Islington - a truly 20mph borough?

Islington residents already have 20mph limits on all residential roads.  Following last November's decision by the Council Executive to roll out 20mph limits on all borough controlled MAIN roads, the Council Executive is tonight deciding whether to go ahead with implementation following a statutory consultation.

The recommendation is to proceed with implementation.despite objections from the police, who will not allocate resource to enforce 20mph limits.  Since they do not enforce 30 mph limits this is effectively immaterial. Give me an un-enforced 20mph rather than unenforced 30mph limit any day.

The specific recommendations in the report to the Islington Council Executive tonight are:
2.1 To consider the responses to the consultation on the scheme and the formal objections from the Metropolitan Police.
2.2 To agree to proceed with the implementation of a 20mph speed limit on the Borough Principal Road Network, including those roads designated as part of the Strategic Road Network.
2.3 To note that Transport for London may at a later date exercise their right under section 121(B) of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 to object to the inclusion in the 20mph scheme of roads designated as part of the Strategic Road Network and/or recover their costs of revoking the scheme.

I've campaigned with Islington Living Streets and Islington Green Party along with many other Islington groups for this sensible measure which will both reduce the severity of any collisions and make Islington a more liveable borough, where the long-term health of residents is supported by a more walkable and cycle-able environment.

The campaigning is not over though. There may be no funds for enforcement, but the Council, Transport for London, the Police and the bus companies can ensure their drivers stick to 20mph through Islington creating an array of moving vehicles keeping speeds at 20mph.

The next objective is to civilise the Transport for London Road Network (TLRN) running through Islington.  This means tackling the A1, which may go all the way to Edinburgh but as it passes through Islington it is a residential road where many people, including some of the poorest residents, live, work and shop.

Hopefully Mayor Johnson and his Deputy Mayor for Transport Isabel Dedring will rise to the occasion and see Islington Council's bold move as an opportunity to trial 20mph on their roads.  With 20mph on all other Islington roads, it would be relatively straightforward to conduct a trial.  Last night at a transport meeting in Camden, Isabel Dedring asked for positive ideas from the public.  I hope she sees this as a constructive suggestion.

Time for a new hashtag?

The #cyclesafe hashtag has generated a bit of Twitter discussion about the need for #walksafe as well as #cyclesafe.  Carlton Reid has suggested that  #peoplesafe might get more long term traction than either #walksafe or #cyclesafe and Joe Dunkley suggested yesterday that we need "Cities Fit For People", which is of course exactly what we all need.

Cities Fit For People?

The Times campaign for Cities Fit For Cycling has been admirable in its dogged determination to galvanise debate about safety on our roads following the horrific collision suffered by their reporter Mary Bowers.  The London cycling community led in particular by Danny Williams of Cyclists in the City and Mark Ames of i-bike London have brilliantly helped the Times take that debate all the way to parliament.

Last year  sixteen cyclists and seventy seven pedestrians lost their lives on London's roads, but if you ask most Londoners they assume that many more people lose their lives cycling than walking.  This is probably because most people don't identify specifically as pedestrians.  There's no gear to buy for urban utility walking, no shops to act as hubs for engagement around walking issues and people don't tend to think of walking as transport.  Cycling by contrast has many tribes and generates inspiring levels of enthusiasm for change.

In the last week, two pedestrians have suffered terrible deaths in collision with Heavy Goods Vehicles while crossing the road in London.  On 21st February the Walthamstow Guardian carried the headline "Elderly woman killed by lorry" and just a few days earlier on 17th February the Surrey Comet carried the unbearable headline "Man decapitated after being run over by a lorry" following a crash in Tooting.  These two deaths merited no national coverage despite the death of a passenger on a coach crash being national headline news for a couple of days and despite the intense focus on road danger in London generated by the Times Campaign.  

The excellent See Me Save Me Campaign, dedicated to reducing lorry danger and saving lives, run by Roadpeace presents worrying statistics showing that over sixty-fives are particularly vulnerable in collisions.  "One in eight pedestrians hit by a lorry died, and the figure rises to one in four for those over sixty five who account for almost half (46%) of pedestrian deaths." Further, "Pedestrian deaths mainly occur at junctions (74%)."  This suggests there are two issues requiring urgent examination:

• Why are so many older people being killed when crossing the road?  
• Why are so many people on foot killed at junctions?

And a series of junction related queries to be answered:

• How many pedestrian deaths were on green man crossings? 
• Is there a correlation between the length of "solid" green man times and pedestrian deaths?
• Did vehicles involved move forward on flashing amber?
• How many of the collisions involved lorries?
• Of the lorries involved, were they fitted with front and side sensors, sideguards and mirrors?  

The Times eight point manifesto has much in it to improve the safety of people on foot as well as those on bikes, particularly in terms of blind spot issues, the need for mirrors, sensors and side guards. We just need our MPs and those running our local authorities to be made aware that there's an issue around walking safety too.  

The call for 20mph should be beefed up though.  The deaths are happening at junctions on main roads not on quiet residential roads.  While I'm delighted that 20mph is gaining traction in residential areas, what people in cities need is 20 mph limits on all roads where "people live, work and shop". Holloway Road near me in Islington may be the A1 going all the way to Edinburgh but it is also a road where many people live, work and shop with a tragic history of road deaths.  Most thinking people understand that urban journey times are controlled by through-put at junctions and not by the speed at which the ground is covered between traffic lights. A default 20mph urban speed limit could be implemented quickly at relatively low cost and would immediately reduce the severity of any collisions.  

We need to show politicians they can change some things quickly.  Local authorities could ensure that all planning permission comes with a condition that all construction vehicles are signed up with the Freight Operator Recognition System (FORS) or an equivalent and put rigorous checks in place to ensure compliance.  Any HGV on the road in the service of a local authority should be compliant with FORS or similar and driver training on pedestrian and cyclist awareness mandatory.  In any urban area where there is a large construction project, there should be regular changing places training aimed at both pedestrians and cyclists.  These measures will cost peanuts compared with the huge infrastructure investment that is also being called for.  It is more about raising awareness of the danger posed by very big lorries and introducing reasonable measures to mitigate the risk.  There is no reason to delay.

Enough is enough?

Once again, last night cyclists and pedestrians descended on Kings Cross to express their anger and sadness at the terrible death toll on London's roads and to send a message to the Mayor and Transport for London (TfL) that we need streets designed for movement of people on foot and on bikes, not just those in vehicles.  The event was organised by Bikesalive who claim that "polite meetings and symbolic action have had no effect" and the time has come to say enough is enough with peaceful direct action to close the gyratory for an hour a week until TfL start to design our streets for people flow not vehicle flow.

Green mayoral candidate, Jenny Jones lead the way on her bike followed by hundreds of cyclists and pedestrians filling the streets around the traffic dominated gyratory with noisy calls of "where's Boris?".

There were many pedestrians amongst the cyclists and plenty of people who were clearly not "transport geeks", just Londoners infuriated by the way our streets are managed and prepared to come along to show they care.  One woman passing through Kings Cross on her bike who hadn't known about the demo in advance, joined in saying she was "so glad the demo was happening - I nearly get killed here every day".  

The policing was exemplary.  Officers were sensitive to the strength of feeling about road death and injury. They coped admirably with the lack of leaders, enabled the demo to take place and kept people safe.  

As Jenny Jones said in her blog "road deaths and injuries are still too often seen as unavoidable in a modern society", clearly this has to change.  It is absolutely not acceptable that so many families should pay such a high price for travelling on London's roads.  I'll be there next week and hope others will too.

Pay as You Go Driving - the time is right

Last month while much of London's media were taking a look at Boris' election bus, Darren Johnson AM was hosting a launch of a report he'd commissioned from Professor John Whitelegg and Phil Goodwin: Pay as you go: managing traffic impacts in a world-class city.

John Whitelegg opened by outlining some key issues: congestion, damage to the economy and air pollution that London has to address to achieve a better future as a world-class, healthy and socially-just city.  The prognosis is pretty stark.  London is the most congested city in the UK and in Europe with traffic delay costing £1.58 billion annually.  According to Transport for London (TfL) estimates, £17 is lost for every hour of traffic delay with estimated costs ranging from £2-4 billion per annum and the wider costs on tourism and business logistics unquantified.  London is slipping down the league of good places to live as other cities make themselves more attractive by cleaning up their air and tackling congestion.

Atkins reported in 2008, that the economic cost of congestion in London was £9 billion in 2005 and will be £20 billion by 2025.  So why do drivers in Hamburg, Munich and Frankfurt waste less time in traffic than London drivers?  London needs to be as good a place to live as Frankfurt, otherwise Frankfurt will take over as the financial centre.

Clearly more than 4000 deaths per annum due to air pollution is unacceptable, in 1952 when 4000 died in the Great Smog, politicians took action and in 1956 the Clean Air Act was introduced.  In 2008 4000 deaths were attributable to air pollution and no one has acted.  London is grade "F" for air pollution, with cities like Berlin, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Vienna and Zurich scoring significantly better.

Whitelegg reckons that we should learn from the existing congestion charge, scale it up to include the whole Greater London area, make it more high tech, increase the revenue ratio, deal with future growth in population and improve our economy, making London the world's best city.  Wryly he suggested the existing congestion charge is too high, with much too much spent on the system.  I sat there imagining the headlines "Greens commission report stating congestion charge too high - shock", but following through the case, he clearly has a point.

The current congestion charge is successful, but covers too small an area.  If London's Mayor expects growth, the impacts of congestion and air pollution cannot be ignored. A Pay as you Drive system would give drivers the opportunity to change their behaviour to take advantage of traveling at cheaper times of day or on cheaper roads.  There have been many reports on road pricing over the years, all have concluded that pay as you Drive would work.  In 1964 Ruben Smeed thought Pay as You Drive would be best, but the technology just wasn't available to implement it. It was also the preferred choice of Eddington in a report in 2006.

The design criteria have not yet been specified, but Whitelegg was convincing in his description of a system piggy-backing on existing schemes, following interrogation of technical and ICT programmes elsewhere.  His vision is of a system that charges by the kilometre, by the length of street travelled and by time of day providing both relief from congestion and an improvement in air quality.  Key issues to be addressed would be guarantees of privacy and the protection of the interests of low-income groups, women, key workers, small businesses, shops and newsagents.  There'd also need to be a clearly articulated walking, cycling, public transport and car-sharing strategy to deliver an increase in each of these modes.  If these are all addressed then Pay as you Drive offers the holy grail of benefits to the economy, benefits to health and a reduction in carbon emissions.

The social justice case is clear.  Low income groups use buses, have low levels of car ownership, yet are five times more likely to be killed on the roads than their wealthier neighbours.  By reducing traffic volume and speed low income groups will be helped.  He also showed the diagram from the Living Streets report Driven to Excess by Josh Hart showing a direct correlation between increased traffic levels and less social interaction between neighbours.

There is also a very strong revenue case for pay as you go driving.  The current congestion charge has generated £2.182 billion in eight years.  A London-wide pay as you go system could generate £1billion per annum to invest in public transport and walking and cycling projects.

Whitelegg concluded by saying that the time is right to address the economic damage caused by current levels of congestion and pollution to make London into a world-class city.  It can be done through a pay as you go system.  There are no other viable options on the table - all Londoners would benefit and he could not think of any group who would not benefit.  He called on Darren Johnson to build both a political debate and a consensus for pay as you go driving in the capital.

The report has been peer reviewed by Phil Goodwin and Chris Nash as Whitelegg wrote it.  Phil Goodwin spoke briefly and asked "Why now?"  There is "always a reason why NOT now".  He said there have been several reports into road pricing over the last fifty years, at least one per decade and described it as "the only policy instrument available that would pay for itself".  All the road-pricing reports have said that road-pricing is do-able and do-able fairly.  The political response has always been, "that sounds great for ten years time".  Ten years in political speak is "not in this administration and not in the next one - so I don't need to deal with it now".  Goodwin's message was that we have to make this an issue for NOW.

Eleanor Besley from Sustrans raised the idea of highway space allocation with one third for walking and cycling, one third for public transport and one third for cars and lorries.  She also said that other countries fully enforce low speed limits specifically to encourage walking and cycling.

John Stuart an airport campaigner, felt that by tackling congestion with pay as you go driving, we'd obviate the need for airport expansion.  He also felt that noise should be added to the case in relation to impacts on health from congestion.  In his response, Whitelegg quoted Kushman and Wakefield on the relative economic performance of cities.  London is not doing well and others are streaking ahead.  He said we can choose not to charge for the economic costs of congestion (rising obesity, poor air quality etc) but if we choose not to charge, those costs don't disappear, they have to be met from elsewhere.

Gordon Telling from the Frieight Transport Association said he had "no philosophical difference with pay-as-you-go".  He wanted to know if charges would be universal or differentiated and suggested that huge savings could be made using out of hours deliveries along with reductions in congestion and pollution.  The 1984 lorry ban case was made on noise grounds, but deliveries between 1.00 am and 4.00 am could engender huge savings via logistics: in Germany logistics solutions have reduced lorry miles by 60%.

A questioner from London Travel Watch said that public acceptability was the elephant in the room.  He went on to say "I'm signed up to this but good luck to you Greens".  He then cited the "shocking" recent campaign against Westminster parking charges by the Evening Standard.  Whitelegg suggested that aspirations and policy objectives for world-class city status should be clearly demonstrated, the options available inspected to clarify the case that the benefits are not deliverable without pay-as you-go driving.  If it doesn't happen London will suffer.

Sian Berry from the Campaign for Better Transport asked if pay-as-you-go is compatible with the existing cordon-based Low Emissions Zones. Whitelegg said there was fundamental compatibility in that higher emitting vehicles would pay higher rates per km travelled.  Pay-as you-go would replace the existing LEZ and would eliminate the issue of "grumpy residents finding themselves on the wrong side of a line on a map".  The flexibility of the pay-as-you-go system allows people to choose how to avoid the charge - a nudge towards different behaviour and an awareness that "my car is not the only option".

Sian Berry also asked about using a cost benefit analysis (CBA) approach to making the case for pay-as-you-go.  Phil Goodwin descibed the awkwardness of using CBA on road-pricing - it makes money and so the numbers look odd.  He felt that a cost benefit analysis from the driver's perspective would show benefit.  On the politics of pricing, he said it is an illusion that "all you need is consensus".  rather he thought that stages are required for incremental implementation.  At each stage theoretical benefit should be converted to local advantage so people are clear that many more benefit than lose.

John Whitelegg's last report for the Green Assembly members was into the viability of a cable car instead of a new fixed river crossing and that has already made its way from the drawing board to reality - due for completion shortly.  If this latest report can make it into the real world so quickly, there may be hope yet that London can compete with other European cities for liveability.

Congratulations are due to Darren Johnson for commissioning this report and for realising that there is a constructive and achievable solution to the problems grappled with daily by Londoners.  Let's hope that politicians from other parties show as much imagination and have the courage to acknowledge the multiple problems that our car dependent travel culture entail.

What price patience? Why I'll be joining the Vigil at Kings Cross on Tuesday.

For those of us campaigning for more people-friendly streets, this year and particularly the last few weeks have been desperately sad.  It has felt as if news of deaths and serious injuries involving both pedestrians and cyclists has come horribly frequently with families and communities mourning the sudden loss of family or friends.

Shortly after the death of Deep Lee at Kings Cross I received an email from someone I've worked with closely on local voluntary projects over the last two years.  The email was brief and simply stated that her father, Leslie Michaelson, was killed at Kings Cross in May 1997, 14 years ago: knocked off his bike by a lorry at the junction where Deep Lee recently lost her life.

This information was shocking on many levels.  Firstly that my friend had lost her father in such a tragic and sudden manner, but also that nothing has been changed at the junction in the intervening years.  Leslie Michaelson's death was just 14 years ago but is outside the 10 year statistics used by the authorities who manage our streets and so is effectively invisible.  This makes the choice of Kings Cross for a vigil on Tuesday night particularly poignant and emphasises the need for us to learn from each of these tragic deaths.

Vehicles filter to one lane as they pass through the junction at Kings Cross.

Two common factors in collisions resulting in death or serious injury are junction design and heavy goods vehicles with poor visibility around their high cabins, leaving people on foot and on bikes very vulnerable.  We need to address both issues urgently.  Jenny Jones has written to the Mayor about Kings Cross asking that northbound vehicles travelling along Grays Inn Rd filter to one lane before arriving at the junction, rather than as they pass through it.  This would mean that there would be space at the junction to create a safe place for people to cycle and there would be less jostling for a position on the road.  However at a public meeting last week in Camden,  Transport for London officials are reported to have told Deep Lee's boyfriend that a cycle lane could not be introduced at the junction because it would "cause considerable queues".  This suggests that our collective priorities are strangely skewed.  What price patience?

We have to work together to achieve fundamental change for London's roads.  This means learning the lessons from every death, reallocating road space for cycling, slowing all vehicle speeds, allowing sufficient time for people to cross roads, taking action to ensure that lorries are driven to the highest standards and that drivers receive appropriate training and support to help them drive through the capital with care.  If we are going to achieve this, we have to work with Transport for London, with freight operators and with each other, whether we drive, walk or cycle on London's streets.  We owe this to the people who have lost their lives.  The time for anger and blame must pass, we need urgent collaboration to address the systemic failure on London's roads.

This is is why I will be at Kings Cross on Tuesday evening at 6.00 and why I hope that many people will join us. 

Air Pollution - Let's not "dilly-dally"

Parents from Canonbury School with Jenny Jones campaigning for clean air

Yesterday I attended a Camden and Islington Air Quality Summit at Camden Town Hall. The Council Chamber was packed to hear what health, transport and air quality experts had to say.  It was good to see Councillor West Leader of Islington Council, who has recently been persuaded of the serious impacts of transport on the health of residents but a pity she was unable to stay for all the presentations as there is much for Islington Council to do.

We learnt that London air is polluted with emissions from vehicle exhausts and from minute particles from tyre and brake disk wear. On average, the lives of Londoners are being shortened by 11.5 years because of air pollution, streets like the Euston Road are breaking European and World Health Organisation limits many times over and more than 4,000 people are dying in the capital each year because of poor air quality.

Worryingly, children are the worst affected. They breath in twice as much pollution as adults because their mouths are closer to the level of vehicle exhaust pipes where concentrations of pollutants are highest. Children also suck in more polluted air than adults because their energy levels are higher, their lungs are bigger in relation to their bodies than adults and their lungs are not fully developed. Professor Frank Kelly, Director of the Environmental Research Group at Kings College, was stark in his description of a generation of children living near busy roads who will reach adulthood without ever developing full lung function.  This is disproportionately the case for children of lower income and ethnic minority families.

Professor Kelly was very clear that there is a solution.  "We simply have to remove the source of the pollution"  and went on "the more we dilly-dally on this, the more people will suffer respiratory problems".  

The presentation from Isabel Dedring, Deputy Mayor for Transport, made clear that Boris and Transport for London are "dilly dallying". Having just seen images of diesel particulates embedded in a child's lung, the Mayor's programme of sticking pollution to the ground near the air pollution monitors on Euston Road appeared utterly inadequate. The lack of ambition in tackling this serious health emergency is shocking and tragic in equal measure and was brilliantly illustrated by the TfL projections that even by 2050 we will not be breathing clean air. As Professor Kelly made clear, there is a solution.  We just need "to remove the source of the pollution" and that must mean fewer and cleaner cars on our roads.

Why are we so sanguine about this serious health risk? Many of us know children with asthma and others suffering lung or cardio vascular diseases and yet we continue to allow pollution creating vehicles to drive unimpeded through built up areas where many people will breath in the poisonous air.  The scale of damage to health from air pollution puts the dangers of alcohol, smoking, drugs and road traffic collisions in the shade.  There seems to be a collective lack of outrage and a paucity of imagination: We just need "to remove the source of the pollution".  London could be so much better if only we dared to imagine a city with fewer vehicles, cleaner air and a more walkable and cycle-able, people-friendly street environment.