What are the councils up to? January & February 2023 edition

An aide memoire of items I’ve noted from the boroughs where I work, rest and play, in case it is of use to others.

A link back to November & December 2022’s editions if you want to rummage backwards.

February 2023

Consultations closing

• Closing 3 March, Westminster Council’s consultation on plans for a walking & cycling scheme along Cleveland Street, with questionnaire.
• Closing 6 March, City of London’s consultation on proposed Beech Street ULEZ, plus a related project around Barbican, Bunhill and Golden Lane.  
• Closing 19 March, RBKC’s consultation on new Sheffield cycle stands across the borough.
• Closing 19 March, Wandsworth Council’s consultation on six new school streets, to be enacted in the summer initially as experimental traffic orders.
• Closing 22 March, DfT’s consultation on changes to the MOT tests (frequency and content).
• Closing 30 March, Croydon Council’s consultation on “healthy neighbourhood” schemes
• Closing 3 April, Tfl’s and Hounslow Council’s consultation on cycleway C9 in west London.
• Closing 3 April, TfL’s consultation on the next rounds of changes to the direct vision safer trucking rules.

City of London

• 14 Feb, Streets Sub-Ctte, see agenda for papers – too many to link:
  • Following consultation and analysis, officers recommend keeping most of the pedestrian priority schemes (King St, Old Jewry, King William St), with further work needed on Cheapside to find the right answer, Threadneedle dependent on the Bank junction changes, and Chancery Lane needing co-op with Camden Council where it will issue an experimental traffic order later in February. 
  • Several papers re Bank junction – in summary, kicking out any proposal for unrestricted traffic returning to the junction as the impact on bus journey times will be catastrophic.  Officers set out a gently paced timetable to study other options including allowing black taxis to access the junction during weekdays.  Don’t expect any conclusions until early summer of 2024.  (These studies follow a request from  Court of Common Council in summer 2022 where several Tufton Street friendly Aldermen demanded unwinding the scheme to allow black taxi access).
• 20 Feb, per above, City of London and Camden Council together are filtering Chancery Lane M-F 7-7 for 18 months under and experimental traffic order. Exemptions for blue light and black taxis.  City asking for feedback via survey form.
• 7 March, Planning & Transport.  See agenda for a big bundle of papers regarding a review of City’s Traffic Orders, where consultants have checked street-by-street which can be altered.  The ctte paper tho is more interesting for the comments about traffic volumes e.g. cyclists now make up the largest mode of vehicular traffic and the only mode where volumes have increased post-pandemic compared to 2019.  All other vehicular modes are down.   The parking accounts paper explains how £6m of parking fees (on-street and car parks) has been spent on a various transport related projects.
• 7 March, Streets-Sub Ctte has works-in-progress reports for the West Smithfield (around the new Museum of London) and Moorgate (Crossrail station) urban realm schemes.

Croydon Council

• 1 Feb, full Council, has a Conservative-sponsored motion opposing the ULEZ expansion, and some unfair public questions asking for the Highways Director (an officer, not a cllr) to be fired because of previous LTN-related decisions.
• 1 March, full council, reviews and likely approves lots of budget papers for 2023/4, and councillors’ allowances.

Government / Department for Transport / Professional bodies

• 2 Feb, rail stats for 2022.
• 6 Feb, Active Travel England has £200m for local authorities to do active travel stuff.
• 15 Feb, the transport-use-since-the-start-of-the-pandemic stats, now monthly.
• 2 March, latest of the regular EV charging point stats with interactive map etc.
• …
• 8 Feb, Sustrans’ research report re giving disabled people a voice in walking and wheeling policy and practice, including PDF report.
• 20 Feb, paper by Andrew Gilligan (former transport advisor to Boris Johnson) re improving environment around Parliament Square.  Some urban realm stuff such as pedestrianising one or two sides of the square, but also a lot about controlling/curtailing public demonstrations.

Hammersmith & Fulham

• 6 Feb, Cabinet with lots of budget papers for 2023/4 and beyond.
• 23 Feb, full council will vote on budgets for 2023/4 onwards.  Public questions are dominated by the traffic filtering schemes east and west of Wandsworth Bridge Road in south Fulham.
• 6 March, decision published to make permanent the “safe cycle path” don’t-call-it-CW9 cycleway along King St into the Hammersmith gyratory.  Cycling numbers along the corridor are up significantly e.g. 83% increase in people cycling along King St.  Further work, tho, needed to address some junctions where drivers continue to endanger people cycling because they are failing to look. 

Kensington & Chelsea

• Closing 5 March, latest RBKC consultation on bike hangars.
• Closing 19 March, RBKC’s consultation on new Sheffield cycle stands across the borough. Quite why, I don’t know. JFDI.
• 1 Feb, full council, considers tweaks to the borough’s proposed Local Plan, post consultation.  No changes to the draft re (dire) support for active travel, other than to note that the council’s approach to cycle routes will be “guided by the study commissioned from Centre for London [re Kensington High Street debacle], and the reaction of residents to it”.  CfL said a cycle track is needed along KHS, and the Better Streets K&C group is awaiting judgement from the High Court re its request for the council’s decision to rip out the trial cycle lane to be reviewed.
• 2 Feb, Enviro Ctte, has a report about the dire air quality around K&C’s schools.  And the solution? Encouraging kids to cycle and scoot to school in a borough that rips out cycle lanes.
• 8 Feb, Scrutiny Ctte, has huge PDFs with the Local Plan through 2027 (30mb!), and the ‘corporate dashboard’ of performance indicators.
• 15 Feb, Leadership Team reviews budgets for 2023/4 and beyond. 
• 1 Mar, full council, to sign off budgets for 2023/4 and the Council Plan through to 2027 (above).

Kingston Council

• 2 Feb, Kingston local ctte, continues the slow and administratively expensive rollout of 20mph across the borough, and has an update on the Albert Road LTN.
• 9 Feb, Place Ctte has a lot of papers (see agenda) mostly for the 2023/4 and medium-term budgets.  The parking-fund budget has been reduced going forward, with the Go Cycle scheme being blamed for removing bus lanes and hence the bus lane PCN expected revenues being halved.  Agenda also has a big 10mb pdf with a vision paper for the Kingston town centre.
• 23 Feb, Surbiton local ctte reviews application to convert most of the Tolworth Tower from offices to residential flats.  The proposal ticks requirements without thought e.g.  there’s extra wide cycle parking for cargo bikes but located behind several sets of normal sized doors.
• 2 March, full council, to approve budgets for 2023/4 and beyond, as a largely abstract “council plan” through to 2027.
• 9 March, Kingston local ctte, has the annual update on a niche bit of SW London municipal weirdness: the “Maldens and Coombe Urban District Council Act 1933” where the council maintains some of the roads in the gated, exclusive Coombe Hill estate south of Richmond Park, and charges a levy to the residents.  The residents association has an explainer.
• 9 March, South of the Borough local, proposes to make the Buckland Road school street permanent by the Castle Hill Primary.

Lambeth Council

• 6 Feb, it appears that the UK Supreme Court has refused permission to Lambeth’s anti-LTN campaign to appeal its previously lost cases against Lambeth Council. The campaigners have crowd-funded several legal challenges and lost all.  (Confirmation on the Supreme Court’s Dec’22 list).
• 7 Feb, decision to proceed with the urban realm improvements to the Oval-Stockwell LTN, following statutory consultation.
• 7 Feb, decision to go to statutory consultation for the Loughborough Road scheme which installs new cycle tracks, Copenhagen crossing etc along the road.  The decision papers include a summary of resident & blue-light feedback after the commonplace surveys in autumn 2022.
• 20 Feb, Cabinet, has lots of budget papers for 2023/4 and beyond.
• 1 March, full council, to sign off budgets for 2023/4 and beyond.
• 3 March, effective date of decision to shift position of two filters in the now permanent Ferndale LTN (west of Brixton), following engagement with locals and blue light services. Goes to statutory consultation and then revised TOs.
• 6 March, decision to install 100+ EV charging points.

London Assembly / Mayor of London

• 23 Feb, Mayor’s Question Time focuses on the the Mayoral/GLA function budgets for 2023/4.  There’s normal monthly questions which will get written answers during March.
• 28 Feb, Transport Ctte should be fun, as it has invited a panel to discuss road user charging.
• Dipping into answers to the Jan’23 questions to the Mayor:
  • By summer 2022 there were 3774 bike hangars across London.
  • TfL is happy to talk to boroughs and land owners about extending the Santander bike scheme but no definite plans.
  • Cycleway C9 has so far cost £15.5million.   There have been four consultations since 2017 on cycleway C9, with a fifth to conclude in April 2023.
  • There are no plans to restore the left-turn from Grosvenor Road onto Chelsea Bridge, as this helps improve the safety of people cycling on cycleway C8.
  • No, Tony, TfL won’t build a road tunnel under Marble Arch to satisfy your petrolhead constituents.
  • TfL still sells a carnet of 10 one-way paper tickets for £17 for the cable car ‘dangleway’.
  • With the demise of the Rotherhithe – Canary Wharf bridge, any plans for a better ferry service are dependent on DfT funding.
  • TfL’s policy on treating snowy, icy roads (one, two and three) – cycleways get treated but may not appear so as people cycling aren’t very heavy apparently (mmm ….)
  • 2.2million unregistered Oyster cards were used in London in January 2023.
  • Annual stats for the Santander-sponsored bike hire scheme, and some targets for future years.  (Sceptical about the future targets as the pricing change in Sept’22 has clearly affected usage).

Merton Council

• 1 Feb, full council, has an anti-ULEZ motion from the minor group of Tory cllrs (7 of 57) with several questionable claims. Will be interesting to see how the majority Labour and opposition LibDem cllrs react to it. (Postscript, majority Labour amendment voted through, Tories and LibDems against.)
• 20 Feb, Cabinet, had an update on the borough’s progress against its climate delivery plan, medium-term financial plan through to 2027, and the Dec’22 monthly finance report.  Appendix 5 of the Dec finance report shows that Merton Council has again failed to spend the cycling funds from TfL and shifted nearly £250k into 2023/4 for things like cycle parking.
• 23 Feb, Sustainable Communities Ctte, has a big 8mb paper on air quality, with lots of graphs but not much in the way of action.
• 1 March, full council, to review budgets for 2023/4 and beyond.

Richmond Council

• 27 Feb, Transport & AQ, has a report on options for increasing safe space for people walking and cycling along the Hospital Bridge Road corridor in Whitton where the railway bridge is especially narrow.  The Q3 performance report notes that parking-related income is £450k below budget.
• 7 March, full council, to sign off budgets for 2023/4.

Royal Parks

• A group of residents are crowd-funding a legal challenge to the Royal Park’s decision to close Sheen Gate in Richmond Park.  The funder failed to raise sufficient funds by 24 Jan, and has been extended for another 28 days.  Some 250 local residents claimed in Nov’22 that they’d support a campaign – by 24 Jan, only 42 had pledged any cash.

Surrey County Council

• 8 March, Surrey Hill AONB Board.  The minutes of the Dec’22 meeting include the Chairman Heather Kerswell back-pedalling furiously to withdraw her claims in the Sept’22 meeting that there are off-piste/wild mountain bike trails on e.g. Hindhead Common and that MTBers have a ‘culture of entitlement’.  This meeting’s agenda focuses on plans to expand the AONB boundary.

Sutton Council

• 20 Feb, Strategy, has finance papers for 2023/4 and beyond.

Transport for London

• 1 Feb, TfL Board , with Commissioner’s Report.  Lots of work-in-progress but can’t see anything new.
• 1 March, Programmes & Investments.  Heavy 8mb pdf with the quarterly portfolio report summarising works-in-progress.  There’s a Healthy Streets paper outlining potential milestones for urban realm, cycling lanes, vision zero and bus priority measures across the next 2 years.  A lot of PDF designs and consultations, and other than finishing cycleway C4 through Lewisham, I can’t see any spades-in-the-ground in south London.  Also, DfT is paying TfL to extend contactless payments to 233 rail stations across the south east.
• 8 March, Finance Board, with quarterly report.  Plus updates to taxi fares, and lots of technical treasury mngt activities.
• Closing 12 April, TfL’s consultation on retaining the Arthur Street (in the City of London) tweeks, which were introduced while Southwark Bridge was being worked on. 

Transport for London – Freedom of Information requests

• 6 Feb, Sutton’s tin-foil-hat wearing where-are-the-cameras cranks are now spamming TfL wanting to know where the ULEZ cameras are (one, two and three and four).  As always, polite answers from the TfL FOI team.
  • 27 Feb, to its credit, TfL’s FOI team have finally reached the “FFS, f*ck off” stage of dealing with dozens of co-ordinated time wasting requests from ULEZ camera conspiracy nutters.
• 7 Feb, when you should use the Oyster Pink readers to validate a journey avoiding zone 1 to get a cheaper fare, with a 2017 Mayoral Direction paper which explains all.
• 10 Feb, over 300,000 PCNs have been issued to drivers by TfL’s On Street officers over the last 3 years, mostly for parking illegally on red routes.
• 13 Feb, the 9am 60+ freedom card decision has a £40m implication for fares.
• 13 Feb, how does TfL signpost multiple cycleways when they share the same cycle path?
• 20 Feb, TfL’s policy on where and how to site trees.
• 23 Feb, High/Appeal Court judges have order the taxi unions LTDA and UTAG to pay TfL £182,000 to cover TfL’s costs in their failed attempts to challenge the A10 Bishopsgate experimental traffic scheme.  The unions’ own legal costs will likely be similar six-figure sums, so an expensive process.
• 27 Feb, guidance to boroughs on how to prepare Healthy Streets plans to get LIP funding for 2023/4/5 in a PDF document.
  • Which seems to go hand-in-hand with the GLA’s guidance to boroughs on how to prepare a Local Development Plan, which requires them to prepare network maps for walking & cycling.
• 27 Feb, cycle count data for several days in May and June 2022, with spreadsheet.  Also need the site description sheet from TfL’s data store.
• 28 Feb, TfL spent nearly £9m on the Queen’s funeral, including £178k to Serco ‘cos the launch of Santander eBikes was delayed.
• 6 March, how travelcard zones are determined (the Watford question).

Wandsworth Council

• Closing 19 March, Wandsworth Council’s consultation on six new school streets, to be enacted in the summer initially as experimental traffic orders.
• 1 Feb, Transport Ctte has lots of papers, including:
  • More bikehangars, with a phase being planned.Various zebra crossings.  Those on Franciscan Road and Broomwood Road are needed because the council (formerly Tory, now Labour) doesn’t have the spine to do low traffic/healthy neighbourhoods, so the crossings are needed to help kids get to school.  In the case of Broomwood, it’s private school parents driving miles across London to drop their kids off, creating the problem that the zebra has to solve.  There’s other zebras also proposed on the B305 Westbridge Road/Vicarage Crescent corridor.Local Implementation Plan, approved by TfL.  There’s still some Tory nonsense, such as school theatre workshops to teach kids how to stop drivers killing them, but most is useful.  There’s an interesting addition to study the border with Merton’s Plough Lane at the top of Blackshaw Road (north of St George’s Hospital) and the area to Garratt Lane.   WBC has installed a pandemic wanded cycle track along Garratt Lane, and LBM has installed stepped tracks on Plough Lane. The study seeks options to join these up with benefits for people walking & cycling in the area.
  • Daft use of £40k on study re extending the Northern tube line from Battersea Power Station (station) to Clapham Junction.  TfL and Network Rail have always hated the idea as the tube would be swamped at CJ by passengers migrating from the Victoria and Waterloo services.  Their preference is to put energy in Crossrail 2 and with it a big redevelopment of the CJ area (think of a London Bridge-like station redevelopment).
• 7 Feb, Enviro Ctte, includes papers on licencing professional dog walkers.  Council has issued 46 licences, of which at least 28 are to residents & businesses from other boroughs.  There’s a lot of dogs being chauffeured around.
• 1 March, Finance Ctte has budget papers for 2023/4 and beyond.  Plus a bundle of papers with a night-time strategy for the borough, blending suggestions for the night-time economy with different aspects of public safety.  And by exception due to timing, proposals for tweaking the traffic orders relating to Wandsworth’s roads near Wimbledon Stadium as the usual transport ctte won’t meet until June.

Westminster Council

• Closing 3 March, Westminster Council’s consultation on plans for a walking & cycling scheme along Cleveland Street, with questionnaire.
• 13 Feb, Cabinet has a lot of budget papers for 2023/4 and beyond to review.  Parking-related revenues are being dialled down by £5m due to several pressures: fewer residents wanting permits, active travel, WFH etc. (which all sounds like the right way forward).  The capital plan for the next few years has interesting items, including what looks like new Santander hire bike sites in Queens Park, sites for dockless bike and scooter parking, lots of cycle hangers, something called “cycle greenway north”, and lots of new paving slabs.
• 6 March, City Mngt.  Report notes transfer of several Santander hire bike sites to north of the borough, support for the Park Lane cycle track, the Cleveland Street healthy street consultation, and frustration with Lime dockless bikes.

January 2023

Consultations closing

• Closing 5 Feb, LBHF’s crazy consultation on using a Public Space Protection Order to ban ebikes, escooters and “reckless cycling” from the paths along its entire Thames side.  If you use an ebike to take young kids to school, or as a mobility aid, then you’ll be banned.
• Closing 22 Feb, RBKC’s consultation to revoke the planned contraflow cycling on Gliston Road. 
• Closing 6 March, City of London’s consultation on proposed Beech Street ULEZ, plus a related project around Barbican, Bunhill and Golden Lane.  
• Closing 9 March, TfL’s and Hounslow Council’s consultation re Cycleway 9 along Chiswick High Road.

City of London

• 16 Jan, City launches two low traffic and low emissions neighbourhoods.  Another attempt at the Beech Street ULEZ, plus a related project around Barbican, Bunhill and Golden Lane.  Consultations for both close on 6 March.
• 17 Jan, Streets SubCtte has an interesting agenda with lots of papers and appendices including:
  • Updated Vision Zero road safety plan through to 2028, which continues to focus on motorised vehicles and junctions as the cause of most issues to vulnerable road users;
  • Draft proposals for the Fleet Street Healthy Neighbourhoods plan, which goes to consultation in Feb’23.  This splits the Fleet/Ludgate/Farringdon area into several neighbourhoods, each getting filtered streets and related treatments.
  • Plans to extend support for dockless bikes, pending new legislation from DfT sometime after 2024.  City seems to have a good relationship with Human Forest, but not with Lime Bikes which sounds similar to the issues that Westminster Council has experienced.  City has extended Lime’s agreement until May’23 with a requirement to sort its operation out.
• 31 Jan, Planning, considers proposal to replace Fleet House in New Bridge Street, north of Blackfriars Bridge, and beside cycleway C6.  Conditions are clear: the road, pavements, cycleway etc must not be blocked or hindered.

Croydon Council

• Closing 30 March’23, Croydon Council’s consultation on “healthy neighbourhood” schemes, which are the watered down LTNs introduced during the pandemic.
• Croydon Council is tweaking one-way street layouts at the south end of the high street (e.g. reversing Katherine Street) to move some bus stops nearer to the empty Alders store, with pdf map.
• 25 Jan, Cabinet, has TfL LIP funded project portfolio 2023/4/5 for sign-off.  See agenda for several maps and papers – but get a magnifying glass as the print on the tables is very, very small.  For all the bluster before the 2022 local elections about opposing low traffic neighbourhoods, questioning some cycle lanes etc., the new Conservative Mayor and administration have produced a portfolio that ticks nearly all the usual DfT and TfL boxes – more LTNs (under different names), more school streets, more bus priority projects.  The council is keen to get Levelling Up Funds from HMG, and if I read the papers right, then it wants to use good delivery of the TfL LIP (MTS) projects as proof to Active Travel England that LUF money will be good investments.
• 31 Jan, Streets Scrutiny, has related 2023/4 budgets for review.  Expected revenue from penalties and charges has been reduced, either overbudgetted in previous drafts, or Croydon’s drivers are better behaved.
• 1 Feb, full Council, has a Conservative-sponsored motion opposing the ULEZ expansion, and some unfair public questions asking for the Highways Director (an officer, not a cllr) to be fired because of previous LTN-related decisions.

Government / Department for Transport / Professional bodies

• 2 Jan, two DfT statements about Active Travel England spending £30+m on expert resourcing across England, here and here.
• 6 Jan, ONS has released info about house ownership and access to cars and vans, the vehicle data also available in an interactive map.
• 11 Jan, transport use by mode since the start of the pandemic will now be published on the 2^nd Wednesday of each month (so no longer fortnightly).
• 12 Jan, approvals to lots of London boroughs for eScooter parking bays (see signs authorisation site) which signals that the London trial will continue for some time.  DfT is unlikely to pass any permanent legislation until 2024/5.
• 17 Jan, lots of Levelling Up Fund announcements, including £9m for Whitechapel Road in Tower Hamlets (which I guess is the wider pavements, better CS2 cycle track, clearer market space proposal from the old Labour council).  Although some correspondents think this £9m is a re-announcement of old 2022 news.
• 18 Jan, stats on disability travel and blue badges.
• 20 Jan, Government writes to TfL to say it gives itself another month, to end Feb, to agree pension reforms with TfL. Let’s be honest, the Government wants TfL to water down its pensions benefits package, including retrospective/accumulated benefits, and this will likely trigger industrial action.  The Mayor wrote to the Government last autumn with options.
• 25 Jan, EV charging point stats, interactive map etc .. an update of previous stats.
• 31 Jan, bus stats for year ending March 2022.
• 2 Feb, rail stats for 2022.
• …
• “Motornomativity: How Social Norms Hide a Major Public Health Hazard” by Ian Walker, Alan Tapp and Adrian Davis of Swansea and Bristol universities.

Hammersmith & Fulham

• Closing 5 Feb, LBHF’s crazy consultation on using a Public Space Protection Order to ban ebikes, escooters and “reckless cycling” from the paths along its entire Thames side.  The eScooter-ists will ignore it, the Police won’t enforce it, and people using ebikes as mobility aids are shafted.  Absolute madness.
• 3 Jan, Climate Change Ctte has the rescheduled ‘clean air neighbourhoods’ presentation (4mb pdf) that was cancelled from 29 Nov due to a clash with World Cup football.  The presentation is by the borough’s director of car parking, which rustles up lots of excuses about why the borough shouldn’t do low traffic neighbourhoods.
• 9 Jan, Cabinet, has proposals to reduce car parking charges for cleaner vehicles, as part of the cost-of-living support.
• 6 Feb, Cabinet with lots of budget papers for 2023/4 and beyond.

Kensington & Chelsea

• Closing 22 Feb, RBKC’s consultation to revoke the planned contraflow cycling on Gliston Road.  In Oct’22, the council after consultation approved a traffic order to enable contraflow cycling on several one-way streets.  Since then, one of the local residents’ associations (canape clubs, mostly run by local Tories) has complained to a Tory cllr, who has leaned on officers to think again.  The whole thing stinks to crony decision making.
• Closing 5 March, RBKC’s consultation on bike hangars proposed at 4 sites.
• 1 Feb, full council, considers tweaks to the borough’s proposed Local Plan, post consultation.  No changes to the draft re (dire) support for active travel, other than to note that the council’s approach to cycle routes will be “guided by the study commissioned from Centre for London [re Kensington High Street debacle], and the reaction of residents to it”.  CfL said a cycle track is needed along KHS, and the Better Streets K&C group is awaiting judgement from the High Court re its request for the council’s decision to rip out the trial cycle lane to be reviewed.
• 2 Feb, Enviro Ctte, has a report about the dire air quality around K&C’s schools.  And the solution? Encouraging kids to cycle and scoot to school in a borough that rips out cycle lanes.
• 8 Feb, Scrutiny Ctte, has huge PDFs with the Local Plan through 2027 (30mb!), and the ‘corporate dashboard’ of performance indicators.

Kingston Council

• 24 Jan, South of the Borough local ctte, rolls out more 20mph streets, street-by-consultation-by-street …
• 24 Jan, Kingston local ctte, has papers recommending the Birkenhead Avenue/ Gordon Road tweaks relating to the new Lidl store go ahead.  The council continues to ignore the danger to the Go Cycle cycle track along London Road, saying that it doesn’t have funds and will wait to see what danger results.  The approach is negligent and people will be harmed.
• 26 Jan, New Malden local ctte, has a bundle of papers with feedback on and proposed changes to the design of the Kingston to New Malden cycle scheme.  The design is still poor with gaps in the cycle track and unpopular shared-use pavements.  And if you read the papers carefully, you’ll see there’s no funding commitment to build and finish it (funding referred to the “Place Ctte”) – this is interesting in light of the TfL FOI answer linked below.  In summary, this is lots of PDF which doesn’t really take the scheme forward.
• 26 Jan, Surbiton local, has similar papers for the Ewell Road Go Cycle scheme. 
• 26 Jan, interesting FOI response from TfL regarding claims by Kingston’s Council that funding for the Go Cycle scheme was stopped – it didn’t. With bundle of redacted papers. These include the statement by TfL that it won’t invest in further cycling infrastructure in Kingston until the existing schemes are completed.
• 2 Feb, Kingston local ctte, continues the slow and administratively expensive rollout of 20mph across the borough, and has an update on the Albert Road LTN.
• 9 Feb, Place Ctte has a lot of papers (see agenda) mostly for the 2023/4 and medium-term budgets.  The parking-fund budget has been reduced going forward, with the Go Cycle scheme being blamed for removing bus lanes and hence the bus lane PCN expected revenues being halved.  Agenda also has a big 10mb pdf with a vision paper for the Kingston town centre.

Lambeth Council

• 9 Jan, looks like Lambeth Council plans to roll out controlled parking zones across the whole borough by end of 2024.  Papers set out the timetables for comms and consultations.
• 13 Jan, Lambeth Council launches kerbside strategy, creating more street space for people walking, cycling, sitting and for trees, with PDF doc … which goes for approval at …
• 16 Jan, Cabinet, has the kerbside strategy for approval, plus an updated air quality action plan through to 2025.
• 23 Jan, effective 31, decision to proceed with Phase 6 of the bike hangar rollout, with an additional 50 hangars being installed. Usual objections etc.  
• 7 Feb, decision to proceed with the urban realm improvements to the Oval-Stockwell LTN, following statutory consultation.
• 7 Feb, decision to go to statutory consultation for the Loughborough Road scheme which installs new cycle tracks, Copenhagen crossing etc along the road.  The decision papers include a summary of resident & blue-light feedback after the commonplace surveys in autumn 2022.

London Assembly / Mayor of London

• 17 Jan, Transport Ctte, invites a panel to discuss transport fares in London.
• 19 Jan, Mayor’s Question Time, with Jan’23’s questions to the Mayor, most of which will get written answers.   The Mayor’s monthly report notes that contactless payments on London’s transport network using bank cards and recently mobile devices is now 10 years old.
• Dipping into answers to November’22’s questions to the Mayor:
  • London’s escooter trial has been extended to autumn 2023, with interim reports this spring.  (Some boroughs, like the City, are assuming extension into 2024).
  • As act Oct’22, there are 820 rapid charge points across London of which 85 are dedicated to taxis.
  • Condition of non-rail bridges maintained by TfL.
  • There are 224 junctions without any signalised ‘green man’ pedestrian crossing facilities, but it’s too much effort to break down other junctions where arms are unsignalled.  (TfL answered a similar FOI in Nov’22).
  • 390 school streets have been delivered since April 2020.
  • TfL funding to Tower Hamlets will be dependent on MTS alignment (one and two).
  • London Councils is seeking decriminalisation of lower speed limits to enable civil enforcement, albeit Wandsworth is doing an experiment to 20mph cameras currently.
  • Boroughs encouraged to adapt low traffic neighbourhoods to address issues.
  • Guidance on bus stop islands.
• Dipping into December 2022’s questions to the Mayor:
  • TfL is working on London Cycling’s list of dangerous junctions – answer is much as expected, although an interesting detail is that there’s a longer term Healthy Streets pipeline including Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park Corner and Clapham Common station.
  • How TfL calculates the number of people living within 400m of high quality cycleway.

Merton Council

• 16 Jan, Cabinet has big business plan/budget paper for the period through 2027.  Section 10 has an interesting note about the increase in the Mayor’s precept: £20 of the increase relates to the DfT/TfL funding arrangements.
• 19 Jan, Sustainable Communities, mostly taken up a “call-in” from Conservative councillors re experimental orders filtering streets around the Wimbledon tennis grounds during the 2021 tournament (yes, 18 months ago – see agenda for lots of papers).  The Met Police asked for the filters as part of anti-terrorism measures.  Some local residents are upset about temporary loss of driving privileges.  Feels like a waste of committee time.
• 1 Feb, full council, has an anti-ULEZ motion from the minor group of Tory cllrs (7 of 57) with several questionable claims. Will be interesting to see how the majority Labour and opposition LibDem cllrs react to it.

Metropolitan Police / Emergency Services

• 25 Dec, 283 penalty notices in last five years for noise offences from vehicles (e.g. missing silencers).
• 25 Dec, brilliant spreadsheet with the age of everyone receiving PCNs for speeding (cameras and speed guns) in the last 3 years, plus the make and model of the vehicles involved.

Richmond Council

• 10 Jan, Transport & AQ Ctte has lots of papers recommending that the Burton’s Road traffic filtering scheme is made permanent.  The scheme was introduced using an experimental TMO in Feb’22.  And several more school streets.

Royal Parks

• A group of residents are crowd-funding a legal challenge to the Royal Park’s decision to close Sheen Gate in Richmond Park.  The funder failed to raise sufficient funds by 24 Jan, and has been extended for another 28 days.  Some 250 local residents claimed in Nov’22 that they’d support a campaign – by 24 Jan, only 42 had pledged any cash.

Transport for London

• TfL updates a XLS file in the London Data Store each month with summary figures for the Santander hire bikes.
• 25 Jan, press statement saying that TfL will proceed with the cycle tracks and new pedestrian crossings between Battersea Park Road, Queenstown Road and Nine Elms.  The project page has been updated with the consultation report (appendices still missing tho).  The scheme was first floated in 2017 when it received serious criticism (the design was unacceptable).  This updated design will take another 3 years to construct – 700 metres of road to be fixed.

Transport for London – Freedom of Information requests

• TfL FOI site https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transparency/freedom-of-information/search
• WDTK https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/tfl
• 16 Jan, numbers of journeys on TfL’s bus, tube, train etc. services for each day since 20 Dec 2018, with csv file.
• 17 Jan, yes, independent polls consistently show that low traffic neighbourhoods are popular, regardless of what far-left, far-right and petrolhead campaigns like to claim.
• 17 Jan, pedestrian casualties over 10 years in the proposed Streatham Wells area of south Lambeth, where the council proposes installing a low traffic neighbourhood.
• 18 Jan, there are 271 pedestrian crossing where the crossing time is 10 seconds or less.
• 18 Jan, stats about bus route lengths, average timetabled times etc. with spreadsheet.
• 19 Jan, the traffic lights at the junction of Piccadilly and Bolton Street north of Green Park were struck by drivers 24 times in 2022, and poles were replaced 19 times!
• 19 Jan, TfL weekly tickets, PAYG caps for the last 3 years.
• 26 Jan, interesting response from TfL regarding claims by Kingston’s Council that funding for the Go Cycle scheme was stopped – it didn’t. With bundle of redacted papers.
• 27 Jan, TfL deleted the Crossrail twitter account in Dec’22 but didn’t keep an archive of the tweets.
• 27 Jan, plans for more step-free stations.
• 30 Jan, not my parish, but an interesting road safety audit for a cycle lane along the Seven Sisters Road across Islington, Hackney and Haringey.
• 30 Jan, you can recharge your mobile phone on 1200 London buses.
• 31 Jan, numbers of tickets sold at Overground and Elizabeth Line stations in 2022, presumably by ticket offices rather than the machines.  Some sold very, very few.
• 31 Jan, numbers of people boarding at bus stops across London, with xls file. Description indicates these are weekday average numbers for June 2022, with one of the stops outside Brixton Station being the busiest.
• 1 Feb, interesting answer re interdependence between TfL’s A23 cycle scheme and Lambeth Council’s neighbouring low traffic neighbourhoods, with zip file of redacted emails and presentations.

Wandsworth Council

• 1 Feb, Transport Ctte has lots of papers, including:
  • More bikehangars, with a phase being planned.
  • Various zebra crossings.  Those on Franciscan Road and Broomwood Road are needed because the council (formerly Tory, now Labour) doesn’t have the spine to do low traffic/healthy neighbourhoods, so the crossings are needed to help kids get to school.  In the case of Broomwood, its private school parents driving miles across London to drop their kids off, creating the problem that the zebra has to solve.  There’s other zebras on the B305 Westbridge Road/Vicarage Crescent corridor.
  • Local Implementation Plan, approved by TfL.  There’s still some Tory nonsense, such as school theatre workshops to teach kids how to stop drivers killing them, but most is useful.  There’s an interesting addition to study the border with Merton’s Plough Lane at the top of Blackshaw Road (north of St George’s Hospital) and the area to Garratt Lane.   WBC has installed a pandemic wanded cycle track along Garratt Lane, and LBM has installed stepped tracks on Plough Lane. The study seeks options to join these up with benefits for people walking & cycling in the area.
  • Daft use of £40k on study re extending the Northern tube line from Battersea Power Station (station) to Clapham Junction.  TfL and Network Rail have always hated the idea as the tube would be swamped at CJ by passengers migrating from the Victoria and Waterloo services.  Their preference is to put energy in Crossrail 2 and with it a big redevelopment of the CJ area (think of a London Bridge-like station redevelopment).
• 7 Feb, Enviro Ctte, includes papers on licencing professional dog walkers.  Council has issued 46 licences, of which 28 are to residents & businesses from other boroughs.  There’s a lot of dogs being chauffeured around.

Westminster Council

• Westminster Council is asking folk for ideas for cycling contraflows in one-way streets and other quick fixes to improve permeability. No deadline.
• Lots of task force committees looking at 2023/4 budgets, such as 17 Jan looking at capital expenditure and 23 Jan looking at several revenue streams including highways.   I don’t think much has changed under the new Labour administration compared to the previous Tories.  The capital plans include huge sums to “stone wash” bits of tourist London such as £20m on Regents Street, yet little is assigned to fix the many streets without dropped kerbs which hinder access for people using mobility scooters or wheelchairs.  The revenue plans include £103m of highways related income, but bemoan WFH and modal shift as creating risks to that huge revenue stream.
• 18 Jan, not my usual topic, but an insight into councils’ legal powers.  Westminster Council has obtained position of and is selling a flat in West Kilburn where the absentee owners haven’t paid council tax since 2006.  Building’s managing agent can’t find them either.  Decision papers explain the legal process.
• 25 Jan, decision to spend £1.75million on the Vigo and Sackville Streets scheme, post consultation. The streets were filtered in 2021/22, so this is an urban realm scheme to widen pavements, plant trees, repaint cycle lanes and lay a lot of paving slabs.