Reservations expressed by Hackney and Tower Hamlets Friends of the Earth with regards with regards to the proposed North South Cycle Route

by | Jun 30, 2019 | Blog: All Things Mile End, All Things Tower Hamlets, Community, Democracy

Below is the a copy of the submission given by Hackney and Tower Hamlets  Friends of the Earth to Transport for London (TFL), with regards to the proposed North South Cycle Route (Hackney to Canary Wharf). Demonstrating that concerns by residents go beyond simplistic divisive rhetoric of cyclists vs car owners:

These representations are from Hackney and Tower Hamlets Friends of the Earth. We are campaigning to improve air quality. We are proposing an exemplar project in St Paul’s Way to improve the currently poor air quality in this street which is home to four schools.  We are seeking to achieve this by reducing the number of vehicles in the street; lower emissions from the buildings in the area, and more greening.

We are therefore strong supporters of improved cycle facilities in the area. However, there are some detailed aspects of the current scheme on which we have reservations.

  1. We are keen to reduce vehicles “rat-running” through the heart of the area along the B140 (St Paul’s Way/Devons Road/Devas Street) or along Bow Common Lane.
    1. We are concerned that potentially the “No left turn” from Mile End Road (westbound) into Burdett Road (southbound) could encourage this. Have you done any modelling on traffic reallocation? We note that levels of traffic southbound on Burdett Road should decrease, which is good news provided it is not diverted onto the internal streets here.
    2. We are pleased to see the various restricted turns between Burdett Road and St Paul’s Way as this will tend to reduce traffic on St Paul’s Way.
  2. We would urge you to rethink the changes to Locksley Street and Clemence Street for two reasons:
    1. Locksley Street is used for access to Mile End Children’s Park & Pavilion.  This traffic will be forced onto Clemence Street which is residential, very narrow and not adequate for this task. Could a safer and greener solution be to provide visitor parking/drop-off elsewhere on a distributer road (see b. below for details)?
    2. Opening up the entrance of Clemence Street onto Rhodeswell Road is unsafe as there is poor visibility caused by the sharp bend just to the north. We appreciate you have attempted to improve this by widening the pavement just to the north of the junction, but we do not believe that this is sufficient to create a safe solution. An alternative solution would be to make Turners Road one-way north-eastbound. Traffic that currently travels south-west along Turners Road could continue along St Pauls Way (B140) and turn left This would have the added advantage of reducing through traffic on this residential street in accordance with Tower Hamlets emerging Liveable Streets programme (this area is in Phase 3). This in turn would allow you to bring forward the stop line on St Paul’s Way westbound freeing up parking space at the closed end of Locksley Street to provide parking for park visitors accessed from St Paul’s Way. 

Further to our representations set out in my earlier email, our attention has been drawn by local residents to another issue we had not been aware of before and which is causing considerable concern to them and us.

In the current proposals the right turn from West India Dock Road (northbound) into East India dock road (eastbound) is to be banned.

Currently there are significant number of commuter coaches which travel from Kent to Canary Wharf and on to the City, which carry out this movement in the evening in order to get access to the Blackwell Tunnel. With this turn banned the coaches will tend to carry straight on north up Burdett Road to gain access to the tunnel via Mile End Road. This is quite a long detour and is already seriously congested during the evening rush hour when they will be using it. So there will be a significant risk that drivers will try to find alternatives. We are concerned that one of those alternatives will be to use St Paul’s Way. We therefore suggest that a “No right turn” could be introduced on the turn from Burdett Road into St Paul’s Way during the evening rush. I look forward to hearing your suggestions for dealing with this potential problem which would not be in the spirit of the Mayor’s Healthy Streets policy.