How not to conduct transport improvements: Curious case of new Greenwich development

Next weeks plans are likely to be approved for a new development in Greenwich peninsula comprising hundreds of homes, hundreds more students rooms as well as commercial units.

A post on the entirety of a report before councillors will follow another day, but this post takes a closer look at something I spotted within the report and could help explain why links between Greenwich peninsula and east Greenwich remain so very poor.

As part of the process an “Active Travel Assessment” was undertaken to look at routes to nearby amenities on foot and cycle from the site beside a new footbridge over the A102.

Now, if you know the area, there’s some incredibly poor routes between east Greenwich and the peninsula. Funnily enough of numerous routes looked into within the Active Travel Assessment, almost none of those were included.

The report states: “An Active Travel Zone (ATZ) assessment was carried out of key pedestrian and cycle routes from the site to key destinations in the local area.

“Generally, it found the local area provides a good pedestrian environment although recognised some cycling shortfalls in the wider area.”

How did they come to that conclusion? Why, by ignoring all those that aren’t very good and being highly selective of course. It looked into routes to:

“North Greenwich Station, Boord Street Bus Stops, North Greenwich Pier, Central Park, Greenwich Peninsula Practice, Millennium Primary School, Co-op Food Store, St Mary Magdalene C of E School All Through School Peninsula Campus, Olympian Way (Thames Path) Foot and cycle way (on the east side of the Peninsula), Ravensbourne University London, CU London Greenwich (Vocational College), The Institute for Creativity and Technology (Ravensbourne University), Peninsula Dentists and the Post Office.”

Yep, almost all on the peninsula. Just one route is mentioned which focused on heading across the other side of the A102 Blackwall tunnel approach (and soon to be Silvertown tunnel approach) – yet it appears even that route didn’t look at the walk to many shops, amenities and public transport in east Greenwich.

Links to rail

The route to Maze Hill or Westcombe Park station for trains to London Bridge, the City of London, West End (via a change) and Thameslink to stations such as Farringdon and St Pancras? Ignored.

Once again this development has hundreds of students rooms and is car-free yet zero consideration of anyone cycling to a station then heading to numerous universities served by rail such as Kings College.

What about the walk or cycle to Greenwich library and leisure centre? Seemingly not covered.

The route to many shops and places to eat and drink at nearby retail parks in east Greenwich and Charlton? Ignored. It only looked at a co-op on the peninsula.

Yep, the small branch with limited choice while ignoring the far larger Asda, Lidl, Chinese supermarkets such as SeeWoo, Aldi and Sainsburys to the east.

Not to mention shops like Home Bargains, M&S and others. If that was looked into at the very least the need for a safer crossing at Peartree Way north of the large roundabout would be spotted.

Given hundreds of student rooms are planned perhaps they could have looked at the route to Ikea (many people including students use the cafe for cheap eating and free wifi as a place to work) and, say, the Odeon cinema? Nah.

What sort of Active Travel Assessment can be so selective?

Could it be that an accurate look at routes to nearby areas would mean acknowledging just how bad they are and needing to invest?

Where money does go

Now, the one route they looked at over the A102 did note it was poor and £450,000 in Section 106 payments is allocated. But GLLaB are getting £550,000, and perhaps a true picture of how off-putting routes are on foot and cycle would see that funding switch a bit more to improving the area.

And that route looked at is heading to the Thames Path after crossing over the A102 and not heading to shops and transport links on the direct route people would take.

None of this is new of course.

They’ve ignored improving links for many years when many other developments have been approved. See new towers rising beside a relatively new school.

Greenwich Millennium Village’s latest phase is also on the rise. Each and every time links to many nearby locations are ignored which would reveal how poor they are.

Own services impacted

As a result of that shops and services in east Greenwich are likely to be losing custom.

As is the Greenwich Centre which was seeing membership totals fall year on year before numbers stopped being reported.

With thousands of new homes nearby on the peninsula you’d think the authority would want to improve routes to benefit their own centre – but no.

It raises the question of why bother with such Active Travel Assessment if they’re going to ignore so many important routes. A box-ticking exercise?

There’s been no end of reports and strategies on sustainability, active travel, a healthy population et al but if it comes down to studies like this, what’s the point?