Walking and cycling changes between Oval and Streatham

Consultation Update 12 July 2023

Our experimental walking and cycling improvements between Oval and Streatham have now been fully assessed.  We have also reviewed and responded to all the issues raised by members of the public as part of our public consultation. The changes we made included: 

• new advanced stop lines for cyclists; 
• widener bus lanes at bus stops;
• amended bus lane operation to 24 hours a day 7 days a week; 
• extended bus only lanes to stop lines, except for left turning vehicles;
• introduced three banned left turns, except cyclists, at St Johns Crescent, Blenheim Gardens, and Fairmount Road;
• removed some parking bays from bus lanes;

Our data has shown that the scheme has contributed to a 33% increase in the numbers of people cycling along the A23 between Oval and Streatham – our monitoring shows that on average 4,000 people a day are cycling along this corridor compared with 2,600 people a day in 2019. Our traffic monitoring also shows that traffic flows, including bus journey times, have not been unreasonably impacted.  We have therefore decided to retain the changes we have made on a permanent basis.

We have responded to all the issues raised during our public consultation process and produced a report with details of our monitoring and observations about the impacts of the scheme on cycling rates, bus journey times and general traffic.

The current situation on-street has been created using more than one traffic order and so the permanent changes will need to be implemented using a similar approach. Please be assured that during this process, no further changes will be made to parking or loading bays in the area.  

- update ends -

Consultation update 22 March 2022

We held a six-month consultation between 17 May and 17 November 2021 on experimental changes we made to the A23 between Oval and Streatham.  

We received 306 responses to our consultation in total, including two from stakeholders.   

We have now published a Consultation Report to set out the outcomes of the consultation, but we have not yet made any decisions about how to move forward. You can read our consultation report and the appendix to the report in the 'Documents' section of this page.  

Once we have made a decision about how to move forward we will write to the respondents to the consultation with a response to each of the issues raised in the consultation.

- update ends -

Overview

We have made some changes to the A23 between Oval and Streatham as part of an experiment. We hope these changes will help people who can to walk and cycle more, to help maintain space on public transport for those who need it and help people to avoid using their cars as much as possible.

We want to know your views and experiences on these changes. We are holding a six-month consultation on the A23 experimental scheme. You can reply by following the link to the Survey below. We also want this consultation to be accessible to everyone.

There is an Easy Read version of our materials in the ‘Documents’ section. There is also an Easy Read version of our survey. In the bottom right-hand corner, there is also a British Sign Language video which includes audio. If you need to translate this page into another language, please use the ‘Select language’ button in the bottom left-hand corner of this page.

The purpose of this scheme

Enabling walking and cycling

There are already large numbers of people who cycle regularly along the A23 between Oval and Streatham. Our data shows that over 500 people regularly cycle between Oval and Streatham in the peak period. We think there is the potential for more people to cycle along the A23, but only if we introduce new measures to encourage and support people to do so. Doing so will help to take pressure off buses and trains so that key workers, and people who cannot walk or cycle, can travel more easily. It will also help buses to run more reliably.

Keeping people safe

We also need to take action to prevent people walking and cycling from being hurt and injured: there were 80 collisions along the A23 between August 2017 and March 2019 which led to people being hurt. Of these, 50% involved people walking and cycling.

A map giving an overview of the changes we will be making can be found in the 'Documents' section.

Information to help you respond

There is additional information in the ‘Documents’ section of this page. This information explains in more detail:

• How this consultation will work. We are not consulting about whether or not the experimental scheme should have been introduced. We will need to decide what any future of the scheme should be
• Why we have chosen to introduce this scheme experimentally
• How we will be monitoring the effects this scheme has, and how we will know if the experiment is a success or not
• What impacts we think the experiment scheme will have
• A summary of the changes we have made
• A copy of our consultation questionnaire, in case you would prefer to complete it offline and post it to our Freepost address (which is FREEPOST TFL HAVE YOUR SAY)