TfL allocates £22m for temporary cycling and walking schemes

Transport for London (TfL) has allocated almost £22.3m to enable 24 boroughs to implement emergency interventions such as temporary cycle routes, school streets, low traffic neighbourhoods and wider pavements.

This spending commitment represents around half of the total money TfL has to spend on active travel responses to COVID-19.

TfL said it selects schemes based on criteria such as deliverability, location, value for money, and unmet demand for cycling and walking based on its Strategic Cycling Analysis, as well as locations where public transport trips can be switched to cycling and walking. Many of these criteria are set out in its Streetspace guidance for emergency infrastructure.

The Streetspace approach is intended to help Londoners avoid public transport by walking and cycling more during the COVID-19 crisis, while preventing an increase in the use of private motor vehicles across the city.

Analysis by the website roads.cc indicates that some £12.64m has been allocated to strategic cycle routes, £4.29m to low traffic neighbourhoods, £3.56m for creating social distancing.

Lambeth has been allocated the most – £2,639,000 for nine schemes, including Cycleway 5 on Bayliss Road, which one of four borough ‘Strategic Cycle Routes’ that together receive £1.3m – and £968,000 for its low traffic neighbourhoods scheme.

London’s three “Mini Holland” boroughs, Enfield, Kingston and Waltham Forest, were allocated around £2m each.

Camden, Islington, Hackney and Southwark are each getting £1.3m-£1.5m.

Hounslow received more than £1m for footway widening, town centre space, a strategic cycle route, three low traffic neighbourhoods and three school streets.

A number of boroughs have yet to receive funding. More allocations will be announced over the coming weeks.

A TfL spokesperson said: “Walking and cycling will be central to London’s recovery from coronavirus and we’re determined to ensure that people living in every borough have access to high-quality infrastructure. It’s more important now than ever before that walking and cycling is made safer, easier and more appealing right across the capital. Each application for funding is being carefully assessed on its own merits and money will only be awarded for schemes which meet the principles laid out in the guidance we have issued to boroughs and published on our website.”

The figures can be found by clicking here