The Greenway is a stretch of traffic free cycle track from Stratford to Beckton on top of Bezalgette’s sewer. TfL has recently spent £4.5m on “upgrading” the track and now calls it Quietway 22.
Photo: Hackney Cyclist
As so much cycle infrastructure in London, it is very poorly executed as no money has been spent on the difficult bits. Hackney Cyclist has written an excellent report last month. Here I just concentrate on the TOTAL lack of intervention wherever the Quietway meets motor traffic. In other words, Will Norman is perfectly happy to treat active travel as a second class form of travel.
Western end
Notice the absurdly wide pavement
The link with Victoria Park is the very unattractive and unfriendly Wick Lane, which has no safe cycling infrastructure. NO MONEY SPENT HERE
Stratford High Street
After five hundred metres the Greenway meets three obstacles: a railway, a river, and a main road; in spite of the £billions spent on the Olympic project, these obstacles have been deemed too formidable for the English urban planners. The Greenway just dies and resumes where it is easy. One can follow a lengthy link provided by Marshgate Lane and CS2, but crossing Stratford High Street has not been considered at this point and one has to improvise. No wonder that very few West Ham fans cycle to watch their team. NO MONEY SPENT HERE
UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2019 – A short stretch of old Greenway, West of Stratford High Street has been reopened. However the NEW crossing of SHS has been badly designed: first of all it is staggered, for no good reason; secondly and most important the new type of green man signals are extremely confusing and likely to confuse people and induce them to cross at the wrong time:
It is worth noting that during the Olympic Games, the crossing was direct and additionally a bridge was built on top of it:
English people are not happy if they don’t erect barriers
Photo: Hackney Cyclist
Along the 5km of the main stretch, the Greenway meets five roads. In all occasions there are formidable barriers which are difficult to navigate with a cargobike. Money has been thankfully spent on lighting along the way; which means that the route is no longer closed at dusk as Newham used to do. But why not replace those horrible barriers with simple pillars?
The A117
The Greenway is interrupted by the A117 at its intersection with the A13. This junction exemplifies the English lack of respect, let’s call it disdain and utter contempt for ordinary citizens who don’t drive. To rejoin the Greenway, one has to negotiate SIX TRAFFIC LIGHTS. Naturally, this being England, no thought has been directed to synchronising these lights for the benefit of people walking or cycling. On the contrary they seem to be programmed to maximise the waiting time. On two arms, the conflicting motor traffic is stationary at red, and yet the pedestrian lights are also fixed at red. This may be an error, but this being England, nobody complains or the complaints are ignored. We tested the total time required to cross this junction:
West-East:
Wait at 1: 1 minute 35 seconds; cross to island 5 seconds
Wait at 2: 55 seconds; ride to 3: 15 seconds
Wait at 3 20 seconds; cross 3 & 4: 15 seconds
Wait at 5: 1 minute and 15 seconds; cross 5 seconds
Wait at 6: 1 minute and 35 seconds; cross 5 seconds.
Total SIX MINUTES AND TWENTY SECONDS
East-West:
Wait at 6: 1 minute and 5 seconds; cross 5 seconds
Wait at 5: 30 seconds; cross to 4: 10 seconds
Wait at 4 1 minute and 25 seconds; cross: 10 seconds
Wait at 3: 40 seconds; ride to 2: 15 seconds
Wait at 2: 45 seconds; cross 5 seconds
Wait at 1: 1 minute and 45 seconds; cross 5 seconds.
Total: SEVEN MINUTES
How can anyone think that this is acceptable?
Vision Zero London 
You can get an insight to the process by looking into the design documents or guides. Traffic Advisory Leaflet 1/06 is a fairly readable version which outlines the sorts of considerations made. The worked example at the end of part 3 where pedestrians are getting in the way of setting the phases for cars is realistic of how pedestrians are *not* included into the design as an equally important user.
Large intersections like this usually end up with many traffic phases splitting up the different directions and segments to increase throughput for motor traffic. But the pedestrians signals get lumped together in just a few groups to simplify their control (minimise cost and effort) and their throughput or wait times are not even considered or checked.
An FOI request should be able to get you the complete programming/design of that junction if you really want to see why it failed.
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Yes what a half-baked enterprise the Greenway, sorry Quietway 22, now is and look out after dusk as you could be quietly mugged.
I’ve got my times negotiating the A13/HSt.S junction to a minimum by doing it anticlockwise W to E and clockwise E to W but it’s still a pain and probably quite literally so if you dont spot the many cars jumping and running red lights.
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