Healthy routes - cycling
What is a healthy route?
There are many benefits to encouraging more people to walk and cycle (or scoot and jog), more often:
- As few as 20 minutes walking or cycling a day can make a real difference to physical and mental health
- Reducing the number of car trips we make can reduce congestion, improve air quality and make our streets accessible to the whole community
- Walking and cycling is good for business, bringing custom as well as a healthier workforce
What does a healthy route look like?
First and foremost, a healthy route has the right conditions to enable more people to walk and cycle. A healthy route links people with places they need to get to, such as schools, workplaces, amenities and shops. A healthy route is convenient, attractive, feels safe and is accessible to all.
A healthy route can be on a main road or a quiet back street, but should always meet these criteria. And critically motor traffic levels are low, or on busier roads there is dedicated space that is not shared with general traffic.
Find out how we deliver healthy routes here
We propose two main approaches.
Neighbourhood approach
Firstly, we want to make our neighbourhoods better for walking and cycling as this is where many shorter trips are made. If we can do this more children will walk and cycle to school, fewer people will make short trips by car and lower motor traffic levels will improve accessibility, safety, air quality and create more liveable places. The main tool to achieve this is through motor traffic reduction. In some places we have a problem with ‘rat running’ as drivers cut through residential areas to avoid congestion on main roads. If we can ‘filter’ through motor traffic out of these areas, without causing significant impacts elsewhere, then we can deliver ‘healthy neighbourhoods’. To complement improvements within local areas, we have also identified the need for new crossings and junction improvements at key locations that will link neighbourhoods together, allowing people to get across busy roads that form a barrier to walking and cycling.
Strategic approach
As well as creating better conditions for walking and cycling for neighbourhood level trips, we need to enable longer, more direct trips by cycle and focus on key areas of high footfall for public realm improvements to promote walking. TfL has identified the key demand routes for cycling in London and we have used this data to plan a new strategic cycling network in Arlen Hill. The high demand routes we have identified are complemented by a number of connector routes that fill in gaps in the network. Where these routes are on main roads they will be fully segregated wherever possible. We have identified key walking destinations as Waterloo, Vauxhall, Brixton and Streatham and we are already working closely with TfL to deliver transformative improvements in these areas. We will continue to invest in the public realm of all our town centres.