Richmond Road Pedestrian and Cycle Improvements (Eleanor Street to Mare Street)

Overview

Background

The Council is committed to making Hackney’s roads safer for everyone living, working or visiting the borough. Helping to create an environment that will encourage more walking and cycling is a key part of the Council’s Transport vision and an essential part of Hackney’s Community Strategy . To achieve these aims, the Council has developed a programme of schemes to provide a safer and more accessible street environment for all users.

Richmond Road is currently subject to a 20mph speed limit but the Council has identified speeding as an ongoing problem, particularly between Greenwood Road and Mare Street, where there are large gaps between existing traffic calming measures. The Council has also received a number of enquiries asking for pedestrian crossing facilities in this section of Richmond to be reviewed, and where possible improved, particularly by Eleanor Road and at the existing Hackney Grove/Martello Street pedestrian/cycle crossing. 

In response to these issues the Council has developed proposals to help reduce vehicle speeds, improve pedestrian accessibility and provide better, clearer crossing facilities for pedestrians and cyclists

This consultation seeks the views of residents and property owners who live near the affected areas around the Richmond Road.

Proposals

The proposals include: 

• Installing a raised junction table at the Richmond Road/Eleanor Road junction. The raised junction will help fill-in the large gap between existing traffic calming measures and will help reduce vehicle speeds. The junction table will also provide an informal, step free crossing opportunity for pedestrians travelling to/from London Fields
•  Installing clearer 20mph zone signs at key locations along Richmond Road.
• Replacing the existing informal pedestrian/cycle crossing at the Martello Street/Hackney Grove junction with a new combined pedestrian/cycle zebra crossing, where vehicles will legally have to give-way to both pedestrians and cyclists. Until now this type of combined crossing has not been possible under existing UK Legislation but the Department for Transport has recently consulted on a number of regulation changes, that will allow this new combined crossing design to be introduced. The Council hopes and expects that these changes will come into effect in early spring 2015.
• Extending the raised junction table by Hackney Grove/Martello Street and moving the eastbound bus stop slightly in order to accommodate the combined pedestrian /cycle crossing
• Refurbishing the pavements and planting small trees at the Eleanor Road junction.
• Introducing a “Green Man” pedestrian crossing on the Richmond Road arm of the Mare Street junction. (This will be subject to further detailed modelling and agreement with Transport for London and so if approved is likely to be taken forward for implementation at a later stage)

 For an overview of the proposals, please refer to the related documents section.

 Other works in the area

The replacement of the existing road humps at Eleanor Road with cycle friendly (sinusoidal) road humps will be carried out as part of these works.

How we use your feedback

We will not be able to reply to you individually, but we will consider your comments, together with road safety research and statistics, to help us make a decision about the proposals.

 We can only accept one reply per household.

We can only consider your response if you supply your address and post code. You do not need to supply your name. Under the Local Government Act 1985, all replies will be available for public inspection, so we cannot guarantee your response will remain confidential.

What happens next

Your views will be taken into account as part of the detailed design process. Works are expected to start in January 2015 should we get a positive response. May we take this opportunity to thank you for replying to this consultation.