According to the Hubbub newsletter, Leytonstone High Road will be the latest area to become Walthamised . After the success of Alexandra Road, I imagine Waltham Forest is now getting in its stride and going after some large scale projects.
The newsletter optimistically thinks that it won't be as bad as the Wood Street makeover, since the High Street is wider. I do think that the author has unfairly under-estimated Waltham Forest's capabilities here. The small matter of whether there is a lot of space available is no barrier to implementing some really shoddy cycling provision, as Forest Road proves.
True to form, the plans (which are not available online from WF as far as I can see) seem to involve a lot of extra pavement parking for cars. Presumably vast amounts of money will be spent raising the tarmac by a couple inches as well since this is what Waltham Forest believe constitutes an improvement to the "streetscape".
They've done precisely this on Cann Hall Road. On the one hand, cycling is much better with the cars out of the way, and to be fair the whole environment looks much better. But - now pedestrians have a sort of single track to walk down, jammed between parked cars and the front walls of houses. It'd be a pretty tight squeeze for a wheelchair or pavement scooter.
ReplyDeleteAnd ... did I read somewhere that Leytonstone High Road was originally earmarked to be a Cycle Superhighway route? I suspect the Newham veto put the kybosh on that.
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