Electric vehicle charging rollout is posing a growing threat to walking, wheeling and disabled access
A new report we commissioned with support from inclusive cycling charity Wheels for Wellbeing, has found that electric vehicle charge points in London are “invading pavements” with significant impacts on anyone making walking or wheeling trips, especially Disabled people.
Freedom of Information requests revealed that despite government targets to prioritise pedestrian space and Disabled access, targets for installing EV chargepoints without clear conditions to where they can be placed, many have been placed on pavements.
We’ve written to Active Travel England and the Office of Zero Emission Vehicles calling on them to agree on a set of common principles regarding on-street electric vehicle charging points, to ensure they are not obstructing walking and wheeling and are accessible to all road users.
The Problem
While best practice guidance from Transport for London is also clear that EV chargepoints should be installed on kerb buildouts in parking spaces rather than on pavements, London councils have installed four times as many EV chargepoints on pavements than in converted parking spaces.
The government has set an objective for half of all short trips in towns and cities to be walked, wheeled or cycled by 2030 - requiring road space to be reallocated away from private cars and towards active travel. De-cluttering pavements is officially recognised as an essential part of enabling more trips to be made by active travel.
But the Department for Transport has recently slashed budgets for walking, wheeling and cycling improvements, while at the same time massively increasing budgets for on-street EV chargepoints and announcing that around half a million public EV chargepoints will need to be installed by 2030 in order to meet demand from drivers under net zero plans.
This has created a huge pressure on local authorities to accelerate the rollout of charging infrastructure on UK streets but without creating a set of conditions on where they are placed has lead to many local authorities are placing them in pedestrian space instead of taking parking space away from cars.
The Impact
The rollout of EV chargepoints is welcome, but it’s eating away at footways across the capital, whilst simultaneously failing to provide accessible charging for Disabled drivers. It is a new and totally avoidable access catastrophe.
Pavement installations can have a profound impact on the already generally poor quality of the walking and wheeling environment for people with additional mobility challenges, particularly wheelchair users and those with visual impairments (like poor-quality walking and wheeling environments including narrow pavements, cracked paving slabs, tree roots, street clutter, missing dropped kerbs and lack of tactile paving).
Once again, the Equality Act and the obligation not to disadvantage Disabled people seems to have been ignored by the public bodies funding and delivering this infrastructure. On top of this disadvantage, Disabled people who do have access to cars and would like to switch to EVs have found that the overwhelming majority of public chargepoints are completely inaccessible to Disabled drivers.
By making footways more difficult to navigate for all pedestrians, they are also likely to deter walking and wheeling trips more widely, at a time when councils are supposed to be supporting residents to make more. Ensuring active travel is a viable option for all is just as important for meeting climate targets as changing the way cars are fuelled, but to do that, we need to be removing clutter from footways, not adding to it.
Possible and Wheels for Wellbeing have written to the respective government agencies responsible for delivering EV charging and walking targets, the Office of Zero Emission Vehicles and Active Travel England, calling on them to come together to agree on a set of common principles with respect to placement of on-street electric vehicle charging points.
We will support ATE and OLEZ in ending this practice and ensuring that the roll out of EV chargepoints brings progress and greener mobility for all, rather than further limiting Disabled people’s mobility.