Mortlake (and Richmond) is likely to get a massive new development on the Stag Brewery site.
I’m not an architect or an engineer, but I am an active travel campaigner, and whatever they build here, I think someone needs to say “you need to use this plan to fix walking and cycling in the area.”
I’ve previously done a Twitter thread – https://twitter.com/RichmondCycling/status/1303440612490915840 – on why the transport plans are poor, but here I want to to offer a bit more of a vision which takes into account the current Government and London direction on active travel, clean air, healthier streets, and healthier people.
Make it work for the area
It’s widely accepted that if nothing changes on the plans or in the area, people are going to move into the Brewery and bring cars which they’ll dump all over the place in Mortlake. But people in the area already have more cars than we can handle.
And with Hammersmith Bridge not available to motor traffic, people in Barnes and Mortlake are likely to want to use Chalkers Corner to head west.
So we already have a problem at peak times, because cars will queue all the way from Chalkers Corner back — in the worst cases — along Mortlake High Street and beyond.
And then there’s the South Circular, which is mostly single lane, and mostly busy at all times. There’s no capacity improvements available on these roads, generally, so if you inject more traffic, it’ll just make a bad situation worse.
So rather than taking the developer’s proposals, and trying to shovel a few extra cars through Chalkers Corner every sequence, why don’t we do it differently? Why not work out a plan for the area, which makes it better for everyone?
It’s Active Travel, Stupid
We know Londoners are driving a lot of journeys they could walk or cycle, and we know that we don’t persuade people to drive fewer journeys by offering them a bike voucher.
We also know that we can build walking and cycling schemes that don’t stop people driving, and which allow buses, ambulances, fire engines, deliveries and everything to happen ‘as normal’.
And we know that areas of higher density populations like this in more central London areas tend to be surrounded by better public transport, and increasingly with carefully designed walking and cycling facilities and routes.
Which is what we need to do here.
A travel plan for the Brewery Development should say:
- Children at the school will have a safe car-free or segregated route to get to school
- White Hart Lane will be one way for traffic with Sheen Lane operating in the opposite direction, freeing space for outdoor use, proper cycling facilities, and cutting air pollution and congestion on those roads
- Chalkers Corner will have a segregated cycle route leading into it. Cyclists will be able to cross Chalkers Corner without interacting with cars.
- Chalkers Corner will get pedestrian crossings on every arm.
- Cycling and walking route in residential streets will be improved to prevent use of rat-runs like St Leonard’s Road.
- Mortlake High Street will gain segregated cycling both ways, with pavements cleared of street clutter, and widened, at the expense of road space for cars.
Because if we want the development’s residents — and the present locals — to prioritise journeys by walking and cycling, then we need to do the same in the area. People watch what you do, and they follow it: build space for cars at Chalkers Corner and they’ll drive.
Talk to People
Local teams from the Mortlake and East Sheen Society (MESS) and the Mortlake Brewery Community Group have done excellent analysis on all of this. I don’t pretend to know or properly understand many of the wider issues around density, school places, or building design.
But I do know that other areas of London show that it *is possible* to build a high density development here (and indeed at Manor Circus) and make transport work. I think any approval of this development needs to include a significant sum to support:
- Full and detailed consultation and analysis on local aspirations
- Review of actual traffic and journey needs (not the modelling that just assumes that every journey we do by car will carry on that way)
- Design of infrastructure that not only supports more locals to choose to walk and cycle, but also makes roads like the A205 and A316 work better for all transport modes
- Genuine, community based planning that could make this area ‘ground zero’ for developing very low carbon, low pollution, people friendly transport infrastructure
Surely we all now know enough about climate change, air pollution and the negative impact of designing for cars to do better?