Report Reveals Level Of Support For CS9 In Hammersmith
TfL suppressed data showing response by postcode for nearly a year
Artist's impression of CS9 on King Street
Full details of the consultation held by Transport for London (TfL) on Cycle Superhighway 9 have finally been released.
For the first time the responses broken down by postcode have been published and they show exactly half of residents of both W6 and W14 either strongly supporting or supporting the plan for a segregated cycle path between Kensington Olympia and Brentford.
There were 391 responses from the W6 postcode area of which 43% indicated strong support and 7% support. 34% were strongly opposed and 13% opposed with just 3% neither supporting or opposed.
In the W14 postcode area 44% of 252 respondents were strongly in favour and 6% broadly in favour with 37% strongly against and 12% broadly against with just 1% undecided.
For the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham as a whole, with responses from Shepherd's Bush and Fulham included, 56% of respondents were in favour.
A majority of residents from postcodes along the route were against the scheme but this was because of the high level of opposition in Chiswick. The W4 postcode area was the only one where there was majority opposition to the scheme.
Just 33% of Chiswick residents supported or strongly supported the plan with over 60% opposed or strongly opposed.
The consultation on the original design in 2017 received 5,388 responses with 84% providing a postcode. Nearly 60 per cent of respondents supported the scheme.
The detailed postcode breakdown shows that the overall majority in favour was based on overwhelming support for the project from other parts of London from which 81% of respondents backed the scheme.
Postcode Breakdown of Responses to CS9 Consultation
| Postcode district | Strongly Support | % | Support | % | Neither support nor oppose | % | Oppose | % | Strongly oppose | % | Total |
| W4 | 434 | 27 | 100 | 6 | 68 | 4 | 206 | 13 | 792 | 50 | 1600 |
| W6 | 170 | 43 | 26 | 7 | 11 | 3 | 52 | 13 | 132 | 34 | 391 |
| W14 | 111 | 44 | 15 | 6 | 2 | 1 | 31 | 12 | 93 | 37 | 252 |
| TW8 | 108 | 51 | 17 | 8 | 7 | 3 | 23 | 11 | 55 | 26 | 210 |
This site made a Freedom of Information request to be provided with the data in February of last year in an attempt to verify these claims but this was declined on the basis that the information needed further processing before being published in the future. An appeal was made against this decision but TfL continued to refuse to release the data. The matter was reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office and an investigation has been opened. It has been suggested that TfL did not want to put this information in the public domain because the Mayor, Sadiq Khan has said that his policy was not to support projects for which there was not local support.
TfL did eventually publish this data in the report on the consultation released with the planned redesigns of the scheme including a rethink of how the path operates near to Kew Bridge and a section of Chiswick High Road. However, the table of information was buried in an appendix at the end of the report. In the body of the report a number of map based visualisations of the responses were provided which didn’t make clear how support and opposition to the scheme was broken down.
The consultation on the revised designs for two sections of the route is now open and will run until 26 February. Minor changes to the scheme on other parts of the route are not being consulted on.
Full details can be found online Responses can be submitted online at tfl.gov.uk/kew-duke, by post to FREEPOST TFL CONSULTATIONS or by e-mail to consultations@tfl.gov.uk.
Artist's impression of superhighway looking west from Olympia
February 1, 2019