The Money, the Mandate: Ealing Council's Missing Cycle Route.

Ealing Council is consulting on a major scheme for Popes Lane. Much of it is good. But on a street its own plan calls a Core Route for cycling, the plans deliver no protected cycle track. Here is why that matters, and how to ask for it before the consultation closes on 26 July. Reply directly to the council's consultation at haveyoursay.ealing.gov.uk/en-GB/projects/popes-lane.

Popes Lane, between the A406 and Rose Gardens, is about to be rebuilt. The council's scheme would remove the obstructive parking that forces buses to divert, calm the traffic that speeds along the empty road, widen footways, add crossings and plant rain gardens. We support all of that.

It is also a big scheme, and much of the street will be dug up and rebuilt. That scale is a rare opportunity. Do this once, and do it properly, and Popes Lane could carry a high-quality cycle route as part of a safe connection from Ealing Fields to Acton. The plans, as they stand, do not take that chance.

A Core Route with no cycle track

Popes Lane is a Core Route on Ealing's own Cycle Network Plan 2024-2035. Core Routes are the backbone of the borough's planned cycle network, the streets where the best and safest provision is meant to go.

Ealing Council published their Cycle Network Plan in 2024. https://www.ealing.gov.uk/info/201173/transport_and_parking/620/transport_strategies_and_plans/6

This scheme gives cycling almost nothing. The only provision is a few short stretches of shared use footway at the entrances to Gunnersbury Park, where people cycling are expected to mix with people walking, plus crossings that take you across the road rather than along it. There is no continuous, protected cycle track anywhere on the route.

Shared use is the wrong tool here. It is bad for people cycling, who are pushed onto the pavement and made to give way at every turning. It is bad for people walking too, especially disabled, older and blind or partially sighted people, for whom sharing a footway with bikes is intimidating. Good design gives each group its own space. A protected track does exactly that: it does not hold up drivers, it protects people cycling, and it leaves the footway to pedestrians.

The money is already meant for this

Here is the part that is hard to explain away. The scheme is funded from Transport for London's Local Implementation Plan, and by the council's own account that money "can only be spent on projects that contribute directly towards" the Mayor's Transport Strategy, whose central goal is for 80% of journeys to be made on foot, by bike or by public transport by 2041.

The programme that pays for Popes Lane is, top to bottom, an active and sustainable travel document. Every one of its strategic aims points that way. A Core Route rebuilt with no cycle track is the exception it makes to its own rule.

Held to a lower standard

You do not have to take our word for it. The council's own 2026/27 programme funds three comparable streets. Boston Road in Hanwell gets £200,000 and segregated cycle lanes. Lady Margaret Road in Southall gets £400,000, from the same bus priority budget as Popes Lane, and includes a two-way cycle lane. Popes Lane gets £300,000, sits neatly between the two, and is the only one of the three with no cycle track at all.

The same programme, three strategic streets, all with comparable budgets, and the one in the middle is the only one left out. This is not a question of money. It is a question of priorities.

Cycle through a locked park?

Look closely at the plans and a strange assumption emerges. Because every scrap of cycle provision sits at a gate into Gunnersbury Park, the scheme seems to expect people to cycle east to west through the park rather than along Popes Lane.

That does not work. The park is gated and locked for much of the day. A route that shuts at dusk is no route at all. And after dark, an unlit path away from any passing traffic is exactly the kind of place many people will not ride, women in particular. A lit street, overlooked by homes and traffic and open around the clock, is the route people will actually use. The park gates are welcome as ways into the park. They are not a through route.

Build it right, and build it once

There is room. On the wider, on-route section of Popes Lane, around 14.5 to 15 metres, removing parking from one side frees enough space for protected tracks, and a two-way track on one side would leave more room for the rain gardens the scheme rightly wants.

And when a good route is built, people use it. On nearby Cycleway 49, cycling rose by around 300% in the two years to 2021. Low numbers on a hostile road today tell you nothing about the demand a proper track would unlock.

The works are happening anyway. The kerbs, footways and junctions are being rebuilt along the whole street. To do all of that and not build the track would lock in a poor route for a generation, and mean digging the kerbs up again later to add it. That is not a saving. It is a bigger bill, deferred.

What we are asking the council to do

Deliver the Core Route in full: a continuous, protected cycle track along Popes Lane from Rose Gardens to the A406, separated from both traffic and pedestrians, using the space that removing parking frees up. Keep everything good about the scheme, the parking removal, the calming, the crossings and the greening, and add the one thing it is missing.

Have your say

The consultation closes on 26 July 2026. The council will report the responses to ward councillors and the Cabinet Member for Climate Action, who decide whether the scheme goes ahead and in what form. The more people who ask for a proper cycle route, the harder it is to leave out.

Reply directly to the council's consultation at haveyoursay.ealing.gov.uk/en-GB/projects/popes-lane.