July 2023 Newsletter

Posted on July 4, 2023 by John Garnsworthy

Consultation on more School Streets

There are currently ten school streets in the borough but this number could be set to rise soon as the council is consulting on three more:

Abbey Primary School
Tweedale Primary School
Robin Hood Infants’ School

Please support this latest initiative by responding positively to the consultation!

Support more school streets here!

Holding the council to account

Following on from ‘Sutton’s councillors: welcome to the class of 2022’ and ‘What was delivered for cycling in Sutton between 2010 and 2022?’, we have the third article in the trilogy to consider the final piece in the jigsaw. The article is about holding the council to account over its lapsed reporting on the borough’s former Sustainable Transport Strategy, and the sister document, the former Cycling Strategy.

Very disappointingly, the article notes that a mere two of the 25 objectives set out in the borough’s now retired Cycling Strategy 2015-21 were met and that no explanation for this lack of success has been forthcoming. In order to highlight these issues, a dozen questions were put to Councillor Barry Lewis, Chair of the Environment and Sustainable Transport Committee. The article sets out the questions, provides context behind the questions, and details the responses to the questions that were received.

Healthy Streets Scorecard

The 2023 London Boroughs Healthy Streets Scorecard launch event will be taking place online on Tuesday 11 July from 10:00-11:15am. If you’d like to hear how Sutton fares and much more about this year’s active travel achievements in London, please click below to register:

Climate Safe Streets:
letter to the council leader

Last month, we reported on LCC’s “One year on, one year to go” report following up the Climate Safe Streets campaign at last year’s local elections and Sutton’s, at best, modest achievements.

Given the importance of the campaign, we have sent an open letter to the leader of Sutton Council, Councillor Ruth Dombey. ‘Climate Safe Streets: One Year on, One Year to Go‘, in which we reviewed the borough’s response to the delivery of the actions (pictured above) relating to active travel and road transport decarbonisation schemes that we had proposed twelve months previously. At the time of writing we are still awaiting a response from Councillor Dombey.

TfL’s Cycling Action Plan

TfL has launched an updated Cycling Action Plan, including an updated Strategic Cycling Analysis and will be releasing a more detailed version of the Strategic Cycling Analysis this summer as well.

LCC has responded to the plan, both the good and bad, in this Twitter thread.

RideLondon: the final word

We were delighted to learn that over 50,000 took part in the RideLondon FreeCycle on 28 May, not to mention nearly half that number on the London-Essex rides. More than 500,000 people have participated and cycled more than 46.5 million miles since its start in 2013 following the 2012 London Olympics. More than 25% of riders didn’t cycle regularly before the event and 40% say they will now cycle more and the same number expect to make fewer car journeys by car.

Cycling Quiz

And now for something completely different: our cycling quiz! The answers will be given, but no prizes, in our next newsletter when we return in the autumn:

1) Which novelist said “Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”?

2) Which area in England is Britain’s most successful Paralympian, Dame Sarah Storey, the Cycling and Walking Commissioner for?

3) Which local authority has the highest cycling rate of cycling in England and which has the lowest?

5) What colour jersey is worn by the leader of the Tour de France’s Young Rider Competition?

6) Which county partnered London for this year’s RideLondon events?

7) Complete the title of this Sherlock Holmes story: “The Adventure of the ???????? Cyclist”

8) Who is Glasgow’s velodrome named after?

9) The highest number of Santander cycle hires last year was recorded on 18 August but how many: (a) 66,972 (b) 53,281 c) 71,384 (d) 61,286?

10) In which film does Paul Newman ride a bicycle with Katharine Ross and what song on the soundtrack accompanies them?

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