Ride to See Brentford FC

 

You don't expect the name of a football club as the headline of a cycle campaign news item, so I guess I should explain.  One of our old friends not only cycles a lot to get from A to B but is a long-standing follower of his local club, Brentford.  'How about combining the two?' he thought, and 18 months ago two supporters came together to form a new fans' group called 'Sustaina-Bees', he began to lead official bike rides to Brentford's home games and the London away games, and it caught on.  In fact, it caught on so well that the club has hired professional ride leaders, leading four separate rides from Acton, Ealing Broadway, Hounslow East and Richmond, each being led back 15 to 30 minutes after the match.  There is now secure, covered, parking for 300 bikes by the ground, watched over by Brentford FC staff.  UEFA and the FSA (Football Supporters' Association) have noticed too and given it a mention: good news can travel!  

For the game against Manchester United on May 4th people cycling to the stadium will receive a voucher for food (important to cyclists, as we all know) and a drink too. 

More details here  https://www.brentfordfc.com/en/travel-to-the-stadium

Well done Bicycle Ben!

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Ealing Cycle Network 2024-35

Ealing Council has published a future cycle network plan of the borough. It is not a map of routes you can ride on now. Some are fine, but others are terrible. Instead, it shows the routes the council will work on improving between now and 2035. The aim is to raise the quality of these routes to the London Cycling Design Standards and the national standards set down in Local Transport Note 1/20. The plan is a requirement of Ealing's Local Plan which has to meet the Mayor of London's target for 40 percent of Londoners to live within 400m of the cycleway network by 2030, and 70 percent by 2041.

Routes in orange are core routes. Purple indicates neighbourhood routes and pink shows key routes that, due to constraints such as narrow width and volume of traffic, it will not be possible to upgrade to the national standards but, where possible, improvements will be made. Green routes are routes through parks and other green spaces.

The map was developed with the help of a wide public consultation. 1,118 residents took part making 1,814 suggestions for improvements. Ealing Cycling Campaign lobbied for high quality routes that cyclists of all abilities could use and for strategic routes not to run in remote, unlit areas. The council has adopted many of our suggestions, and most of the canal towpath is now designated as a green route. 

The network is largely a planning tool. It will  help planners avoid installing obstructions, such as electric vehicle charging points, where they will later have to be removed to install a cycle lane. It will also indicate where any new developments will need to moved back from the road to create space for protected lanes. 

To build the network, priority is likely to be given to routes that are designated as top and high priority on TfL's Strategic Cycling Analysis as these are routes that TfL is most likely to fund (below). The Uxbridge Road is the top potential corridor in Ealing. 

To help assess the quality of existing routes and what needs to be done to improve them, ECC has produced a node network of key routes on the new network plan. Completing the core (orange) routes will put over 40 percent of residents within 400m of a cycle route. 

Adding the highlighted neighbourhood (purple routes) and completing the node network will put nearly all residents within 400m of a cycle route with good connections across Ealing.

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Southall Station Cycle Parking

Earlier this month, Ealing council opened a new cycle parking hub near Southall Station. Funded by Transport for London as part of the Crossrail improvements, the new hub has room for 70 bikes. The hub is a 2 minute walk south of the station on the corner of South Road and Merrick Road. 

The parking is on two levels, and all but four spaces are under cover.

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Woolsey of Acton Closes

Ealing's oldest bicycle shop, Woolsey of Acton closed on 28th September. The shop dated back to the 1930s when it was known as Longs Cycles. Donald Woolsey bought it in 1955, and changed the name, and it had been a family-run business ever since, passing on to Donald's son Roger, and his grandson, Malcolm. 

In the post-war years, business boomed. The nearby Wilkinson's Sword factory helped as most workers rode bicycles to work. In the 1960s, however sales of bicycles slumped. The shop diversified and for 20 years also sold and repaired mopeds. By the 1980s sales of bicycles were on the rise again, and Don went "back to the real love of my life and that’s the bicycle’.

Roger started working at the business in 1962, and took over running it in 1988. Malcolm joined in 2002. In 2009, shortly before Roger retired, the shop was refitted. Every room, including the bathroom was used to hold stock, and despite its small size, the shop held over 200 bikes, giving it the nickname, the Aladdin's Cave of Bikes. 

Roger Woolsey in the shop in 2007

In a closing statement on their website, Malcolm Woolsey wrote: "After 70 years, we regret to announce that we will be closing the business on the 28th September 2024. After 3 generations, the time has sadly come to move on to pastures new. We would like to thank our customers both old and new for their continued support over the years." 

"We have seen many changes over the years, both in life and in bikes and have many memories over the years, many of which we can thank our on going customers for. The occasional gifts we get that show the true appreciation from you and means so much to us."

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Council Plan to Scrap Cycle Lanes on the Uxbridge Road

 

Ealing council is consulting on a scheme that will scrap proposed protected cycle lanes on the Uxbridge Road. It will also rip out the existing cycle lanes (above), and replace them with a bus lane. The new scheme covers the length of the Uxbridge Road between Greenford Road and Ealing Hospital. It replaces a 2021 plan to provide cycle lanes, protected by wands, along both sides of the carriageway. Instead, the latest plans are for cyclists to share narrow bus lanes with buses, and a stretch of pavement with pedestrians. The new scheme ignores national and London guidance for cycle routes, even though the road is a strategic cycle route in Ealing's proposed cycle network. Most of this section of the Uxbridge Road is wide enough to carry an eight-lane smart motorway, so it is baffling that the council hasn't found room for safe cycling. Ealing Cycling Campaign will be opposing the scheme, and calling for it to be revised to include protected cycle lanes. You can see details of the scheme and respond to the consultation here.

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New Cycle Maps

 

Ealing Cycling Campaign has produced new cycle maps of Ealing. We are often asked for cycling maps at our stalls, but since TfL stopped printing the Local Cycle Guides in 2018 there have been no freely available paper maps of cycle routes in London. Paper maps still have some advantages over maps on phones and sat nav devices. They allow you to see a large area in detail which makes it easier to plot a route; they help people familiarise themselves with an area; and they don't drain the battery on a phone. 

We have produced two maps. The first, an A3 version of central Ealing, the second a double-sided A4 map of Southall. Both maps are based on data from OpenStreetMap. The maps will be available on our stalls at events over the summer and from other outlets. You can download your own pdf copy of the Southall Cycling map to print at home.

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