Try Something New: Chesterton Road Reimagined

This article was published in 2019, in Magazine 143.

New cycles, new friends, new places to go. This summer let’s think differently and change our streets for the better as well.

Robin Heydon paints a picture of Chesterton Road redesigned as a people-friendly street.

Image as described adjacent

At the April monthly meeting, a group of people sat down to discuss what could be done with Chesterton Road. We narrowed the discussion to the area between Mitcham’s Corner and Elizabeth Way, noting that Mitcham’s Corner also needs to be radically improved and made people-friendly.

Chesterton Road is reasonably wide, estimated at 18m along most of the street. This means that it could easily accommodate a beautiful avenue of trees, with fully segregated cycleways and wide footways also segregated from the cycle traffic. Cars would have two moderately normal traffic lanes down the middle.

It was noted that all the side roads along this stretch of road are effectively cul-de-sacs for motor traffic, although a number of them provide through routes for cycle traffic using the Cutter Ferry and Fort St George cycle bridges. It was therefore proposed that each of these side road junctions should have continuous footways and cycle lanes, with the motor traffic crossing up and over these on raised tables. Given the small number of traffic movements at these junctions, we believe it would be very easy to provide walking and cycling priority with a residential home zone gateway treatment such as this.

Chesterton Road could easily accommodate an avenue of street trees with segregated cycleways and wide footways (see diagram above and main photo visualisation).
Image as described adjacent

These side roads should also have their junction sizes reduced. Not only would this allow people to cross more easily from one side of the side road to the other, but it would also reduce the speed at which people would be able to drive into these side streets.

Finally, we discussed adding additional cycle parking along this route to allow people to visit friends and it was suggested that discreet cycle hoops could be added near trees.

The discussion then progressed onto ideas for improving Mitcham’s Corner, but time ran out. If you support these ideas, and have more ideas to share, then please join us and get involved.

Camcycle members can contribute to the discussion at Cyclescape thread 4361. If you’re not a member, please join us at camcycle.org.uk/membership