Each month, we email a bulletin to everyone who has signed up on this site. Below is the mailout that we sent in February 2020. If you like it, please sign up on our Get Involved section - you will be showing your support for our work and you will receive our free monthly bulletins a month before they appear here. Have a look at our first bulletin to find out more about how RPC was formed and why we are progressing the idea of reducing traffic in the park by charging for shortcut journeys.
TWO GOOD
Exciting times this week as The Royal Parks furthered its vision for the future of transport and movement within its green spaces, setting out aims which are likely to bring about improvements for everyone who rides a bike in Richmond Park. Those of you who took part in the first phase of the public consultation for the Movement Strategy should have already received an outline document from Mat Bonomi, TRP’s head of transport, who hosted a follow-up event at Holly Lodge on Friday which we were privileged to be invited to.
The initial stage of the consultation was incredibly popular, attracting 1,000 more responses than the Mayor’s London-wide draft transport strategy from 2017. Users of Richmond Park provided the greatest proportion of the feedback, with 75 per cent of them backing the reduction of through traffic – a very encouraging development for the concept of Intelligent Road Charging for shortcuts only which we have been exploring with park stakeholders and other interested parties for quite some time.
Mat’s document looks broadly at all eight parks, while the meeting this week provided some specific viewpoints on Richmond Park. The second and final part of the public consultation is now open, and is less structured than the first – no set questions or boxes to tick this time. Simply read the document and email TRP at movement.strategy@royalparks.org.uk.
You don’t need to have taken part in phase one to contribute to phase two. But to make your contribution count, follow the general ideas outlined in the Movement Strategy document. Accentuating the possibilities for how cycling in the park can develop – less motor traffic and more diverse types of riders, to give two examples – is a more valuable response than rigidly sticking to a specific idea such as detailing how you may think a one-way system would work on the outer road.
To help you, here are the key points from the document and the meeting, along with some of our own insights that you may want to consider in your contribution:
For the first time in the process, TRP has explicitly stated that Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras could be trained on traffic within its parks. ANPR can be used for road charging, although the Movement Strategy document only gives it as an example of controlling the restrictions on commercial vehicles – and at the meeting we were told that Richmond Park would need to change its regulations to keep the income generated by the cameras which would be necessary to make the system economically viable. A regulation change is achievable, and the document also mentions “exploring opportunities to close or restrict park roads to through traffic”. Could the use of ANPR for reducing shortcut journeys in Richmond Park be that far off?
The document states TRP will “reduce speed throughout our parks” using, among other measures, “additional physical infrastructure where appropriate”. Those final two words are key: do you think it would be appropriate to introduce, for example, priority passing areas on the outer road of Richmond Park? It would certainly stop and slow down some vehicles as they let oncoming traffic pass, but cyclists who use the road for exercise would no longer be able to enjoy uninterrupted laps. It should be stressed that there are no specific plans to implement this idea, but an unintended consequence of immovable traffic calming measures could be that those cyclists who value the park as a safe place to maintain their fitness would have to use more hazardous roads outside the park instead.
Last year we said that one of our long-term goals was to have a “slow day” in Richmond Park which would give every type of cyclist the opportunity to use the outer road without the obstacle of motor traffic – so we are pleased to see that TRP also wants to “implement car-free days”, noting: “Many of our parks already do this.” A slow day would give less confident riders the opportunity to improve their skills and enjoy the park. This could provide a means to begin diversifying cycling in Richmond Park to include more women, children, the disabled and the elderly.
TRP will be “undertaking a behaviour change campaign” to improve the conduct of “some cyclists”. At the meeting, Mat said he would be looking to Richmond Park Cyclists to help with this, and that it would probably be based around a code of conduct combined with self-policing – well-behaved cyclists (which is most of us) politely calling out bad or inconsiderate actions when they see them. As well as improving the image of cycling in the park, this would strengthen our bond with TRP, giving us a bigger voice to represent your interests.
You have until 25 March to send TRP your comments to movement.strategy@royalparks.org.uk. It’s literally your last chance to have your say, chums! The final decisions will be put to TRP’s executive in March, the trustees in April and the finalised strategy should be out in June. How long park-specific plans take to complete depends on how big or small they turn out to be – although we have now been assured the schedule will be much quicker than the seven-year timescale that we spotted at the end of last year in Richmond Park’s Management Plan, which was drawn up some time before the Movement Strategy began in earnest.
In the meantime, though, have a gander at the document and email TRP today. Let’s make the contribution of Richmond Park’s users to the second phase even bigger than the first!
CAM AND GET IT
At another meeting this week, we got to speak to Sergeant Peter Sturgess and Dedicated Park Officer Paul Barber who gave us a handy hint for anyone who rides with a GoPro or similar camera. You can submit footage to the police of bad or dangerous driving in the park – or anywhere else – by going to www.met.police.uk/dashcam, pinpointing the location of the offence and filling in a form. Thank you, officers!
Sergeant Sturgess is in charge of policing Bushy Park, Greenwich and Richmond Park, while DPO Barber, as his title suggests, is based solely in Richmond Park. Another interesting piece of information we got from them was an update on the bike thief who we mentioned they had apprehended in last month’s bulletin. The bike’s owner apparently accepted a Community Resolution as redress, involving a meeting and a letter of apology from the juvenile who was caught trying to offload the bicycle which he had taken from Richmond Park. He has since been moved away from London with his family.
The main reason for our meeting, though, was to discuss the disproportionate number of roadside warnings, usually for speed, given to cyclists in the park compared with motorists which we highlighted in last November’s bulletin. They pointed out that cars usually travel singly and the vehicle becomes a traffic hazard the moment it is parked, whereas a cyclist is more likely to be riding with others and they can be moved safely off the road to be spoken to. Groups of riders are not often stopped but (as we speculated last year) it is enough to skew the figures and make the number of roadside warnings issued to cyclists disproportionately higher. But the police recognise that a moving vehicle poses a greater danger than a cyclist, which is reflected in the proportionately greater number of formal written warnings and prosecutions of motorists.
Many thanks to Sergeant Sturgess and DPO Barber for their time and nuanced explanation. If you want to keep up to date with them and the rest of the team who police all of the royal parks, you can follow them on their Twitter account @MPSRoyal_Parks.
OI – HOPPIT!
Finally, a reminder that if you enter or leave the park via Ham Gate you may need to divert your route due to the annual toad migration which begins next week. The section of Church Road between Ham Gate Avenue and Latchmere Lane will be closed from March 9 to April 22 while the plucky breeders make their 100-metre hop from Ham Common to pools on the other side of the road where they spawn.
Last year we mentioned that we would love to receive photos of toads making their journey as we have, sadly, never seen a single one – despite our HQ sitting a short distance from the migration spot. Unfortunately, the only picture we received was of a squashed toad, which wasn’t quite what we had in mind. So if you do send a photo of our amphibious chums, please make sure they are alive this time. No one likes to see dead Kermits!
SEE YOU NEXT MONTH...
Thank you for allowing us to pop into your inbox – and don’t forget to email TRP! As ever, please share our newsletter with your cycling friends – and if they like what they read, encourage them to sign up to our mailing list too. The more subscribers we have, the bigger our voice.
All the best,
Richmond Park Cyclists
website: richmondparkcyclists.org
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