This is an opportunity for you to feed back your views.

There is plenty in the press about the importance of getting more people walking and cycling and the Richmond Society promotes active travel.

With more people walking or cycling ever greater levels of care and tolerance will be needed between pedestrians, cyclists and motorists. Many of us use these different modes at different times and so developing a mutual understanding should not be difficult. Nevertheless, too many people in Richmond (most especially the elderly and infirm) live in fear of being knocked over while out on foot.

It is vitally important that everyone can use Richmond’s pavements and roads safely – even if they are narrow and heavily parked. There are many locations where pavement parking is permitted (these are signed), but we have all seen instances of people parking inconsiderately and making the pavement impassable for anyone walking with a pram, a wheelchair, shopping bags, etc or who is in any way disabled.

The Richmond Safer Pavements campaign has been formed by a group of residents with support from the South Richmond Police Liaison Group, local Councillors and the Richmond Cycling Campaign. Its aim is to promote pedestrian safety on the footway by trying to curb incidences of illegal parking and dangerous cycling on the footway.

The group would like to identify where and when the pressure points for parking and pavement cycling exist. From that work they hope to identify where better signage and/or enforcement is needed.

If you would like to help this campaign please email Alan Laird
at richmondsaferpavements2018@gmail.com.

He would particularly like details (not rants!) relating to the following:

1) Have you been involved in a cycling:pedestrian accident yourself? If so, when and where? Please explain what happened.

2) Where in South Richmond have you personally come across people cycling on the pavement (i.e. the road or alley name?) If it’s a regular occurrence is there a particular time of day, or day of the week, when this happens?

3) Pavement parking – can you identify pressure points (using the same criteria as above for pavement cycling)?

4) Signage – where do you think “no cycling” signs should be deployed and what form should these take? There is a range of signage across the area.

5) Directional signage to help cyclists – where do you feel signage should be used to help cyclists get to the town centre, the river etc.?

6) Anything else you would like to contribute including something innovative. For example is there a specific road where the pavement on one side could be for pedestrians with the other for cyclists?

7) Would you be interested in joining the working group to help gather the facts, crunch the statistics and help us find solutions?