Pedestrian-friendly vision for City of London includes new lighting, wider pavements, and cyclist improvements
Plans have been shown to pedestrianise some roads in the City of London and improve others for pedestrians and cyclists.
Some of the initial ideas include pedestrianising Camomile Street, the road next to the “can of ham” office block. They also propose improving the space outside Fenchurch Street station. Finally, Lombard Street, which is lined with historic buildings, could be enhanced through lighting, improvements to the cycle lanes, and better pedestrian crossings.
The plans, which cover the eastern quarter of the city, were put forward by the local business lobby and look at a wide range of issues to make the streets more appealing. The ideas range from improved wayfinding to decorative lighting on heritage buildings and alleys and better pavements and pedestrian spaces.
The plans are an indication of what could be done, subject to approvals and funding, and aren’t the finalised schemes, so before people start picking holes in where a specific new tree might go – the plans should be considered aspirations only at the moment.
That said, designing plans like this can set directions for planning approvals when buildings need refurbishing, directing how the local area improvements are carried out so that eventually, you end up with a common design rather than a hodgepodge of discordant improvements.
The Eastern City Business Improvement District (EC BID) says that it has consulted closely with the City of London to ensure the vision aligns with, updates and supports its policies, current strategies (namely the Eastern City Cluster Vision published in 2019) and the draft of the new City Plan 2040.
The full report is here.
I really don’t care about city centres being further pedestrianised. I’d much prefer my zone 3 suburb to have car-free streets so that children (such as my daughter) who are growing up in flats without outside space have somewhere they can play.
The thing about low-traffic neighbourhoods and car-free streets is that if cars can’t drive down your street they’ll drive down mine. Why should one street be prioritised over another by a council with responsibility for all of them?
That’s been disproved several times – eg: https://smarttransportpub.blob.core.windows.net/web/1/root/changes-in-motor-traffic-inside-londons-ltns-and-on-boundary-roads.pdf
It’s true. The most recent research has shown an uplift in traffic along boundary roads. Ian’s linked research is out of date and was affected by Covid.
The dataset goes up to June 2022 – can you cite the recent research you’ve read please.
Why is it that the idealised drawing of these type of changes never show a heap of Lime bikes blocking the pavements whilt lycr clad morons race head down along the small sections for pedestrians? Only asking. I’ve nothing against the large number of decent considerate cyclists who obey the rules.
Sorry Ian but I must disagree with you as to your claim that this research proves anything. The authors (see below) are both reliant for their funding from cycle based pressure groups, which I would suggests, raises questions as to their independence.
Asa Thomas is a PhD Researcher at the Active Travel Academy at the University of Westminster. His research focuses on childhood mobility and the role of streetscapes in transport behaviour and public health. He has contributed to and led research projects relating to Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and School Streets in London.
Rachel Aldred is Professor of Transport at Westminster University
and Director of the University’s Active Travel Academy, a research and knowledge exchange centre focusing on active and
sustainable transport. Rachel has published over fifty
peer-reviewed journal articles in the field and led research projects on topics including near misses, active travel equity, transport cultures, and evaluation of streetscape interventions.
Nonething you cited suggests the authors are “reliant for their funding from cycle based pressure groups”. Also, many other reports also exist – you can quickly google them (although that came top) and see there’s still lots of evidence that LTNs do not displace traffic to a meaningful amount – they reduce it overall.
I am sure that is what you firmly believe but there are also many reports out there on the web that show that people have been abducted by aliens, that doesnt make it true however.
As for funding these authors, and most of the authors of the other papers, have close links with Sustrans and other similar organisations. Their University and college existence relies of being able to secure funds from these organisations. In addition Accademic ratings, which determine employment and funding, rely on your works being referenced by other accademics. Clearly if you “rock the boat” amongst such communities your fellow researcher will not reference you and yor institution will slip down the tables. This is the fact that underpins and undermines the current accademic research model.
Imagine if this had been the situation for in Galleleo’s time when open support for his theories would have had consequeces a lot worse that loss of funding.
If you heard Trvor Phillips on Times Radios this morning you would have seen the impact of the current system on potential research and how it results is self censorship of research that coud produce uncomfortable results, albeit in a different sector than LTNs.