£300m to be spent on improving 33 London junctions
A £300 million programme of investment will see 33 of London’s most notorious road junctions upgraded to make them safer and less threatening for cyclists and pedestrians.
More than 150 cyclists and pedestrians have been killed or seriously injured at these 33 locations in the last three years.
Transport for London (TfL) has announced that gyratories at Archway, Aldgate, Swiss Cottage and Wandsworth, among others, will be ripped out and replaced with two-way roads, segregated cycle tracks and new traffic-free public space.
The Elephant & Castle roundabout, London’s highest cycle casualty location, will be removed.
At other intimidating gyratories, such as Hammersmith and Vauxhall, safe and direct segregated cycle tracks will be installed, pending more radical transformations of these areas in the medium term.
Detailed designs for the first schemes will be published next month and work will begin in the second half of this year.
The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said: “These road junctions are relics of the 1960s which blight and menace whole neighbourhoods. Like so much from that era, they’re also atrociously-designed and wasteful of space. Because of that, we can turn these junctions into more civilised places for cyclists and pedestrians, while at the same time maintaining their traffic function.”
As announced in the Mayor’s Cycling Vision, the junction programme has been fundamentally refocused away from making minor, often cosmetic changes at a large number of junctions to delivering real and transformational change at the busiest and worst junctions.
The pre-Cycling Vision programme would have divided £19 million between 100 junctions, an average of £190,000 per junction. The new programme commits in the region of £300 million to just 33 major junctions, an average of £9 million per junction.
Leon Daniels, managing director of surface transport at TfL, added: “For over a year our designers and engineers have been working flat out to develop new junction designs for these 33 locations to completely change how they operate, transforming their areas for cyclists, pedestrians and the wider local community. They are some of the busiest traffic intersections in Europe, so this work has been complicated. But we are now fully committed to delivering these junction improvements as quickly as possible, making London safer and more inviting for all.”
Full list of junctions:
1. Aldgate Gyratory
2. Apex Junction (part of Shoreditch Triangle)
3. Archway Gyratory
4. Blackfriars
5. Borough High Street/Tooley Street Junction
6. Bow Roundabout
7. Chiswick Roundabout/Kew Bridge Junction
8. Elephant & Castle Northern Roundabout
9. Great Portland Street Gyratory
10. Hammersmith Broadway Gyratory
11. Highbury Corner
12. King’s Cross
13. Lambeth Bridge Northern Roundabout
14. Lambeth Bridge Southern Roundabout
15. Lancaster Gate Gyratory
16. Marble Arch Gyratory
17. Nag’s Head Gyratory
18. Old Street Roundabout
19. Oval Triangle
20. Parliament Square
21. Rotherhithe Roundabout
22. Spur Road Gyratory
23. St Paul’s Gyratory
24. Stockwell Gyratory
25. Stratford Gyratory
26. Surrey Quays Gyratory
27. Swiss Cottage Gyratory
28. Tower Gateway
29. Vauxhall Cross Gyratory
30. Wandsworth Town Centre Gyratory
31. Waterloo Roundabout
32. Westminster Bridge Road
33. Woolwich Road/A102 Junction