How Shravan Joshi turned gridlock into green growth

There’s still plenty of bustle on the pavements, and the omnipresent whine of drills around every corner. But the highway itself is strangely empty. Reach the octopus-like junction outside the Bank and the silence is noticeable: an electric bus purrs by, gliding past a gaggle of cyclists on Lime bikes. But there is no honking of horns, no revving of engines. 

It is so quiet that birdsong can be heard. It may be the shrieking of seagulls rather than the warble of a song thrush but, still, nature is present and breathing air that is no longer thick with exhaust fumes. It’s remarkable in this packed district which once seemed to define both business and busy-ness. 

On a wintry Tuesday morning, London’s financial quarter seems to be inching its way – with all its ‘active travel’ and pale wood coffee shops – towards a Scandinavian level of laid-back.

Welcome to the new iteration of the City, London’s banking square mile which hosts some of the most expensive office space in the world. For years it seethed with energy, its choked streets and barely suppressed road rage almost emblematic of its working culture. But, post-pandemic, there has been a fightback: not only are its workers not chained to their desks to the same extent, the traffic that once clogged its web of roads and side-streets is in short supply. 

One man who can take the credit – or the blame, depending on your point of view – for this feat is Shravan Joshi. Joshi was elected the member for Bishopsgate within the Corporation of the City of London (the City’s local authority) in 2018 and now chairs its Planning and Transportation Committee. His offices are in the Guildhall, the Corporation’s town hall which, like much of the City, is a mixture of the brashly modern and the strikingly Medieval. He is friendly while giving the impression of having a very busy diary. As he tells it, however, his immersion in traffic restrictions was mostly accidental.

“When I was elected, I took over a vacant seat as well as my predecessor’s place on the Traffic and Planning Committee. They were in the process of formulating a 25-year transport strategy,” he says. “There was a recognition that emissions and air quality were huge issues and there had also been a fatality at Bank junction which meant we wanted a change. We thought about what vehicles actually needed to be in the City. We’ve done a lot of work monitoring entries and exits and we want to stop drivers transiting across.”

The Corporation had committed to reducing vehicle journeys by 25% in the City by 2030 and 50% by 2040. A combination of congestion charging (it now costs £15 to drive into or through the City during extended office hours) and the introduction of the ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ) had discouraged what might be termed ‘casual car use’ in central London. 

But Joshi – and his committee – decided to supercharge this, with COVID-19 giving them a golden opportunity to introduce their measures: pavements were widened (meaning the highway was narrowed); there was cycle lane expansion; and, crucially, areas that were being trialled for closure, including Bank junction, were permanently closed to private traffic choking off many through journeys and completely changing the character of the centre of the City. 

Not that Joshi is keen to be the face of traffic restrictions. When he mentions cities that have influenced his policies, he avoids Paris where the campaigning mayor, Anne Hidalgo, has famously waged war on drivers. Instead, he cites Lower Manhattan for its vibrancy and says “it’s brilliant how they’ve recovered from lockdown”. Or, unglamorously, Malmö, for its large district heating system – which the Corporation wishes to emulate, creating a network of 300 buildings extended from its current 30.

But, although 97% of workers use public or active travel to reach the City, the restrictions have not been universally popular. Black cab drivers have mounted a long-running campaign to regain the right to drive across the City and will be allowed to once more on a trial basis from April. 

In fact, the only private vehicles much in evidence on the City’s streets these days are lorries and dozens of small delivery vans. And even those are being eyed: “There’s a sharper focus around what is needed to service this area,” says Joshi. “We’ve pushed building servicing into the evenings and nighttime. We’re looking quite hard at supply chain consolidation – instead of hundreds of deliveries, they may only have tens during a day.” 

Working with the constant background beat of heavy plant machinery must be a nightmare though – is all this building work completely necessary? “If there were no construction in the City, I’d be worried,” he says. And as if to make this point, the Planning Committee has just given the nod to two enormous new towers, 1 Undershaft (74 storeys) and 99 Bishopsgate (54 storeys).

The Corporation is keen to make the City a destination rather than just a workplace, but dealing with all the stakeholders in this extremely expensive district can be tough. Why build a park, when a new office block would be more profitable? “It is critical that we get buy-in from different groups,” Joshi says. “We do negotiate with a lot of different stakeholders.”

Making a business case is something that the City’s councillors have to work at. The Corporation is unusual among British local authorities in having a very low residential population, about 8,600 in its 2.9km² area, according to census records. Compare this to the neighbouring boroughs of Islington – about five times the size of the City but with 216,000 residents or Tower Hamlets, which is 19.8km² but has 326,000 residents. 

With so few residents, City businesses nominate someone within their staff to vote on their behalf. Unlike other local authorities, the Corporation’s councillors rarely have party political affiliations, brandishing instead their business credentials: Joshi spent many years in finance before moving to the energy sector. (Unusually too, the City’s more than 100 livery companies – the descendants of the Medieval unions or “guilds” – also have a say in the running of the Corporation.) 

Nevertheless, the next big public project for the Corporation could be a new 3km-long, £4.5m cycle route which is being proposed from Aldgate, at the eastern edge of the City, to Blackfriars, in the west. If it goes ahead, it will take years to build and, undoubtedly, affect traffic flow. But it’s hard to see that worrying Joshi.  “We don’t just say, ‘Sorry. It’s closed.’ We explain why. The public understands.”

The days when heads of banking departments arrived in growling sports cars seem a distant memory – where on earth would they park now? Or it might be that the public policy and culture has changed and, in this super-competitive environment, it is Strava standings rather than engine size that are now the marker of success.