Camden Council has unveiled plans for redesigning several streets in Holborn as part of its “Liveable Neighbourhood” initiative. And the designs are a far cry from paint on the corner of the road and wide traffic lanes.
The proposals have been drawn up in response to residential surveys and are themselves still open to further consultation. But the draft sketches have been warmly received by the London Cycling Campaign and praised for their ambition.
Camden’s new plans for Holborn are mind-blowingly good: https://t.co/TMRbZYS7yL
Major changes for Theobalds Rd, Southampton Row, Kingsway, High Holborn & further afield. New Oxford Street & Great Ormond St plans look like big changes for better!
Kudos Cllr @AdamDKHarrison 👏 pic.twitter.com/e7mgkR0yKr
— London Cycling Campaign (@London_Cycling) November 7, 2025
The Holborn Liveable Neighbourhood campaign aims “to transform Holborn into a place for people with attractive, healthy, accessible and safe streets for everyone” which includes “clean air, more plants and trees, and beautiful new and improved spaces. We want it to be easy and fast to get around by sustainable and healthy types of transport.”
The project was first launched in February 2024 and feedback and suggestions remains open on the final plans until the summer of 2026. A further consultation on whether to implement those final plans will then be drawn up. The plans are also being part-funded by Transport for London.
The majority of proposals involve either narrowing lanes, making streets one way, or pedestrianising them altogether. Camden Council has also produced detailed factsheets summarising and justifying the changes.
Support for reforming Holborn’s road network is not new, a majority of residents both within and outside the Holborn area supported a council proposal to overhaul a gyratory junction where cyclists have been killed. That initiative was approved in 2022. Under these proposals, that street layout would be changed once again.
There is not a strict timetable for the possible implementation of these proposals but it is hoped that the constant consultation window means that support for these street designs can be maintained in some form.
The proposals will also form part of the Borough-wide cycle network that Camden Council has committed to implementing by 2041 and will utilise “existing main road corridors” and a secondary cycle network of quieter, residential streets. That wider plan is also subject to central government funding and HS2 Road Safety Funds.
7 thoughts on ““Mind-blowingly good” cycle lane proposals unveiled by local council”
LTA will be Fumming
LTA will be Fumming
Um, is there a sequel coming?
Um, is there a sequel coming?
I’m pleased to see the
I’m pleased to see the ambition, and there’s a lot more ‘space for people’ in keeping with the title of the project, but I have noticed that a number of the after images have reduced bike parking. I might put that down to the usual sophistry that comes with these types of images that should be considered as representative of how the space will be used as the photos of decluttered homes taken for estate agent brochures, except some of the before images are also artistic impressions.
Will there be adequate bike hoops so that people on bikes can stop to enjoy the surroundings and use the shops? Will there be spaces allocated for dockless bikes?
FionaJJ wrote:
They could call them … docks? ?
chrisonabike wrote:
I know you are a regular on here, so I’m going to assume you are already familiar with different types of bike parking. Some of it rental docks, some of it secure devices, usually hoops, for private bikes, and some of it for dockless bikes. They are the ones that won’t fit into docking stations. Why you thought I didn’t know the difference between space for dockless bikes, and docks for docking bikes, is for you to know, and for me to speculate.
But for clarity, when I said SPACE allocated for dockless bikes, I meant SPACE, not DOCKS.
Some councils already work with organisations, such as Lime, to allocate dedicated SPACES for dockless bikes, in the hope that if there is a dedicated space, then their users will use them rather than abandon them all over the place. Docks are not required for this. However, I have no objection to the council working with docking bike rental firms too, but I don’t recall any of these featured in any of the projections.
If you’d looked through the images, you’ll have seen in one before photo there was a whole load of dockless bikes in an area of public space. I didn’t check in detail, but they appeared to be sensibly parked, not blocking the pavement or getting in the way despite being a lot of them. But the after image showed the entire space free of any parked bikes – dockless, docked, or secured to cycle hoops. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that as so many people were leaving dockless bikes in the area before, that demand won’t disappear. That would remain the case if a docking station for docking bikes were to be introduced (despite not being in any images).
So the question remains – has bike parking (spaces for dockless, as well as cycle hoops) been considered in any of this?
No fire here. Just me having
No fire here. Just me having my usual dig about dockless bike share.
(Particularly the kind that is just some company mining venture capital by leveraging public space they don’t pay for. I think the whole idea – even the ones managed in partnership with a local authority – is not a great plan. Even docked bike share always requires funding from somewhere AFAICS – and seems to be a fig-leaf for “we didn’t provide enough surface-level public transport and the mobility infra isn’t good enough to persuade many people to run their own bike.”
Dockless requires even more resources and cash because it’s asking for bikes to wander off and require retrieval or be dumped places where they’ll get trashed.
Although very popular in some places – but these places mostly seem to sport 3rd-rate bike and public transport provision. Which … would still be better than most of the UK, of course…
)
Obviously if the authorities have accepted / given up trying to check these then yes, pragmatically providing for what people will do anyway makes sense. Just like we do for cars, i guess.
FionaJJ wrote:
The text accompanying that picture says they will “Open up space for people by relocating paid for, motorbike plus dockless cycle parking to nearby streets including Drury Lane and Wild Street”. Similarly on Kingsway where the current cycle parking in the central reservation has been removed, they say they will be “Providing better and more accessible locations for cycle parking”.