Lewisham Council have recently been successful in winning a very significant ‘Levelling Up’ bid from Central Government to enhance Lewisham Town Centre, including £8Million for ‘Connectivity’ improvements. We see this as a once in a generation opportunity to improve active travel access to the town centre and overcome the current dislocated layout.
Here’s our Vision for how the town centre could be improved:
In February we wrote to the Lewisham Mayor, Damien Egan, sharing this Vision document and stating:
“Congratulations from Lewisham Cyclists for securing levelling up funding for Lewisham Town Centre. We’re especially excited with the news of the Lewisham High Street connectivity project for pedestrians and people on bicycles. You and your team have done brilliantly well to secure this funding in such a generally bleak economic period, and we were pleased to be one of the organisations that endorsed the application.
Connectivity has long been an issue in the town centre which suffers from the dislocation caused by the shopping centre, and the encircling main roads.
This opportunity represents a major boost to the Lewisham Spine project (A21), a key pledge of the Council, and valuable steps have already been taken with the TfL Streetscape scheme currently in place between Catford (Rushey Green) and Lewisham (Molesworth Street). However the Lewisham High Street project has the potential to integrate with the Spine to completely transform Lewisham Town Centre.
We have pulled together some of the key strands towards making the town centre much more accessible with the shopping centre development proposals at the centre of a much more “permeable” town centre where everyone can journey safely and pleasantly along a web of green and convenient active travel routes.
Our ‘Active Travel Vision for Lewisham Town Centre’ is attached and we’re happy for this to be shared with your colleagues. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss this in more depth, and share our experiences in moving around the town centre safely and sustainably.
We understand the connectivity project has to be completed within a three year period, which given other competing priorities facing the Council, is a challenging timescale. Please let us know how we can be involved up-front to collaborate with the Council and any of its partners to achieve a transformational outcome.”