Planning London’s future

We need to cut the population of London. The recent increases have led to congestion on both public transport and roads and led to big problems with housing. We need to move people out of London as happened in the 1950s/60s and discourage further immigration.

We also need to change the governance of London so that the controlling transport body (TfL) is not a political football and is reliant solely on public transport fares. Regulation of roads and private vehicles should not be done by TfL.

We should abandon local authorities in London and just have one London Authority with full powers to develop each part of London equally, to treat all parts of London equally. Can you imagine if all the housing was built equally around London and if all the funds from government grants, council tax and business were going into one London pot? And even better, if all London areas paid the same amount of council tax rather than each authority deciding how much to charge us? London would be so much better taken care of everywhere rather then Westminster and Chelsea looking good and others being total dumps. It would feel more like one city which it doesn't now. It would also mean that small minds that run local councils would no longer be able to lord it over the local residents.

London needs to stop pandering to cyclists and pay attention to the rest of us. They may have a strong lobby but they are still a small minority and they don't appear to be rising in numbers. I don't want to live in a 15min city, I chose London precisely because it's a big city and not a village. So better and more affordable way to get across town would be appreciated. As it stands, unless you live right next to a tube station, public transport just doesn't work and buses in particular are a joke. Weekends, precisely when people are more likely to want to see fiends, get to a museum or other kind of attraction tube lines are shut (does anyone remember a weekend when overground wasn't suspended?) and buses are even fewer and far between.

We need some radical new thinking on transportation within London. There are too many cars, average speeds are ludicrously low, many of the measures intended to encourage cycling merely add to the complexity of the streetscape (and hence the risk of accidents) and there are far too many bus routes reflecting out of date travel patterns. Bus transport needs to be much quicker and free public transport should be more widely available. We need a “carrot and stick” approach to discourage the use of cars and encourage more use of public transport. Perhaps increased fees for parking permits could be used to finance a scheme to give Freedom Passes to adults in households who agree to forego their cars?

We need to reduce the population of London and stop building more flats when there is no supporting infrastructure. We also need to improve the road network, remove LTNs, stop putting in more cycle lanes and bus lanes.

As others have commented, the survey form provided is very biased - for example in response to the first question, you cannot say "none of the above". It is simply not possible to request how you would like to see London improved.

(a) Overcrowding and (b) the ridiculous war on motorists in London are killing this great city.

I see lovely family houses with gardens demolished all over our suburbs and replaced by blocks of flats, yet no extra provision is made for them, not water, schools, hospitals or GPs, buses, trains, roads, sewers, etc etc. Already overcrowded London is being ruined by current housing and planning policies. We need to accept that space on this small island IS limited. Not to turn the whole place into a city of Leningrad tenements with knife crime and drugs becoming endemic.

The taxation by stealth with ULEZ and other zones calls the power of the Local Authority into question. My personal perspective is that the ludicrous changes to traffic rules giving far more precedence to cyclists than is reasonable is a costly mistake. Costly both financially for London taxpayers and also in the sense of adding to congestion, pollution and road rage!

With tickets for West End theatres now hovering around the £100 each price and cinema barely surviving, the desire to go 'into town' for the evening has totally receded. And the Mayor's TfL Underground stations charging full whack in the evenings to park a car by a station kills that avenue too. These are all short-sighted political interference with Londoners' lives and freedoms as well as killing the Town Centre.

The high-street model for shopping is no longer relevant in an increasingly sophisticated society. Amazon and other online sources plus beautiful modern shopping malls under cover and to which one can take the car is now the mode. The ones offering free parking thrive even more. Also, public transport now costs commuters an impossible financial burden for all the above purposes.

Reopening all roads to all people would help a lot. Make the people free again.
Remove all restrictions to Motor vehicles and Most Importantly change the ULEZ criteria to vehicles that do not meet Government emissions and MOT standards, not punishing those that do meet these standards.
Make public Transport more accessible by restoring the free elderly travel on tube and bus before 9am so they do not have to rely on cars/cabs.

Re housing. London is FULL. The current policy of building housing on every bit of spare land is deeply flawed. We should be DISCOURAGING more and more people coming to London and instead level up all the regions with more employment, culture and other opportunities. Houses lie empty in other parts of the country. In London public transport is packed, school places problematic, GP appointments impossible etc etc. We are building TOWER BLOCKS. We did this before and had to demolish many of them. An FOI revealed that not a single councillor in Waltham Forest lives in a tower block. If the pandemic has taught us anything it is that most people need to live with some private open space. What are all the people who live in the housing going to do? Fear that we are building the slums of tomorrow.

First of all ... like all questionnaires ... the survey is very misleading. What some people call "improvements" others call "vandalism" There should be a space on the survey for general comments. As there isnt saying this here :-) You are forced into answering when you dont agree with the question, or the question is capable of many interpretations.

There needs to be a drastic reduction in the volume of traffic. This means cheaper and more extensive public transport and measures, such as road pricing, to make the use of cars less attractive. Development needs to be concentrated around public transport nodes and not spread in low density suburbs. Housing needs to be made more financially accessible which means making investment in production rather than in assets more attractive (outside the capability of a London mayor unfortunately). We should work towards Anne Hidalgo's '15 minute city' where everyday needs - shopping, employment, cinemas, etc - are near people's homes so as to reduce the need to travel.

I am personally irritated by numerous road closures where traffic is open only for emergency services. This has caused congestion on all roads near where I live and the pollution from cars is too high, with congestion on roads instead of being for an hour during rush hours is not 3 to 4 hours long at times the whole afternoon and evening. I really want this to be reversed. My cycling route is also blocked on many parts and unsafe for cycling in the winter months as there are many cycling routes that are in darkness or leading through the estates that I do not feel safe in so I feel safer on main road where there is traffic than isolated, creepy looking quiet streets.
The infrastructure where I live near North Middlesex hospital and White Hart Lane has plans for many new homes but the roads cannot cope with the traffic now. People living here will have good travel links but the cost of pubic transport is not affordable any more.

Public transport in Greater London means people need access to cars. In W. London there's good transport to / from Central London, but almost none if your place of work is North / South or West from here. My nearest local shops are 1 mile away, the supermarket is 2+ miles away - it's ok to walk to get some milk, but not to do the weekly shop. The nearest bus stop is 20 minutes walk away. Houses are no so expensive you need 2 incomes - in most cases that means 2 cars / household. My last 2 jobs would have required 2-3 hours to reach by public transport compared to less than 1 hour by car. Local children no longer have priority for local schools which increases traffic on local roads as children are brought in from outside the local area.

More genuinely affordable homes for people close to where they work if of working age and for shops, activity centres and places to socialise and worship without needing cars nor PT - walking and cycling or wheeling to access these places. Make sure there are places for people to sit, street trees and rain gardens, parks for all.

London needs to change by being more friendly.Far too much aggression on streets, on public transport, on roads and by people of all ages and backgrounds.

So many people these days don’t even bother to look at others to smile or say hello, some look threatening ...so depressing, heads down looking at their boring mobile phones.

Smaller changes in a few places. I live in an outer london borough and I get that we’re to take the brunt on the house building as there is more green space here but there’s plans of knocking down the local primary to building a block of flats. The roads in our borough are horrendous and you want to close roads to build flats and there is no plans for the additional traffic this will cause. Also living south of the river our public transport is no where near as good as north london. Especially with cross tail 2 being cancelled. Travelling by car is far quicker and safer for me to get around kingston borough.

All of these questions are useful, but disappointingly, although unsurprisingly, disabled Londoners are just not considered. We keep reducing road space, which I do agree with, but fail to make transport more accessible. We do need more housing, but we are desperate for accessible housing. Disabled Londoners are continually ignored or forgotten, but the city belongs as much to them as to everyone else.

More affordable houses are required for young people to buy. Less focus on high-cost rental accommodation. More pocket parks where those in flats can be outside.

Lots of flats are being built in Newham but the cost puts them beyond the reach of most young people who are trapped renting.