubs and restaurants that might otherwise have closed, and allowed us to get the exercise we need." Hundreds? Really? Many outside the big cities? I've seen naff-all and even some of the ones I've seen in cities have been ripped out (Peterborough) or reversed (Cambridge).

But there are lots of good words in the document. It's worth sharing some of it to local social networks and media if you can. I just hope that this year, the revolution goes national and isn't so city-heavy.

There are bits in there about "We will discourage the weakening or removal of schemes without proper evidence, and require full consultation that fairly reflects local views" but it is still only discourage. Still no mention of requiring funded schemes to stay in place until the minister agrees to removal. It's good to see that the required consultation will now require professional representative polling, which should stop certain well-funded motoring lobby groups from subverting consultations with success rates we can only dream of (although we have sometimes managed it ).

One point that Camcycle seem excited about is "In December we will commence the remaining elements of Part 6 of the Traffic Management Act 2004, allowing local authorities outside London to apply for an order designating powers to civilly enforce moving traffic contraventions; examples include disregarding one-way systems or entering mandatory cycle lanes. The police will retain powers to enforce such restrictions, should they need them." I think thirdcrank has written about this elsewhere recently.

£30m for removing barriers, resurfacing and widening the NCN.

New Highway Code "coming into force early in 2022".

Most relevantly for this discussion, it seems LTNs don't generally just move traffic to the roads around the edges: "Traffic on the boundary main roads surrounding 12 new LTNs was surveyed by the councils concerned before and after each scheme. This shows, of the 50 boundary roads surveyed, traffic had risen on 15 of them, and fallen on 35."