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The council’s short-notice decision to make C9 permanent was reported in HammersmithToday in March. That would be less significant if the January to June Key Decisions List had mentioned it, or if the cycle and walking commission had been in the loop.
This key decision was made on 6th March – on the cusp of a legal minimum five working days notice, but despite being ‘key’ was not sufficiently important to be discussed at the 17 minute Cabinet meeting that day.
We are in the business of being a ‘critical friend’, as a former chair once put it, and here we need to be critical. An apparent reluctance to encourage public – or even cabinet – scrutiny in such a significant decision making process is concerning. Let’s be clear: we expect a well-designed, safe and efficient public transport system for everyone, and the C9 bidirectional design unnecessarily precludes that simple and democratic vision, marginalising those unable to cycle – and that’s quite a few. We might also reflect on the fact that bicycles are ‘vehicles’ in law, and while cycling is classed as ‘active’, it remains a form of private transport being favoured over actual public transport, while at the same time being encouraged to use a less safe infrastructure.
Without independent design and vetting, the council created and reported on it’s own survey in October/November 2022, on which the decision appears to rest. The detailed report has been redacted which raises its own questions, but the summary is problematic too. Firstly it’s a small self-selecting sample of around 700 people, of whom only around half live in the borough. Secondly, 45% of the able-bodied, and 22% of the disabled respondents said their preferred mode of transport was cycling. But only 3-4% of the public actually cycle according to TfL’s cycling counts, casting respondents as ‘keyboard warriors’, unrepresentative, or both.
The survey data, redacted as it is, shows a design successful enough to split the public 92% against (drivers), 89% for (cyclists), with 68% of disabled respondents not regarding C9 as beneficial. Overall, only 52% of the respondents thought C9 to have a positive impact, and last time that percentage voted for something of significance, there was some notable buyer’s remorse.
It’s been widely reported by others that this two-way design is, rather then the moniker ‘safer’, actually the more dangerous cycle path, as the accident rate (above) confirms. We’ve disregarded the council’s collision data supporting its decision, as it erroneously compares three years of pre-C9 accidents with less than one year with, while failing to normalise the data as an accident rate, per the chart above. Nevertheless, it still shows a higher percentage of cycle-related accidents since C9.
The risks were evident before implementation as a result of advice from transport experts, including those that have studied Dutch and Danish implementations (the latter removing bidirectional paths in urban areas over a quarter of a century ago on safety grounds), through the council’s own unflattering public engagement exercise (painfully extracted by FOI), it’s own Walking/Cycling Commission – which was not consulted in detail – it’s own Disabled Residents Commission, and, last but not least, us! 80% of accidents continue to happen at junctions, and much vaunted segregation does little other than provide a false sense of security for unwary users, to which we might partly attribute the increased accident rate.
The Disabled Residents Commission didn’t support the existing ‘temporary’ scheme, or the bus bypass concept, their abandoned bus shelters, or staggered pedestrian controlled crossings, and were as surprised as we were to see the 22% claim above. For reference, TfL’s latest data says 83% of disabled and 82% of able-bodied Londoners have never used a bike.
We put these and further specific points to Cllr. Holder, responsible for this policy, who passed them on to officers for detailed response, yet to be received. At the moment, we have no idea what a proposed ‘permanent’ C9 looks like, such is the lack of communication and consultation on this important transport artery.
Without rerunning all the arguments, we said that a bidirectional design was unsuitable for Hammersmith six years ago, because of our medieval road sizes with all the competing users – particularly buses – and an understanding that, despite City Hall’s European-themed aspirations, London doesn’t yet have the same culture or road sizes.
Cycling here, particularly on weekdays, is more a commuter-driven competitive sport, and despite initial City Hall claims of 1000% post-pandemic increases, then 200%, then 40%, and now just 13%, actual numbers are fairly flat as you can see adjacent. Weekends have seen notable increases, often weather driven, as we’ve observed before. Many of the design compromises begin and end with lack of acknowledgment of these essential facts, and they also explain the roots of the original A4 proposal.
Pictorially, it’s easy to spot, by comparing TfL’s aspirational tweet below (the photo is actually Copenhagen, despite the caption), and the photo adjacent – London in 2023. Until that circle is squared, fit young men will continue to get fitter by whizzing through narrow Hammersmith streets.
Solutions have been proposed to the junction problem, involving chopping down trees adjacent, which we would obviously oppose, or closing off Rivercourt and Weltje roads, which a) would add to the gridlock around the Broadway created by the now daily tailbacks from King Street, and b) only address about 40% of the documented accident risk. We’ve recently been notified by local residents that the council intends to carry out some repaving and narrowing around these two junctions imminently, but no consultation was carried out beforehand with them – or us.
There’s a diehard ecowarrior view that gridlock has to be achieved before people will switch to greener transport. But London is already the most congested city in the world – arguably that job has been done, intentionally or not. With buses carrying more than any other ‘transport mode’ but going ever slower making them less attractive, the objective of more and greener public transport is defeated.
Disabled access to bus stops has become such an issue that the Mayor is now investigating his own policy in a piece of Kafkaesque theatre, while ever faster e-scooters and e-bikes whizz through bus bypasses, or in some places (thankfully not here), through the actual bus stops, sometimes exceeding the 20mph speed limit.
We proposed the A4 route in 2017, and some, including members, continue to use it without fuss and with reduced danger. When TfL claim air quality is improving because of cycle lanes, they forget the previous thirty years of steep declines as a result of longstanding national and international policies, plus technological advances, meaning the A4 route will continue to become ever the more preferable.
We will continue to press the council for a better designed, measurably safer, and more inclusive cycleway, with fewer impacts on public transport users.
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