Transport Solutions

Walking
Cycling
Improving Bus Services
Zone 6
Journeys to School
Green Travel Plans
Home Zones

Walking

We believe that walking can solve many of the problems of 21st Century living and that Epsom and Ewell are ideally suited to walking.

Walking is an antidote to four major health problems:

Obesity: thanks to a largely sedentary lifestyle, an increasing proportion of the population are becoming overweight and obese. This increases the risk of diabetes as well as putting an unnatural strain on the heart and the skeleton.
Coronary heart disease: physically inactive people are about twice as likely to suffer from the UK's largest cause of premature death as those who regularly take suitable exercise, such as walking.
Children's fitness: walking more would build children's general stamina, energy and alertness and reduce susceptibility to disease. It would also increase their independence, self-reliance and awareness of personal safety.
Elderly people's health: regular walking can help elderly people keep flexible and co-ordinated, reducing the risk of accidents, particularly falls. It also helps people to stay independent.

Unlike many other forms of exercise, you don't have to find the time for walking: You can use it for journeys you would have to make anyway. And walking is certainly less stressful than being stuck in a traffic jam!

Walking more would certainly improve our quality of life. As well as being good for our health and our stress levels, walking reduces pollution, global warming, traffic congestion and road casualties and deters crime and vandalism.

The borough is ideally suited to walking. It is an excellent way of exploring our wealth of open spaces. Even in the built-up areas, many footpaths have survived. As well as avoiding the noise and fumes of traffic, these often provide a more direct route than the streets: your destination may be closer than you think!

LA21 has identified a number of obstacles to walking, especially in Epsom Town Centre. These include:

Pedestrian crossings that have to be negotiated in several stages.
Traffic lights that do not change unless the button is pressed: even when the traffic has stopped, the green man may not appear.
Traffic signs obstructing the pavement (See photo).

The borough's Local Strategic Partnership is forming a working group to tackle Epsom town centre. Watch this space for further developments.

Waterloo Road is an obstacle course for pedestrians.

Cycling

Please refer to the Cycling Action Group pages.

Improving Bus Services

We are campaigning on five fronts to improve bus services:

Improving bus stops and shelters
Bus shelters
Monitoring reliability
Reducing traffic delays
Integration with rail services

For the full story, please click here.

Zone 6

Until 2007, none of Epsom & Ewell Stations was included London's Travelcard zones. This increased the cost of travel between our borough and destinations in London served only by the Underground or by bus services. It was also inconvenient for passengers travelling to our borough by train but starting their journey by Underground or bus: they could not easily buy a Travelcard including an extension to Epsom & Ewell's stations.

Following a successful campaign by Borough Councillor Derek Phillips, Ewell East and Ewell West have been included in Zone 6 and Stoneleigh has moved to Zone 5. One-day single and return tickets are now priced using simple-to-understand common zonal fares, based on the existing London fare Zones. Some comparisons:

Journey	Old Fare	New Fare
Ewell West (Z6) to Waterloo (Z1) single	£4,10	£4.80
Ewell West (Z6) to Waterloo (Z1) cheap day return	£4.50	£5.70
Ewell West (Z6) to Clapham Junction (Z2) single	£3.60	£3.10
Ewell West (Z6) to Clapham Junction (Z2) cheap day return	£3.90	£4.00
Ewell West (Z6) to any Z1 Underground station single	£7.10	£6.80
Ewell East 6-zone off-peak travelcard	£8.20	£6.70

Oyster pre-pay cards cannot currently be used at National Rail stations (with certain exceptions). Agreement has, however, been reached for them to be used be at stations with barriers in Greater London by the end of the 2006 and at other London stations by 2008.

For further information on the campaign for Zone 6, please see http://zone6please.noonhost.com/zone6please.html
http://nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/LondonZonalFares.html

Journeys to School

Over recent years, an increasing number of schoolchildren have been driven to school. This has led to a number of problems:

Roads are congested near schools - the difference is very noticeable during school holidays.
Children miss out on the physical exercise and social contact provided by walking to school.
Children fail to develop road sense and independence.
With more traffic and fewer people walking, parents perceive walking to school to be dangerous and decide to drive their children to school, producing more traffic and creating a vicious circle.

To find out how to end the vicious circle, please click here.

Green Travel Plans

What are Green Travel Plans?
What are the benefits of Green Travel Plans?
Why are Green Travel Plans needed in Epsom & Ewell?
How many local employers have a Green Travel Plan?
What has happened as a result?

To find the answers to these questions, please click here.

Home Zones

A Home Zone is a residential street where priority is given to:
walking chatting playing	sitting cycling
and where cars travel slowly and safely.

Residential streets can provide for all of these activities, but the growth in the speed and volume of traffic can reduce or eliminate them. Home Zones seek to restore the full range of activities to residential streets.

We are seeking to ensure that new housing developments in the borough are based around Home Zones. We believe we have succeeded in the case of the Thames Water site in East Street. We are hopeful of a similar success on the Horton Hospital site.

Surrey County Council investigated possible Home Zones in existing streets in 2003-04. In particular, the Dirdene Gardens area was considered. Unfortunately, there was insufficient support from local residents to take things any further. So, how about your street?

For further information, please refer to the following sites:

Living Streets: www.livingstreets.org.uk
Urban Design Alliance: www.udal.org.uk
National Children's Bureau: www.ncb.org.uk