January 2025 – Over the last couple of months a number of our members have been in contact with concerns that the Whipps Cross Corridor Transport Planned Scheme will make the Forest less accessible for people walking and people with mobility problems, especially wheelchair users.
 
 

About Whipps Cross Croridor Transport Scheme

At the moment a wide pathway runs alongside Hollow Ponds and Leyton Flats from Whipps Cross down to the Green Man roundabout. The pathway is shared by pedestrian, cyclists, dog walkers, and runners. It is popular and many families walk along it at weekends; crossing it is one of ways people enter or leave that part of Forest .

Whilst there are many good ideas in the proposed scheme we have heard from some of our members who live near Hollow ponds that they fear that the proposal to replace the shared path with a bidirectional cycle path could lead to a conflict between cyclists and walkers/people in wheelchairs visiting Hollow Ponds. Pedestrians will no longer be able to use the pathway alongside the Forest. They will instead be placed on a new pathway next to the road. You can see what this might look like in the video explaining the scheme. This new path puts pedestrians closer to traffic and requires them to cross the cycle path if they want to enter or leave the Forest.  The new pedestrian pathway will be a narrower path than the current shared path.  Its design does seem counter intuitive and is unlike any other piece of cycling infrastructure in Waltham Forest where the cycle path is set alongside the roadway, and the pedestrian pathway runs alongside the cycle path.

Our Responses:

It does seem to us that in the designing the new cycle path that perhaps the needs of people visiting the Forest were not properly considered.

Another option would be to have the cycle path next to the road, as are almost all cycle paths in Waltham Forest, or to leave things as they currently are.

We do think that the needs of people walking to the Forest are being disadvantaged unnecessarily in this design, simply to speed up journeys for cyclists.

Notes: 

Full details about the transport scheme for Whipps Cross corridor linking Lea Bridge Road and Leytonstone, please visit Waltham Forest’s website: https://www.walthamforest.gov.uk/parking-roads-and-travel/active-and-sustainable-transport-schemes/current-schemes/whipps-cross-corridor-transport-scheme