Two major items have occupied us this year: the Uxbridge Road and the West Ealing Liveable Neighbourhood project. After the tragic death of Claudia Manera in October 2017 the Make Uxbridge Road Safe campaign raised a petition and led the council to commission a study into the whole length of the road within the borough from Acton to Southall from a well-regarded consultancy, Urban Movement. They have performed a Cycle Level of Service (CLoS) study, a formal method of scoring a section of road on how safe and convenient it is to cycle there. ECC and MURS accompanied the engineer for a morning to observe the working method first hand, then received the draft report late Summer. We met with Ealing council on December 13th and received the final report. You won't be surprised to learn that is is critical of (pretty much) the whole road. In parallel the council has conducted a study of the collision statistics for the Uxbridge Road to try and identify hot spots of casualty risk. (We shall try writing a digestible summary of these reports. In the meantime the MURS Facebook page has a write-up in their review of 2018 here and you can download the full report from here.)
The council have been awarded £6.5 million by Transport for London to improve West Ealing as a "Liveable Neighbourhood" scheme and have allocated £2 million to top it up. We attended a meeting in November to be updated on the feasibility report, but heard no details beyond the good news that a stepped, segregated, cycle lane is the recommended option. Also the junction of Northfield Avenue and Mattock Lane, part of a cycle route passing through Dean Gardens is to be improved, though outside the Liveable Neighbourhood project. The original intention was to publish the report by this years' end, but we learned this week that TfL will release it in January. Once we get it we shall let you know. Some things have happened already. Kirchen Road now has a 'No Entry Except cycles' treatment at the Uxbridge Road end (making it a complementary pair with Bedford Road immediately to the west) and some cheerfully-coloured pedestrian crossings have been laid (in Felix Road, for example, near the Jacob's Ladder bridge over the railway). Let's see what the full report brings in the new year.
See here for a summary of the project, though at time of writing this has no details of the design.
And best wishes from all of us in Ealing Cycling Campaign. Don't forget your lights, will you? We want to see you next year.
