For the upcoming 7th May local elections, we will be holding a hustings (jointly with Living Streets and Low Traffic Hackney) for Mayoral candidates. This will be held on the 16th April, from 7:30 to 9pm, at the Pembury Community Centre. Would be great to see you there! You do not need to register to attend, simply turn up.
Currently Caroline Woodley (Labour) and Zoë Garbett (Greens), the two publicly declared candidates, have agreed to attend. This will be an excellent opportunity to hear the candidates share their plans for active travel in the borough, and to put questions directly to them.
Here are our asks of the candidates, which will be shared with them ahead of the hustings. Once we have recieved a response, this page will be updated to reflect which of the asks candidates have committed to.
Our asks of the candidates
- Enable all children to safely walk and cycle to every primary and secondary school in Hackney
There should be school streets (which 20,000 students currently benefit from, a little over half), filters, protected cycle lanes on main roads, or safe junctions for every primary and secondary school in Hackney by 2030.
School streets already delivered without enforcement measures should be upgraded.
- Continue to roll out low-traffic neighbourhoods, and connect gateways between them to maximise their potential for safe cycling
We wish to see the council accelerate rollout of area-wide traffic reduction schemes, so the benefits can be shared across the whole of the borough.
Existing schemes with time-based restrictions (e.g. Lansdowne Drive, and Chatsworth Road) should be made operational 24/7. Safety measures cannot only be operational just some of the time.
To maximise the benefits of these low traffic areas, gateways should be installed across boundary roads to allow safe cycling between them.
- Reduce use of kerbside space for private car parking by 10% by 2030, and convert to more sustainable uses
The council should adopt a formal strategy for reducing the use of kerbside space for private car parking, and instead use this valuable and limited resource for more sustainable and beneficial uses.
This should include (on every residential street) parking for dockless micromobility vehicles, cycle hangars, and also traditional bike parking. It would also free up space for greening, car club spaces, and could speed up bus services.
- Connect Hackney’s town centres by tackling dangerous roads and junctions
Many of Hackney’s town centres are not currently connected to their neighbouring town centres, either in Hackney or in adjacent boroughs. We ask that the council work towards filling these gaps, creating new cycleways formed of streets made suitable for cycling through traffic filtering, or the installation of new protected cycle tracks.
TfL regularly produce a strategic analysis of London, identifying missing links in the cycle network. Building the missing Hackney routes shown in their 2023 analysis would achieve much of this ask.
- Reduce overall motor traffic volumes, and explore piloting a road pricing scheme in Hackney
Too often roads and junctions in Hackney are optimised for maximum throughput of motor vehicles, leaving pedestrians and cyclists marginalised. There seems to be a reluctance to rebalance this, with impacts to essential services (such as buses) from congestion often cited as a justification for avoiding change. As such, we want the council to commit to a target for reducing overall motor traffic in the borough, to address the real root cause of congestion.
We also wish for the council to actively explore potential methods for distance-based charging of road users, particularly at times and locations when congestion is at its worst, to target this problem directly.
