Eltham to Greenwich Park - Strategic cycle route

We have secured funding from the Department for Transport's Active Travel Fund to deliver a high-quality, temporary, cycle route between Eltham town centre and Greenwich Park. This will help connect two of the borough's three major town centres with a safe, convenient and accessible cycle route that can be used by people of all cycling abilities.

Funding is available for a temporary route, which we are proposing to implement in the Summer of 2021.

Why we're proposing this route

This new cycle route will help get more people cycling, more often, and even more safely.

The Council’s Local Implementation Plan for transport sets out a vision to create an attractive, accessible, healthy and sustainable transport network. This will help make Royal Greenwich a great place to live, work and play – opening up the opportunities it offers to all of its residents. This includes being on-track to help realise the Mayor of London’s aim for 80 per cent of all trips in London to be made on foot, by cycle or using public transport by 2041.

The draft Carbon Neutral Plan shows that a 45% reduction in private car use - due to a shift to more active travel and public transport - is required to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2030.

Approximately 80% of residents in our borough don't get the recommended minimum of two lots of 10 minutes physical activity each day. By providing safe, convenient cycle infrastructure, we hope to help build physical activity into daily routines where possible.

Our proposed route between Eltham and Greenwich Park passes several primary and secondary schools. We want to help our young people make safe, sustainable, independent travel choices, and give parents the confidence to let their children cycle to school.

There are high-quality cycle routes in Greenwich already, and others are being built at the moment or very soon. This will help form part of a much wider cycle network around the borough and into central London on a mixture of safe, segregated routes and quiet backstreets.

What changes are we proposing for this route?

We're proposing some temporary changes to certain parts of the road network to create a high-quality cycle route that meets or exceeds Transport for London's Cycle Route Quality Criteria . We're proposing to create this route by introducing:

Check out our FAQs if some of the terminology is new to you .

Why do we think these proposals will get more people cycling?

Almost half of all Londoners worry about being in a collision with a vehicle . Lightly-segregated cycle lanes help create a safe space for people on bikes, can be installed relatively quickly and are fairly easy to maintain.

The same data shows that the main reason people stay away from cycling is fear of mixing with motor traffic. TfL's Cycle Route Quality Criteria recommends that if segregated cycling isn't possible, you should keep traffic flows to fewer than 200 vehicles per hour. Our data shows that traffic flows on Kidbrooke Gardens and Eltham Green Road are higher than this at peak times, and there is not enough room on these streets to provide separated cycle lanes, which is why we have proposed restrictions to through-traffic on these sections. Under our proposals, all properties around these streets will still be fully accessible by any vehicle.

We've also proposed to remove through-access on Shawbrooke Road under the A2, even though it is not directly on the cycle route. It is very likely that through-traffic between the A205/A20 and Rochester Way would be displaced here with a filter on Birdbrook Road / Eltham Green Road.

What are the likely impacts?

We know that changes may have some potential impacts on some people or some journeys. We can't be certain what all of the impacts are but we can anticipate:

We're committed to understanding the impacts of our proposals. We will be publishing a monitoring strategy and an Equality Impact Assessment to document our approach to understanding these impacts and minimising them where we can.

How the process works

At the moment, we've only got funding from TfL to design the route. We hope that, supported by consultation feedback on our ideas, we'll get funding to progress with more design work and be able to build the route in Summer 2021.

We're proposing to implement the route using an Experimental Traffic Order. Once a scheme is put into place, considering the feedback we receive during this consultation, a six-month public consultation period on the scheme would begin. This will allow you to provide more feedback, based on your experience of the trial. A decision would then be taken on whether to make the experimental scheme permanent, amend it or remove it.

During the experimental process, this Commonplace page will be left open to give you a chance to make comments as the benefits and impacts of the scheme become more apparent.

We will also communicate if any changes are being made during this process. You can opt in to receiving updates from us via Commonplace if you're interested in being kept informed of any progress and potential changes.

Have your say

We want to know how you think our proposals would work, whether you think they would achieve the aims we've set out, or if there's anything else you think could be included to get people cycling more. Your comments will help to inform the detailed design process so that we can deliver the best possible scheme.

Please use the form below comment on the proposals. You can make comments until Sunday 21 March 23:59.