Forum Topic

scrap the King Street Chiswick High Road cycle lane scheme

Correct link here for people to sign https://www.change.org/p/hounslow-and-h-f-councils-scrap-the-king-street-chiswick-high-road-cycle-lane-scheme?signed=true

Rae Lewis ● 1468d29 Comments

I'll sign but sadly its a bit late for that

Andy Jacobs ● 1468d

I'll sign but sadly its a bit late for thatLets hope you are right its utterly outrageous that people are still moaning about a little bit of cycle infrastructure when we have seen how heavily used cycle lanes are across the city as evidenced by installed digital counters.

Matthew Swain ● 1468d

“A little bit of cycle infrastructure” so in what way could this “little bit”make  cycling  so much better?  Is it worth the chaos and disruption caused to the majority of road users? Remember us, the majority? . How many millions spent on this”little bit”?

Maggie Dodge ● 1468d

Totally support cycle lanes in central London it makes sense but there is zero justification for the suburbs and I would hardly use the term heavily used in Hammersmith or chiswick. With winter coming it will be empty except for a few users. The majority of people do NOT use the cycle lane but walk and drive. The chaos it is causing is totally unjustified.

Jayne Thorburn ● 1468d

Its a little bit in terms of allocation of space on London roads for vunerable road users and also in terms of budget. Last time IO checked only a meagre 5% was allocated to cycling from the TFL budget. Also there is no 'us',  many people who cycle also drive. Anyone who works and pays taxes also contributes to the road budget so the 'us' you have in mind (of the Onsie variety) should not get special priority even if in reality they have done for many years.

Matthew Swain ● 1468d

This petition was set up over 7 months ago by a Conservative candidate for Ravenscourt Park Ward in London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. Liam was moved to another ward after he had to apologise when he was exposed for lying that the bike shops on King St had signed his petition. The Chairman of the Ward stepped in and was even more hapless in his single-issue campaigning against the cycle lane. The Conservatives got hammered in the Council election and they have been silent ever since.Sign away. The triumph of hope over experience.

Paul Campbell ● 1468d

It will be interesting to see what happens when updated air pollution figures are published for the Hammersmith Gyratory to Chiswick Roundabout stretch, and the extra deaths projected.

Paul Charlton ● 1468d

The phrase "tilting at windmills" comes to mind.

Richard Greenhough ● 1468d

" Its a little bit in terms of allocation of space on London roads for vunerable road users "Poor you ! The likes of yourself, Pike, and Robinson - "vulnerable" . My heart bleeds !! Whereas the truly vulnerable pavement users who have been dissauaded from venturing out and taking their chances and whose absence convenienttly won't be noted be noted by any of your digital counters, can be safely ignored."Active Travel" in fact priorises cycling at the expense of pedestrians. In fact "Active Travel"  offers predestrians no benefits whatoever only costs in terms of less pavement space, over and above the pipe dream of abolishing all cars whether IC or electric from our roadsmichael adamsOTOH if it was a troll, then I can only say 10/10

Michael Adams ● 1468d

Matthew, where is the digital counter for all to see on CS9?Tom shared with us a lovely picture of one on Embankment, I think, but oddly one doesn't seem to have been installed here.

David Lesniak ● 1468d

It's been, what, half a day since we had one?And yet, there seems to be no answer as to what would it happen once the C9 is removed. Traffic will NOT improve. Congestion will STILL remain, as there is today, EVERY DAY, on Oxford Road North and CHR leading up to the roundabout (where there is, notably, NO cycling infrastructure).These threads, day after day after day, fail to remember one key point: the sheer increase in the number of vehicular journeys in London. There's 5 car journey for every van journey. Journeys on non-A roads have increased almost 40% since the 1990s.

Francis Sheehan ● 1468d

Matthew, where is the digital counter for all to see on CS9?Did I say there was one? Please ask for one,  I remember a lot of anti lobby groups claiming the cycle lane on embankment (CS3) was never used, that is until the digital counter turned up.  Suddenly we could evidence how many cycling journeys were done in winter, rainy days etc. Tell you what, those numbers came in handy when rebutting the anti's arguments.  There is even a twitter handle dedicated to CS3 such is the cult status of that bike lane,  I have no doubt that CS9 will have the same following.

Matthew Swain ● 1468d

It would indeed be an excellent idea to get a digital counter up with the upgrade to the central section and I think everyone supportive of C9 would welcome it. Of course a diminishing hardcore of Onesies will continue to claim that any data that runs against their beliefs has been manipulated. We've seen the same with climate-change deniers, and it's not surprising there's an overlap in membership between the two groups.

Tom Pike ● 1468d

You don't need to wait until air pollution figures are published, there is an air quality monitoring station on Chiswick High Rd that measures air quality every hours, 24 hours a day and all the data is available on the internet. London Borough of Hounslow - Air Quality monitoring service (airqualityengland.co.uk) The good news is that air quality has improved year on year.  Air quality is a complex subject and affected by many factors but the data clearly disproves the claims made by opponents of the bike lane that somehow it has made pollution worse on the High Rd. The key thing to reduce pollution from vehicles is reduce the number of polluting vehicles.  The speed of the vehicles along the High Rd isn't significant given it has always been slow.  You can't reduce pollution by making driving easier — that would be like claiming you can reduce obesity by making it easier for people to stuff themselves with cake.

Michael Robinson ● 1468d

"You can't reduce pollution by making driving easier — that would be like claiming you can reduce obesity by making it easier for people to stuff themselves with cake."Or like claiming that you can reduce pollution by making it more difficult for people to cycle instead of using cars.

Paul Campbell ● 1468d

Let’s take the cycle lane out,  at a cost of millions and see. It was experimental going in . Seems only  fair.  There are instances where they’ve removed cycle lanes where improvements have been achieved.  There are many areas where cycle lanes and LTNs have caused and continue to cause gridlock.

Maggie Dodge ● 1467d

Nor can you reduce pollution by making driving harder. That was the plan, force people out of their cars by making life difficult. Nice. It failed, for various reasons.  Why isn’t important but it definitely failed.Taken from The Conversation“If road space is taken away from cars to create cycle or bus lanes, then congestion will initially increase. But the additional delays will prompt some drivers to make other arrangements, and congestion will revert to what it had been.”

Maggie Dodge ● 1467d

The article you quote doesn’t say what you claim it says.You don’t reduce pollution by reducing congestion, you reduce pollution by reducing the number of cars.

Michael Robinson ● 1466d

My point was that the suggestion was,  if you make driving more difficult people will stop driving. They haven’t , nor has there been the rush to take up cycling.

Maggie Dodge ● 1466d

The equipment that has measured an increase in cyclists along CHR doesn’t care what you think.

Michael Robinson ● 1466d

I'd like to know under which logic traffic in areas WITHOUT the cycle lane should benefit from not having the cycle lane but I guess that'd be a step too far.

Francis Sheehan ● 1466d

I couldn't get my head around your point, sorry.  Are you asking what the benefit of not having a cycle lane is?

Maggie Dodge ● 1466d

I shall repeat the post you responded to:"Traffic will NOT improve. Congestion will STILL remain, as there is today, EVERY DAY, on Oxford Road North and CHR leading up to the roundabout (where there is, notably, NO cycling infrastructure).These threads, day after day after day, fail to remember one key point: the sheer increase in the number of vehicular journeys in London. There's 5 car journey for every van journey. Journeys on non-A roads have increased almost 40% since the 1990s."

Francis Sheehan ● 1466d

So does it make any sense to reduce the road space to cars? Because trying to force people off the road isn’t working.

Maggie Dodge ● 1466d

So you wouldn’t want any more 24/7 bus lanes put in either I guess - that reduces the space available to cars doesn’t it?

Andrew Jones ● 1466d

Again, Maggie: go to Acton Lane, the bit of CHR west of HSBC, Oxford Road North, Bath road and check how much space has been taken off cars. Also, and going beyond the limited realms of Chiswick, let's look at the experience of the US, or many Chinese cities. Places like Houston, LA, Urumqi, Chongqing and more. They've build enormous highways everywhere, ripping out neighbourhoods and wreaking havoc throughout. And yet I've sat in gridlock in all of the above cities, at rush hour.

Francis Sheehan ● 1466d

Rather nearer home, Birmingham and the surrounding West Midland area built a whole series of ring roads and motorways in the 1960s, and still suffer from gridlock. They eventually had to build a bypass for the M6 motorway (aka the M6 Toll Road) to try and alleviate the problem.

Richard Greenhough ● 1466d

M6 Toll Road is a joy compared to the non-Toll motorway route. However, if it was free, I suspect we might be back to square 1. Mind you, perhaps if a private company took over the operation of Hammersmith bridge and charged Tolls ...

Andrew Jones ● 1466d

It doesn't have to be a private company that would charge tolls for Hammersmith bridge.The government arrangement is that TfL and LBHF need to pay 2/3rds of repair costs (until TfL are financially self-sustaining then it will be all costs) and tolls are an obvious way to fund these costs.

Michael Robinson ● 1466d