Each month, we email a bulletin to everyone who has signed up on this site. Below is the mailout that we sent in December 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.
BOX CLEVER
Big thanks to every one of you who took part in The Royal Parks’ public consultation on the traffic trials in Richmond Park after reading our special bulletin last week. The response was superb – more than three times the average number of clicks compared to similar emails.
The third and final consultation on the Movement Strategy is your last chance to tell TRP what you think. If you have yet to fill in the survey, please do so now – and remember that the third page of the four-page questionnaire has a little box at the bottom where you can tell TRP in your own words how the trials have impacted your visits.
Use those 1,000 characters wisely, friends! Describe your own experiences, good and bad – and if you think no through-traffic is a good idea, explain why with specific examples.
To refresh your memory, or to give yourself some inspiration, take a look at our formal response to TRP, which also sets out our vision of how the park can become more visitor-friendly. But whatever you think, do take part in the consultation – you will be helping to shape the future of London’s No1 free cycling resource for the better.
NO EX-SKEW-SES
None of the questions in the survey asks if you think that permanent restrictions can go further than the trial, which means that the only opportunity you have to express such an opinion is in the little box at the end of the third page. As many of you have pointed out, this looks like it is simply a rubber-stamping exercise to turn the trial restrictions into permanent measures while ignoring all calls for a total elimination of through traffic. We will be writing to management ourselves, requesting that any response calling for more robust measures than the current trial should be given extra weight given the bias implicit in the form of the consultation.
If you think the format of the survey is skewed and you would like through traffic eradicated, please tell The Royal Parks by emailing Movement.strategy@royalparks.org.uk or writing to: TRP – Movement Strategy, The Old Police House, Hyde Park, London W2 2UH.
As the car ban during the first lockdown showed, an absence of through traffic attracts a greater diversity of cyclists to the park, including the less confident and vulnerable. It is important that TRP realises this.
WHO SAID IT?
"What is a landscape without people to use it? Watching a child learning to cycle on one of the [park's] closed roads recently – that experience that individual has at that age will potentially stay with them their whole life. That's what these green spaces are able to do – they are able to provide those unique memories and experiences. In conversations I have with people, their strongest memories tend to be those that trigger within their times around green space. They are such important spaces to people that we're bound to see a great deal of pressure on them, but that's even more of a responsibility on us to try and protect and conserve them."
Those words sound like they could have come from us or another cycling advocacy group. In fact, it was Tom Jarvis, TRP’s Director of Parks, who said them. Tom was addressing Ham and Petersham residents via Zoom at a meeting in October which was kindly set up by Green Party councillor Andree Frieze (you can now watch the event – Tom’s quote is at approximately 1hr 10min – or read the minutes.)
It is encouraging that one of the most notable people in The Royal Parks has publicly recognised the importance of protecting Richmond Park as a place to cycle. One of the pressures on the park that Tom may be alluding to is the notion that it should accept some through traffic to keep the surrounding roads from getting clogged. But judging by what has been happening before and during the second lockdown, that argument is weaker than ever.
We have been filming the roads in the park and those outside at various times of day over the past month and a half – and traffic levels in the evening have been much lower than pre-pandemic times. In fact, on one recent evening, there was more traffic queuing inside the park at Richmond Gate than there was in the same direction on Petersham Road. More of these traffic checks will appear on our Instagram stories and highlights.
Working from home is bound to become more commonplace in the future, so some commuter traffic will become a thing of the past. Meanwhile, TRP is monitoring car journeys in the park, and councils in the surrounding boroughs are watching theirs. If the figures that emerge tell the same story as our footage, how can Tom and his team fail to eliminate all through traffic?
KEEP BUSHY CUSHTY
Time for a big shoutout to Richmond Park’s little brother, Bushy Park. We’re rooting for you, buddy! The Teddington tiddler also has a traffic trial running at the moment, with cars currently banned from using the central road as a shortcut. The route is popular with many cyclists, so if you want to keep the north-south route between Hampton Court Gate and Teddington Gate a pleasant, welcoming space for pedestrians, family groups and cyclists, please take part in the separate survey.
RIGHT ON QUEUE
Lockdown two will be over tomorrow – and, hopefully, so will the huge influx of cars queuing up outside the car parks every weekend, blighting the park’s roads for everyone who cycles on them.
With so many restrictions on people’s movements, it was sadly inevitable that Richmond Park and other public spaces all over the UK would become a magnet for visitors, many of them driving to their destination. Recognising the frustration that many of you felt, we requested ahead of last month’s stakeholder meeting that TRP tells visitors to use another form of transport if they can, so it was pleasing to see it doing something along those lines on Facebook. And it appears they deployed marshals at Pembroke Lodge to turn away motorists after the car parks become full – thank you, TRP! But if the weekend gridlock continues, we’ll be pushing them to take a firmer stance.
GATE FOR IT...
Finally, a reminder that you will need to avoid the park for another two weeks or so if you usually cycle through it early in the morning or at night. The deer cull is ongoing, which means the gates are still closed from 8pm to 7.30am, so please do not cycle through if you arrive shortly before locking time unless you are confident that you can easily reach your exit within ten minutes – otherwise you may find yourself locked in.
As usual, the cull could finish earlier or later than the set six-week period, depending on the health of the herd, so keep an eye out for announcements.
SEE YOU NEXT MONTH...
Thank you for allowing us to pop into your inbox. As ever, let us know what you think about any of the subjects in this bulletin, or anything related to cycling in Richmond Park – we reply personally to every email you send us. If you enjoyed this bulletin, please share it 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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