The Council is now ready to start road works in Clapham Junction town centre to improve the traffic, redesign the cross-roads, refurbish the pavements and provide several more facilities.
A report on feasibility study into improving the Town Centre was published in June 2007 and examined by the Transport Committee (part of the Exemplar scheme aiming at improving Town Centres).
We have already commented in February 2009 on part of the Exemplar Scheme affecting the road system around Clapham Junction, for vehicles and for pedestrians.
The scheme was estimated to cost £3m (in the report to the Committee), including £800k coming from TfL money and allocated by the Council to the Junction. However the recent article published in Brightside in January talk about £1.2m (click on the article to see bigger).
I found an excellent presentation of the scheme on the Council Website HERE (I re-use part of the article below as with my experience information on the Council website tend to move and links being lost).
The proposed scheme aims to:
- make the area safer and more attractive and convenient for pedestrians and
- enhance journey times for general traffic, buses and cyclists
Transport proposals
The main changes to local streets and footways will be:
- Redesign of the junction of St. John’s Hill, Lavender Hill, Falcon Road and St. John’s Road to provide improved pedestrian crossing facilities. This will include a diagonal crossing to make it easier for pedestrians to get across the junction between the Falcon Pub and Debenhams Department Store;
- Introduction of a right turn into Falcon Lane from Lavender Hill. This will include a banned right turn from Lavender Hill onto Falcon Road
- Movement of the taxi rank from it’s current position to a site further along St John’s Hill;
- Improvements to the junction of the Falcon Lane and ASDA car park access road ;
- Introduction of a keep clear area, within the existing mini-roundabout between Falcon Lane and Falcon Road;
- Widening of the pedestrian crossing outside the railway station to give pedestrians more space;
- Amendment of bus stop locations on St John’s Hill to combine service stops;
- Introduction of cycle lanes along Lavender Hill in both directions between the junctions with Falcon Lane and Falcon Road to improve cyclists’ safety; and
- Amendments to the waiting and loading restrictions in the area.
Streetscape proposals
Proposals include improved conditions for pedestrians and a clear and barrier free streetscape through:
- Reduction of guard railing
- Straight and direct crossings
- New public spaces
- Creating furniture zones for street furniture, taxi ranks and bus stops along the road
- Creating a clutter-free movement zone for pedestrians close to the buildings
- Durable materials for paving, lighting, benches, bus shelters
- Repaving of large sections of the pavements with large sand coloured slabs
- More trees
- Providing cycle parking away from the congested pavements
Click on the picture to display bigger.
The first sign of activity on the exemplar scheme has appeared- if you look fairly closely at the pavements on the various roads that the scheme is set to affect, there are yellow squares about a foot wide painted in the location of what will (presumably) be new street lighting columns; and survey marks where someone’s been tracing what utilities run under the new positions. Quite an increase compared to the current density of street lights, and rather less haphazard than the current arrangement (which is definitely a good thing – particularly on the notably poorly lit stretch along the Falcon Lane).
I understand that the works are set to be fairly drawn out, with stages proceeding “as funds become available” – but with a bit of luck at least the main area will get tidied up a bit, as although the gaping potholes have been sorted out (conveniently just before the election!), the paving – especially on the Lavender Hill side – is particularly uneven and run down at the moment.