Get Britain Cycling

The All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group have produced a report titled Get Britain Cycling.

I’m chuffed to say that thE Liberal Democrats have adopted all 18 of the recommendaitons.

The key components being:

–  government providing funding of £10 per person each year for cycling. That this amount rise to £20.

– cross -departmental cycling action plan be produced

– appoint a national cycling champion

– raise the target proporiton of all trips by bike from 2% in 2010 to 10% by 2025.

These actions owuld produce a heatlhier, happier and richer country.

Carmageddon

It has been reported that one of the coalition minister Tory Eric Pickles wishes to relax parking restrictions. He fear local authorities are “anti-car”.

We’ve had our own local issues around Lordship Lane and the bus lanes being zealously enforced but what would happen if Mr.Pickles had his way?

Through a weird quirk of fate an full scale experiment along the dogmatic lines Mr.Pickles proposes has taken place in Aberystwyth.

Due to a mix=up between the police and Aberystwyth local authority they’ve had no parking enforcement for exactly 12 month.

These extracts from 1 June Daily Mail describe the chaos Mr.Pickles wishes up the rest of the country…

“For the last 12 months, citizens have been free to park wherever they please, without fear of prosecution. And any faith in human nature, that people might act responsibly and observe the restrictions anyway, is quickly dispelled by a visit to the town. Forget Armageddon – this is Carmageddon. Everywhere you look there are cars parking where they shouldn’t be: on single yellows, on double yellows, next to bus stops, on pavements , and – most brazenly of all – in just about every disabled parking space available.”

“As the residents of Aberystwyth are discovering, the iron is that when,  in theory you can park anywhere, you can’t in reality find anywhere to park.”

“With allocated loading bays being blocked by family saloon, frustrated delivery drivers are simply stopping their lorries in the middle of the street with queues of he-up motorists honking in frustration and demanding to know when they will be moving on.”

Cyclists Death

As a councillor for East Dulwich and former chair of Southwark Cyclists I was horrified to hear of the tragic death of SE22 resident Chiara Giacomini last Wednesday.

The crash with a Veolia HGV happened on Thurlow Park Road near its junction with Gallery Road.

Cycling is incredibly safe but when it goes wrong with a lorry especially a HGV, waste or tipper lorry, it too often proves fatal. Our roads must be made safer and policing of all vehicles must stop being a low priority in London and the Dulwich area. Such HGVs have been involved in 53% of London cyclist deaths in the last four years, but they only account for 4% of traffic.

It will take an inordinate amount of time before the coroners rules on the this death but we must learn lessons from it.

 

 

Bus Crashes

Bus Garage Collisions London 8,600 buses travel an amazing  490 million kms a year across 700+ bus routes. Last year 2.35 billion bus customer journeys. So bus trsavel is safe but then the drivers are professionals.

The following is table of buses that crashed and needed repaits.

Major crash requires more than 40 hours of repairs, minor crash less than 40hours of repairs. Apparently the higher rates such as at Perivale, which is an engineering centre, and Stamford Brook, which is a London United refurbishment centre, indicate where the buses are taken for repair or renewal rather than the depots at which they are stationed for operation of routes.

Even allowing for this big variations between the crashes per million kms. Why the difference. Clearly some bus garages are doing something smarter than others. It means more crashes than we truly need on London roads.

Paxton Green roundabout ideas

images  This weeks Local Transport Today  has an interesting article about Dutch style roundabouts called a turbo roundabouts.
They provide 1-1.5 time more capacity than traditional 2 lane roundabouts but with 50-70% less serious crashes than respectively traffic signalled & give-way junctions.

Struck me as a possible model for Paxton Green.

You can see a 70second video of the concept here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMYib3IR43I

Do you think it would help solve the problems at this intersection?

20mph Average Speed Cameras

2009 I obtained agreement on behalf of Southwark Council from TfL that for the cycle super highway along Southwark Bridge Road (most of its route in Southwark) that it would be 20mph.

Putting self enforcing measures along the road would be really expensive and disruptive.

Separately I’ve been nagging Southwark Labour cabinet members about trialling 20mph average speed cameras.

I’m chuffed to see both moving forward: http://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/documents/s38028/Report%20-%20Allocation%20of%20discretionary%20funding.pdf

20mph average speed cameras will also have a small £10,000 study about them being applied to Southwark Bridge Road.

I submitted details to them about Siemens having a self funding scheme with 3-4 speeders paying to attend speed awareness courses and some of the fees paid for the £50,000 per cameras pairs and administration.

Hopefully the study concludes this route is suitable. Happy days for an opposition councillor to helps steer an administration policies.

Disappointing Business Crash Liability

I’m really disappointed that Lib Dem Transport MP Norman Baker has announced that the coalition government will not change Crash Liability.

Crash liability in Europe is where the weakest party involved with a crash is assumed innocent until proven guilty. So a cyclist hitting a pedestrian would be  assumed guilty unless they prove their innocence. Equally a lorry crashing into a car would be assumed guilty.

The govt and UK car lobbyists argument is that everyone should be assumed innocent. But this results in the weaker road users going uncompensated for years if they received it at all. Both parties remain involved in litigation for many years. The only real beneficiaries of current system are lawyers.

But sharing the same insurance rules as Europe would mean one insurance regime dramatically increasing the competition and lowering prices. It would also see crashes being resolved years sooner.

 

The Millennium Link or Connect 2 Partially Completed

Great news that the bridge is finally open. HOORAY.

Alastair Hanton, Michael Bridgeland and I originally proposed this in 1998. Please see attached graphic and map we used in our Southwark Cyclists report.The Millennium Link Graphic

It was meant to be a The Millennium Link a project linking northern Southwark to the Millennium Dome. We met so many people so many times – everyone from Network Rail, TfL, Southwark Council – officers and councillors, Southwark Police, Lewisham Police, British Transport Police, Sustrans….

Lots of hurdles. Walking the route to double check our assumption, site meetings with the great and good. Simon Hughes MP was very supportive. Things like arranging for the Blue Belle Railway to remove the redundant tracks – which were of a very old heritage railway design avoiding a major project costs while helping a charity.

Eventually Sustrans agreed to take it forward by which time it was 2002.

Not quite sure how so much of the project became side tracked linking Peckham to Rotherhithe but either way this off-road key link is in place and things can be added onto it.

I really recommend trying it and dreaming of what it will eventually lead onto.

And a particular well done to Alastair Hanton and his extreme long lasting tenacity – 15 years to make this project happen. I’m halfway through raising a family in the time it has taken.

But roll on the next phase…

Shocking London Bus Crashes

Very sad article about two buses a day on average crahsing with pedestrians and cyclists.

During the last six years 145,533 bus crashes. With 3,591 pedestrians and 1,219 cyclists injured or killed during that period. Injuries such as little Pollyanna Hope tragically losing a leg while on a pavement.

With London having 8,500 buses that means every year on average each London bus will have nearly 3 crashes (2.85). Even with their very high bus mileage it still seems an outrageous number.

But what I find shocking is that late in 2005 TfL with the First bus group deployed a $700,000 fully immersive Bus simulator to train bus drivers of off the roads. In the US they’ve been shown to help reduce crashes by 43%.

I had the good fortune to spend a day on it trying it out representing the London Cycling Campaign. You can really create a lot of tough driving quickly and repeatedly. Drivers can have what happened played back to them and really learn a lot quikcly. It got wrapped up in a light TV show but that didnt deter me from having a good go on the bus simulator. They threw sleet, storms, throngs of suicidal cyclists. First still say theyre operating it.

What was really surprising was the large insurance claims office at the other end of the bus simulator corridor. Never forgotten that. And with the stats revealed it’s not surprising they need such offices.

But the bus simulators proposed have never been rolled out across London as planned. And we still have an unacceptably high crash rate for fulltime professional drivers.

If you think London Buses need to do better and deploy bus simulators tell London Mayor Boris Johnson at mayor@london.gov.uk and copy me  james.barber@southwark.gov.uk

East Dulwich highways renewal

The plans for Southwark highway and street lighting maintenance have been issued pending a cabinet councillor decision:

http://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/mgIssueHistoryHome.aspx?IId=50000667&Opt=0

For East Dulwich it’s proposed to:

– Barry Road resurface between Lordship Lane and Goodrich Road 22m costing £32,460

– Peckham Rye resurface and renew pavement between Barry Road and East Dulwich Road 400m costing £89,931

– Landcroft Road resurface 400m costs £57,912 – this appears to have been rolled over from this financial year with no explanation.

– Silvester Road resurfaced between Landcroft Road and Crystal Palace Road 200m costing £70,671

– Goodrich Road resurfaced between Landcroft Road and Hillcourt 418m costing £91,375

– Worlingham footway renewed 280m costing £12,930

– Dunstans and Goodrich Road replace defective lamp posts

– Install Pigeon mesh at various bridges across the borough to control pigeon mess.

Do you think this makes sense for East Dulwich and Southwark – let us know what you think?