Great news: an overwhelming majority of respondents agree with LCC that parks are for people, not cars. Bad news: despite those results, The Royal Parks are set to meekly roll over the trials of current schemes for another year, rather than make these schemes permanent now, and add to them.
Another year of dangerous Royal Parks roads?
The Royal Parks has received almost 18,000 responses to consultations across changes to five of its iconic parks in London that were subject to trial restrictions to motor traffic over the last six months. And good news is that in every consultation, a strong majority of respondents supported the moves to restrict motor traffic from the park. That's in part thanks to you and LCC's campaigning on this issue.Public opinion ignored
The good news is that means these schemes have a real public mandate to move forward and again people have spoken to say car cut-throughs in parks make no sense. However, the battle sadly isn't over. As a result of the response, rather than make the schemes permanent, or even increase restrictions as many of us called for, The Royal Parks have rather meekly just rolled the scheme trials over to March 2022 to “collect additional data to ensure a clear picture of the impact of the schemes, before determining whether they should be made permanent”.The response from The Royal Parks is so weak that it fails to acknowledge that while several sections of road in central London parks are set in the trials to remain closed to motor traffic during the weekends, another section of road on South Carriage Drive is effectively closed 24/7 at the moment as well.
A bad development for action on climate and the pandemic
The Royal Parks has an urgent and serious role to play in London’s response to the climate crisis. Another year without further action is another year of emissions, pollution, road danger, inactivity tolerated in its spaces. And while the Royal Parks claim schemes need to be monitored with post-Covid London traffic levels we would argue the reverse.
If the Royal Parks waits until its remaining through routes clog up with motor traffic from those avoiding public transport, it will choke the potential of these routes for walking and cycling for transport, leisure and fitness. And it will be far harder to reduce through motor traffic with more restrictions later than it will be to stop that motor traffic ever returning to the parks now.
What LCC wants to see next
The full results of the consultations give The Royal Parks a clear mandate, again, alongside their own policies, to act now. To build on the good work of these trials and to move them on this year, not delay and dither. And thats what we'll keep pushing them to do.
The results in detail
Bushy Park
The lowest support rate for schemes was for the removal of through motor traffic from Bushy Park, which faced a concerted campaign of opposition against the proposals from some drivers. Even there, however, 56% supported the trial approach, and the only group responding strongly negatively to the scheme were “those using the park for driving through by car”, 93% of whom opposed changes (disabled visitors did raise significant concerns about access and congestion on surrounding roads, also).Other parks - overwhelmingly in favour of ending through-traffic
Hyde Park, Green Park and St James’ Park lower level interventions were supported by over 70% of respondents and calls for further restrictions were the “most common theme in the comments”. Greenwich Park’s removal of through motor traffic got 81% support. And Richmond Park saw the largest overall response with nearly 11,000 responses, and 71% overall support (with majority support among the 43% of responses from local residents too). Unsurprisingly the most common comments on Richmond Park were also calls for the total removal of all through motor traffic, with access retained to car parks, particularly for disabled people.
Regent's Park
Despite not being one of the listed five parks with schemes, hundreds of emails were also sent to the Royal Parks on the issue of through motor traffic in Regent’s Park too.