Bow in the snow

Cycle Superhighway 2

CS2 isn't officially due to be operational until next Summer, but the latest of Boris's bank-sponsored cycle lanes is already making an appearance. A blue stripe has been daubed along parts of Bow Road and Mile End Road over the last week or two, and bikes are already speeding their way along. Sounds great? I'm not convinced.

The road from Aldgate to Bow ought to be perfect for the addition of a dedicated cycle lane. It's relatively straight and there's plenty of room - the road's wide enough to have supported both trams and traffic back in the early 20th century. Indeed there's been a cycle lane along the road for several years, it's just wasn't as wide as Cycle Superhighways are supposed to be. The old lane was less than a metre wide, which isn't entirely conducive to feelings of safety. The new lane's the requisite metre and a half, which is much better. But you still wouldn't catch me dead using it, for fear you'd catch me dead.

Problem 1) It's still just a cycle lane. It's not segregated from the rest of the traffic at all. No thanks, not for me.

Problem 2) Bow Road is wide enough for a narrow cycle lane and two lanes of traffic. But it's not wide enough for a wide cycle lane and two lanes of traffic. All that's happened so far is that the new blue stripe has encroached on the inside lane and shrunk it, meaning it's no longer wide enough for a lorry, bus or coach. Traffic is now forced to trespass on the Cycle Superhighway because left-hand wheels have to go somewhere. As things stand, CS2 is much more likely to be full of traffic than its narrow predecessor.

Problem 3) OK, there are probably plans to repaint the existing white lines to equalise the two non-bike lanes. But I fear this would simply shrink both lanes to impractical widths too narrow for buses and broad-chassis traffic. It's therefore possible that Bow Road will, in places, be restricted to a souped-up bike lane and one lane of traffic, rather than the current two. Great for cyclists, but expect snarled-up jams of cars and lorries as the capacity of the road suddenly shrinks. We'll see.

Problem 4) As a cyclist, the one thing you really don't want to end up underneath is a bendy bus. Along Bow Road we have lots of those trundling along route 25. More importantly we have lots of enormous bus stops, increased in size six years ago to be long enough to fit two-and-a-half bendy buses. Our bus stops are a massive 45 metres long, creating corresponding 45m gaps in the blue striped Cycle Superhighway. These huge bus stops won't be required next summer when the 25 is due to revert to double decker operation. But I bet nobody at TfL thinks to shrink Bow Road's bus stops down to normal size after the bendies go, and the unnecessarily large gaps in CS2 will remain.

Problem 5) Bus stops aren't the only street features creating gaps in the Cycle Superhighway. We have a ridiculous number of pedestrian crossings along Bow Road, so the stripe regularly breaks for those. And for road junctions. And for laybys. Indeed, the newly laid Cycle Superhighway is split into at least ten separate chunks, and that's over a stretch less than a mile long. The blue lane stops starts stops starts stops starts, which ain't great. I hope there's more blue paint on its way, to link things together, otherwise this intermittent stripe is a bit rubbish.

Problem 6) TfL posted me a leaflet three months ago which promised "From Autumn 2010 a section on our webpage will be showing further details of what will be implemented, and where. We will also show details of the timing of any works which may affect local residents and businesses." It isn't there. Work has started on CS2, and nobody's telling us anything. That new layby beside St Clements Hospital, that should have been online somewhere, but it's finished already and not a mutter. Much public information was promised, but none's been delivered.

Problem 7) The Cycle Superhighway's blatantly not yet finished. I'd hope that many of the problems I've mentioned above will be sorted out before the official opening next summer. And yet someone's already been along and written "CS2" on the road at regular intervals, as if to give the fledgling Cycle Superhighway some unwarranted legitimacy. Bad thing. If it's not yet ready, don't tempt cyclists onto it.

Problem 1 again) Even when it's finished, it'll still be nothing but a souped-up cycle lane. It won't be segregated from the rest of the traffic at all, it won't be safe. No thanks, not for me.

Olympic update

  Olympic update
  Can we check your car please?


One of the interesting side-effects of living on the edge of Stratford is that the Olympic Delivery Authority sometimes send you letters. Dear Householder, they say, and then let you know about something 2012-related they plan to do on your doorstep. It'll be something that's bound to happen whatever you think, but they need to tell you about it because they have to tick the box marked "public consultation" .

Our latest local planning application is for a Vehicle Screening Area to be used during the Olympic Games in 2012. Organisers don't want any spectators turning up by car, but lots of vehicles still need to enter the park to make the Games work. Handymen to keep the place ticking over, deliveries of McDonalds burgers, visiting dignitaries in luxury coaches, that sort of thing. And it's clearly essential that none of these vehicles get inside the perimeter with a cargo of high explosive on board - hence the need for vehicle screening areas dotted around the edge of the park. We're getting one of these in Tower Hamlets. Squashed between the A12 and the River Lea, north of the mainline railway and south of Fish Island. Nowhere lovely, nowhere that'll be greatly missed. But planners still have to ask whether anybody minds, because that's the law.

You might expect that a planning application like this would be online. Well, if it is, I can't find it. I can't find it on the official ODA Planning Register, because that's an unfriendly mess with a godawful mapping interface. I can't find it on the London 2012 website's Planning Consultations page, because nobody's thought to include it there. And I can't find it on the webpage where information's held about "living near the Olympic Park". Admittedly there is a hotline telephone number to ring, but nobody's going to phone that on the off chance that there just might be plans for a Vehicle Screening Area round the corner. If I hadn't had the letter through my door, I'd never have known.

So, with zero information available online, I went along to yesterday's drop-in session at my local library. One venue, one day only - one chance to find out. There were no posters in the building, no announcements - nothing signposted. If I hadn't known the two folk in the corner were Olympic-related I'd have walked straight by. But yes, they had the plans for the screening zone out on a table and were only too happy to talk.

The entire takeover of the railway sidings and surrounding plant will be temporary, and the area will be returned to normal after the Games. There are two options, depending on whether the landowner of the northern half signs up or not. It'll be back of house vehicles parking up here, not spectators. A newly remodelled road junction will be created at the Old Ford turnoff on the A12. Really, it'll be nothing earth-shattering. Unless you're my one reader who lives virtually nextdoor, you wouldn't be interested.

But the bloke giving me the Olympic spiel let slip one particularly interesting snippet of advance information. Included amongst the many Vehicle Screening Areas there'll be one out east for Stratford's new Westfield megamall. As you might expect, shoppers driving into its multi-storey car parks during the Games should expect to be police-checked. More unexpectedly, these random screening checks will begin early, several months before the the Opening Ceremony takes place. There you'll be popping into John Lewis for an Easter gift or barbecue set, and your car might just be flagged down for an anti-terrorist once-over. The E15 police state kicks off prematurely, it seems, because security chiefs can't be too careful.

Our conversation was highly professional, and the ODA employees were able to answer all my questions. It was only after I'd turned to leave that I realised they hadn't once asked me what I thought about the plans. This had been a one-way transmission exercise, from them to me. They hadn't offered me one of their response cards piled up on the table and asked me to fill it in. They hadn't asked whether I was in favour or not, they'd just assumed. Indeed, in common with several other so-called 'consultation' events I've been to round here over the last few years, no direct consultation actually took place.

The Tower Hamlets Vehicle Screening Area will be built whatever local people think, however the authorities decide. In this particular case, that may be no bad thing. But in their general approach to public consultation and stakeholder engagement, I fear the ODA are merely ticking boxes .

Mayoral Election Result

Lutfur Rahman (Independent) 23283 (51.8%, elected)
Helal Abbas (Labour) 11254 (25.0%, humiliated)
Neil King (Conservative) 5348 (11.9%)
John Griffiths (Lib Dem) 2800 (6.2%)
Alan Duffell (Green) 2300 (5.1%)
Turnout: 25.6%

So a petition from 8% of the electorate
triggered a referendum in which 30% of the electorate
triggered an election in which 13% of the electorate
voted in an independent Mayor for Tower Hamlets.

Yesterday Labour ruled Tower Hamlets, with 63% of the councillors.
Today they still have 63% of the councillors, but no power.

Rarely has a core vote been deployed quite so effectively in the face of an apathetic electorate.

Mayoral Election Day

Today is Mayoral election day in Tower Hamlets.
Alan or Helal or John or Lutfur or Neil.
Tough choice.

My polling card arrived several weeks ago along with an information pamphlet, and that was it. None of the candidates sent me anything else - not a leaflet, not a mailshot, not even a bar graph with arrows labelled "Cannot win here". There might have been some further background in Tower Hamlets' weekly council newspaper East End Life, but they don't bother sending me that any more. There was definitely some virulent propaganda in The London Bangla - a blatantly biased freesheet targeted on certain neighbourhoods in the borough. But I saw nothing targeted at me. It's a good job I remembered to vote anyway.

I normally vote on the way into work but this time I thought I'd vote on the way home. Rush hour, before it got dark, I emerged from Bow Road station to a barrage of leaflets. OK, so there were only two people handing out leaflets, but I made sure I took both. Only then did I discover I'd been given the same leaflet twice, once face up, once face down. Still, all credit to Labour for reminding homebound commuters that there was an election on, because I suspect most of them wouldn't have remembered otherwise.

My polling station's in a nearby school on Bow Road. Again there were canvassers outside, this time supporters of independent candidate Lutfur Rahman. But they were far too busy chatting to notice me wander up to the entrance, and completely failed to hand me one of their huge wodge of leaflets they had to give away. I picked one up out of the gutter on the way out, and saw that one side of the leaflet was an approximate copy of the ballot paper with a thumping big cross showing me precisely where to put my vote. A perfect pictorial representation for voters who don't follow written instructions, or spoken English, particularly well.

The polling station was not crowded. Indeed I was the only voter present, which I found surprising given the time of day. I was completely outnumbered by the five council scrutineers, two of whom dealt with me, and the rest of whom continued overseeing nothing. While they tried to cross my name off their list, I noted that only one other person on my sheet (out of about 50) had bothered voting during the previous 10 hours. Turnout up the slightly more affluent end of Bow looks likely to be rock bottom.

Not so nearby in Bromley-by-Bow. I passed the polling station in St Leonards Street at the end of the rush hour, after dark, and the pavement outside was seething. Canvassers, supporters, supporters of supporters, and a single policewoman keeping an eye on the lot. There was no unpleasant atmosphere and I was allowed to pass quite freely (indeed some of the folk with rosettes looked very disappointed when I didn't turn into the school playground as they'd hoped). But the contrast with my own polling station was stark. This was lively and animated, with the local Bangladeshi community considerably more engaged in the electoral process. Maybe that's because Helal Abbas lives just around the corner, but it wasn't only his followers massing outside.

I passed by one more time, half an hour before the polls closed. There were still umpteen political souls milling on the pavement outside the primary school, but now accompanied by two policemen. And a police van. And an unmarked police van. And even the Tower Hamlets CCTV van, parked up opposite to keep a recorded eye on proceedings. Did something kick off while I was away? Was there a big row between the Abbasers and the Rahmanites? No idea, but I've certainly never seen quite such a uniformed presence outside a polling station before.

Whatever the final Mayoral result, one thing seems clear. The final outcome will be decided by specific neighbourhoods that took great interest, and the apathetic will have do make do with whichever candidate those enthusiastic supporters select.

Three Mills

Britain's oldest, and largest, tidal mill is in Newham. But it's also in E3. It's the House Mill, at Three Mills. And it's open every Sunday afternoon if you fancy a look round.

There are only two mills at Three Mills, although there used to be eight in medieval times. One survivor is the Clock Mill, so called it has a clock on the tower [photo], and the other is the House Mill, so called because the miller's house used to be nextdoor. The House Mill's the bigger, and dates back to 1776 in approximately its current form [photo]. It was built to grind grain not for flour but for the distillation of alcohol, most notably gin. All that came to an end one incendiary night during the Blitz, and it took sixty years for the mill to be rebuilt and restored. A fine upstanding body of volunteers maintain the site and open it up once a week (once a month in the winter) so that visitors can take a look around. It's busier than it could be, but not perhaps as busy as it should be.

Unlike most modern visitor attractions, the café and gift shop are located on the way in. You can have a sandwich or a toasted teacake while your tour guide gets ready, and maybe watch the introductory video (if you can hear the commentary above the hubbub of raucous diners). It's all endearingly amateur, even the unlikely second hand book stall in the corner, and all the better for it. Eventually you'll be heading off up the metal staircase which links together the old and the new parts of the mill. The miller's house turns out to be the wholly new part [photo], containing offices and a penthouse conference room, although from out the front it's a terribly convincing fake. Up top there's a fine view of the tidal river, and how it splits in half to feed the two different mills on the site. You also get some idea of the grand scale of the Three Mills film studios nextdoor, once all part of the same refinery complex, and apparently a former distribution centre for Bacardi.

But it's the old mill you'll be wanting to explore. This is a splendid building, on several storeys, lovingly assembled from pine beams beneath a steeply pitched roof. Some of those beams are English Heritage replacements, but others (the chunkier, woodwormier ones) date back over 200 years. Health and Safety dictates you can't climb right to the top, but you can look up to see the wheel which hoisted sacks of grain to the high level bins. A series of hoppers and chutes directed the grain back down, ensuring it ended up between the right millstones at the right time, ready for the clunking machinery to whirr into action and get grinding. You have to watch your head lest you hit some wooden or metal protuberance, and watch your step in case you dislodge some trapdoor and open up a direct route to the floor below.

Eventually the tour reaches ground level, which is where the milled grain ended up and where the four waterwheels are. They're in two pairs, and also from completely different generations. The largest is a metal Victorian contraption, while the oldest is wooden and so fragile that the trustees daren't even touch it. All are controlled by their own sluice gate, and exist in a dark netherworld of decay and pigeon feathers. If there's ever any money going for further restoration, it's hoped that at least one of these wheels might turn again, powered as before by the ebbing tide. Alas, given that Newham can no longer spare any money even for local schoolchildren to come visiting, further regeneration may be several years off.

CS2 - Bow to Aldgate

A month after dropping an introductory leaflet though our letterboxes, TfL have finally got round to publishing a map showing the route of Cycle Superhighway 2 - Bow to Aldgate. It's not a very detailed map, indeed we could all have guessed it would follow the A11 from along Whitechapel Hight Street, Whitechapel Road, Mile End Road and Bow Road. No surprise either that it'll link to the Regent's Canal towpath (or "cana towpath" as the key has it). Apparently there's going to be the provision of cycle parking at Bow Church DLR station. That must be new, surely, because I don't ever remember seeing any bikes padlocked up outside. And the Superhighway will terminate at the Bow Roundabout, rather than attempting to lure cyclists across several lanes of traffic and over the Bow Flyover. That elevated crossing may come later, once the Olympics are over, because nobody dares paint Stratford's roads blue before 2012. Expect to see roadworks and junction realignments along the A11 between now and next summer... but you'll have to wait to see precisely where that might be.

E3 travel update

Run: The Olympic Marathon really isn't coming our way, is it? Not because we're ugly, nor because we're boring, but because we'd disrupt the special lanes of 2012 delegate traffic. Athletes and sponsors have to be able to get around town or else the Games seize up, so apparently it's for the greater good that 100-or-so athletes go running somewhere else. Personally, I don't get it. The road from Aldgate to Bow isn't part of the main Olympic Route Network - all the big limousines are to be directed down round via Poplar instead. There's a half mile overlap close to the stadium, between Bow and Stratford, but this is all dual carriageway and flyover so it'd be piss-easy to separate runners and vehicles. There'd be much more of a gridlock issue at the Tower Bridge end, Lord Coe has hinted, and that's the dealbreaker. But the road to Stratford doesn't start at Tower Bridge, so an eastbound marathon still ought to be perfectly possible. Most bastardly of all, the revised marathon route is then likely to head along Upper Thames Street and the Embankment ("heavily used every day of the Games with most extensive traffic management measures"). If the marathon can still shut three miles of Olympic Core Route in central London, what's the problem with a fraction of a mile further east? Dear Seb, if an announcement on the amputation of the East End's marathon is imminent, you'd better come up with a better excuse than this. A gold-medal-winning PR disaster awaits.

Rail: Good news, travellers. Crossrail looks likely to survive the upcoming slash'n'burn cuts, and will go ahead with all its stations and spurs intact. Which is great if you live in Maidenhead or Romford or Abbey Wood. But still of no use in E3. Ours is the only postcode along the entire route which Crossrail will tunnel under, but within which it won't stop. W1 and W2 get stations, and EC1 and E1, even E16, but not E3. Our nearest stations will be at least a mile away. None of the convenience, but of all the hassle of shaft-building and boring machines for several years. But you're right, who'd want to stop here anyway?

Walk: Boris's Story of London Festival started yesterday, and runs for ten days. There's only one event scheduled for E3, and even then only just. Blue Badge guides are leading £8 walking tours towards the Olympic Park, and they'll be setting off from Bromley-by-Bow station next weekend at 11am. Sounds great, except that these are pretty much the same £8 walking tours which set off from Bromley-by-Bow station every single day of every week. They're pretty popular, it has to be said, but they're by no means a special event put on for the Mayor's festival. If it's a unique local walk you want, I'd recommend the 14th Floor Project's free guided tours round nearby housing estates (being held in E2 and E14 next week) instead.

Starter for ten

Here are ten E3-related things I'd be interested in reading about...

• The Green Bridge - is it dying?
• Mile End station - seriously, which cretin thought this was an improvement?
• Which is E3's most heritage-tastic street?
• Are Tesco ever going to build that controversial store on Roman Road?
• Is Jongleurs worth a visit? Is it even still open?
• Gangs of E3 - is there a secret subculture?
• That new set of traffic lights outside the police station, useless or what?
• Whatever happened to the London Gas Museum?
• Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park - it's nice, innit?
• The new St Andrew's development - who'd buy a box in the sky?

...although I bet your list would be more interesting (and probably more relevant).

Launch

I thought I'd start a hyperlocal blog of my own. I mean, why not? I've called it eethree (because ethree and e-three were already taken), and here it is. Don't get excited, there's nothing on here you haven't read on my main blog already. I've uploaded all my E3-related posts from the last couple of years to create a brief backstory, and now all that's missing is the new stuff. Maybe you'd help me write it.

I don't have time to maintain two blogs, not properly, so I'd be delighted if certain local folk could help me out with this new one. Let me know, and I'll add friendly literate authors to my eethree permissions list. Only news and comment from the E3 postcode will be permitted. That includes Mile End, Bow and Bromley-by-Bow, even Three Mills and Fish Island, but not Victoria Park or the Olympic Park. Please let's have nothing extreme, nor rampantly advertorial, nor anything applicable to Tower Hamlets as a whole. I reserve the right to moderate what gets churned out, or even to delete the entire project if it doesn't work. But let's hope eethree takes off. HyperEastEndlocality, it's the future you know.