Shoreditch High Street: Not Safe Enough

New plans; same problems…

TfL has announced new plans for Shoreditch High Street’s junctions with Great Eastern Street, Commercial Road, Bethnal Green Road and stretching as far north as Rivington Street.

The scheme deals with cycling at some of the most complex and dangerous junctions in London with some of the highest rates of cycling.

The good news: LCC’s campaigning around the next junction over – which TfL has designed so badly it triggered our ‘Too Weak, Sadiq’ campaign – seems to have already delivered change, and this new junction scheme is a lot better than it might have been.

The bad news? It’s still nowhere near good enough to make this area safe for cycling, let alone enable most kids, women, elderly or Disabled people to cycle here.

Take two minutes and respond today

So please, hit the link today and use the consultation form to send a message to TfL and the Mayor. Our view is below. Please click the link today and put these in your own words in your response:

• Overall, this scheme is only just good enough. The scheme will significantly improve safety for the thousands of people cycling through here daily, but it’s not as good as schemes TfL was doing a decade ago, it’s not good enough to get a wider range of people cycling here, it’s not good enough even to ensure no one is seriously injured or dies at these junctions ever again.
• The ‘cycle gates’ on Shoreditch High Street itself are good (they’re the big boxes like at the north end of Southwark Bridge where traffic is held back a bit so cyclists can get to the front). But they’re not enough – they’ll feel fairly scary to use. What we want is proper junction designs like Manchester and Waltham Forest so those cycling are never being chased down by motor traffic right behind them. Similarly, the cycle track southbound is welcome, but stops short of where it needs to go and isn’t as wide or good as the sheer numbers of people cycling here already will need.
• This isn’t ‘safe’, it’s ‘safer’: the scheme goes from 8 ‘zero scores’ on the Healthy Streets Check to 4. While the worst safety failures in design are halved, there’s still FOUR major safety fails. TfL has to do a lot better than that for the Mayor’s ‘Vision Zero’ target to mean much. For starters not a single zero score safety fail should be tolerated in any junction scheme that’s specifically aimed at making walking, cycling or wheeling safer ever again.

The proposed design for the junction…

Why are TfL’s junction designs so bad right now?

We’re talking to the Mayor, TfL and City Hall about a clear pattern: weak designs, seemingly around concerns over bus journey times, at major junctions and along major corridors. And we’ll continue to talk.

But while we overall support these proposals, we view them as the weakest improvements possible TfL could propose and gain any support from those cycling.

Indeed, we’re putting City Hall on warning today: another scheme this poor and we will be urging everyone to oppose it – many more of these schemes simply won’t be worth the millions spent given the limited funds TfL has to work with.

It’s entirely feasible for TfL to do better. It has in the past, and Manchester and even London boroughs Waltham Forest and Newham are doing far better right now.

Indeed, TfL’s apparent fear of impacting buses, while understandable, simply doesn’t stack up – it’s really a fear of being bold enough to keep buses moving while also making cycling and walking and wheeling safe. Which other authorities can manage.

TfL and the Mayor cannot rely on LCC’s members and supporters to continue to back increasingly weak schemes for ever. That path doesn’t lead to a cycling city or healthier Londoners, it won’t help the Mayor achieve his own targets and commitments.

To help us send a message to TfL and the Mayor that dangerous junctions need more than sticking plasters, please hit the link today and adapt the bullet points above, add to them, use your own words.