A Long Walk

May is Living Streets ' National Walking Month and with a bit of spare time on my hands, I decided to mark the occasion by walking the 20 miles from the boundary of Greater London near where I live to the statue of Charles I in the City of Westminster.

My starting point was the insalubrious environment of Junction 28 of the M25 (above), just by the splitter island of where the A1023 meets the roundabout under the motorway. It was an early start and I walked to my starting point to find the boundary using my phone GPS, and at 04:45, I headed west for the start of a long day.

My route was pretty much a straight line as I followed the A12, A118, A11 and A1211 until I entered the City of London where my route took me through Bank, the recently pedestrianised Strand (above) and finally to Charles I. For the full detail of what I saw, have a look at my 9-hour Twitter thread.

Walking (and wheeling) is an overlooked mode of transport which is probably because it's something that everyone does, even if it is to and from the car at each end of a trip. You would think that we'd roll out the red carpet, but it's often seen as a mode we have to work around because it's in the way.

Now, I am not suggesting that we should all be walking 20 miles in one go in order to experience the issues and barriers the mode faces, but it is worth going out with a critical eye to experience the average high street or suburban road because it isn't great out there. I walked through six London boroughs and while the environment varied greatly, there are some commonalities that I can bring from my day out.

The most significant takeaway was footway condition. While there were areas where surfaces were smooth and well maintained such as in Ilford town centre (above), the vast majority of my walk was on uneven footways which of course ran next to machine-laid carriageways which really shows which mode we actually value.

It wasn't just the surfaces. I had to deal with the rollercoaster nature of vehicle crossovers where they had been built with a slope from back to front, rather than dropping just enough for those using engines to cross. Then we have dropped kerbs. So many were steep, and having them flush with the road surface was clearly an alien concept in many places.

The other thing which was noticeable was the variation in how people were being treated at signalised junctions - I crossed at quite a lot! There were junctions with missing green men, staggered multi-stage crossings and sometimes very short crossing times. I was largely walking along main roads and so I understand that motor traffic capacity was being prioritised, but there really needs to be a rebalancing of all this back towards walking a little more than it is now.

But all wasn't lost. There was evidence of change all along the corridor. Towns such as Ilford and Romford had essentially been bypassed by 1970s era roads which had allowed pedestrianised cores, but as one gets further into the centre, that's never going to be a possibility and so it was nice to see upgrades which benefit walking and cycling such as on Romford Road in Newham (above).

I did need to take the odd opportunity for a rest and it was clear that we have nowhere near enough benches out there. While the town centres and local centres tended to have seating, there were long sections of my walk without anywhere to rest and I had to use what I could find such as walls and larger feeder pillars. Aside from getting the basics on surface regularity right, I would say that providing places to rest is the second thing we should heavily invest in.

I wouldn't recommend walking 20 miles to anyone as by the time I had reached Charles I, my energy was rapidly depleting (above) and I was glad to dive straight onto the Tube. However I am glad I managed my goal and as ever, there is plenty to learn when one goes out to see how people use the infrastructure we design.

Oh, and why the statue of Charles I? Well, it was an entirely relevant and geeky place for me to aim for because as far as traffic sign mileages are concerned, it is the centre of London!