Kensington & Chelsea
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Overall, it was another disappointing year from Kensington & Chelsea. After the encouraging move last year of introducing 20mph speed limits, this year there’s been little progress and the borough has the lowest score for cycle track, one of the lowest scores for Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) and has even dropped from 17th to 21st place for School Streets provision.
Even more worryingly, new data on bus priority, published for the first time this year, shows only 5% of bus routes in the borough have ‘bus priority’ (a bus lane or other means of prioritising the bus over general traffic) compared to highest scoring boroughs Hackney with 51% and City of London with 64%.
Kensington & Chelsea’s overall score is buoyed by a good score on Controlled Parking, but the borough allows residents to park anywhere within the borough, positively encouraging short car trips, and this needs to be replaced with small-area Controlled Parking Zones.
Looking at new data published this year to reflect population density, Kensington & Chelsea scores lower than it should, when taking account of its density. When we account for density Kensington & Chelsea would currently expect to achieve an overall score of 6.02, more than its overall score of 5.57.
Though at 9th place overall, it is still far behind other central London authorities and the gap is increasing. If it is serious about acting on climate change, air pollution and the health and safety of its residents, it must introduce transformative schemes such as LTNs, School Streets and protected cycle lanes urgently.
"The resident parking system in RBKC is one single zone covering the whole borough which actually encourages people to make short journeys by car rather than by public transport or active travel. Given that, we don’t believe the borough should score maximum points on this CPZ measure. We're also really concerned that there aren't any protected cycle lanes in the borough, and the few claimed cycle routes that exist are often completely inappropriate for many to even think of using."
Justin Abbott, Better Streets for Kensington and Chelsea
The Healthy Streets Scorecard combine scores for nine indicators to create an overall Healthy Streets score for each borough. See the graph below for 2022 results (includes 2019 – 2021 results for comparison). For more detail visit the London-wide overview of the 2022 results. You can also:
Scorecard (factored score) chart explained
In the chart above, each borough has been given a factored score. Factor scores are composite variables which provide information about a borough’s placement on a scale. Factor scores are given by F=XB, where X is the indicator normalised score for a borough and B is the factor score coefficient (or weight). Each indicator is weighted as 1, or 0.5 if there are two parts to one indicator, for example Modeshare has a weighting of 1, Active travel – walking has a weighting of 0.5 and Active travel – cycling has a weighting of 0.5. The borough’s total factored score is the sum of all indicator factored scores which is then factored to 10 (multiplied by the number of indicators/10) to give a value on the scale between zero and 10. We can then compare boroughs against each other on the scale.
See your borough’s LTNs – and all LTNs in London in the London LTN map
For results analysis visit Low Traffic Neighbourhoods indicator results
Instructions for map (below)
To navigate the key, click the top left hand corner.
To open in a new window, click the top right hand corner.
Zoom in and out using the + and – buttons.