The closing date is Friday 5 July 2013.
The main thrust of the plan is to block the current rat-run through Portland Street by Piccadilly Gardens, open up Oxford Street to two way traffic which is particularly good for cycle access from St Peter's Square to Oxford Road. However, there is no plan for a 20 mph speed limit for Portland Street, no decent provision for cycling and the overall quality of the design is very messy and disjointed.
The City Centre plans need to be completely redrawn to bring them in line with Oxford Road and provide convenient, and effective cycle infrastructure built to Dutch design standards. If we can get lots of responses from cyclists on this one too then the city might just wake up to the fact that they need to make the whole city cycle friendly, not just Oxford Road.
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How to Respond.
Take a look at this video to see what is proposed, and notice how there is no decent cycle provision.
Notice how the video, this time concentrates on bus flow rather than cycling, ignores Oxford Street completely. Also notice how the proposed Portland Street cycle lanes are standard UK poor quality. If you want more detail you can download the leaflet.
Then compose your response in a text editor of some sort because there isn't space in the web form to see everything you have written.
Write as little or as much as you feel appropriate, but please remember to:-
1) Call for the plans for this whole area to be redesigned to make them fit for cycling, with infrastructure designed to Dutch standards.
2) Tell TfGM if you regularly cycle in the city centre and write about your current experience and how you want it to improve.
3) Support the removal of general traffic from the Picadilly Gardens end of Portland Street.
5) Call for a 20mph speed limit for the whole of this area.
6) Call for 2-way cycling on all the roads in this area.
7) Call for the cycle route design to be improved throughout the whole area - if necessary by employing experienced engineers from the Netherlands to finalise the design.
Once you have written your response, then visit the online form, fill in your name, full address, postcode and email address. It is important that our responses are seen to come from individuals who live in the area.
Then copy and paste your text into the box marked "Your views*", scroll through to check it's all there and hit the submit button.
Then tell every cyclist you know to do the same...
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You can also send your response by email to buspriority@tfgm.com or post it to
Transport for Greater Manchester bus priority,
FREEPOST RRHE-RKUU-KSJY,
Manchester,
M1 3BG
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Update: Thanks to Pete Abel's excelent suggestions I have simplified this post to encourage more people to respond.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot for highlighting this. I have written to TfGM to encourage them to redesign their cycle plans as per your points. Cycling just won't take off if they go ahead with mixing buses and cycles and providing sub standard designs. Their plans just view cycling as an afterthought, i.e. business as usual and we all know it doesn't work.
I prosposed they go to the Netherlands and see how the Dutch would do it.