The Elephant & Castle is officially the most dangerous traffic interchange in London for cyclists. In spite of this, the final masterplan application has dropped all plans to reduce traffic flows at the Elephant and actually proposes to expand the interchange to provide six lanes of traffic. The London Cycling Campaign has made a detailed critique of the plans on its website here.

The current proposals have departed significantly from the original regeneration plans, which proposed to “give priority to pedestrians & cyclists” by removing the link road & creating a pedestrianised ‘piazza’ public square:

Furthermore, despite the fact that Elephant & Castle has the highest possible rating in terms of public transport accessibility, the Council’s regeneration partner Lend Lease is building over 700 parking spaces at the Elephant in what was intended to be an entirely car-free scheme[1]:
Heygate Outline Site: 616 parking spaces - see paragraph 15.1.2 of the Transport Statement Heygate Phase 1 Site: 47 parking spaces - see page 11 of the Environmental Statement
One the Elephant Site: 46 parking spaces - see paragraph 1.2 of the Transport Statement

According to planning officer reports, Lend Lease has submitted viability assessments demonstrating that “the proposed level of parking is justified on viability grounds”.

In addition, - despite strong objections from City Hall - Lend Lease has blocked TFL’s plans for a much needed eastern cycle bypass as part of the proposed Cycle Superhighway 6 (Penge to the City): “A route for the new cycle superhighway (CS6) is not intended to be provided through the proposed Development. The Proposed development is designed to support leisure cyclists rather than being used as a cycling commuter route through the development which may discourage less confident cyclists and conflict with pedestrian movement.“(Transport Statement - paragraph 6.8.2)

[1]See Policy 12, page 48 of the Local Development Framework “All development in the central activities zone (CAZ) should be car-free”