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The next round of public consultation about the Cycle Enfield ("Mini-Holland") scheme for the A105 will start with an exhibition in July.  There will then be a 12-week period in which members of the public can give their views online or on paper.

Cycle Enfield West timetable

Business Event – 16th July 2015
Public Exhibition - 17th & 18th July 2015
Public Consultation - 17th July to 9th Oct 2015 (12 weeks)
"Pop-up" at Palmers Green Triangle - August
Stall at Palmers Green Festival - 6th September
Stall at Enfield Town Show - 12th & 13th September
Enfield Council Scheme Approval – December 2015
Transport for London Scheme Approval – March 2016
Detailed Design -  December 2015 to May 2016
Construction – May 2016 to October 2016

At the start of the 12-week consultation letters will be sent to all businesses along the route and to all residents along the route and in "surrounding streets".  It isn't clear how far away from the main route the "surrounding streets" will stretch, and it is inevitable that many people who will be affected by the scheme will fall outside the zone;  however, the consultation will be advertised in newspapers, on posters, on buses etc, so everyone affected should become aware of it.

At the 3rd meeting of the Cycle Enfield West Partnership Board on 15th June, the PowerPoint slides used for the presentation included the following bullet points addressing various concerns that had been voiced during the earlier consultation phase.

Wny the A105?

  • Enfield is one of five Outer London boroughs identified as having the greatest number of potentially cycleable trips. The A105 area has significant potential.
  • Nearly 80% of car trips in Enfield are of cycleable length
  • A large number of trips are made between Enfield Town and Palmers Green and between Enfield Town and Edmonton Green
  • The A105 currently has a higher proportion of cycle accidents compared to the average for an outer London borough, despite the low cycle numbers

Concerns about parking and loading in town centres

  • Palmers Green
    • Loading 100% retained in existing locations

    • Parking Net increase of approximately 13 spaces.
      • On street reduced by 7 from 44, with 20 spaces added to Lodge Drive car park, with some short-stay free parking
  • Winchmore Hill
    • Loading 100% retained, some relocation

    • Parking Net increase of potentially 54 retail spaces
      • On street reduced by 17 from 59, with the 71  spaces in Ford’s Grove converted to Pay & Display bays.

Reasons for not choosing an alternative route away from A105

  • To provide a successful borough-wide cycle strategy, it is considered essential to have a hierarchy of routes, which includes quietways/greenways, as well as routes on strategic corridors, such as Green Lanes.
  • A successful cycle network must include direct access to key town centres  such as Palmers Green and Winchmore Hill as this is where cyclists need and want to get to, as well as other users.
  • By providing the route through Palmers Green and Winchmore Hill it gives us the opportunity to enhance the town centre, as well as delivering cycle schemes.
  • Palmers Green and Winchmore Hill currently operate more as busy traffic corridors rather than places. This scheme gives us the opportunity to give both areas a greater sense of place, with these town centre improvements.

Keep the Triangle

  • Options have been looked at that retain the Palmers Green Triangle, enhancing the sense of place, with improved public realm

Shared space

  • The town centre designs use shared space principles with the cycle lane and footway at the same height with different materials to indicate separation, reduced kerb heights are also used between the parking and traffic lanes.
  • There is also scope to consider 20mph zones at  key locations along the route

Potential for cycling in Enfield

  • Of those not cycling on the day of the town centre survey, nearly 40% said they sometimes cycle, or would consider cycling in the future, and this number will only increase as a result of Cycle Enfield
  • Main barriers to cycling are concerns about safety, which will be significantly reduced by the proposals and no access to a bike, which has changed with the introduction of a wide variety of supportive measures
  • Lots of support for supportive measures
  • 80% of trips in the borough are of a cycleable distance
  • On average 50% of households in London have at least 1 bicycle

Congestion on the A105 corridor

  • It is accepted that the schemes will generate some level of congestion. But the designs have sought to minimise the impacts
  • TfL have reviewed the results of the modelling as part of their design review
  • We are changing the nature of the road, to make it more town centre focused, which will naturally discourage some through traffic onto e.g. A10.
  • This effect may be increased with 20mph zones
  • The reduction in traffic due to mode shift and the above the implications are unlikely to be significant.

Residential parking

  • Surveys showed maximum occupancy on the A105 corridor of 57% of the available space, with an average of 34%.  
  • Formal spaces have been provided for 82% of the average
  • The remainder would be relocated to spare occupancy on the side roads, which is approximately 21 vehicles on average.

The drawings to be used for the public consultation will be rather easier to understand than the black-and-white drawings that we published last week.  An example is shown belown (click on the image to enlarge).

cycle enfield drawing example small
The consultants (Jacobs) have undertaken to consider the many points that were raised at the Partnership Board meeting and make appropriate changes to the proposals ahead of the public consultation.  For instance, the section above indicates that the northbound Fox Lane bus stop would be removed - something that met with opposition from some attendees.

Download the PowerPoint presentation

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PGC Webmaster posted a reply
26 Jun 2015 01:27
The minutes of the Partnership Board meeting are now available. Haven't yet had time to read and analyse them.

File Attachment:

File Name: cycleenfie...utes.pdf
File Size:114 KB
Karl Brown posted a reply
21 Aug 2015 15:23
An opportunity to help fund and support a grouping very strongly opposed to Cycle Enfield – Save our Green Lanes



While not for me, and including the occasional dodgy looking data in the backing material, it’s right and fair that all issues are surfaced and considered as part of the very wide ranging consultation now underway. Why the group threatens legal action if the public consultation is not immediately stopped is however logically hazy.

The appropriate time for interventions on matters of principle would seem to have been the Public Examination before the subsequent Adoption of the agreed London Plan (March 2015) which lays out exactly what, how and why such schemes are being rolled out across London. (Roughly a need to densify the suburbs, with a particular focus around existing transport nodes, because population growth exceeds the space available and its ability to move effectively is one of several resulting extreme pressure points being planned out as best as the examined evidence and strategy allows.)

On the plus side it’s heartening to see the Green Lanes Business Association finally planning to take a stall at the Palmers Green Festival having personally spent so long over so many years encouraging them to do exactly that –without success – both as a commitment to its local community and a means to promote local trade. Now we can additionally look forward to seeing the list of traders financially opposed to the proposed scheme and its intent to specifically invest in improving the central area of our local community. I’m sure they wouldn’t wish to remain anonymous given their desire for full project transparency.

I would prefer to see it improved, a very long standing public position, previously with the support of the GLBA, rather than saved in its current form which so desperately needs investment and positioning as a public realm worthy of a District Town Centre in the worlds premier city.

Message reads:-

o

We need a crowd of protestors on Monday August 24th, at 11am in Winchmore Hill - corner of the Broadway and Station Road.

Please can you come along . Bring partners, children and other friends and family too. The Enfield Independent is covering the story, and they would like to a photoshoot of protesters. This will only take a few minutes.

You will have seen that the Enfield Town scheme made front page headlines in the local press this week. Helen Linda and I were also on London Live TV.
Other events

September 6th Stall at the Palmers Green Festival - Broomfield Park.
September 12th & 13th. Stall at ENFIELD Town and Country Show
Sept 17th Public Meeting at the Waterhouse Hall, URC, Compton Road, Winchmore Hill 8pm
Sept 22nd Public Meeting at the Intimate Theatre, Palmers Green 8pm
Sept 28th Public Meeting at the Revival Road London Road Enfield 8pm
(Public meetings detailed above are organised by David Burrowes MP)

Many thanks for the many generous donations we have already received.
So far we have raised nearly £3,000 through donations from business owners and residents, but we need more cash for printing of 10,000 postcards for people to send to the council, leaflets, a banner for the exhibitions in Town Park & Broomfield Park and a simple website.
Even a £5 donation will help.

At the moment we can only accept cheques and bank transfers, but hope to have an online account facility set up shortly. Here are the account details
Please send cheques payable to Green Lanes Business Association to

ADDRESS AND BANK DETAILS DELETED FOR CONFIDENTIALITY REASONS. LINKS EXIST BELOW IF REQUIRED

Please use the reference : mini Holland or write the same on the back of any cheque or payment.
Everyone who makes a donation will be listed as a supporter on the Save Our Green Lanes website (name not amount), unless they wish to remain anonymous
If you are on Facebook, please like our page.
Best wishes,
Paul

facebook.com/savegreenlanes
Paul Mandel posted a reply
26 Aug 2015 01:31
It is nice that Karl Brown seems to accept that there are some flaws in the Council's plans for what is to all intents and purposes a cycle superhighway between Enfield Town and Palmers Green.

But, there is a rather sneering tone in his post. For one thing, perhaps he could elucidate on what he calls "dodgy looking data,"

Meanwhile, let me also correct his errors.

1.Enfield Council is not being threatened with legal action. However, it is leaving itself vulnerable if the consultation is flawed. I am not going to elaborate and do not ask me to.

2. The Adoption of the London Plan is irrelevant. If the consultation is flawed, any legal challenge is bound to be successful vis. a vis. the recent Landlord Licensing Scheme debacle.

3. Save Our Green Lanes is holding a stall at the Palmers Green Festival.

4. SOGL has gained wide support of residents, businesses and voluntary groups andis set to grow rapidly



in the coming weeks

4. Green Lanes Business Association is not running a stall. GLBA raises its members' profile in other ways, in particular the Palmers Green Shopping Festival and other events around Christmas and Easter.

5. GLBA is handling donations and expenses on behalf of SOGL. Any surplus at the end of what will hopefully be a short campaign will be given to a local charity.

6. If Karl had looked last month, he would have easily seen who are the traders opposed to Mini-Holland when there was a poster campaign around the time of the Fox-exhibition. If he ventured up to Winchmore Hill, he would have been aware of the immense anger of independent shopkeepers there. There will be a further poster campaign shortly

7. Mini Holland means no substantive improvement to the public realm in Palmers Green. That is just weasel words from councillors in the ruling Labour group and officials. In fact, the Triangle beloved by many could even go, perversely replaced by a roundabout intended for safety, when other roundabouts on Green Lanes are to be removed for the very same reason. This is just like a plot from an episode of Yes Minister


Anyone wanting to help Save our Green Lanes can email me on

Best wishes,

Paul
Tom Mellor posted a reply
26 Aug 2015 16:00
I've been told that the triangle will most likely stay due to its popularity. They are trying to build a 'Dutch' style roundabout but, truthfully, it isn't one. The geometry is all wrong and the 'shared space' aspect doesn't make any sense. The other roundabouts are certainly not of a safe design for cycling, hence their removal. That being said I don't understand why there is affection for the triangle. It is after all a fairy dull design which doesn't provide a relaxing atmosphere to sit on due to the traffic from all sides. I suppose it is something cultural.
Karl Brown posted a reply
27 Aug 2015 09:20
There is always an issue under transformational change - and that is what London is highlighted as necessarily facing in the transport arena - in that the status quo is impacted. Three routes then follow: head-in-the-sand; fight the data; or work with the data.

Take the junction of Green Lanes and Hazelwood Lane, highlighted as an area where the Council don’t know their onions: because this school is a three form entry, it is suggested proposing this junction as single direction only is inappropriate.

Staff will say that after several years being empty, the school bike rack firstly filled with scooters used for the journey to school, and later is now too small for the number of bikes being used for the same purpose. More poignantly, it is any number of years since the recruitment area for the school reached up Hazelwood Lane as far as Green Lanes – population increase and densification of the area around the school. Car journeys to school under both data points suggest the Council may be onto something, all other things being equal.

It’s that micro local knowledge, and concerns, that the Council need to better finesse plans as one of much consultation generated data inputs: Working with.

Take the many local examples – street parties, Blues, music in the park, orchard parties, Palmers Greenery café, Talkies Community Cinema etc, which developed significantly from concern of the fragmentation of the local community. Taking the data and working with it helped develop positive answers. Now speak to new area incomers of the vibrancy and friendliness they experience: Working with.

Take Halloween: kids mostly love it; adults frequently dislike the Trick element. Work with the data, develop a new-Halloween, free for families in the park, based on fun, light and giving rather than threats and Tricks: Working with. Or we could have ignored it, or tried to cancel Halloween.

It’s the choices we all make on the data available. I work with it.
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