Ask for a more ambitious traffic reduction scheme in Bow (Harley Grove and Coborn Street)
There is a proposal currently out for consultation to improve road safety and reduce traffic around the Malmesbury Primary School and Central Foundation Girls' School in Bow. We strongly support these principles. However, the proposed scheme, which primarily consists of new one-way streets, is not good enough. It could easily be made a lot better by making the relevant streets no-through roads and part-time School Streets – a far more ambitious and effective approach. And we are particularly concerned that the new one-way streets do not include any proposal for contraflow cycling nor, in one case, any mitigation for the increased speeds which one-way operation can encourage.
Please do respond by Friday 29 June to ask the borough to do a lot better for these streets; you can either use the webform on the consultation website (scroll to the bottom) or email towerhamlets.consultation@projectcentre.co.uk with your thoughts. If you would like any inspiration, our consultation response is below.
The Tower Hamlets Wheelers consultation response:
We strongly support the principle of reducing through traffic and mitigating its negative impacts in residential streets across Tower Hamlets. We also agree that streets around schools should be particular priorities for this. However, we do not believe that the proposed scheme meets the desired objectives, and we cannot therefore support it. We have significant concerns and suggestions for major improvements as follows:
- The objective of reducing through traffic and unsafe driving in Harley Grove and Benworth St would be achieved much more effectively by simply closing Harley Grove to through motor traffic at its junction with Bow Rd. It is not clear to us why this option has been disregarded in favour of a more complex and less effective proposal of a one-way system and a banned right turn. We therefore urge the borough to seriously look again at this.
- The same rationale applies to Coborn St: closing it to through motor traffic at its junction with Bow Rd would be a much more effective way of reducing through traffic around Malmesbury Primary School. We are particularly concerned about the proposal to make Coborn St one-way without any footway build-outs or other measures to slow traffic speeds, as there is strong evidence that making roads one-way without such mitigation increases motor traffic speeds and danger, as people tend to drive faster when they are confident that they will not meet another vehicle approaching head-on.
- If there is a concern that these alternative proposals would lead pupils’ parents driving into Harley Grove and Coborn Street and undertaking dangerous U-turns or getting stuck amongst other parents’ vehicles, we suggest that these roads could both be made School Streets (i.e. they are closed to non-residents’ vehicles at school run times). School Streets are currently being implemented widely in Hackney and Camden, and have generally proved popular with parents and local residents. We also note that introducing School Streets in Tower Hamlets was a manifesto pledge of the current Labour borough administration.
- In addition to providing major benefits for residents and pupils at the two schools in the area, another great benefit of closing Harley Grove and Coborn Street to through motor traffic at their junctions with Bow Road would be to completely remove two side-road risks from users of Cycle Superhighway 2 (CS2) on Bow Road. We frequently receive feedback that drivers entering and exiting side roads without properly looking are a major source of discomfort and danger for people cycling along CS2, and it would represent a missed opportunity not to remove these risks as part of this scheme.
- We are very concerned that new one-way streets are being proposed without permitting contraflow cycling. This would damage the cycling permeability of the area, preventing convenient cycling access from CS2 to the residential properties, schools and other amenities on Harley Grove and Coborn St. In addition, it is in opposition to the principles of the borough’s cycling strategy (Tower Hamlets: a cycling borough), which aims to roll-out permitted contraflow cycling in many existing one-way streets in the borough, and in opposition to TfL’s London Cycling Design Standards, which state that one-way streets should always permit contraflow cycling unless there is a strong reason not to. If our alternative proposals are not progressed, it is in our view essential that contraflow cycling is permitted on Harley Grove, Benworth St and Coborn St.
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