London,
07
November
2016
|
12:56
Europe/London

Record response for Torrington Place/Tavistock Place route consultation

The council’s consultation on changes to the street layout in the Torrington Place/ Tavistock Place area closed on Friday 21 October.

In the interests of transparency the Council is making public the following headline results; however these are just headline results and are subject to checking and verification. We wish to reiterate that no conclusions or decisions will be made until a full analysis of the consultation comments and alternative proposals has been made.

In total the council received over 15,000 responses, which included 1,387 residents, the highest number ever for a Camden council consultation. 78% of the total were in favour of making the trial street layout permanent, 21% not in favour and 1% had no opinion. Of residents, 61% were in favour, 38% were not in favour and 1% had no opinion.

Councillor Phil Jones, Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Transport & Planning
“I would like to thank everyone who took the opportunity to have their say during the consultation.

“The impressive number of responses received demonstrates the importance that many people, of differing viewpoints, hold with regards to the street layout in this location.

“We are now in the process of fully collating and analysing the responses. Due to the high number it will take officers some time to fully collate and analyse all the views and comments received before we can share the detailed results more widely and use them to inform our final decision.”
Councillor Phil Jones, Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Transport & Planning

Following a full analysis of the consultation results the scheme will be taken through the democratic decision making process. The consultation responses, consideration of alternative proposals for aspects of the schemes and other information including but not limited to air quality, traffic counts and road safety, will be used to inform the Council’s final decision on the scheme. It is anticipated that a decision will be made by the Council’s Cabinet in early 2017. Until a decision is made the current trial road layout will remain in place.

Introduced in November 2015, the trial changed the route that motor traffic used along the corridor of streets that includes Torrington Place, Byng Place, Gordon Square, Tavistock Square and Tavistock Place. Temporary improvements were also made for pedestrians and cyclists by making the corridor mainly eastbound only for motor vehicles and introducing a partially segregated (protected) cycle lane on the southern section of the street. The existing segregated cycle lane on the north side was kept and some changes made to parking and loading.

The council asked for views on the layout at Torrington Place/Tavistock Place, which was implemented as a trial. Members of the public were asked their opinion on whether to keep the current layout (with improvements such as wider pavements and stepped cycle tracks) or to remove it completely and return the street to its former, pre-trial layout (with two traffic lanes and a single, two-way cycle track).