Cars should be banned from Richmond Park at the weekends, urges a petition on the campaigning website, 38 Degrees. But despite the park being used by large numbers of cyclists and other people at weekends, the petition, launched 10 months ago, has fewer than 200 signatures.
We noticed this petition through a post this week on the Facebook page of the campaign group, Stop Killing Cyclists.
While some social media campaigns achieve momentum immediately, others take more time to build it, if they manage it at all.
Without publicity, however, they have trouble getting off the ground, so we’d like to give this one a push as we head into the New Year.
Plenty of road cyclists use Richmond Park to train, particularly at the weekend, but it’s also somewhere that parents take their kids on bikes to let them ride around in a relatively safe environment.
Here’s the wording of the petition, which is addressed to local MP Zac Goldsmith; Richmond Park itself is one of the Royal Parks.
If you agree with what the petition is asking, please sign it.
We want to take cars out of Richmond Park and create a safer and pollution free environment for people to enjoy.
We want a ban on cars commuting through Richmond Park during the week. On weekends we want cars to be restricted to accessing the car parks from the nearest gate.
Why is this important?
Richmond Park is a National Nature Reserve, an SSSI and a Grade 1 Listed landscape. The weekend closure would not only enhance the experience for cyclists and other users but would also promote the conservation, protection and improvement of the natural and physical environment of the Park, and its peace and natural beauty for the benefit the public and future generations.
The park is a great asset for SW London, it should be a safe place for families to explore and for people to ride bicycles around without having the roads jammed up with cars.
16 thoughts on “Ban cars from Richmond Park at weekends, urges petition”
There are plenty of roads
There are plenty of roads closed to cars and safe cycle paths in Richmond Park for safe cycling. I’m in favour of preventing through traffic, but banning cars is pretty short sighted. How will all the other users of RP get there and where would they park? Families that have no interest in cycling would no longer be able to use it.
Cars will still access the
Cars will still access the car parks from the nearest gate, so all the roundabouts will still be busy in both directions. It’s an idea with very little merit.
Still better than having all
Still better than having all the roads through the park clogged with cars, even if the roundabouts will still be used by motorized traffic, also would stop the roads being used as a cut through (which surely defeats the purpose of the park as a recreational facility)
It would be a great step to
It would be a great step to ban through traffic in the Park (which makes up 90% of car traffic in the park according to surveys).
Richmond gate could be left open as an entrance exit to inner car parks and Penbrook Lodge. Kingston, Roehampton and Sheen gates all have car parks beside them, so cars could be restricted to just accessing that nearest car park form those gates.
This way people with restricted mobility could still access Pen Ponds and Penbrook Lodge.
I would bet the average speed of cars in the park would fall (currently 25mph accoo Parks Police) with less people rat running.
I’m all for banning
I’m all for banning through-traffic from the park during busy periods especially at w/e. I try not to ride RP during these times as it’s generally an unpleasant experience. First there are now too many cyclists (unless you get there very early), but the traffic adds an unnecessary element of danger which puts me right off. I’ve seen too many cyclists hit the deck because of dangerous/inconsiderate driving (and riding). Let the general park users get the to car parks from whatever gate they’ve come through and that’s it. Cars banned from there onwards.
I think a better idea would
I think a better idea would be to just have a one way system – this would discourage the commuters using the park as a shortcut but still leave it open to recreational visitors. It would (hopefully) also reduce the close overtaking caused by cars trying to pass bikes against oncoming traffic.
Simplest thing to do would be
Simplest thing to do would be to have a charge at each gate to get in, like every national trust place.
Banning cars would be no good for most of us, it would become like like a giant sustrans path with pushchairs and extendible dogs lead across the entire road.
cub wrote:
Banning cars would
I’m afraid so. Just as you have to leave Richmond Park by 8.30am because of the traffic, you have to leave Windsor Park by the same time because of the prams, children, wilfully deaf adult pedestrians and, indeed, the dog leads that extend right across the road (when the yappy little bitemachines are actually ON a lead, which isn’t very often).
What about all of the non
What about all of the non cyclists that use the park?
Why not make the whole park one way, outer lane, clockwise for cars, inner lane counterclockwise for bikes. It would separate cars from bikes, reduce the amount of cars wanting to use the park as a rat run to commute, whilst still keeping it as a park for everyone.
Yes, as suggested above it
Yes, as suggested above it would only be worth doing if there was also investment in the walking areas so people/dogs/prams/biddies/camera-toting-tourists/joggers/toddlers stayed off the road.
Keeping the cars only to the carparks is surely a good idea though and has been talked about as long as I can remember.
With out cars you’d also get
With out cars you’d also get folks with kids on bikes etc on the road, see Bushy Park for good examples of this on sunny weekends.
The aim of the park is to be park, with sites of special scientific interest etc. maintaining or enhancing it for one partical type of user of the park clearly isn’t in there aims.
Having gone to that meeting, banning and one way systems equally where rightly dismissed.
did though come up with this.
“It was agreed that a working group would look at the practicalities and desirability of creating allocated time slots both for competitive and family cycling groups early on weekend mornings.”
be careful what you wish for comes to mind here, I rarely use RP on weekends so it’s a calmer place.
Pointless petition, hence
Pointless petition, hence hardly any signatures. It’s a public park, you can’t ban a section of the population from using it
TheSpaniard wrote:Pointless
Well, it’s a Royal Park, and its managers have a massive range of statutory powers, and can be given more. If you mean it’s a bad idea, that’s another matter and you may be right. I can’t see any easy answers.
For a longtime I have felt
For a longtime I have felt the solution is to make Richmond park One-Way for all
With a dedicated cycle lane…3 bike width…and a car lane.
If you are using the park as a cut through in a car…it adds about 8 mins to your journey either richmond to kingston…or Kingston to richmond…….depending on wether it was one-way clockwise or anti
If you are a cyclist…you may prefer to cycle a particular direction
but the decend and ascend are very similar both ways
No need to overtake cyclists
No need for silly bans on a particular group
It may discourage traffic using it as a short cut rather than a leisure destination
I don’t like the idea of the
I don’t like the idea of the road being one way for bikes. Fine perhaps if you just want to cycle in the park for the cycling, but some cyclists want to get somewhere, even if only to a particular part of the park. Making the road one way would add substantially to bike journey times. There’s an off road option (the Tamsin Trail) but that’s much slower, shared with walkers, and probably not suitable for road bikes or bikes with slick tyres.
bdsl wrote:I don’t like the
the one way was clearly not something the parks where entertaining.
the Tasmin trail is fine with road bikes, broomfield decent requires care but as long as you don’t try to keep up with the MTBers/CX bikes its fine, though wet gravel can chew up nice race tyres.