The Royal Borough of Greenwich streetspace programme will change the streets of the borough to support the significant increase in cycling and walking that began during the national lockdown and looks set to continue.

Part of The Mayor of London’s Streetspace plan, these changes will make social distancing easier which will help to stop the spread of the virus and bring longer term benefits for public health, including improved air quality and reduced carbon emissions. 

We need to create a transport network which continues to provide safe travel options for all residents and to do this we need to avoid a car-led recovery. Public transport capacity is likely to be greatly reduced for the foreseeable future and our streets need to be able to accommodate a potential ten-fold increase in cycling and five-fold increase in walking as lockdown restrictions are lifted.

Watch and listen to Cllr Sizwe James, Cabinet Member for Environment, Sustainability and Transport explain in more detail why we need to reduce through-traffic and encourage walking and cycling in Royal Greenwich:

The streetspace plan

Phase one projects completed by September 2020 

• Widening footpaths in Greenwich, Eltham and Woolwich town centres to create space for social distancing  
• safe, protected cycle routes to enable many more journeys by bike  
• school streets to create a safe environment around the school gate  
• filtering more residential streets to create low traffic cycle routes and neighbourhoods. 

Phase two projects 

• filtering more residential streets to create low traffic cycle routes and neighbourhoods. 
• school streets to create a safe environment around the school gate  
• new 20mph zones 
• updating Controlled Parking Zones (CPZs) 
• supporting groups at higher risk of collisions 
• school travel planning – working with schools to help them encourage active and sustainable travel 
• schemes to reduce bus delays 
• improvements to pavements to make walking easier for people with disabilities, such as tactile floor surfaces 
• cycle parking - including parking at schools, stations and town centres, as well as cycle hangers in residential locations 
• improvements to the proposed Blackheath Gate cycling safety scheme 
• school and adults cycle training 
• campaigns to make walking and cycling more attractive 
• initial designs to make local streets safer 
• encouraging growth of car clubs 
• making the council’s fleet of vehicles safer and greener. 

Locations

This map shows the locations of:

• social distancing measures, shown with blue pins
• emergency school streets, shown with green pins
• cycle routes, shown with green and orange lines
• modal filters, shown with shaded areas 

Funding

The streetspace programme is funded by Transport for London (TfL) under the London Streetspace Programme and the Department for Transport's Emergency Active Travel Fund. We were awarded £1.266 million of funding for phase 1 and an additional £711,000 for phase 2.  

As well as the projects we have received funding for, we submitted other funding bids to TfL which were not successful. Two of these bids were for social distancing measures in Woowich and Greenwich town centres, but these have been funded directly by the council due to the urgent public health need. We will continue to lobby and bid for more transport funding when it becomes available. 

Future engagement

We will write to local residents who will be directly affected by the work to implement these plans, to tell you about them and to gather feedback.

To understand your experiences of the temporary measures and which of them should be made permanent, we encourage feedback from local residents so that your views can inform decisions about the future of these projects.