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New cycling money in latest London local transport funding

Boroughs plan public realm improvements

Transport for London (TfL) has announced £148 million for transport improvements and better public spaces across London’s boroughs. The changes include better cycling and walking facilities as well as safer roads, according to TfL.

The money will contribute to each borough's delivery of its Local Implementation Plan (LIP) on projects that support the Mayor’s Transport Strategy locally.

A TfL spokesperson told road.cc that the cycling element of the LIP funding is additional to the £913 million over a decade that TfL has been spending on large projects such as the planned east-west and north-south cycle superhighways.

"There are a lot of cycling initiatives in there because cycling is a priority for the boroughs, but it's additional to the other cycling funding," the spokesperson said.

The complete breakdown of the funding includes numerous cycling projects or others with a cycling element. That makes it hard to determine the exact amount being allocated to cycling, but from this breakdown of the spending it's at least £4 million.

Cycling projects that will benefit from the funding include:

Hammersmith and Fulham – £150,000 for a new cycle route on the A315;

Merton: £200,000 towards improving cycling conditions in Wimbledon Town Centre, including indentifying how the gyratory can be made safer and easier for cyclists and pedestrians to use.

Newham: £1m to commence the detailed design on the conversion of Stratford Gyratory to two-way operation, reducing the dominance of traffic and  improving conditions for cyclists, pedestrians, public transport users. £120,000 to improve walking and cycling links around the Royal Docks.

Westminster: £320,000 towards developing and implementing cycle schemes over the next three years, including sections of the Central London Cycle Grid, free cycle training, cycle parking, and improved cycle access to the Royal Parks.

Barking and Dagenham: £400,000 to improve the junction between Ballards Road and New Road, addressing long-standing safety and congestion issues, and making it easier for cyclists and pedestrians to use. 

Mayor of London, Boris Johnson said: “This funding is specifically targeted to provide benefits at key locations across London, helping to make the capital’s roads and open spaces safer, more pleasant places to be. Providing better cycling and walking routes, as well as a raft of major improvements to our streets will help to boost the quality of life of those who live and work in our great city. By working with the boroughs to deliver better transport in their areas, we can in turn help to support jobs and economic growth in the capital as a whole.”

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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5 comments

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Mystery Machine | 9 years ago
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While promises of money are all well and good, the main problem in terms of getting any decent infrastructure in place is going to be political will to overcome the objections from NIMBY cagers. Hounslow, for example, has proposed a scheme along Boston Manor Road with at least one option for proper segregated infrastructure. Surprise, surprise, some local residents are going berserk over the potential loss of a few parking spaces, and, unless the local councillors can maintain some backbone, the effort is sunk.

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hampstead_bandit | 9 years ago
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Nothing for Camden?

The 'Dutch' "soft" cycle lane in Royal College Street urgently needs replacing with proper, "hard" (concrete divider) segregated lanes, as it used to have.

If you take a cycle ride north or south on that road, its a battered mess with crushed steel planting tubs, dirt from the tubs on road, missing rubber 'armadillos' and cars / motorbikes just ignoring the paint markings and parking in the cycle lane, or swerving into it without warning

Nice idea on a drawing board where someone had a misguided hard-on for 'Dutch' style infrastructure, but not in a practical world where you need hard segregation to protect cyclists from motor vehicles. Worrying this is? They are looking at rolling this "soft" lane all the way up Kentish Town Road  2

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jacknorell replied to hampstead_bandit | 9 years ago
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hampstead_bandit wrote:

Nothing for Camden?

The 'Dutch' "soft" cycle lane in Royal College Street urgently needs replacing with proper, "hard" (concrete divider) segregated lanes, as it used to have.

If you take a cycle ride north or south on that road, its a battered mess with crushed steel planting tubs, dirt from the tubs on road, missing rubber 'armadillos' and cars / motorbikes just ignoring the paint markings and parking in the cycle lane, or swerving into it without warning

Nice idea on a drawing board where someone had a misguided hard-on for 'Dutch' style infrastructure, but not in a practical world where you need hard segregation to protect cyclists from motor vehicles. Worrying this is? They are looking at rolling this "soft" lane all the way up Kentish Town Road  2

The really surprising (shouldn't have been I suppose) thing is that so many drivers can't stick to a straight line and keep hitting those planters!

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bikebot | 9 years ago
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Out of self interest, I'm disappointed with the £200k allocated to Merton. The Wimbledon town centre redevelopment was originally part of the mini holland bid, and budgeted at £5m. Recent comments from Andrew Gilligan indicated that it would be going ahead, but obviously they're proceeding at a much slower pace than he indicated considering the money committed so far.

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bike_food | 9 years ago
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Someone figured out how to crop and resize in paint?

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