How are you changing the use of road space in support of your goal to reduce traffic in London?

Three-quarters of congestion is caused by demand for road space exceeding supply, with traffic on London’s roads costing the capital’s economy more than £5.1 billion a year.  Sustainable modes such as walking, cycling and buses can move more people while taking up significantly less space than cars. More than a third of car trips made by Londoners could be walked in under 25 minutes and two-thirds could be cycled in under 20 minutes. By prioritising space for these modes, we can make them more attractive choices, reducing traffic and making the best use of the limited road space available.

TfL and London’s boroughs have achieved significant increases in active and sustainable travel since I became Mayor. I have tripled the amount of protected cycle space in my first term and a further 100 kilometres plus of routes have been delivered since 2020. That is a five-fold increase since I was first elected. Upgrades to traffic signals have allowed our traffic control system to now detect 1.27 million buses every day at over 1,600 locations, meaning buses receive priority over traffic 66% of the time when they arrive at a junction. Following a trial, TfL is now making permanent the 24 hours a day/7 days a week operation of 80 kilometres of bus lanes to encourage a greater number of bus journeys.

I have also taken action to reduce the number of cars travelling into central London. Earlier this year, I made changes to the Congestion Charge to ensure it remained effective and in October last year [2021] I expanded the ULEZ to inner London which, in addition to delivering air quality improvements, has led to fewer vehicles driving in the zone. Traffic reduction is fundamental to realising the goals of my Transport Strategy. TfL will achieve these through delivery of future Healthy Streets schemes that allocate space away from traffic to vulnerable road users and public transport, supported by investment in cycle parking and cycle training to help increase modal shift. While London’s population continues to grow, road space is finite. Getting more people out of cars is key to allowing the efficient movement of essential traffic, including public transport, the emergency services and people who rely on motor vehicles. It will also be critical to tackling the climate emergency. However, this goal is only achievable if TfL receives the future capital funding from Government that London needs.

Thank you very much, Mr Mayor, and again, like my colleague, I will support you over making sure that we get decent funding for TfL so we can invest in more of this stuff.

Now all of what you said sounded positive, but I have some new ideas to put to you today. As you noted, you started this year creating, finally, a specific target to cut traffic with a goal that just over one in four journeys currently taken by car should be made another way by 2030, and your ULEZ expansion might have reduced traffic already by 2% according to this week’s six-month figures. That is good, but it is not going to get us there on its own and you keep telling us that smarter, fairer road charging is some way away in time.

There is more that reducing road space for vehicles can do to contribute to reducing traffic more quickly, both directly and by making space for walking and cycling and public transport. After this week, I imagine most Londoners want a few more trees and space for those on our main roads as well. My question today is: to reach your target to reduce traffic, why are you not shifting more space away from motor traffic, specifically on your red routes, in a more rapid and concerted way?

You will remember the work we had done in relation to cycle lanes on our red routes, and the opposition, and notwithstanding that we have carried on and made sure there are not just wider pavements but more cycling as well. If there are any particular red routes you want us to look into, I am more than happy for the Walking and Cycling Commissioner or the Deputy Mayor [for Transport] to speak to you. We are trying to do what we can within the bounds of recognising there are some parts of London where there is construction taking place. A good example is High Speed 2 in Euston causing real challenges because they require two lanes. It is causing huge problems in relation to the plans we want to do around there. Subject to things we have to do because of other pressures, I am more than happy for you to meet the relevant members of the team on individual issues that you think we could be doing more on. I do not pretend we cannot go even further and even faster so am happy to have that conversation.

That is really positive. Just to add a bit more context here, I am not simply talking about central London here. I think we should be squeezing this traffic at its source and by that I do literally mean those huge junctions that funnel traffic from outside into our city. We need to be cutting down on the traffic on the red routes in order to make things like Healthy Streets schemes work better, so that we are not leading to more traffic on our red routes. I do want to see you squeezing down on the road space and I do not see that currently in your Strategy. At the moment, you talk about traffic reduction giving the opportunity for road space reallocation in your Cycling Action Plan, for example, and it ought to be a bit more the other way round. If you are up for talking about that a bit further, that is something is currently missing in a philosophical sense from your Transport Strategy.

Yes, let me know. I am not in favour of more congestion and so we always have to be aware of the law of unintended consequences in relation to --

We are. We had, for example, an M4 bus lane for a while, that was got rid of and I do not think that was for a good reason. The M4 bus lane was very good for a little while there.

Even you cannot blame me for the M4 bus lane going.

That was nothing to do with you. That was well before your time. I am out of time. I think we are missing a trick not taking away road space on the main roads and it would genuinely help in damping down traffic overall. If you are up for talking about it more, then I will do that and that is the end of my questions.