We love sustainable transport – we even made a sustainable transport treasure trail!
Camden Council have some innovative initiatives around sustainable transport including Green Streets Fitzrovia and free car club membership for the first 150 residents to give up their resident parking permits.
However we are worried that TfL’s plan to roll out pedestrian countdown crossings across the borough will reduce pedestrian crossing times in favour of motor vehicles – as seen at Oxford Circus.
We recently wrote to Camden Council on this issue:
As we said on 26 February 2011 in our response to Camden’s draft transport strategy, there is evidence that TfL is using Pedestrian Countdown at Traffic Signals (PCaTS) in order to allocate more “green-light time” to traffic against pedestrian movements. This is consequently offering more capacity for traffic volumes and speed to increase, and is further severing communities living along busy roads. This is also reducing attractiveness and accessibility of streets to pedestrians.
For these reasons, we would appreciate if Camden Council could answer the following two questions:
- How will the Council ensure that new pedestrian countdowns are neither used to reduce pedestrian crossing time nor used to deliberately increase capacity for traffic on streets in Camden?
- As part of roll-out of PCaTS at 220 sites, how many are planned in Camden and at which junctions?
We are awaiting a response.