TIME TO TAKE STOCK

JUST OVER a year ago, during the run-up to the local council elections in London, our local groups asked every potential council leader to commit to a series of Climate Safe Streets asks — for delivery on walking, cycling and car-use reduction schemes. Fourteen of those who went on to become council leaders did so, with another two giving qualified statements of support. Included in the list of those candidates who committed to the asks in their borough was Cllr Adam Hug, then opposition leader and now leader of Westminster Council.

May 2024 is not just one year on from the local elections, it also marks one year to go for Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, before he faces a public election again. Given that, it seemed sensible to see exactly how well our borough leaders and Mayor are doing on delivering streets safe for cycling and walking, and a London and boroughs where people can move about safely, healthily and happily without using a motor vehicle. Hence our new report:

Climate Safe Streets: One Year On, One Year To Go

Sitting at that point, TfL’s funding is now at least somewhat stabilised and clearer in its deal with the government — and so borough funding for schemes is also clearer. New leaders have got their feet under the table and all leaders should now be at a point when they can assess what they want to do with the next few years of their council, or what the priorities are.

This is a moment for borough activists to reinforce with council leaders that they did (nearly universally) declare a climate emergency, and that it’s time to act like climate is a crisis (indeed, that we won’t solve the cost of living crisis without reducing our voracious appetite for oil).

Similarly, it’s a moment for LCC to remind the Mayor that while he’s copping a lot of flack for ULEZ expansion right now, if he doesn’t get on with bolder, faster, better delivery, his climate commitment of a ‘net zero’ London by 2030 is looking increasingly untenable. While the boroughs have several years to take more action, he has to get a serious shift on in this last 12 months before the election to lay the groundwork to be nearly at a net zero capital by the end of his potential next and last term.

The full report is downloadable at lcc.org. uk/climate, but what does it say about London and your borough?

Mayoral Delivery

The One Year On, One Year To Go report primarily looks at and uses data from prior to the pandemic to look at long-term trends and then separately looks at more recent delivery against the Climate Safe Streets asks we’ve made of each borough and the Mayor.

Some of that data is really only applicable at a London-wide level — and for that, and Mayoral action over his term so far, there is good news and bad news.

The bad news

Sadiq’s commitment to a net zero London by 2030 looks off-track. London’s driven vehicle kilometres (km) figure was going up and up (according to DfT figures) prepandemic. Obviously, motor vehicle use dropped dramatically in the capital during the pandemic, but the 2021 figures show it rapidly recovering. However, even overall, the reduction in km driven in 2020 amounts to a less than 20% cut on the year before. Set that against Sadiq’s experts who suggest we need to reduce road km driven by 27% by 2030, as well as electrifying a lot of motor vehicles, to reach that net zero goal.

Put another way, we need to reduce road km driven more than we saw during the worst year of the pandemic, on a permanent basis, to fulfil our climate obligations. But instead, we’re seeing car use going back towards prepandemic levels.

The progress on London’s mode share of private motor vehicles compared to other modes is at least not going in the wrong direction (unlike road km driven). Every year, the dial shifts slightly further away from private motor vehicles when it comes to looking at the proportion of journeys made by mode. But whether outer or inner London, private motor vehicle mode share was only dropping just over half a percent a year in the years preceding the pandemic on average.

That rate of progress would need to be significantly increased to get the Mayor to his Transport Strategy target of 20% of journeys done across London by private motor vehicles by 2041. And that target was set before the Mayor’s declaration of a climate crisis and target brought forward a net zero London by 2030. The implied, but never said, reality is we need to turn the dial a lot faster than 20% of journeys done by private motor vehicle by 2041. But even 2041 isn’t currently on target.

This all is to a backdrop of TfL analysis that suggests a majority of motor vehicle journeys done in London could relatively easily be made by other modes. Most motor vehicle journeys are not ferrying tools, heavy goods or parcels from A to B to C to D; they’re single A to B journeys, with no passengers, light loads, short distances etc. So what can Sadiq do now, fast? Simply, it’s reduce the amenity of motor vehicle use and massively boost how safe, comfortable, convenient and cheap other modes are.

Bus expansion, with Sadiq’s Superloop routes, is happening — but with limited roadspace and high congestion, bus expansion has a limit. Tube expansion, as the Elizabeth

Line demonstrates, is not going to arrive quickly or cheaply. And walking already happens for the majority of trips it can easily be done for. So the trick has to be cycling — a mode that is cheap to expand and which can be expanded rapidly.

But for that, Sadiq needs to be willing to switch car lanes for cycle tracks much more boldly and faster than he has done so far. And he’s clearly facing increasing opposition to such an approach from inside TfL. ‘Bus gates’ as found on Stoke Newington Church Street, in the City at Bank and on Bishopsgate, and on more minor roads in Waltham Forest, are a clearly good answer, but one curiously not being picked up by TfL Buses.

So one thing Sadiq should prioritise is ensuring TfL is internally more coherent on delivering to his Transport Strategy: that teams innovate and work together not against each other, as seems to be currently happening.

The good news

The Mayor of London’s commitment to a ‘Vision Zero’ of eliminating serious and fatal collisions from London’s roads by 2041 is broadly on track. This is likely due to the rollout of 20mph zones, active travel schemes and the Met Police’s increasing speed enforcement (the Met is due to enforce one million speeding offences annually by 2024). But we’re still worried on road safety rollout of much safer junction designs. Sadiq and TfL really need to get to grips with both temporary and trial changes at such locations, and finding other ways to deliver cheap changes if he is to increase the rate he is tackling the most dangerous junctions in London.

LCC’s overall recommendations from the report are that the Mayor must accelerate his programme, particularly ensuring ULEZ expansion set for August is not delayed or weakened, get bolder on the schemes and roads he has direct powers over, and solve the current siloed working inside TfL in favour of schemes that deliver for buses and active travel.

Boroughs taking action

There is a clear gulf now in trajectory and action emerging between the boroughs taking action and those not, and broadly, it is more common for inner London boroughs to be taking action than outer, although there are exceptions in both directions.

The four boroughs taking most action to deliver Climate Safe Streets, and furthest along on delivery against their asks, are: Hackney, Camden, Waltham Forest and Lambeth.

Hackney has long led on delivery on reducing motor vehicle use — between 2010 and 2019, the mode share of private motor vehicle use in the borough dropped by 37% — the highest fall among London boroughs. And that delivery accelerated at the start of the pandemic.

It’s also worth noting Waltham Forest’s levels of delivery on active travel are particularly high for outer London, in part due to its ‘mini-Holland’ funding, an approach now being rolled out at a national level. It saw the proportion of journeys done by motor vehicles drop by 19% in the decade pre-pandemic, with much of the shift coming after the point the first mini-Holland schemes went in.

Boroughs failing to deliver

Four boroughs are failing to deliver any real Climate Safe Streets for residents in their boroughs. At the bottom of the table of mode shift away from private motor vehicles prepandemic are: Tower Hamlets, Bromley, Hillingdon and Bexley.

Tower Hamlets is the only London borough where a higher proportion of journeys were being made using private motor vehicles before the pandemic than a decade ago (mode share rose by over 4%). The inner London borough has very low levels of car ownership, but did nothing to constrain car use prepandemic. And since the local elections, Tower Hamlets has elected a Mayor on a manifesto of ‘reopening roads’ by removing active travel and car restriction schemes.

So far, campaigners in Tower Hamlets have been working really hard, with support for our local group from LCC, alongside supportive interventions by the Mayor, Will Norman (the Walking & Cycling Commissioner), TfL, NHS experts on public health and even heads of local schools, to persuade returning Mayor Rahman to steer a course away from actively encouraging more car use and removing schemes that were enabling communities to walk and cycle more. But we wait to see if Climate Safe Streets are something Rahman and his Aspire Party want to deliver or destroy.

The ‘mixed bag’ boroughs

Twelve further boroughs are significantly behind on delivering schemes asked for by our Climate Safe Streets campaign (beyond the already-named bottom four). Of these, the n View the report at lcc.org.uk/climate leaders of both Greenwich and Kingston upon Thames councils both made full commitments to the campaign asks prior to the local council elections, but are currently failing to deliver on those commitments. Barking & Dagenham, Barnet, Brent, Croydon, Ealing, Hammersmith & Fulham, Harrow, Kensington & Chelsea, Redbridge and Sutton are all significantly failing to deliver on Climate Safe Streets schemes, but also failed to commit fully to our groups’ asks — although all of these councils have declared a climate emergency.

The report doesn’t just track recent delivery on schemes but shows historic mode shift away from private motor vehicle use across the decade leading up to the Covid pandemic. During this period, inner London boroughs on average saw private motor vehicle journeys (as a proportion of all journeys) drop more than 10%, and outer London boroughs nearly 8%. Yet the scale of difference is huge — Hackney saw that proportion drop nearly 40%, while in Tower Hamlets (also in inner London) private motor vehicle use as a proportion of all journeys went up 4% — the only London borough to see a rise.

A few strange standouts are Kensington & Chelsea and Brent, both of which saw significant drops in the proportion of private motor traffic on their roads (nearly 24% and 20% respectively) despite their poor record on scheme delivery. Just imagine what these boroughs would be like if their leaders actually started delivering on active travel and motor vehicle use reductions?

There are also a few interesting boroughs that have recently changed party colour. Westminster and Barnet switching from blue to red seems to mean more forward progress, but the same is arguably true for Croydon, now delivering schemes having switched from red to blue.

Below the boroughs delivering middling schemes at a middling pace are far too many boroughs essentially doing little to nothing while the planet burns and the collisions keep mounting up year after year. And below them still, the real villains of this piece.

Kensington & Chelsea has ripped out the only cycle track ever installed in the borough while individual councillors have undermined and attacked TfL junctions schemes designed to save lives. Tower Hamlets has elected a Mayor on a manifesto of opening roads to more motor traffic in a climate crisis. And Ealing and Harrow have both ripped out copious numbers of schemes on flimsy pretexts and then sat back to do next to nothing so far. Harrow have even joined Bexley, Bromley and Hillingdon (and Surrey County Council) in going so far as to sue the Mayor of London over his plans to expand the ULEZ scheme. Unsurprisingly, these four are some of the least active on delivering change on issues around car use, climate and pollution (even to the extent they’ve rolled out some of the lowest numbers of on-street electric car charging points in London, as charity Possible has pointed out).

LCC’s report provides specific recommendations to the leadership for each London borough to help them get on track reducing road transport emissions, and stressing their climate emergency declarations (in London only Bexley and Bromley appear to have not declared an ‘emergency’).

London must not be a postcode lottery for climate action or safe cycling and walking. We need a lot more boroughs delivering Climate Safe Streets like Hackney and Waltham Forest and fewer, like Tower Hamlets and Bromley, failing to deliver as our new report shows.

This exposes not only a Climate Safe Streets postcode lottery – with the emissions and experience of people walking, cycling and wheeling in Waltham Forest increasingly different from those doing so in Harrow, Tower Hamlets or Ealing, but more, the gaps in the Mayor of London’s power – if boroughs like Kensington & Chelsea and Harrow can thumb their nose at Sadiq, what chance his targets on Net Zero and Vision Zero?

Regardless, if any council or Mayoral targets are to become a reality, this report is clear that we need a lot more Hackneys, Camdens and Waltham Forests and that means Brent, Greenwich and Richmond really getting their skates on in the next three years. And it means those boroughs currently proposing to launch expensive legal actions over ULEZ or sitting back and quietly delivering nothing on climate emissions must now move in accord with the Mayor, the evidence and London. We have three years for every London council to really start delivering. The clock is ticking.

Every London council and the Mayor must deliver more streets fit for cycling, walking and children playing — and faster — if we’re to help London escape the grip of car dependency and the cost of living crisis. Our new ‘One Year On, One Year To Go’ report highlights what needs to be done, for future generations, and to make London now a better city today.