Wednesday 2 November 2011

Elephant and Castle - write now!

I gave a heads-up about the concerns I had with the Heygate Estate development here and the weakness of strategic cycle route development. Now I hear that the cycle bypass to the East of the E&C gyratory should form part of Cycling Superhighway 6, but this appears not to be reflected in the current proposals.

Please take a moment to follow this link to Cyclists in the City, which has an excellent post, and write an email as they ask.

As for the roundabout plans themselves, TfL's Cycling Superhighways team have been shown some early layouts for the E&C C northern roundabout and I've been told:

Although far from ideal, the positive points for cyclists as far as I can see are the full signalisation of the RAB, ASLs on the RAB, and the closure of London Rd to general traffic in both directions. Of course, we have said that ideally we would have a "Hyde Park Corner" style treatment where cyclists can cross on and off the middle of the RAB from all arms. But such an arrangement would be likely to mean movement of general traffic falls outside the parameters of the scheme.


The bit I've marked in bold suggests to me that this is another sensible idea to facilitate sustainable travel that is scuppered by the Mayor's insistence on forcing as much motor traffic through central London as he can by means of Smoothing the Traffic Flow