camden.gov.uk/making-travel-safer-in-camden

Making your neighbourhood safer and healthier The Covid-19 pandemic has changed how communities in Camden live, travel and work. More people are walking and cycling as a result of social distancing requirements and a decrease in use of public transport, making improvements to walking and cycling infrastructure more important than ever. We want our streets to have more space for everyone to walk and cycle easily and safely. Whether making an essential journey, like taking your children to school, getting to work, visiting your local high street, or just popping out to enjoy your local park, we want you to have the choice of being able to make this journey easily and safely on foot or by bicycle. To help, we are introducing ‘pop-up’ cycle lanes and improved pedestrian crossing facilities on Hill and Rosslyn Hill (between the junctions with Prince of Wales Road and Pond Street), to support more walking and cycling in this area and across Camden. Why implement walking and cycling changes on Haverstock Hill and Rosslyn Hill? Haverstock Hill and Rosslyn Hill form a key route between & Park and . It is currently dominated by motor vehicles and parked vehicles – there are no cycle lanes and a limited number of pedestrian crossing points. A significant number of road traffic casualties have been recorded on Haverstock Hill and Rosslyn Hill, with the majority of casualties in the last 3 years to December 2019 involving vulnerable road users – pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists. There are few pedestrian crossings along Haverstock Hill. People walking along this road have to travel long distances to reach a pedestrian crossing point or cross the road informally. This makes it less attractive to walk certain journeys, and can make it inconvenient to visit some businesses and other amenities. We want to help businesses benefit from increased local custom. Over 8 in 10 trips by Camden residents aren’t made by car, and the vast majority of residents’ trips to our high streets are made by sustainable forms of travel. We want to help make it easier for all those people walking, cycling, and using public transport to visit businesses on this corridor, whilst retaining adequate nearby parking provision for those with an essential need to travel by car. There are many schools and learning institutions within the vicinity of Haverstock Hill and Rosslyn Hill. We often receive complaints about traffic congestion and decreased air quality in this area, as a result of vehicles travelling to and from schools. Traffic danger is the most common reason cited by parents for not allowing their children to walk or cycle to school.

The pop-up segregated cycle lanes on Haverstock Hill and Rosslyn Hill will connect with the segregated pop-up cycle lane schemes on Prince of Wales and Road, resulting in a potential 3km of new protected cycle lanes being added to Camden’s cycle network. Protected cycle lanes help to overcome the single biggest barrier to more people cycling, which is fear of traffic. This enables our residents without a vehicle to cycle, and other non-essential car journeys to be switched to more sustainable, healthy, active ways of travelling. Introducing segregated cycle lanes provides an alternative, healthy and sustainable option of travel to and from NHS sites, such as the Royal Free Hospital, for both NHS staff and others visiting these sites. This follows feedback received from the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, who expressed their support of Camden’s Transport Strategy and Cycling Action Plan, and in particular the proposals for a pop-up segregated cycle lane and pedestrian crossing improvements on Haverstock Hill. Figure 1 Segregated Cycle Lanes We have already seen the number of people cycling at two of Camden’s count points on weekdays increase by an average of 106% this August compared to last. TfL predicts a 10-fold increase in kilometres cycled in London, and a 5-fold increase in walking as a result of Covid-19. Adding these new pop up cycle lanes on Haverstock Hill helps us to respond to this increase locally. On our Commonplace engagement website we had numerous comments making great suggestions on how to improve this part of Camden, including suggestions to introduce cycling improvements on Haverstock Hill and Rosslyn Hill, which you can read here: https://camdensafetravel.commonplace.is/. We also want to support the 17 recommendations from Camden’s Citizens Assembly on the climate crisis, which included requests for more segregated cycle lanes. This scheme also helps to deliver our Transport Strategy priorities, which were strongly supported when we consulted on them, including increasing walking and cycling, improving public transport, improving air quality and making our streets and transport networks safe, accessible and inclusive for all. You can read more about our strategy on our website. What is going to change? To make it easier and safer to cycle and walk along Haverstock Hill and Rosslyn Hill, we will be making the following changes:

• Adding new cycle lanes, protected by flexible wands, on either side of Haverstock Hill and Rosslyn Hill. • Replacing five of the existing ‘uncontrolled’ crossing points with four new zebra crossings and one new signalised crossing on Haverstock Hill. This helps make clear that pedestrians have the right of way. • Creating ‘shared use bus boarders’ by moving the existing bus stop road markings further into the road. • Changing the hours of operation of the bus lane at the northern end of the scheme area to 24/7 to make journeys for bus passengers quicker. • Making minor changes to junctions with ’s Lane and Pond Street, including ‘pedestrian countdown’ facilities, ‘early release’ for bikes and extended ‘Advanced Stop Lines’ to help bikes stay ahead of motor vehicles, subject to approval from TfL. • Removing the majority of existing parking, loading and coach bay facilities along Haverstock Hill and Rosslyn Hill. • Relocating some of the parking provision on Haverstock Hill and Rosslyn Hill to adjacent side roads, such as disabled bays, paid for parking and loading. • Introducing one completely new disabled bay, close to Steele’s Village. • Providing two new timed loading bays along Haverstock Hill to allow businesses to service their premises at quieter times of the day. Further information about these changes can be found on our website, along with the decision report (and accompanying appendices).

Enabling work on these changes is scheduled to commence from 4 December 2020. Working hours will be between 9am and 5pm, from Monday to Friday. The main construction period will take place from early January 2021. How can you give your views? We are using Experimental Traffic Orders (ETO) to make these changes quickly. This allows us to trial changes on streets as an experiment so that we can see how they work before any decision on whether to make them permanent is made. We have already consulted with the emergency services and statutory groups on these changes and you will also see information going up on the local streets and on our website. You have the right to comment at any point during the trial period. We encourage you to use our new dedicated Commonplace website to share your views on this scheme, before, during and after implementation, or to suggest improvements on our scheme map: safetravelcamden.commonplace.is/ Once the changes have been up and running for a little while we will check in with all local residents in March 2021 and again in July/August 2021 to remind you how to comment. We will also contact all residents and stakeholders with more information ahead of a full public consultation, on whether to make the scheme permanent, after the trial has been in place for around 12 months. Any changes to our plans, for example due to the impact of Covid-19, will be updated on our website along with all the latest developments.

Responding to the challenges of Covid-19 in your neighbourhood

Speeding is the main We want to keep your cause of road death. BAME Londoners are more at risk of being killed or seriously injured, neighbourhoods safe 21,260 from speeding... BAME children are on average 1.5x more likely to be affected than none- BAME children. PLEASE 8531 SLOW YOUR SPEED 2019 2020 43 London speeding enforcements till August (149% increase)

...so we are reducing traffic in residential streets

Covid-19 is causing extra cars across Camden... and it's getting busier on our streets 38% of people at risk of deprivation, 36% of women TfL estimates if all car owning households and 31% of disabled people switched their usual public transport who don’t cycle said they'd journeys to cars there would be like to give it a go nearly double the traffic in Camden plus extra from other boroughs

Supporting Camden residents to travel sustainably Camden residents love their bikes Almost 50% of journeys 8/10 trips by Camden Weekday cycling at 2 locations in residents are not made by Camden residents are on foot or by bike. Camden have seen an average by car. increase of 106% this August to last. Children want to travel healthily and safely to school

In Camden, 69% of households don't have a car, so We surveyed 14 local schools and providing safe and easy walking and cycling facilities is 51% of pupils walked, scooted crucial. or cycled to school.

We want you Health is everything to breathe easy.... 42% of Camden residents are overweight Breathing in polluted or obese, increasing the risk of air can have short Lockdown measures led to a 53% severe illness and death from and long-term impacts reduction in traffic levels in London, COVID-19. on our health, at any reducing the overall level of pollutants Just a 20-minute walk can prevent stage in our lives. in our air. We want to see air quality long-term health conditions like Type 2 improvements continue now lockdown diabetes, heart disease and certain has eased. cancers, as well as being good for your 20 mental health. mins Find out more

To find out more on how we are making travel safer in Camden visit: www.camden.gov.uk/making-travel-safer-in-camden [email protected] / 020 7974 4444 To give your suggestions and feedback visit: safetravelcamden.commonplace.is

To learn to cycle for the first time, improve your cycling skills or for a bike loan to help you get on your way visit: www.camden.gov.uk/cycling

Transport Strategy Service, , Town Hall, Judd Street, London, WC1H 9JE