Ealing Cycling Campaign
Newsletter January 2007
Ealing's bus lanes are under attack. The council have threatened to remove a lane in Northolt, and are conducting a review of existing lanes. Bus lanes provide a relatively safe area for cycling, and help cyclists cut through congestion. Ealing Cycling Campaign have objected to their removal. In the face of opposition from bus users, and TfL, the council appears to be backing down.Instead of abolishing the bus lanes in Northolt, they are now proposing to make them peak hour only (7-10, 4-7) instead of all day. During the middle of the day there will be a parking ban on most (all? - hard to tell from plan) of the bus lanes. Ealing Cycling Campaign response is to ask the council to install advisory cycle lanes painted within the bus lanes to help cyclists during the hours when the bus lanes will not be operating. The Council's Unitary Development Plan says that local schemes should not make conditions worse for cyclists or pedestrians. The removal of bus lanes contravenes this requirement, and may be open to legal challenge.
Hanwell
Consultation
The council are asking
for views on the traffic in Hanwell. The consultation is focusing on the area's
five main roads/intersections: Boston Road/Lower Boston Road, Drayton
Bridge Road, Drayton Green Road, Greenford Avenue/Church Road, Uxbridge
Road. The aim is to reduce traffic congestion on the main roads and reduce
the need for rat running, thus improving air quality. They also hope to
enhance safety for pedestrians, cyclists, bus users and motorists.
To complete the survey
online, go to.
http://www.ealing.gov.uk/services/council/consultations/current_consultations/hanwell_area_traffic_consultation/index.html
Deadline 14th February 2007.
The council are planning to install a 20 mph zone in the Fielding area of Northfields. Transport planners have sent details of the plans to local residents. They include raised tables for zebra crossings on Northfield Avenue, and speed humps. While Ealing Cycling Campaign welcomes the introduction of the 20mph zone, we would like to see the speed humps replaced with speed cushions. Speed cushions are far less obstructive to cyclists, and were installed in the 20mph zone to the North of Fielding, so we were suprised not to see them on the plans.
Recent or planned work by the council includes the following:
Fifty new cycle stands
are being deployed, some around the Ealing New Broadway.
Installing improved cycle stands for Perivale House Complex
Resurfacing of cycle paths on A40 west of Greenford.
Widening of cycle paths at Ealing Hospital.
Following the recent spate of sat-nav thefts, which led to a police campaign to raise awareness of this danger, Ealing police are now focusing attention on cycle thefts. With rising numbers of cycles in use, opportunist thieving is on the rise too. We have heard of cycles being stolen from the racks outside Ealing Broadway Station. An accomplice blocks the view of the CCTV camera, while the thief steals the bike. We have also heard of a Brompton being stolen from the railings outside M&S.
A cycle theft prevention workshop was held by the police at Ealing Broadway Centre on 15 October, with information being given out about the immobilise.com registration scheme and offering advice on security. One important message is not to rely on a poor quality lock – it is worth spending a bit more for a good one.
The massive project known as CrossRail is getting closer, whilst relieving pressure on the central lines and providing easy through transport east to west it does not provide cyclists much. Bikes will be allowed but not on the underground stretches – so expect to be turfed out at Acton. The project does allude to ample cycle parking at stations but this is not much consolation. This is something ECC will take further.
Following the outcry when Ealing Broadway Centre cracked down on cyclists parking their bikes on the railings on the 5th floor of the car-park outside Holmes Place, Ealing Cycling Campaign organised a meeting with the centre manager to clarify the issues.
Cycling is not permitted within the multi-storey car park which centre management consider an environment generally hostile to cyclists, and not a good place to park cycles in view of the difficulty of covering them adequately by CCTV. The barrier recently removed outside Holmes Place was intended to protect pedestrians from cars, not for cycle parking. The cycles chained to it were obstructing an escape route from Holmes Place, so Holmes Place removed the barrier for Health & Safety reasons.
In total there are 29 Sheffield stands around the centre, but centre management (Legal & General) recognise that the ones in the alleyway between M&S and Broadway Boulevard are unattractive and don’t count them in the total. Assuming 2 bikes per stand, this gives a capacity of 48 cycle parking spaces. Typically about half of these are in use. All are covered by CCTV, although this is not always immediately obvious as some of the newer cameras are very discreet (if the camera is too obvious, one thief can stand with back to camera while shielding an accomplice committing the crime). There are also a number of Sheffield stands provided by the council around the town centre. The informal cycle parking along the railings (e.g. outside M&S) is very convenient, with typically around 20 cycles parked along these in the middle of a weekday. At this level of parking on the railings, parked cycles do not cause a problem but if numbers were, say, to double then alternative arrangements would need to be considered.
It is vital that anyone who has a bicycle stolen from the stands at Ealing Broadway Centre fills in a police incident report as well as notifying centre management. This will give centre management a crime reference number which can be logged on any CCTV request made by the police - necessary to comply with the Data Protection Act and crucial in finding the thief. There have been two such reports logged in the last 12 months, compared with over 100 thefts reported to the police in the town centre as a whole.
All
members are welcome at our meetings. We usually get together on the first
Wednesday of the month. Our
venue is downstairs at "Cafe Grove" on The Grove, W5.
If
you haven't been before you are very welcome.
P.S. The cafe does very good cheesecake and Polish beer.
