What are the short, medium and long term opportunities to make London and other cities fit for cycling?

This is one of seven questions that people were asked at June’s Street Talk. The responses below are unedited and in no particular order. We’d welcome further comments/suggestions – comments will close on 2nd July.

• Adopt a road danger reduction/traffic harm reduction approach – move away from roa safety wth sole focus on KSIs

• Showers, drying rooms, lockers etc in all new/refurbished offices

• Encourage employers to make their cycling facilities a feature of their recruitment (works for me)

• Every government office to have a designated cyclist or more

• Short – ‘permeability’ measures – cycle parking, 2-way cycling, direction signs, modal filtering, allowing courteous cycling in parks, urban greening – attractive places

• Medium – driver liability, 20 mph everywhere, driver training

• Long – segregation on busy arterial roads

• Bring back restrictions on the number of car parking spaces in any new development. Dont allow councils to stop people tying bikes to railings – and privately managed building/land

• Reform compensation system and introduce stricter liability – that would drive safety investment forward

• Short term – relaxation of DfT guidance which now makes it easier to have 2-way cycling, introduce 20 mph limits, both at very low cost

• Long – changes to DfT rules to come in line with other countries with higher levels of cycling

• Cycle lanes that carry legal force (stud them out like in Barcelona)

• Make all bus lanes 24-hour to give a simple initial solution  to giving cyclists some space (and let cyclists use bus infrastructure)

• Short – all state procurement contracts to require motion sensors, cameras and sideguards on lorries

• Medium – require share of magistrates and judges to commute by cycling

• Copy Hackney – but remember ‘Hipster’ demographic not really found in rural Hampshire

• Track shop rental values in pedestrian and cycle friendly areas and routes

• Make sure traffic signals detect cyclists especially in the rain

• Long-term – stuff the internet/technology enables us to do next: who knows???

• Long term – plan land use to support local businesses and services

• Age of austerity – value for money makes sense

• Long term – look for town centres regeneration programmes that can be supported/shown to have worked due to cycling changes and get involved – make Kingston, wandsworth, Greenwich etc as ‘local hubs’ for cycle network as well as radial superhighways.

• Medium Mayoral election 2016, general election 2015

• Short: fix the guidelines

• Medium: provide the money

• Long: build it

• Accept that it is a long-term goal… but make sure short-term changes add up to long-term goals incrementally.

• Short/medium: decent communication! Signs, signals that are comprehensive and visible to ALL road/street users

• The Olympics show that restricting lane use etc is possible when there’s political will – why not zil lanes for cyclists?

• Quick segregation on major roads using cones as in Chicago/New York

• 20 mph on all bridges – what’s the downside?

• Boris has been stalling on a new road safety plan for London (see Mayors Question Time) Call him out on it.

• New TfL road schemes are still ignoring cycling. These are schemes where they are already digging up roads and spending millions, so noexcuse not to take chance to put in great cycle infrastructure.

• Build cycling facilities into all road maintenance schemes

• Improve major roads and junctions

• Traffic calm residential roads

• Short – make existing lanes usable for cyclists – less parked vehicles in them.

• After olympics make Games Lanes into cycle lanes

• Short-term – awareness/education

• Medium term – infrastructure

• Long-term – culture

• Ban lorries during days, not nights as at present.  Will reduce risk in commuting hours and ease congestion.  This is a quick and easy short term measure. – But cyclists at night are even more at risk.

• Learn from the LCN (London Cycle Network) – why didn’t this £110m project deliver?

• Convert quiet residential streets to have home-zone style play-areas, seating etc and make space for this by increasing zip car and cargo bikes to be shared communally (take out some on-street car parking spaces to make room)

• Short – enforce existing lanes/laws

• Medium – bring existing infrastructure up to Best possible standard

• Long – dutch-style solutions – not just segregation but calming, reduction of traffic/speed/through routes

• More experiments – even if just short term in first instance e.g. no car days, temporary lane closures etc. Opportunities for people to experience alternative futures and perhaps like them!

• Short – more flitered permeability, cheap, easywins to close off residential streets to through traffic

• Medium – reclaim carriageway space for segregated cycle tracks. The space is there!

• Long – Unwinding/demolishing giant road schemes and restoring space for parks.

• Short-term: return to car free days every Sunday over the summer not just once a year if that!