Susan Hall fan-boy Jason Perry, after operating a web page that gave encouragement to ULEZ vandals, is about to commit his own act of vandalism on a piece of public infrastructure that he has undermined from the start, reports JEREMY CLACKSON, transport correspondent
For the chop: pro-car Perry, the Mayor of Croydon, declared he’d get rid of the Brighton Road cycle lane before it was installed
Croydon Council claims that it has had no time in the past two years to consult with Transport for London over the TfL cycle lane on Brighton Road that the borough’s pro-car Mayor, Jason Perry, wants to have ripped out.
That’s just one of the blatant Perry porkie pies contained in a report going to tomorrow night’s council cabinet meeting, when the Mayor’s Tory stooges are expected to nod through the dismantling of the “Brighton Road Cycling Corridor”.
Since it was first installed by Perry’s council administration, the two miles of supposedly protected cycle lane, from Purley Cross to just short of Croydon town centre, has been left incomplete, presented a danger to all road users, and has been deliberately sabotaged.
TfL estimated that the cost of installing the Brighton Road cycle lane was around £500,000. The act of gross self-harm proposed by pro-car Perry looks likely to cost cash-strapped Croydon Council close to that sum in TfL grants, which will have to be clawed back from other travel and transport schemes proposed around the borough.
After the Brighton Road cycle lane was first suggested in 2021 and approved in March 2022, it was left to the new council administration under Conservative Mayor Perry to roll out the cycle lane aimed to “help connect the south of the borough with the town centre, making it safer for cyclists along Brighton Road”.
Sabotaged: the only thing blocking the traffic on Brighton Road here on Sunday was this illegally parked car – plonked in the cycle lane
Just like Perry’s vandalism celebration Facebook page, “Croydon say no to ULEZ Expansion”, Croydon Conservatives have pandered to motorists with their own “campaign” page “Stop the Brighton Road Traffic Chaos!” (accompanied by a photo not of Brighton Road, and showing nothing resembling chaos…).
Perry declared his personal animus to the cycle lane before it was installed, announcing his intention to have it ripped out when he was still a mere councillor for South Croydon ward, which the A235 Brighton Road passes through. Small businessman Perry had determined that a cycle lane was somehow “bad for businesses”. Though he never managed to explain how.
Conservative prejudice: Perry has always wanted rid of the Brighton Road cycle lane
By the time he became Mayor, and found himself saddled with a TfL-agreed scheme, part-time Perry did his best to use his position to undermine the cycle lane.
Perry ordered the removal of many of the lane’s safety “wands” even before the route was formally operational in March 2023. Obviously, this made the wand bases, known as “defenders”, more difficult to see, resulting in damage to them, and to people. There have been at least five personal injury claims arising from collisions with the black runner bases, including one reported by iC back in November.
Might our Mayor be held personally liable for causing these injuries, or will Croydon Council Tax-payers pick up the bill?
Tomorrow night’s meeting in the Town Hall Chamber will be making a decision on an official council report that has got more holes than a Swiss cheese.
There are claims that several, no doubt expensive, road safety audits have found design flaws with the Brighton Road cycle lane. But oddly, by the time of publication, none of these audits had been attached to the agenda on the council’s website. Nor has is there any evidence of Perry’s council having done anything to address these supposed flaws.
The report to cabinet itself fails to mention the detailed analysis carried by Road Safety Answers Ltd.
The familiar claim that “emergency services experiencing difficulties and delays” is included, based on an email (singular) from an unnamed organisation. That single email is not included with the report. Maybe it was from a Mrs Perry of Castlemaine Avenue, South Croydon?
The (unevidenced) claim that emergency services are in any way delayed is at odds with TfL’s own Guidance for the Use of Traffic Wands with Cycle Infrastructure which says, “Ambulance services identify 8metre spacing on links is sufficient to enable other motorists to pull out of the traffic lane to enable their vehicles to pass. This is a useful guide when designing for other emergency service vehicles.”
The claim is also simply just not true. The video taken on Sunday clearly demonstrates: drivers are shown pulling into the spaces between the wands and defenders, then quickly emerging afterwards, as the ambulance speeds north along Brighton Road.
The report also includes a ridiculous claim that the cycle lanes can’t be kept clean by Veolia’s motorised sweepers (which in any case are a rare sight in the borough). Yet, the manufacturers of the Schmidt Swingo 200+ machines boast that, at only 1.3metres wide, they are “ideal for cycle paths” – the ones along Brighton Road are between 1.8m and 2.0m wide. And of course, there are such things as human street sweepers (though these are rarely seen on Croydon’s streets, either…). So this looks to be another of Perry’s porkies.
Equally laughable is the assertion that “residents living along Brighton [sic] are prohibited from getting deliveries at all times”. Anyone who has taken a trip along the stretch of road will see that most of the cycle lanes are part-time, and delivery drivers will park wherever they want, whether it’s legal or not.
The report’s Equality Analysis is a hoot, a token tick-box exercise suggesting that people who are married or going through gender reassignment will somehow benefit by making cycling more difficult and dangerous.
Mayor Perry has misused the council’s propaganda department to effectively lobby against this piece of the council’s own infrastructure almost since the day it was installed, regularly seeking “responses” from users of the A235. There’s also been petitions run by Croydon Conservatives and some residents’ associations.
Those were the days: queues to get into the Purley Oaks dump. This photo is from 2016 – six years before the cycle lane
All those efforts attracted a grand total of 458 objections, less than 1% of the population of the four wards affected – Waddon, South Croydon, Purley Oaks and Riddlesdown and Purley and Woodcote.
Of those who raised objections, 91% of them do not live on Brighton Road or its adjoining roads.
Those who objected complained that the cycle lanes cause queues. The objectors, a bit like piss-poor Perry, didn’t seem to realise that the traffic queues are usually caused by cars, rather than cycles. Perhaps if more people cycled, there would be fewer queues?
Objectors blamed the traffic jams at Purley Oaks Recycling Centre on cyclists, instead of too many drivers queuing up. They seem to have forgotten that there have always been queues (of cars) outside the recycling centre.
To cut congestion and reduce emissions and to save drivers’ time and fuel, other councils like Sutton have introduced online booking systems for their civic amenity sites. But that’s all too much trouble for Mayor Perry’s Croydon Council.
When it comes to alternative options for Brighton Road, the report listed ones that were all bad and so all were dismissed. However, it’s the one they haven’t considered at all that which would be the best. Physically-segregated cycle tracks are responsible for a surge in cycling in other parts of London, which is why City Hall, and TfL, is investing public cash almost everywhere in the capital, except for pro-car Perry’s Croydon.
The cabinet report’s author notes that “due to the challenging timescales in preparing technical assessments and this report, there has been insufficient time to properly consult with TfL”. Which seems more than a little lame. And lacking any credibility.
Of itself, this admission ought to see the report dismissed. But the Tory councillors in Perry’s cabinet wouldn’t dare pipe up over such obvious nonsense.
Under Perry and the ULEZ-hating Tories, the preference is to stop people having a realistic alternative to their car, despite all the exhortations from Conservative central government and cycling being a fundamental aspect of the Mayor of London’s Transport Strategy.
Expensive: Croydon’s £82,000 per year Mayor, Jason Perry
The reason for Perry’s headlong rush to remove the Brighton Road wands is unexplained. The lack of consultation is something all too familiar. The cabinet member notionally responsible for the decision, Scott Roche, chairs the council’s “Croydon Advisory Forum on Active, Sustainable and Accessible Transport”.
This “advisory forum” has met only twice in two years. Maybe it is just not a priority for Mayor Perry?
When it held its latest meeting, just two weeks ago, the Mayor’s secret plan to scrap the Brighton Road cycle lane was not even on the agenda.
The report itself also omits to state what the cost was to instal the Brighton Road scheme, or what might be the costs of removing it, or the cost of the consequences of any removal. Which, for a cash-strapped council with a “toxic” mountain of debt, probably ought to be among the first considerations. But not in piss-poor Perry’s Croydon.
The report does acknowledge the risk of TfL clawing back its funding for the scheme, “most likely via a reduction in funding for 2024-2025. This would have a material impact on the delivery of a range of projects and schemes, including those in the Reconnected Croydon Levelling Up Fund programme”. So Croydon would not only be losing two miles of an important cycling connectivity, but also funding for other projects.
With TfL having estimated the cost of installation at £500,000 in 2021, any clawback is liable to double the net financial impact.
There’s the matter of the climate emergency, too. Croydon Council has set itself the goal of having 63% of all residents’ journeys being made by walking, cycling and public transport by 2041. Mayor Perry is about to make that goal that bit more difficult to achieve.
Not that Perry will care much. Research earlier this year by London Assembly Sian Berry earlier this year found that Croydon did not apply for any TfL funding for cycle or bus priority schemes.
“The current set-up is an imperfect solution and this report’s plans will make things worse,” according to Angus Hewlett, the Croydon co-ordinator for London Cycling Campaign.
“We want joint working with TfL and experts with a successful track record elsewhere in London to properly review sound options and bring us the benefits that other boroughs enjoy.
“Full account must be taken of TfL’s London Cycle Design Standards to give us high-quality solutions that work for everyone.”
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If you don’t want traffic jams have fewer cars, it’s very simple.
That’s a distinct possibility, Paul. But it’s still too complicated for part-time Perry.
or if you can’t live with inevitable traffic jams, don’t get in your car
Anyone who has stood outside Croydon University Hospital A&E junction (“Mayday Road”) for more than a few minutes will have seen the ambulances blocked by buses and other traffic that have nowhere to go because of the 2 metre wide bollarded cycle lanes on both sides of the road.
They should all be converted to Bus Lanes.
Now that the current ULEZ has chased all the polluting vehicles off the London streets, ULEZ cameras now serve little further purpose other than surveillance unless the criteria are savagely tightened which will put all the poorest workers and tradesmen off the road.
They should be repurposed to give a daily charge to the huge domestic vanity-purchase vehicles that consume excessive road width, an obvious criterion is being too big to fit in standard parking spaces.
Or perhaps the primary reason ambulances are “blocked” and “have nowhere to go” is because of “buses and other traffic”?
I wonder what planning applications are waiting to be submitted that the cycle path is currently in the way of?
The irony is that the plans for the site of the former Purley Pool, reported by Inside Croydon on 11 May https://insidecroydon.com/2024/05/11/purley-residents-reject-purley-pool-plan-backed-by-perry/ “involve the removal of 424 parking spaces in the existing multi-storey, to be replaced by just 50 in a 220-unit housing development with a leisure centre attached”.
Investing in the very best cycle lanes that other parts of London enjoy would render that consideration irrelevant. When it’s safe and easy to cycle, more and more people choose to go by bike, as demonstrated in other boroughs and cities.
Instead in Croydon it’s being made more dangerous to go by bike and, in Purley, more difficult to go by car. Our council’s transport and environment policies are in tatters, a situation in part brought about and exacerbated by the departure of the highly respected Head of Strategic Transport, Ian Plowright.
It’s also down to a failure to either join the dots or to honour commitments. Also on the agenda of the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday is Air Quality, where the nth action plan will be discussed and nothing material will be done to implement it.
This is despite the Mayor’s Business plan for 2022-2026 including the commitment to “lead action to reduce carbon emissions in Croydon”.
The report tells us that “it has been estimated that up to 40% of pollution
in Croydon is from outside London and Europe therefore actions to reduce pollution in Croydon are limited.” This is council-speak for “over 60% of air pollution in Croydon is home grown, therefore actions to tackle it are vital – but we don’t want to do anything about it”.
The report goes on to say “therefore we need to engage with residents and businesses to reduce exposure to air pollution and to raise awareness to change people’s behaviour by encouraging people to walk and cycle more so they can live healthier and more pleasant lives.”
We don’t need encouragement or more hand-wringing. We need concrete action. Now.
It’s more likely that the “email (singular) from an unnamed organisation” came from the Alliance of Bad Drivers (prop. Morgan, P.)
I am a cyclist who frequently uses the Brighton Road cycle lane from end to end. I would be very disappointed to see it removed.
If the Report’s recommendations are voted through then it will be a backward step for cycling, seemingly against the visions and directives of government and TFL, and at odds with how the majority of other London boroughs have improved cycle infrastructure. Croydon is likely to become the laughing stock borough of London when it comes to improving cycling infrastructure. Hopefully, the London Cycling Campaign and / or Cycling UK will be on the case.
I ride my motorbike down the Brighton Road (and elsewhere!) and worry about these ‘rubber bases’ because I know that if I clip one … I’ll be off. I’m sure the same applies to pedal cyclists. The so-called ‘wands’ seem to me to be essential as a warning. But I’m sure thefre is a safer, less ugly, solution that TfL’s six-figure annual salary experts could come up with.
Naturally there is – only have to look to other bits of London to see how it’s done.
https://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/dictionary/hybrid-cycle-track
https://lcc.org.uk/news/streetspace-main-road-cycle-routes-arrive/
The main thing is _consistency_, so that the road layout is predictable for all road users. Croydon aren’t very good at that, there’s a tendency to build stuff that stops and starts, and that’s bad for everyone.
If the cycle lane is removed it would be disappointing. Having said that, it is poorly implemented.
Last week I had annual leave and was able to get out on my bike a few times. I seemed to spend more time moving out into the main part of the road to get around vehicles parked in the cycle lane.
In contrast the equivalent to the north of Croydon works so much better. Cycling up past Mayday and the location of the former Broad Green Cinema has been improved massively by the installation of the wands. The old painted lanes were just ignored, but now even when the road is gridlocked you can safely progress.
It just gets more dangerous once you past Broad Green in the final stretch to West Croydon, where cars seem desperate to overtake at all costs and I can imagine inexperienced cyclists will not enjoy riding there.
For the last bit, go round the back through Parsons Mead. Much quieter, no argy-bargy and no traffic lights!
Yet another example of Perry and his dogmas operating against the interests of the financial situation of the Council.
So he thinks waving goodbye to the odd million is a price worth paying to create upheaval and satisfy his support base, without any tangible evidence to back up the claimed benefits.
If he really was an effective Mayor batting for Croydon and not his niche support base he would be looking to engage with a wider base of stakeholders and maximise income to support the Council.
Just another example of why he is proving to be an ineffective Mayor without real clout to improve the situation in Croydon.
Perry’s antipathy towards cyclists is easily understood if you look at this through the lens of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud. He boiled everything down to s-e-x.
Being a man of stout physique, our Mayor feels inferior to sprightly men who, unlike him, can get their leg over….. crossbars. For us these are simply metal bars but for the Mayor they are metaphors for that which he desires but cannot do. This manifests itself as irrational hostility towards those he regards as supermen, because they represent a threat to his manhood and this in turn reveals a deep-rooted insecurity and Oedipus complex. Probably.
He could cure this by getting on a tandem, him as stoker behind a matronly captain. But the trouble is that he thinks active travel is actually getting out of the car to pick up the takeaway instead of using the drive-thru
No need to fat-shame the man, especially when there’s so much better to shame him for – and a modern metro-cosmopolitan gent like our Jason shouldn’t feel in any way emasculated by plumping for a nice Dutch step-through frame, in any case.
After all, everybody’s got a six-pack, just for most of us it’s hiding under belly chub. And what better way to burn it off?
(Actually, lots of better ways if that’s the look you care about. But the bike is the way for rapid improvement on parts of the body that other people will actually get to see without triggering the restraining order.)
As the study showed fewer than 200 cycles used the lane on the day of the survey. Can the expenditure of £500,000 have been justifiable? How many used it before the scheme started?
The investment – if well spent – serves a number of purposes. One is to make it safer for people who already cycle. Another is to make it safer and more attractive for people who would cycle if it were made easier.
That gives people a real choice of how to get from, in this case, Purley to Croydon or vice-versa. Drive the car, take a bus or taxi or the train, walk or take the bike?
The current scheme is half-baked, giving up at the difficult bits, such as between Nottingham Road and Croydon High Street, and prioritises someone’s convenience when driving over their life when cycling.
The plans in the council report being approved tonight are not to make that situation better, but even worse.
The government said they wanted to increase the percentage of short journeys in towns and cities that are walked or cycled from 41% in 2018/19 to 46% in 2025.
Our council is stopping that happening.
If you consider that a bus fare up and down the Brighton Road is £1.75 each way, on an extremely crude basis you could estimate that it’s worth £3.50 per user per day; assuming the 200 is a reasonable average daily number it’d hit somewhere near parity in two years.
An academic study a few years back estimated a net benefit to society of 67p per mile cycled, again call it two miles each way and you’d get to breakeven in three and a half years.
But 200 daily users is absolutely not an impressive number compared to e.g. North End which has well over a thousand cycle trips per day, or Blackfriars Road in central London which peaks at over 5,000, and we should ask why it’s so low – and there’s really two factors.
One is that, as alluded to in the article, the quality isn’t great. But perhaps more importantly, it completely fails to join up to the town centre, stopping a mile short at Haling Park Road. And that next mile up past Southbridge and Coombe roads is pretty hairy on a bike – even as a very experienced central London cycle commuter (20+ years riding London main roads most days), I’d describe it as not for the faint-hearted.
So it’s basically useless to anyone other than the fit-and-fast going further north than South Croydon station, and as a result it’s no surprise that it’s not getting the sort of usage it should have.
Personally I’d argue they should have built out from the North first, starting at the flyover and working progressively South, but for whatever reason they built this one in isolation. I’m not sure whether that was the Red Team’s doing or the Blue Team’s, but either way, it doesn’t make sense.