Covid-19 has changed the way people are able to move around Lambeth and London more generally. The number of people who can safely use public transport in the capital has been dramatically cut to ensure travellers stay two metres apart. This means we need to find other ways to get around, walking and cycling as much as possible. To reduce the potential for more congestion on our already busy road network and to ensure those who need to drive are able to, we have set out a detailed delivery plan to enable more sustainable travel.
Many of the improvements we are planning to make are included in our Transport Strategy, adopted in 2019. Due to the road and public health dangers caused by Covid-19 we now need to work rapidly to make our streets safe and avoid an air quality crisis. Our programme will be implemented over the next 6 months, with some measures already introduced to our streets.
Looking for information on changes in your area?
If you have seen a street sign with the url lambeth.gov.uk/covidLTN or received a letter informing you about emergency changes to roads in your area, you can find more information and provide feedback online on Commonplace.
What sort of changes will be made over the next 6 months?
- Footway widening: we are widening pavements to help people keep up social distancing. We have limited resources, so we are focusing on locations with large amounts of foot traffic, such as areas with shops or routes to open spaces. You can let us know about areas where it is hard to socially distance on Commonplace.
- Low Traffic Neighbourhoods: in many areas, most traffic is passing through, using residential streets to cut through from one main road to another. Low-traffic neighbourhoods stop this through traffic and make some roads access only. People on foot and travelling by bike can still pass through, providing safe and quiet travel routes with limited car traffic.
So far, we have plans to create low-traffic neighbourhoods in the following areas:
We now have 5 low-traffic neighbourhoods live across the borough:
With two more planned in Streatham Wells and Brixton Hill.
- Healthy Routes: healthy routes help people to walk or cycle safely to the places they need to go along roads with low traffic or protection from vehicles on busier roads. We have identified key routes which lots of people need to use to access healthcare, get to work or visit a town centre to shop and will be focusing on making sure there are healthy routes to and from these so fewer people need to use public transport or drive. Healthy Routes are about more than walking and cycling and we want to ensure that they work for everyone, for example by trialling the concept of ‘mobility lanes’ that cater for both cycling and mobility vehicles.
Our Healthy Routes plans include:
- Cycleway 5
- Loughborough Road
- Kennington Road
- Barrington Road
- Atlantic Road
- Streatham to Peckham cycleway
- Coldharbour Lane
- Brixton Water Lane
- Access only roads: to complement LTNs and Healthy Routes, we have identified a number of key locations where it will be necessary to remove through motor traffic in order to address safety issues and to create more space for people.
- Supporting measures: We need to keep thinking about journeys from start to end, making sure that people have access to the facilities, equipment, information, skills and confidence that they will need in order to take advantage of the new infrastructure that we plan to provide. We will be asking people to change their habitual behaviour and we need to try to remove real and perceived barriers to this right across our diverse communities.
Some of these supporting measures are:
- School Streets: timed road closures around schools to help people to travel safely to and from school.
- Building more bike hangars on streets and estates for people who don't have room to store a bike in their home.
- Cycle training to help people who are new to cycling to gain confidence and knowledge of how to ride safely.
- Promotion of the changes we have made so people are aware of healthy routes, and promotion of affordable ways to buy a bike.
Find out more
We are working as quickly as we can, so we are publishing our detailed plans for each intervention as we work our way through the programme.
- You can read more and share your feedback on individual interventions, such as the Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods in Oval, Railton and Ferndale on Commonplace.
- Our Low Traffic Neighbourhood Monitoring Strategy sets out how we'll be monitoring the schemes.
- You can also read the full Lambeth Covid-19 Transport Strategy Programme for an overview of our plans and delivery timeline.
Get in touch
For more information