Walking

•    Many people who did not take up cycling during lockdown took up walking or jogging.

•    There is also a need to provide better walking infrastructure.

•    The Town Wardens have done extensive work clearing foliage from roadside footpaths and footpaths in general.

•    There are though, places where people wish to walk which currently have footpaths that are either too narrow or non-existent.

•    There is therefore a need to provide safe walking infrastructure to all locations, especially crucial for some out of town business centres which would otherwise be walkable from nearby towns and Villages.

•    There are initiatives to make residential streets more walking and cycling friendly. The Mini-Holland initiative in Walthamstow Village in East London is one such example. When there are complaints about children playing football in the street then you can count it as a success.

•    One method for residential streets where cars can turn around (as in cul de sacs) is the concept of filtered permeability which is used to reduce through traffic on streets and roads. This is best exampled by many of the temporary filters inserted into one end of many streets to enable social distancing in this country.

•    Walking and pedestrians must be considered when shared paths are considered as an option. Shared paths should not be even considered on footpaths where there is high pedestrian footfall, Instead in these incidences segregated cycle paths must be considered. Failure to do this leads to conflict between pedestrians and cyclists, pedestrians because they don’t hear cyclists coming up behind them and cyclists because they get held up when pedestrians don’t hear them. Shared paths need to be at least 2.5m wide to enable cyclists to overtake them and cyclists should use bells to forewarn pedestrians (though noise cancelling headphones makes this pointless).