This blog post is from Westminster Healthy Streets, originally published here.
Westminster City Council have released their plans to “get the economy moving again” by reallocating space for walking, cycling and social distancing on their streets. See the announcement here. Will these plans prevent traffic flooding back and keep the clean air and all-age active travel Westminster has experienced during lockdown?
What’s clear is the huge demand for healthy streets: “In just over one week, the city council has received over 500 requests from residents and businesses for temporary measures from right across the city.” Our own interactive map drew over 1,000 suggestions to make walking and cycling better in Westminster (sent out to all ward councillors last week). We’ve now added layers to the map to summarise the suggestions and sketch out strategic measures like low traffic neighbourhoods and cycle routes.Our take on the council’s plans
In short, there’s much to welcome – including school streets, wider pavements, pop-up bike lanes and street closures in Covent Garden. But more will be needed to keep traffic low and make active travel safe and direct enough to replace public transport. The bold measures seen elsewhere in Central London to create miles of car-free streets are missing in Westminster. And the principle of reducing through traffic to create low traffic neighbourhoods, now being widely adopted by other boroughs, is not even mentioned. This is despite the Department for Transport singling out “point closures” (preventing through traffic) as the quickest and cheapest way of reallocating road space for active travel.

Westminster announces space for walking and cycling – LCC
This blog post is from Westminster Healthy Streets, originally published here. Westminster City Council have released their plans to “get the economy moving again” by reallocating space for walking, cycling and social distancing on their streets. See the announcement here. Will these plans prevent traffic flooding back and keep the clean air and all-age active… [Read More]