Martin Gibson - Head of Operations
This month, Boris Johnson launched the start of construction
of London’s new North-South segregated cycling superhighway. The route will run
from King’s Cross to Elephant and Castle and is part of a package of measures
that is hoped to further boost cycling in London. It will be followed fairly
soon by a new East-West Superhighway from Tower Hill to Westbourne Terrace. The
new routes will extend the superhighway network into and across central London.
A lot of other cities are also trying to dramatically
increase cycling. Manchester is looking to develop cycling along the Oxford
Road, closing it to car traffic. Edinburgh is trialling a segregated cycle lane
along George Street. Cambridge is putting in segregated cycling lanes on key
routes.
One of the reasons for increasing cycling is to drive
environmental improvements, especially in air quality. Transport for London
published its Environmental Evaluation Report for the new cycle superhighways
in January. This predicts route wide benefits and no adverse route wide effects.
The report shows that there will be both positive and negative local
environmental impacts from the proposed new cycle superhighways. The positive
effects considerably outweigh the negative effects, with air quality and noise
due to improve in a number of locations.
The study behind the report shows that changes in traffic
will re-distribute vehicle emissions but will not increase overall emission
levels. It does not mention the possibility of an overall reduction in
emissions on a wider scale. However, work in the late 1990’s showed that
reducing road capacity can sometimes lead to traffic effectively disappearing.
If this were to happen, then the cycle routes should lead to a wider
improvement in air quality.
From the scale of highway capacity reduction that the new
cycle superhighways will produce, it seems possible that traffic could reduce. If
it does, this should lead to improvements in air quality and reductions in
noise that are significant enough to be considered more than just local. If
evidence emerges that there are wider air quality benefits, it should provide
more impetus for innovative projects that are currently on only at the concept
phase. In London alone, these include a Norman Foster’s sky cycle, the London
Underline and the Floating Track on the Thames.
It may be hard to disaggregate the effect that the
segregated cycle highways will have on London’s environment but it will be
important to see if air quality improves when they are completed.
