The Shoreditch Triangle 'Apex' - looking for the most rational solution
During Transport for London's 2001 consultation for the reform of the Shoreditch one-way system, local groups and organisations (including the London Cycling Campaign in Hackney) urged engineers to consider removing the rat run from Great Eastern Street into Pitfield Street. Most
motor traffic doing this movement is on its way straight through to New North Road, and our contention is that it should make its way there via the more major roads - Old Street, City Road, Provost Street/Vestry Street.
We consider the main benefits to be as follows:
- Simplified junction of Great Eastern Street and Old Street, with the main
junction for Old Street and the Inner Ring Road moved westwards to the
vicinity of the fire station, allowing more direct routing of north south LCN
route between Pitfield Street and Tabernacle Square (current drawings route it
off desire line and partly on footway)
- Simplified routing of pedestrian traffic across this major junction
- Reduced through motor traffic in Pitfield Street is key to its
regeneration, as the master planners of Shoreditch Our Way confirm, making
life more pleasant in general and in particular, from our point of view,
better for southbound cycle traffic impressive gateway to the Triangle
- Better civic space enabled, with an uninterrupted apex coming out from
the main junction, leaving existing planting and siting of fountain and
forming a far more impressive gateway to the Triangle.
Keeping the rat run is a constraint imposed on the scheme by the Congestion Charging Unit,
which is understandably resistant to reductions in capacity for private motor vehicles using
the Inner Ring Road to skirt the charging area. However, as well as attracting local consensus
support, our proposal is being strongly backed by the Traffic and Transportation Section of
the local authority, which believes that the Old Street roundabout does in fact have the
capacity to take the diverted traffic.
Check out TfL's plan for the apex site, Pitfield Street rat run included.
In January 2002 there was a lobby of our Greater London Assembly
representative Meg Hillier on
this issue. Among those urging a re-think were nearby residents' associations, the Shoreditch Town Hall Trust, Triangle Traders, three local councillors, the vicars of St John at Hoxton and St Leonard's at Shoreditch, local planning agency Intelligent Space, Shoreditch Our Way and Levitt Bernstein. Meg Hillier was supportive, and took up the issue with TfL. "Hoxton residents should not be forced to suffer the impact of the shift of congestion from this major road network," she wrote in her February 2002 constituency report.
Action
Please write to:
Derek Turner, Managing Director of TfL Street Management
(derekturner@streetmanagement.o
rg.uk)
or by post to him at Windsor House, 42-50 Victoria St, SW1H 0TL
Please politely but firmly asking him to remove this rat run.
You might like to copy your correspondence to Ken Livingstone
(mayor@london.gov.uk)
His postal
address is: Romney House, 43 Marsham Street, London SW1P 3PY
UPDATE 10th March 2002
by Trevor Parsons
Steve Walker of Hackney's transport team is asking TfL Street
Management to consider dropping its plans to signalise Old Street
roundabout, thereby avoiding any reduction in capacity at that point in
the system and lessening the requirement for the Pitfield Street rat run
as a perimeter pressure valve in the congestion charging system.
I know that the TfL engineers working on the Shoreditch scheme would like
to avoid sacrificing Pitfield Street if possible. Having reduced the
capacity of the system overall by agreeing to scrap the one-way system,
they are now compelled to decide which of the remaining capacity
restraints to tune - a decision requiring the judgement of Solomon.
Steve Walker said he hadn't received an unequivocal answer on whether the
Old Street roundabout signals are or are not a functional necessity for
making the Shoreditch Triangle scheme work. Signalising the roundabout is
an attractive idea in itself, of course. It would have safety advantages
for two-wheelers (cf. Lea Bridge roundabout) and would also permit
street-level pedestrian crossings. But if it were postponed, he argues, it
could always be done later, meanwhile offering the hope of satisfactorily
resolving the apex / Pitfield Street issue now.
Steve also reported that his team has commissioned consultants (Buchanan
and Partners) to look at the options for Pitfield Street north of the TfL
boundary - in particular, how to make it work with cycle traffic in both
directions. Their report is due by the end of this month and then we and
the Pitfield Street frontagers will be consulted. I was relieved to hear
him confirm that a two-way track (pencilled in on the original 1997
Hackney plan for the reform of the one-way system) was not thought to be
an option because of the lack of space. Northbound cycle traffic will
continue to go on the carriageway.
Thanks to the pressure from ourselves, the local councillors, our GLA
representative Meg Hillier, Hackney's transport team, Triangle Traders,
Pitfield Street residents' associations, Shoreditch Our Way and others,
the importance of the Pitfield Street rat run issue has been recognised.
Even at this late stage there does still seem to be some hope that it
will be resolved positively.
UPDATE 5th November 2002
Unfortunately, despite the strong pressure from the local authority and from the many local
groups and individuals calling for a rethink on the apex and Pitfield Street, TfL has decided
against revising the plans, so the Apex site will remain a sore thumb until the time comes for
the implementation of the promise Phase II of the reform of the Shoreditch traffic system.
Phase II already, uncontroversially, includes the reversion to full two-way working of
Shoreditch High Street, taking through motor traffic out of poor old Curtain Road completely,
and Steve Decker, TfL's lead engineer on this project, has agreed that the solution at the
apex site, despite being literally set in stone (expensive York stone and granite setts at
that), will be open to re-evaluation "once traffic levels have adjusted and incorporated both
the effects of the one-way to two-way switch and the congestion charging scheme."
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