MK currently has an about-average amount of walking and an above-average amount of cycling, according to official statistics.
spread over a vast network. It is still perfectly possible to cycle on a redway for five minutes and not see a living soul. (Although, to be fair, it is also possible to cycle on the LCC's Wandle Way all day and not see a living soul)
The problem with Milton Keynes is this - it's a vast suburb with a relatively small population. Derek Walker planned it when the car was the future and it was universally thought that people needed to be as far away from their neighbours as possible. He took the Llewellyn-Davies, Weeks, Fforestier-Walker and Bor plan, stripped out the local centres, got rid of the 30mph limit on the grid, and substituted roundabouts and slip roads for crossroads and t-junctions. In other words, just about everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. Back when I was living in Buckinghamshire the Corporation was selling self-build plots at ten to the acre - a density that, if repeated across the country would mean London stretching beyond Carlisle. The expansion at Brooklands is going to be a little more dense than the present MK, but nothing like the kind of density that one would take for granted in (say) Ealing.
I spoke to one of the original designers when I prepared the D+A statement for the hotel. He reckoned that if you reverted to crossroads, built on the green space next to the grid and went back to the original 30mph idea it would be an improvement, but, essentially, the place was unrecoverable. My obvious move, if I were king for a day would be to build on the 20,000 car spaces in CMK - that's right, 20,000 car spaces which probably exceeds the entire car space provision in Westminster, the City, and the five innermost London boroughs!
So - low density plus road network plus westward expansion means ever greater car use. It's not just that there is vast car use within the so-called city - the countryside for twenty miles around, and up as far as Hinckley to northwest is riddled with MK commuters, for whom the usual rush hour slog has been turned in to a magic tarmac ride.
Essentially the place is a dead loss, and should be demolished piece by piece, remitting the entire population to some of the under-used parts of northeastern towns. That's not going to happen - in fact Prescott accepted that the city would double in size. The DfT has put away predictions of 'peak car' and now assumes that car usage will grow by 40% up to 2040. If they, the supposed guardians of our sustainable transport plans, are content with that, then the suburban tumour that is MK will spread up through Northamptonshire, across Buckinghamshire and, who knows, knock, one day, on the door of Bedford, swallowing ever more agricultural land, ever more byways and ever more villages.
And I loathe the football team.
And my eldest daughter and my grandson was subjected to racist abuse in Stoney Stratford High Street. Twice.
) with actual red tarmac, parallel with the V roads - one on the station side of Grafton Gate and one on the main shops side of Saxon Gate... and Street View shows one in red block paving on the shops side of Marlborough Gate, too.
