Cycling in London could increase tenfold and pavements could be widened to allow for physical distancing and queueing outside shops, under plans to overhaul the capital’s streets post-lockdown.
As part of the London Streetscape plans, new walking and cycling routes along major corridors would be fast-tracked , including temporary cycle lanes along routes such as the busy thoroughfare of Euston Road.
City Hall is under pressure to increase tube services but unions have expressed concern about doing so without agreement on protecting the health of passengers and staff.
Boris Johnson said at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday that a crucial part of efforts to get transport to run safely involved “a bigger and more expansive tube service” so that people could observe physical distancing,
But the office of the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, said millions of journeys a day would need to be made by other means, with London’s public transport capacity potentially running at a fifth of pre-crisis levels.
If people were to switch even a small fraction of those journeys to cars, Khan said, London risked grinding to a halt, air quality would worsen and road danger would increase.
The mayor and Transport for London (TfL) said they would work with boroughs to focus on three areas:
The “rapid construction” of a strategic cycling network, using temporary materials, with new routes, aimed at reducing crowding on public transport.
A “complete transformation” of local town centres so that people can walk and cycle where possible, including widening footways on high streets so that people can safely queue outside shops.
Reducing traffic on residential streets and creating “low-traffic neighbourhoods”.
TfL said its modelling suggested there could be a tenfold increase in distances cycled, and up to five times the amount of walking compared with pre-coronavirus levels, if travel demand returned.
Pavements have already been doubled in size at locations such as Camden High Street and Stoke Newington High Street, and widened at six other locations – two in Southwark and one each in Hackney, Lambeth, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Croydon.
Calling on anyone who can work from home to continue to do so, Khan said: “I urge the government and boroughs to work with us to enable Londoners to switch to cleaner, more sustainable forms of transport and reduce the pressure on other parts of our transport network once the lockdown is eased.”
The plans were welcomed by organisations such as Living Streets, a walking charity, which said the pandemic had highlighted the importance that walking plays in people’s lives.
“Where London’s pavements aren’t suitable for safe social distancing, it is vital widening happens to ensure people aren’t forced into the paths of oncoming traffic,” said its director, Stephen Edwards.
However, there was criticism from the Green party, which said the mayor was now “tackling a handful of high streets” to make up for “snail’s pace progress” in recent years.
“Key workers have led the way by taking up cycling to make safe, socially distanced trips to work, and the mayor is trailing behind playing catch-up when we’ve already suffered weeks of drivers speeding and making our roads much more dangerous,” said Caroline Russell, a London assembly member.