Sustrans National Cycle Network Route 1 – NCN1 on the Isle of Dogs

If you would like to do an assessment of the Isle of Dogs section of NCN1, please retain your impartiality by doing the assessment before reading the post or watching the video.  List of 18 London cycling posts and videos.

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Sustrans planned the National Cycle Network Route 1 cycleway from Dover to the Shetland Isles as a recreational route. It was a romantic idea and serves this objective. But the Isle of Dogs section of NCN1  is pretty drab, apart from two short sections of ride by Millwall Dock the River Thames.  The rest of the Isle of Dogs NCN1 route has too many dog’s-leg changes of direction, too many junctions and far too many parked cars. The result is a dog’s dinner and following the route is a navigational challenge. The underlying problem is that the creation of the route was not treated as the creation of a greenway, with landscape planning and landscape architecture inputs. The approach was ‘without spending more than a few bob, we have to signpost a route through the Isle of Dogs’. OK. They did it. But how many London cyclists use the NCN1 cycle route?