Cycling in London could increase tenfold and pavements could be widened to allow for physical distancing and queueing outside shops, under plans to overhaul the capital’s streets post-lockdown.
As part of the London Streetscape plans, new walking and cycling routes along major corridors would be fast-tracked , including temporary cycle lanes along routes such as the busy thoroughfare of Euston Road.
….
But the office of the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, said millions of journeys a day would need to be made by other means, with London’s public transport capacity potentially running at a fifth of pre-crisis levels.
If people were to switch even a small fraction of those journeys to cars, Khan said, London risked grinding to a halt, air quality would worsen and road danger would increase.
The mayor and Transport for London (TfL) said they would work with boroughs to focus on three areas:
· The “rapid construction” of a strategic cycling network, using temporary materials, with new routes, aimed at reducing crowding on public transport.
· A “complete transformation” of local town centres so that people can walk and cycle where possible, including widening footways on high streets so that people can safely queue outside shops.
· Reducing traffic on residential streets and creating “low-traffic neighbourhoods”.
TfL said its modelling suggested there could be a tenfold increase in distances cycled, and up to five times the amount of walking compared with pre-coronavirus levels, if travel demand returned.
….