12 March 2016

Kingston Council Go developments drop-in session was a waste of time

Just over two years ago Kingston won £30 million from Boris "to deliver transformational change for cycling in the borough, bringing benefits to everyone whether or not they cycle". That quote comes from The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames A cycling vision for everyone Kingston Council’s Stage II submission to the Mayor’s Outer London Cycling Fund December 2013.

Since then not much has happened.

Plenty of staff have been working on the programme, I've met over half a dozen of them at various times, and several documents have been produced, including a 1cm thick booklet on the proposed Riverside Boardway that I was not allowed a copy of.

Then we heard that the Mini-Holland scheme had been included in the broader Go Kingston programme that is looking at all transport improvements, not just cycling, and Kingston Council announced a series of drop-in events, inviting residents, businesses and organisations to learn more about the ‘Go Programme’.

So I went to one but was bitterly disappointed by it.

What the exhibition confirmed was that very little had been achieve to date, unless you count rebranding as progress, the definition of the scheme had got much broader and the emphasis was now more on the public realm than on improving provision for cyclists.

To make things worse, there was no information on the main schemes, just a map of where they were which we had seen many times before. Even the drawings we had seen for the Kingston Station and Riverside Boardway schemes previously were missing.

The exhibition had very little information and none of it was new so I could not see what the point of it was. I did not stay very long.

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