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Waterfront tram proposal

Dear Peter,

On behalf of Greenwich Cyclists I am writing to say that we welcome the Council's support for a sustainable public transport scheme which will help to encourage people to reduce car use on roads. We hope that the recent announcement of the Waterfront Transit Scheme will help to achieve this.

We hope that the Council will support measures intended to help cyclists as part of the Waterfront scheme. In particular we are concerned to ensure:

1. good cycle parking at Transit stops to encourage people to integrate the Transit system with cycling;

2. ensure that cycle routes are properly safeguarded along roads where the transit scheme will go;

3. the Transit scheme includes cycle racks similar to those used on many trams and buses in Holland and Germany to encourage integrated use of the Waterfront scheme by people with bikes.

We also believe that the redesign of certain main roads for a tram or trolleybus service should allow improvements to be made to cycle route provision so as to segregate cyclists from traffic and develop continuous cycle routes to follow local and central government guidelines. We are particularly concerned to see improvements to the cycle lanes on Woolwich Road which is an important part of the London Cycle Network.

Greenwich Cyclists would like to be involved in any further consultation by the Council of local opinion regarding the development of this exciting scheme.

Kind regards

Greg Englefield Greenwich Cyclists

12 FEBRUARY 2002 GREENWICH COUNCILLORS BACK TRANSIT LINK

Councillors in Greenwich have pledged to do "all in the Council's powers" to promote a new transport scheme that could revolutionise public transport in the north of the borough.

The Greenwich Waterfront Transit is one of four schemes currently under consideration by the Mayor of London. The transit scheme - which could be a tram system, a trolley bus, or a conventional bus running on a segregated route - won strong backing from local people in a consultation last summer.

Greenwich councillors have made clear their support for the proposal and preference for a tram system.

The transit will have built-in reliability, thanks to high levels of route segregation and priority. It will feature modern facilities, clean fuel

and low platforms to ensure gap-free level boarding. The first phase would run from North Greenwich to Abbey Wood via Charlton Retail Park, Woolwich town centre and Thamesmead town centre. A second phase would extend the scheme from North Greenwich to Greenwich town centre and Greenwich station.

Greenwich Council has already secured around £12m towards the cost of the scheme through local planning agreements.

Council Leader Chris Roberts said, "The Waterfront Transit has the potential to transform public transport in the north of the borough. Such a modern and sustainable public transport system will be greatly welcomed by both residents and businesses. It stands to make an important contribution to reducing congestion and air pollution by attracting people from their cars to public transport in large numbers.

"We have seen a sustained regeneration of the Greenwich waterfront, with new businesses, homes, leisure and tourism facilities all helping to bring new life to the area. The success of the Jubilee and DLR extensions shows how successfully new public transport infrastructure can act as a magnet to other investment, and the proposed Waterfront Transit offers the promise of accelerating the regeneration of large areas of the borough.

"The town centres at both Woolwich and Thamesmead will benefit greatly by attracting customers from further afield, and the new system will mean people in some of the poorest parts of the borough find it easier to travel to centres of employment. In particular, parts of Abbey Wood and Thamesmead have been greatly handicapped by the lack of good transport links, and stand to receive a tremendous boost."

ENDS

Media enquiries: Greenwich Council press office: Andrew Stern 020 8921 5043 e-mail: andrew.stern@greenwich.gov.uk

Save the London Cycle Network!

Dear London Cyclist

I am emailing you today to ask for a bit of your time to help save the London Cycle Network. You may be aware that London Cycling Campaign has been fighting for years for the London Cycle Network to be given the resources necessary to bring it up to a high standard. Despite our hard work, next year's budget is due to be cut to a share of a measly £2million (compared with £8million for 2001/2). We're now trying to make them realise that the Mayor's Transport Strategy includes lots of cycling stuff, after our successful lobbying.

We have been busy trying to get £12million in the 2002/3 budget for cycling projects, including the London Cycle Network. We've had some success with Bob Kiley (Ken's Transport Commissioner) and Transport for London Board members - they have made a public promise to review cycling in the budget process. Our local groups have also been lobbying your council to get them to argue for funding as well.

What we really need now is your help to stop London's cycling budget being cut: PLEASE SEND THIS EMAIL AND WRITE TO YOUR LONDON ASSEMBLY MEMBER (addresses below). We know that they listen to individuals and we need as many letters and emails to London Assembly Members as possible. They are due to question Ken on the budget on NOVEMBER 15 - they will only do so if they are made to think Londoners care about cycling.

Below you'll see a draft email to your London Assembly Member. All you need to do is:

1. SELECT YOUR LOCAL LONDON ASSEMBLY MEMBER, CUT AND PASTE THEIR EMAIL ADDRESS INTO A NEW EMAIL

2. COPY AND PASTE THE DRAFT (see bottom of email) INTO THE EMAIL

3. CC IT TO BOB KILEY AND KEN LIVINGSTONE AND LCC (bobkiley@tfl.gov.uk, ken.livingstone@london.gov.uk, campaign@lcc.org.uk)

4. FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO ANY SYMPATHETIC CONTACTS THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE

5. COPY AND PASTE THE LETTER INTO A LETTER AND ADD A HANDWRITTEN, PERSONAL NOTE (this will ensure that is gets past the PA)

Thanks very much for your time.

Peter Lewis, Director London Cycling Campaign

**************************************************

1. SELECT YOUR LONDON ASSEMBLY MEMBER AND PASTE THEIR EMAIL ADDRESS INTO A NEW EMAIL

BEXLEY & BROMLEY Bob Neill (Con) bob.neil@london.gov.uk

CAMDEN & BARNET Brian Coleman (Con) brian.coleman@london.gov.uk

CITY & EAST John Biggs (Lab) john.biggs@london.gov.uk

CROYDON & SUTTON Andrew Pelling (Con) andrew.pelling@london.gov.uk

EALING & HILLINGDON Richard Barnes (Con) richard.barnes@london.gov.uk

ENFIELD & HARINGEY Nicky Gavron (Lab) nicky.gavron@london.gov.uk

GREENWICH & LEWISHAM Len Duval (Lab) len.duvall@london.gov.uk

HARROW & BRENT Toby Harris (Lab) toby.harris@london.gov.uk

HAVERING & REDBRIDGE Roger Evans (Con) roger.evans@london.gov.uk

NORTH EAST Meg Hiller (Lab) meg.hiller@london.gov.uk

LAMBETH & SOUTHWARK Val Shawcross (Lab) val.shawcross@london.gov.uk

MERTON & WANDSWORTH Elizabeth Howlett (Con) elizabeth.howlett@london.gov.uk

SOUTH WEST Tony Arbour (Con) tony.arbour@london.gov.uk

WEST CENTRAL Angela Bray angela.bray@london.gov.uk

**************************************************

2. COPY AND PASTE THIS TEXT INTO THE NEW EMAIL AND LETTER (please feel free to make amendments. Remember to add a handwritten, personalised note)

[relevant Assembly Member] Romney House Tufton Street London SW1P 3RA

Dear [relevant Assembly Member],

I was dismayed to hear that the Transport for London's draft budget for the year 2002/3 did not include a budget for the London Cycle Network, and only included a share of £2million for cycling initiatives.

I urge you to use your influence within the London Assembly to reinstate and increase all cycling budgets to reflect the priority and commitments made in the Mayor's Transport Strategy. I believe the urgent completion of high demand, high quality cycle routes (Proposals 4J.3 and 4J.4 of the Mayor's Transport Strategy) as part of the London Cycle Network is vital to get more Londoners onto bikes, as are initiatives such as on-road cycle training for all London school children (Proposal 4J.8).

I understand that although you, as an Assembly Member, will not have formally approved the Mayor's budget until next February, Transport for London will issue letters to boroughs in mid- December setting out their allocations. Such allocations will include any spending on cycling infrastructure. It is therefore imperative that you get involved in the budget debate now, and ensure that a budget is included for spending on a strategic cycle network for London.

You'll remember that getting more people cycling will not only improve the efficiency of the transport system through reducing demand for scarce space on roads and public transport at peak hours with very small capital outlay. It will also improve the quality of life of all Londoners through the related health, community and pollution benefits.

If you need any further briefing, please contact Peter Lewis, Director of the London Cycling Campaign on 020 7928 6112.

Yours sincerely

[signed]

cc. Bob Kiley, Transport Commissioner for London, Windsor House, 48-52 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0NW

Photo of cyclists
Cyclists celebrate the opening of the Dome path

Path around the Dome

"Given the £1 million per month cost of maintaining the Dome, it is a scandal that one of the few long term benefits to the public that the site offers, the path around Greenwich peninsula, remains closed, in breach of the planning agreement with the local authority. English Partnerships must open the path now."

Greenwich Cyclists are very concerned at the continuing delay in opening the path around the Dome on Greenwich Peninsula to the public.

Greenwich Cyclists have been campaigning for almost one year to get the foot and cycle path around the Dome open to the public.

The path is one of the few long term "legacy" benefits to the local community from the Dome development. Englsh Partnerships owns the land on which the Dome is built.

Under the planning agreement signed by English Partnerships and Greenwich Council in June 1997 that allowed the Dome to be built, EP covenanted with the Council to open the path around the Dome to the public and keep it as a public right of way within 6 months of the closure of the Millennium Exhibition.

The Millennium Exhibition closed on 31 December 2000. The path should have opened by 30 June 2001. It has not, and EP cannot say when it will open.

Work to secure the Dome itself from the path only started in July. Noone at EP seems to have planned ahead, despite the fact that both EP and the Council have known about this obligation to open the path to the public for over FOUR years.

The Council announced publicly in June that they fully expected the path to open by the beginning of July. Since then they have been silent on the matter.

We understand that building works are preventing the opening. EP used a similar excuse when developing the Woolwich Arsenal site. There the river path was closed to the public for almost two years.

Greenwich Cyclists believes that a similar delay at the Dome is quite unacceptable. EP has had ample time to consider how to open the path to the public. Despite the huge sums being spent on maintaining the Dome, the public is getting no benefit from the site. The foot and cycle path must be opened now.

Woolwich Arsenal

Finally!

The Woolwich Arsenal river front path is open as of today which allows you to cycle from the Woolwich Waterfront car park off-road along the river to Erith. This is three years late, and two years after the work was completed. Feel happy that you can finally enjoy the fruits of your taxes.

Those interested in big guns can stop off at the new Firepower! museum at the Woolwich Arsenal. The Arsenal supplied the armed forces of the Realm with ordnance and guns from 1587 to its closure in 1967, and at the end of the last century a football team. You can still see the railway lines leading out to jetties used to load ordnance onto barges between 1914 and 1918 for detonation in nearby Flanders. Many of the buildings were constructed during the Napoleonic Wars between 1806-13 on one of the grand sites on the River Thames, and the site has one of the highest concentrations of listed buildings in the country. Remarkably the Luftwaffe failed to destroy the site, concentrating instead on the Royal Docks just north of Woolwich. This great national heritage has now in part been passed into the custody of Berkeley Homes, purveyors of residential developments (with numbered car-parking). We await the opportunity of comparing the works of Messrs. Goering and Berkeley.

Beyond, Sir Joseph Bazalgette's magnificent Romanesque Pumping Station at Crossness is open by appointment. The world's largest rotative beam engines, opened in 1865, are being restored to their former splendour by local volunteers. The sewage system, built by Sir J. following the Great Stinks of the 1850s, saved an estimated 20,000 lives per year in London - probably the greatest single contribution to improved health in London's history. One of his other gifts to the nation was the Victoria Embankment in central London (another sewerage system).

Further on, the first phragmites salt marshes of the Thames estuary, big skies, estuarine birdlife and the last remaining bits of unused D-Day Mulberry Harbour (most of which was towed to the unsuspecting village of Arromanches on the Normandy coast in an Anglo-Saxon attempt to avenge the replanning of the Royal Docks) lie next to one of Britain's main rice importing jetties and Rainham marshes. Finally Erith, a previously pretty Victorian fishing village which has had the full late-20th century town-planning treatment, including mandetory quasi-vernacular supermarket, but an interesting small pier giving great views across the Thames.

Total distance about 7 miles from Woolwich.

Meanwhile the riverpath around the greatest single contribution to the uPVC industry at the northern end of Greenwich Peninsula is still awaited, but I am assured that it is only a matter of weeks.

Greg Englefield

Around the Dome

It seems as though we may soon have good news about the riverside route around the Dome.

The cycle and walking route around the Dome is supposed to open following the closure of the Millennium Experience exhibition at the end of last year as part of the original planning agreement. We have been pushing Greenwich Council hard to make sure that they ensure that the landowner abides by the original agreement. We have been concerned by reports that there may be some delay because further work is needed on resurfacing the path (after only one year!), and also the continuing delay in opening the section at the Woolwich Arsenal (see below). This week in the Mercury the head of strategic planning at Greenwich, David McCollum was quoted as saying that the path will open by the end of June and Greenwich will be asking "serious questions" if it is not. We are continuing to monitor the situation but trust that the Council now have the end of June as an opening date. We have also had support from Nick Raynsford MP.

In addition we understand that the Woolwich Arsenal riverside path will now open permanently on 27 May, although there may still be some works necessary along the route. This route has been delayed by several years, and we have worked with Sustrans to ensure it is opened this summer.

Once these sections are open then the river walk in the borough will be largely complete except for the section between Thames Barrier and Woolwich Dockyard. We will be working with Sustrans and Greenwich to ensure this is completed as soon as possible.

Greg Englefield

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