All signed up for the Mayor’s Hounslow Skyride are we?
No? Well, neither am I – I’m buggered if I’m going to spend Sunday pootling [gmap] about Isleworth and Osterley advertising anything to do with Rupert Blasted Murdoch. Instead I’m going to pretend to be an ordinary member of the public, hop on the bus and see what’s going on from the other side of the fence. I suspect a lot of the participants will be from Sky, cajoled into taking part.
Meanwhile, Kulveer’s revenge on the ungrateful voters of Syon Ward (who voted him into second last place in 2006) has begun to create the odd rumble of unease, although it has to be said that most coverage is still pretty positive, driven by Boris fans and cycling enthusiasts on local forums in particular.
Indeed, if the thing is a frost in some way it won’t be through lack of goodwill but lack of planning and communication – the event has been set up at very short notice after Hounslow council leapt at the chance to ingratiate themselves with the Boss and there are worrying signs this has had a negative impact on communications. For instance, I’ve been keeping an eye on the TfL weekend diversions for the bus routes in the area (some of which are bus routes in my area as well and indeed in areas from Twickenham to White City) and information on the quite large-scale diversions only appeared within the last couple of days, evidently done in something of a rush – this is the cleaned up version:
HOUNSLOW SKYRIDE 2009: Due to the event taking place routes 117, 235, 237, 267, H28 and H37 are being diverted with severe delays occurring to journey times between 0900-1800 Sunday 9 August.
…
Route 267 eastbound towards Hammersmith Bust Station will not be diverted.
Well, Hammersmith is well known for getting its tits out, of course. Hounslow’s own website does manage a fairly comprehensive list of bus and road closures, which is welcome, but will people necessarily pick up that information about a GLA event is best communicated by the local council? A rather startling snippet from Cycling Weekly’s website hints at more communication problems:
[South West Trains] learned of the Skyride from a local councillor, says Dave Holladay, the CTC (national cyclists organisation) public transport advisor. As a result SWT plan to double the length of their trains serving the Hounslow area from four to eight carriages on Sunday.
Great. There’s one catch, which is that there’s only one train an hour in each direction on the Hounslow Loop on a Sunday, a source of annoyance to locals for a while now (during the week it’s a decent 15-minute interval). Also, Isleworth station only has room for four carriages at the platform, so bad luck if you expect to get off their with your bike and are in the wrong half of the train. At least they point out that Isleworth and Syon Lane (the closest stations) have steps down/up from the platforms, and recommend Brentford, which has lifts, but only during ticket office hours, plus usable approach roads to each platform. It’s a good mile or so from the course though.
Now, Friday is, as I’m sure you know, Brentford, Isleworth and Chiswick Chronicle day, and one might expect a prominent advert for such a novel local event. It is, after all, a proper local newspaper of the type Gilligan approves, with heartwarming local stories like ‘Bus thug is jailed for attack on driver’ and ‘Racist louts kick man to the ground’ (in BNP-voting Feltham, how surprising). However, in today’s Chronicle, page 5, there’s a mention of a disabled couple living in a cul-de-sac off the route, who aren’t happy:
‘Fun ride closures will trap me in my street’
A wheelchair user says a ride bringing thousands of cyclists to Hounslow’s roads will leave her a prisoner in her own street.
…
‘The first I heard about the bike ride was when I saw a notice on a lamppost. We haven’t received any information about the event, or told how buses will be affected’.
Well, that’s just two people in one house. Surely that’s not typical? Oh.
‘My sister keeps her horse near Osterley Park and has just found the road to her field is closed all day for the Hounslow ride. She’d have arranged for the horse to be moved if she’d known sooner as he may need vet attention (he’s not well). There are houses there too and at least one of the residents knew nothing until yesterday. Oops’
This, incidentally, reveals something not often realised about the area – it is really rather rural, with the green sweep of Boston Manor Park and Osterley Park round to the north meaning a drive down Windmill Lane turns from a suburban to a rather country experience in a couple of hundred yards. I say ‘drive’ – this is serious car territory, the Great West Road was a very early British motor highway opening, Firestone made tyres along it, Trico made windscreen wipers, the big 20s and 30s West London industrial expansion followed the petrol haze out into the suburbs, the 60s brought the M4 Elevated Section while the 90s brought that Reebok advert where a man gets chased round a car park by a beer belly on a motorbike and sidecar. The famous scene in Anthony Powell’s Dance To The Music Of Time where Nick first kisses Jean Templer takes place along the A4, in the back of a car. I bought my first car from a garage on London Road, Isleworth.
Not, on the face of it, particularly fruitful ground for persuading people out of their vehicles.
Yet this is apparently what’s going to happen – not only are the roads along the route going to be cleared of cars, assuming people have heard about it in time, but three roads used as diversion routes for buses are also having to be partially cleared, even though no cyclists will be going down them. Even with all this, there’s had to be a major compromise to the ‘car free streets’ idea of Freewheel, in that quite a lot of the route is actually still open to vehicles in one direction, eastbound. This does, at least, reduce the bus disruption somewhat, in that you can get out of Isleworth to the east, just not back in.
As for road closures, they’re here (page modified 5/8/2009). Mostly suburban streets, inevitably. Cul-de-sacs closed off all over the shop. Will the locals revolt? Will they park at West Thames College, get their bikes out and join in with merry shouts? Will anyone take the train or are people going to drive with a bike on the back of the car? How will Boris get there? Does anyone seriously believe a boarded-up seminary subject to a contentious planning dispute represents a hidden gem of the suburbs? Find out on Sunday evening.
Tags: hounslow · skyride10 Comments
10 responses so far ↓
Yes, come and cycle in Hounslow where Boris slashed funding for cycling: http://www.hounslowchronicle.co.uk/west-london-news/local-hounslow-news/2009/02/24/boris-johnson-accused-of-cheating-hounslow-cyclists-109642-22995516/
Instead, he’s spending huge amounts of money on a Saatchi & Saatchi campaign [ http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/theWork/news/907945/gallery/4856/page/1/#4856 ] to encourage people onto bicycles where’s there’s no cycling infrastructure because he’s cut the funding. Doh!
How much is Hounslow Skyride costing us through the GLA, the local council and the local police?
Don’t forget that the Mayor’s office didn’t manage to get any publicity out before the schools broke up for the summer holidays. However, in June there were already posters at London Underground stations for the main London event on 20 September which bore the name Sky Sports London Freewheel, rather than Mayor Of London’s Skyride; I took a photo of one at Moorgate.
So, for the main event all the posters were printed before they decided to change the name and for the Hounslow event they were done at the last minute. Classic Boris Johnson administration.
It is bizzare that houses along the route know nothing about it.
He cancelled Ken Livingstone’s ten times a year freesheet of course, which was very cheaply produced and distributed.
Typical Bozza cheapskating, cripes, crikey & etc
I don’t remember seeing any posters for Freewheel this year, but there is a Hounslow Skyride poster up at, er, Wood Green station.
There isn’t any easy way to get a bike from Wood Green to Hounslow, save for cycling there – which’ll take 90 minutes, according to Journey Planner. That’s a nice way to start a relaxing bike ride, isn’t it?
Thre may be only 1 train hour that stops at all stations but note that Skyride plans to have a lead ride in from Feltham (Windsor, Weybridge and Reading services), and if required might consider making SSO (Special Stop Orders) for the fast services which can run via Brentford.
Twickenham/St Margarets are as close as Brentford for the London Apprentice and Old Isleworth and you can add in Kingston Loop services, with Southall/Hanwell and Gunnersbury/North Acton as options for FGW/HConnect/Overground-NLR
By happy coincidence the car parking issue can be resolved by using the empty commuter car parks and catching a train….
PS I meant SWT can initiate an SSO – BTW for a while the FAQ referred to the London event as a race, but that has now been corrected.
martin (post 4) Train from Ally Pally station (your regular commute to Moorgate?) change at Kings Cross – options H&C train to Hammersmith and then Picc train to Osterley, or ride to Camden Road and train to Gunnersbury (cheap fare as all in 1 Zone!)
Here are 3 questions posed by a friend of mine to the organisers of the Skyride – and the response from the organisers.
Dear Sir / Madam,
I am interested to know why you have renamed this event from the “London freewheel” to the poxy and very un-cool ‘Mayor of London’s Skyride’.
1 – This event occurs on the ground (and not in the Sky) – or is this an association with the sponsors requiring it to change every time the sponsors change? Does it mean if Coke sponsor it next year it will be called ‘The Mayor of London’s Cokeride’?
2 – Why has the Mayor of London stuck his name at the front of this event? Was it solely organised by the Mayor? Is he leading the day? or is it because his publicity advisor saw a bandwagon passing and told him to hop on? The previous mayor did not feel the need to self-publicise himself with this event – so why does the current encumbant? Is he that desperate to grab on to something which is popular?
3 – Why have you wasted (I presume) vast sums of public money to change this name when the original one was perfectly adequate? Is this evidence of the Mayor’s ‘tighter controls’ on the public purse strings? I would love to know what the cost of the switch was to the public (and please don’t force me to bring an FOI request as it’s very time consuming and only serves to give the appearance of yet another ‘cover up’ by a public body)
I’m dying to know what ‘thinking’ was behind this decision? I will not be surprised if it turns out to have been an idea from a marketing company who co-incidently then get the job of doing the re-branding – which goes to further solidify the public belief that the people who manage public money are essentially ‘mugs’ – or simply corrupt.
Regards
Thank you for your recent enquiry as to why the Freewheel mass participation cycle ride event has changed it’s name to Skyride.
We very much appreciate that in the two years of staging the Freewheel event, the event became a well-loved and popular event with cyclists of all ages and abilities from across London. The event was first commissioned by the Mayor and TfL in 2007 following the Tour de France, it was then subsequently re-commissioned in 2008. However these events were not in the core TfL budget, and as such money had to be found in order to produce the event each year.
Following last year’s event, the Mayor gave a indication that the staging of the event would continue to be staged annually as a integral part of his desire to see more Londoners in the saddle, but at the same time he wanted the event to become more financially sustainable.
As you will be aware Sky Sports sponsored the event in 2008, and in entering sponsorship discussions with Sky, it became clear following the success of 2008 that they were planning to nationally roll out the ‘Freewheel concept’ to 3 other UK Cities in addition to London, however in doing so they were re-branding these events as Skyrides. Therefore the only way that Sky would consider sponsoring the London event again was if we also adopted the brand ‘Skyride’.
I hope this answers your quetsion.
Regards
Greetings I’m here only going to post to test out my account on this forum and just wanted to say hi.