25 September - Email from Andrew Bashford, Team Leader (Traffic Projects) regarding Abbey Road
Apparently “most of” what I have said about
Abbey Road is wrong.
Mr. Bashford did not, he says, “deliberately withhold
the consultation
from the people most affected” and the scheme is not to “solely provide a small
benefit to cyclists”. He doesn’t like my reference to accident statistics and says that the road redesign is not “politically correct”
in the way it favours cyclists.
Perhaps he should read his own files again. Street notices to keep pedestrians
informed were rejected because “As there are no such changes (of law)
required as part of the Abbey Road scheme, no street notices were
required.”
Mr. Bashford’s final submission to The Cabinet Member for Transport says that the scheme is “part of
a cycle route condition study which identified safety issues and the scheme
reduces speeds by decreasing road widths. This is achieved by widening footpaths
on both sides and relocating the existing cycle lanes to the widened footway.”
Apart from a reference to the London Cycle Plus Network that’s it. Abbey Road
was virtually destroyed by seven lines of typescript. If the scheme is not “solely
to benefit cyclists” it was certainly the driving force and the possible
by-product of speed reduction is not supported by the experts at The Transport
Research Laboratory (T.R.L.) or the Vice-Chairman of Bexley’s Traffic Scrutiny
Sub-Committee.
On the subject of speed Mr. Bashford said “this road was not identified as one
of the priority roads, based upon its collision history assessment”.
Is that not an indication that accident levels have been low? Now that
we have accidents occurring he seems to want to
rewrite history to make the contrast as favourable as possible.
Andrew Bashford makes many references to his contact with the London Cycle
Network Plus Team (LCN+) and how they have approved the changes in Abbey Road.
LCN+ is The
London Cycling Campaign, a Registered Charity. It’s a pressure group. Their
stated mission is to “influence decision making”. Mr. Bashford may not
like me calling his motives politically correct but rewarding pressure groups
with £400,000 of taxpayers money is certainly a political issue. But let’s look
on the bright side. My criticism of his “naive mathematics” about the car door
risks goes unchallenged. The same for my claim that he did not follow the T.R.L.
and Department for Transport guidelines and that based on their advice the failure
to do so could lead to head-on collisions. Neither was there any rebuff for my suggestion
that the restriction at Florence Road was “malicious” and that the
failure to paint the cycle track there for eight years was a mistake.
Why a scheme the councillor did not believe in was allowed to go ahead remains a mystery. Maybe we
should vote for someone with teeth next time.