Thanks to everyone who came along to the public meeting on 13th October "The Big Green Pow Wow".
We've developed our draft response to the transport consultation and we'd like your comments before we submit it.
Please comment below this blog post, like it, share it or email us at info@sustainablehackney.co.uk We are also responding to the Air Quality Action Plan.
Transport Strategy generally:
Public Transport:
Liveable Neighbourhoods
We strongly support the council’s objective to create and sustain “liveable neighbourhoods,” with initiatives ranging from tree planting and safe play streets to safe pedestrian routes, cycle and car share schemes and new areas for communal food growing. But these ideas need coordinating and discussing with residents. We want to see a borough wide Liveable Streets Forum and the council to encourage discussion on liveable street improvements in Ward Forums so people can take ownership of street greening.
We strongly support increasing street tree cover – but this should be in the context of the Biodiversity Action Plan.
We support increasing community street planting, but we think a more pro-active approach is needed and that biodiversity is a better objective than food growing.
We support a Hackney-wide Freight Action Plan.
We want to see targets for more car-sharing bays and electric car charging points.
UPDATE our final submission is here Transport Strategy - comments from Sustainable Hackney - Final.pdf
Comments are closed for this blog post
Water Freight seems to be a major omission in the Hackney Draft Transport Strategy.
The River Lea, Hackney Cut & Regent Canal all pass though Hackney and present a major opportunity to move freight from road to water.
The basic infrastructure is already in place with recycling facilities, waste handling, aggregates distribution and container terminals all located waterside on the Lea and Thames rivers.
The existing waste handling facility on Millfields Road could be converted back to a wharf for waste products and new wharfs provided in Hackney Wick and along the Regents Canal.
The environmental advantages are huge - Water freight uses significantly less carbon than either road or rail (by between a third and a quarter less than road-freight); and by reducing the amount of HGV's on the roads, they would be less polluted, less congested and safer.
The waterways are an underused resource. They were the backbone of our transport network 200 years ago and could play a significant role in a low carbon economy.
I wonder if anything could be said on the issue that sometimes Hackney Planning makes decisions contrary to its own declared policy, I'm thinking increasing parking and traffic on Hackney Marshes here?
David, thanks for your comments, very useful.
We'll add the car-free day idea to the transport strategy response, I think the post-it went with the air-quality team. The comments from the pow-wow are included in the liveable neighbourhoods part of our response, we'll also include them in the other parts of our response. We're communicating with Living Streets and Hackney Cyclists. Living Streets has sent us their draft response which I'll forward to you if you let me have your email address by emailing info@sustainablehackney.org.uk.
Good draft response. Here are a few comments:
* Some post-its must have fallen on the floor as I can't find any mention of my suggestion of having a borough-wide car free day or will that be included solely in the response to the Air Quality Action Plan? There's overlap between the two plans and, where appropriate, the more we can repeat/reinforce suggestions the more likely we may have a chance of seeing them through especially as it would seem to distinct teams are in charge of each plan.
* It would have been better to integrate all the comments from the pow-wow into Sustainable Hackney's detailed response than having them all collated on a page on their own. It makes them a bit too easy to be dismissed by the Council.
* It would be useful to include references/links to the responses mentioned. For instance where can I find the submission from Hackney Living Streets mentioned on p. 4?
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