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Part of route of proposed Quietway through Islington (copyright Simon MacMichael)Islington Cyclists call for traffic restrictions on planned Quietway (+ video)
Islington Cyclists have launched a petition calling on the local council to restrict through traffic on a planned Quietway running north to south through the Inner London borough from Finsbury Park to Clerkenwell.
The proposed route takes in roads including Drayton Park, where it passes Arsenal FC’s Emirates Stadium, Westbourne Road, Thornhill Road and Amwell Street.
As a result, it enables people on bikes to avoid busy main roads such as Holloway Road, Upper Street and Liverpool Road, as well as Highbury Corner, currently the site of major roadworks.
The route is already hugely popular with bike riders, with a steady stream of them heading towards the city centre in the morning and back home in the evening.
But Islington Cyclists – which is affiliated to the London Cycling Campaign – says vehicles including taxis, vans and lorries also use the route to avoid other, more congested roads, and has highlighted some of the issues in this video.
In its petition on Change.org the group says:
Islington has secured money from TfL to implement a cycling Quietway from Finsbury Park to Clerkenwell. The route is quieter than Holloway Road, but it is still heavily used by through traffic. We want the council to remove the majority of traffic from this route by only providing local access.
This is a great opportunity for cycling money to be used to benefit local communities. Installing bollards on Thornhill Road, Barnsbury Road and Amwell Street will reduce pollution and traffic noise for those living and working there. At the same time, it will create a truly quiet route along which people from 8 to 80 can feel comfortable cycling.
You can see a map of the route here.
The planned Quietway is also one where you might spot the odd cycling celebrity – the studio of Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry is on the route, and he can often be seen riding in the area his green Vogue transport bike, which he had shipped over from the Netherlands.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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16 comments
Rat runners drive so aggressively along the Quietway near me, which has a school halfway along it, nastier than the main road.
FWIW ... I'm in this area regularly and often let the pup loose in the square opposite the 'kissing cars' that feature in the video
When I'm there walking her, I'm gobsmacked by the number of bike commuters that go by in the morning and evening, certainly compared to my commute from Greenwich-Barbican 10 years ago.
It's heartening to see so many people on bikes.
But a friend who rides the central part of this route each day to get to work (Offord Rd-Angel, so along Thornhill Rd etc) says the biggest problem they encounter isn't motor traffic - it's pedestrians who walk out without looking for bikes.
Pedestrians might be a pain when you're cycling, but I doubt anyone's put off the idea of cycling because of pedestrians.
Islington is one of a few central London boroughs where there's a hell of a shift happening with the people that live (and vote) there. Car ownership is plummeting year on year, but traffic levels aren't because most of it comes into the borough from outside.
There's plenty of local support for measures that reduce traffic, and it's likely to increase.
If traffic is restricted on these stareets where will it go? Probably to the adjacent streets increasing the traffic flow on them, making it more dangerous for the resients on these streets
A significant proportion of it will evaporate. Close roads and traffic disappears. Build roads and it appears. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearing_traffic
Often cars/vans using this kind of street as a rat-run rejoin the main roads a little bit further along the journey. This might save those taking the short-cut a couple of minutes, but overall makes the congestion on the main road worse for everybody else as they are rejoining it.
If everybody just stays on the main roads and traffic light timings are set correctly it can make things a hell of a lot better for everybody.
I was looking though old pictures of my area and saw one from the 50's that shows a street sign that states it is a 'play street' where vehicles aren't allowed during the day.
Call that progress?
Most UK quiet residential streets should be Access Only, with a big bollard halfway along.
I do sometimes think cycling groups do themselves a disservice by demanding preferential treatment over other road users. Both in this story and the Old St redevelopment it seems local councils are actively trying to make better provision for cyclists only to be told that whatever they do is not good enough, and that any new development simply must have segregated cycle lanes else it is worthless.
Sure, I’d love if all of Barnsbury was restricted to local traffic with no through roads (I live there) but it’s not very realistic as probably less than 5% of the people in the area actually ride a bike.
In most of the UK, motor traffic is prioritised on every road. By closing some roads to through-traffic, you create some roads were cycles are prioritised, thus starting to balance things a little bit.
Why do you jump to discussing all roads being closed on an article about some roads being closed? That just sounds like the slipper slope fallacy to me.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope
Even fewer people currently walk or cycle the direct route between Pimlico and Nine Elms, but that's not a good argument against building infrastructure to support walking and cycling there. Similarly I think quite a few people might be put off cycling in Barnsbury by fear of motor vehicles.
You don't see the link there?
Either there needs to be segregation (main fast roads), or there needs to be low traffic volumes (residential, access, slow roads). Nothing else will convince most people that cycling is safe.
I use a couple of closed roads on my commute to work and there brilliant. The best part is that it was the local residents that campaigned for them because they were sick of them being used as rat runs by people doing double the speed limit in their cars, so cyclist don't even get the blame.
Islington has a dense mesh of roads which serve motorised road users very well.
Old St development is complicated by anticipated planning applications above the Old St tube site needed to pay for upgrade of the Old St tube station.
Wow - are councils allowed to do that? Isn't it against the law or something?