City of change

The Square Mile has grasped the bull by its horns, says Carlton Reid, and now leads on active travel progress

THE LIKELIHOOD that your average skateboarder is going to read our transport strategy is pretty slim,” joked one member of the City of London Corporation’s streets and walkways sub-committee meeting on 23 May.

This is unfair to skateboarders, plenty of whom know the law backward and can often run (or skate?) rings around enforcement officers seeking to move them on.

Nevertheless, it’s true that most citizens don’t pay much attention to local authority transport strategies. Until the bollards go in — and overnight many motorists suddenly become transport policy experts and staunch disability rights advocates. No bollards, no interest.

A week after the meeting, just 78 people had watched its YouTubearchived livestream where, among many mundane matters, it was clear that the committee members agreed that the current transport strategy should be revised. It will therefore go further on protecting, enabling and encouraging active forms of transport.

Committee members were invited to “note and discuss” the proposals from the City’s officers, and they did so. Some raised concerns, but these won’t derail the revised transport strategy, which is backed up with firm data and bolstered with hard-hitting background reports. A few (rightleaning) aldermen would like to saturate the City with cars again, but they’re in the minority and likely to remain so.

More changes ahead

For all the arguments about the Corporation being an unaccountable medieval relic working beyond the authority of parliament, the authority in charge of the Square Mile has become phenomenally progressive over the last few years, on transport at least. (Full disclosure: I am a freeman of the City of London). If you’ve trodden the bustling pavements or cycled its streets since the pandemic, you will have seen the changes already wrought.

Now the Corporation’s revised strategy seeks to reduce the number of motor vehicles in the City even further. When designing and managing its streets, the Corporation puts the needs of people walking first. A statement in the document accepts that “delivering priority for people walking may result in delays or reduced capacity for other street users”. People come before cars, reaffirms the updated strategy, which will be published next year.

“Our definition of essential traffic,” it continues, “is walking, cycling, buses, freight and servicing trips with a destination in the City, and private and shared vehicles used by people with particular access needs.”

The City of London Corporation will be working with Transport for London (TfL) on an updated version of London’s congestion charge too, which will be designed to reduce motor traffic.

“Motor traffic reduction remains key,” states the City’s proposed strategy, adding that it plans to “improve the experience of riding cycles and scooters in the City.”

Great news as cyclists are the “single largest vehicular mode counted during peak times on City streets,” said a March report to the Corporation’s transportation committee. At peak times, people cycling represent 40% of road traffic in the City and 27% throughout the day.

Sure, the Square Mile is an outlier, but, wow, what an outlier!

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