We have received responses to our London Mayoral candidates Manifesto from Caroline Pidgeon (Liberal Democrats) and Sian Berry (Green Party). We show them below in the order received: in orange (Caroline Pidgeon) and green (Sian Berry) fonts.
We hope to get responses from the Conservative and Labour candidates soon.
We ask the new Mayor to support our calls for reducing danger at source, for the safety of all road users as part of implementing a sustainable transport system:
- ENFORCEMENT: A substantial increase in law enforcement based on a harm reduction approach –targeting rule and law breaking known to endanger or intimidate other road users. Careless driving and driving offences in general should be treated as a priority by the Police. Behaviours such as close overtaking of cyclists (Highway Code Rule 163), not giving way to pedestrians (Rule 170), and car collisions not involving personal injury and speeding in 20 mph areas are typical examples of under-policed rule and law breaking. Driving offences should be properly treated as crimes and included in MPS and MOPAC crime statistics, strategies and community consultations.
I fully support this recommendation.
The Green Party in London is strongly committed to making road danger reduction and enforcement of traffic rules a much higher priority for the police, with an increase in resources to make this possible.
Close overtaking of cyclists is both terrifying and dangerous, the ignoring of rule 170 makes walking less attractive and adds to social isolation amongst older people, and the lack of reporting of all car collisions reduces our understanding of where dangers lie and leads to a sense of lawlessness on our roads. All the rules identified by the RDRF will therefore be prioritised for action. I would also extend 20mph speed limits to all TfL red routes and enforce speed limits rigorously.
Policing of traffic law would be a key performance indicator for the police with a Green Mayor, and this would mean recording of these statistics would be automatic and would help in making sure adequate resources were allocated
- TRAINING OF MPS and TfL PERSONNEL: Unconscious bias in officers’ attitudes, including victim-blaming and seeing driving offences as minor should be strongly challenged/ addressed. The MPS has confronted commonly held attitudes amongst officers with regard to gender, sexuality and disability – it should similarly change/ address/challenge attitudes which stem from a culture where driver misbehaviour is routine.
I fully support this recommendation.
You have rightly identified that unconscious bias amongst officers, whether in the form of victim-blaming or perceiving traffic offences to be minor, is a significant issue that has yet to be addressed. We agree that training is needed throughout TfL and the police at every level. As Mayor I would include representatives of walking and cycling groups on the TfL Board to help bring their perspective to many aspects of transport planning and policy, and we believe that training and attitudinal reform programmes should be devised in collaboration with these groups too.
- MEASURING DANGER PROPERLY: Road safety targets need to be set correctly indicating level of exposure to danger. Current road danger measurements use aggregate numbers for reported casualties, which can be low simply because of low levels of pedestrian, and particularly cyclist, traffic.
I fully support this recommendation.
This is a very important issue to have highlighted. Using a risk exposure model to measure safety is crucial for making our streets less dangerous and encouraging more people to get about our city under their own steam. Measures that discourage cycling and walking could otherwise be justified on safety grounds, and this is absolutely not the way to reach a sustainable transport system.
- EVEN SAFER LORRIES: The September 2015 requirements for HGVs in London by TfL should be upgraded by September 2016 to require full guards, infra-red sensors and design features such as transparent door panels retro-fitted on lorries, or else new design (low cab) lorries, and extend the CIRAS system to FORS fleets. While lorries are a small part of overall danger in London, reducing their danger at source can achieve demonstrable benefits for pedestrian and cyclist safety.
I fully support this recommendation, indeed I would like to see a real push to minimise the number of lorries on our roads, for example by making greater use of the River Thames to move construction materials. I also believe we could reduce the number of HGVs on our roads during the day. I support a trial of all HGVs being prohibited from central London at rush hour, although it is vital to ensure that the policy actually works and does not redistribute collisions during the day.
I completely agree with this. A heart-breaking number of deaths and injuries are being caused by the inability of drivers in large vehicles to see cyclists and pedestrians around them. All public vehicles should be replaced with low cab designs as quickly as possible, along with retrofitted safety measures on all vehicles entering the city. I would also specifically ensure that all TfL and GLA procurement specifies low cab lorries.
Through the London Plan the Mayor can also ensure that conditions on safe construction vehicles are put into all new planning agreements, and create an ambitious scheme of incentives and regulations for the freight industry, including freight consolidation and switching to smaller vehicles, as well as new designs for HGVs.
The CIRAS confidential reporting system is at last being brought in for buses and would be very effective for freight too. I am very happy to commit to extending this to be included in FORS.
- SAFER BUSES: End TfL’s Bus performance contracts based on measurement of excess waiting time targets.
I would be reluctant to entirely end all performance targets for excess waiting times as a reliable bus service is important to ensuring bus travel is well used and provides practical alternative to many car journeys. However it is vital that any targets do not have adverse effects on drivers’ behaviour. I support a full investigation into this issue to ensure robust policies are in place. In the meantime I welcome the recent publication of bus collision data. I have supported for a long time the adoption of the Confidential Safety Reporting system for London’s bus fleet.
I agree that time pressures on drivers can be an important root cause of poor driving and we support the efforts of campaigners to highlight this discrepancy. Greens are committed to ending this practice and will work hard for this as Assembly Members or if I am elected Mayor.
As well as making sure such performance contracts on the buses end, and introducing safety requirements instead, we can do more to cut down on speed incentives of all kinds in London. For example, within the GLA, we can make sure that no contract we procure ever specifies time-based targets for driving on the roads, and we can also work with boroughs and other public authorities to reduce the practice there too and talk to the freight industry about more constructive ways to improve their performance by reducing traffic than by putting pressure on drivers.
- TRAFFIC REDUCTION AND MODAL SHIFT: TfL to set targets for reduced motor vehicular traffic throughout London in order to reduce danger, emissions and congestion, with local authorities required to show how shift to sustainable modes is to be achieved as a condition for Local Implementation Plan funding.
I not only support this recommendation, but advocate a number of policies that would help ensure there was a modal shift, such as the adoption of a workplace parking levy on employers who provide parking spaces in central London. I also believe much further advances are necessary in the provision of segregated cycling lanes in London. I also advocate the extension of the cycle hire scheme, especially further into Southwark and South East London.
For further information on my views on cycling I hope these articles on the London Cycling Campaign and Stop Killing Cyclist websites are useful:
http://lcc.org.uk/pages/2016-mayoral-election and http://stopthekilling.org.uk/direct-actions/10-by-2020-cycling-safety-challenge/responses-to-10-by-2020-cycling-safety-challenge/#CarolinePidgeon
I further believe London should be made far more attractive for walking, such as through the provision of a pedestrian and cycling bridge linking Rotherhithe to Canary Wharf and through the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street. I would also like to see London adopt from New York a series of Summer Streets traffic days in many parts of the capital, so that people can take ownership of their streets and look to pedestrianise more streets across the capital where appropriate, such as in parts of Soho.
TfL’s recent policies for more road building, particularly in planning new road crossings and prioritising driver time savings when planning junctions, have seemed more and more to be going back to outdated ‘predict and provide’ policies. It’s not that radical to talk about setting targets for traffic reduction, and I strongly support this call, and would aim to do it by taking more road space away from cars in London and prioritising investment for other ways to get around. In fact, traffic has fallen on most of London’s roads (inner and outer, and by about 10% on average) over the past decade. We need to work with this positive trend away from driving and car ownership among our citizens, putting infrastructure funds into more safe cycling routes not expensive road tunnels and bridges.
To help make this a reality London urgently needs to replace the creaking Congestion Charge (which first started 12 years ago) with something much more sophisticated, covering all of London not just a small central zone. As candidate for Mayor I am committed to start consultation on these plans straight after the election, and to develop a set of fair new charges based on three principles: how far you drive, how polluting your vehicle is and the time of day.
- RIGOROUS INVESTIGATION OF ROAD DEATHS AND INJURIES: A transparent, accountable and effective system to be implemented
I fully support this recommendation.
The Green Party in London and our leader Natalie Bennett are both on record supporting the introduction of presumed liability for drivers in cases where cyclists are killed and injured, and I fully support this change in the law. Within London, and within the Mayor’s powers, we can do much to improve things without waiting for this to happen.
Road collisions need to be investigated with the same attitude and – as much as possible – the same rigour as is devoted to rail and aviation incidents, where the emphasis is placed on learning quickly from mistakes and preventing future dangers, and lengthy judicial processes are not allowed to delay these investigations and implementation of what is learned.
My personal preference is for an independent London road safety investigation office to be created and suitably resourced, tasked with making recommendations for changes to streets, bus operations, policies and incentives for freight, cars and public transport vehicles to highways authorities, the London Mayor and Assembly and Transport for London as quickly as possible after incidents occur. They should also be responsible for gathering information on ‘near misses’ and devising ways to improve safety pro-actively not merely in response to deaths and injuries that could have been foreseen.
In addition Caroline Pidgeon made the following comments:
I would also like to take this opportunity to say that I have long championed greater road safety in London and the need for London’s roads to be much safer and attractive for pedestrians and cyclists. For example I took the lead on exposing the problem that many pedestrian crossings in London were not meeting the 2005 Department for Transport standard for the minimum time that should be granted to pedestrians when crossing the road at a traffic signal. Following my intervention I am pleased to say all these standard crossings have been upgraded.
I have also championed the need for every pedestrian crossing to meet the 1995 Department for Transport standard for blind and visually impaired people. All these sub-standard crossings will finally be upgraded by March 2016.
I hope these links are useful.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8048961.stm
As part of my work on the London Assembly Transport Committee I also produced a report on how walking could be made safer and more attractive in London. The report Walk This Way can be seen here:
https://www.london.gov.uk/mayor-assembly/london-assembly/publications/walk-this-way
