Cyclists hit back at ‘propaganda’ after children in face masks are used to protest London Cycle Superhighway 11

Just out of interest... is "Criqui" pronounced "crikey"?

This is an example of what Andrew Gilligan warned of from the outset, when he told the new mayoral administration  "Time is your enemy".

Nearly a year's gone by, and the simplest of tasks (consulted on - overwhelmingly and postively in favour) was ready to go. 'Ready to go' meaning - one person's task of 25 minutes to go around Regent's Park and close SOME gates, and leave them that way for a few hours.

BUT - one year later, and Val Shawcross is showing her true colours - with contempt for those who have already vote for this park to be used as...a park!! For kids to be able to ride to the zoo - to school - or even to have a half way decent chance of being able to ride with their parents into town  rather than be ferrie in some monster truck/combat vehicle respendent with creative number plate.

So. Do nothing for a year. Giving the depraved and demented Criqui mob all the time they need to kick up such a fuss that this this deputy mayor for transport along with the new 'Nike' walking and cycling commissioner can prove his 98K pa value by telling campaigners what they all knew several years ago.

Contrast this with Jeanette Sadik-Khan who spent seven years, day in day out fighting the ignorant, the addicted and the the sociopathic, to bring about a network of cycle lanes in New York.

Elsewhere we have Mayor Ada Colau in Barcelona and Mayor Hidalgo, somewhat less afraid of using there remit to bring to a halt the inexcusable foul-up and infestation of motorised urban vermin.

The real tragedy here is that wealthy people are being literally poisoned in their own exhaust gasses! Someone should be demanding that car manufacturers fit better filters to the air intake for the passenger compartment in order to remove the Nitrous Oxides and particulates that are accumulating in the cabin at far greater levels than are found out on the street. It is simply unfair that in any un-equal society that the horrid street dwelling scum are not only causing all the traffic congestion by their selfish use of pavements and bicycle lanes, but are suffering less from the toxic result!

Given that children's lungs seem to be particularly susceptible to absorbing these contaminants, I feel that important people such as Learmond-Criqui, Lord Tebbit, Katie Hopkins etc should be allowed to use any small* child that does not go to a Montesori school as an inexpensive and easily replaceable air filter.

In the meantime, maybe a short period of clear thinking and quiet reflection on where the problem actually lies might be more productive.

*Should be small enough to conveniently fit inside a Range Rover glove box for example.

They missed a trick with the kids, they could have given them WW2 gas masks for more impact, then scared the hell out of some passers by by asking "are you my mummy?"

Im unsure how they believe reducing the number of lanes on a road ups the number of cars. In a given stretch of road that currently takes say twenty cars across two lanes, if you reduce the number of lanes the number of cars has to go down, or am I missing something here?

Also as other schemes have shown if the option is available to a cycle superhighway people do tend to use it.

Parents could do something consturctive and actually use public transport or walk their children to school which would mean less cars on the road and ironically they would inhale less pollutants than if they were in a car.

 A thread from I Love Hampstead - NW3 has just popped up on my Fb tl. I've never read such illogical nonsense in my life.

https://www.facebook.com/ilovehampstead/posts/1480910258599996

EDIT: just discovered that the person behind the page is the primary anti-CS11 activist, sponsored by the driving lobby. Her love for her motor vehicle is more than her town then...

Excellent opportunity to educate the readers of that rag.  Go on, post loads of comments pointing out the insanity of the argument.  I'm pretty sure I'd not want someone with so many screws loose dealing with anything that requires a solicitor.

I wonder, just what does she solicit?

On the subject of "bike lanes cause pollution" it's demonstrably untrue given the London Air Quality Network have monitoring along Upper Thames St (part of the excellent CS3, where a lane was removed to add in fully protected cycle lanes) and guess what? It doesn't show any noticeable increase since CS3 fully opened!

Recently got into a bit of an argument with a taxi driver over this very fact and despite posting the graphs and links to their website to obtain the data himself the best he could come back with where links to a Daily Mail article and an unsubstantiated tweet from Robert Wilson claiming the new cycle lanes had increased pollution by a factor of 7!

So I happen to live in the area. Cycle through it often daily, many friends there etc etc.

shes a fucking loon.

The parents drop the kids off when they don't need to. There are plenty of buses going around but they are too good for buses.  So am I frankly. But I cycle.

and they all drive around in, as many are hypothesising - Chelsea tractors. And they all already use all the rat runs and side streets. The problem, in my experience, is not that there aren't enough roads. There are too many mums dropping their kids off around here. 

"With 55 schools and colleges in the area it would only take 9 pupils per establishment to cycle using the proposed infrastructure, rather than be driven, to negate the fear of increased motor traffic. Not an improbable target."

yeah none of the kids cycle  

When school is on holiday my bike commute is a bliss.  Virtually hardly any traffic on the roads. 

Till now I still amazued and or puzzled why thats the case. How can during school term time there are so many traffic as opposed to when they are on holiday. 

Based on that observation I can only saw that school is causing all the polluants and not the cyclists. 

With 55 schools and colleges in the area it would only take 9 pupils per establishment to cycle using the proposed infrastructure, rather than be driven, to negate the fear of increased motor traffic. Not an improbable target.

475 extra  vehicles per hour is 8 cars a minute or one extra car about every 7.5 seconds.  100 extra cars an hour is just over 1.5 extra cars per minute or one every 36 seconds!  

Interestingly she provides no evidence, not a single figure, to support a claim that air quality will be negatively impacted then claims not to be a nimby whilst overlooking the congestion reduction if local residents used CS 11, walked or used public transport.

Don't think I'd want her to be handling my legal affairs if this is typical of her attention to fact.

Regrettably, it is quite normal for motons to blame anybody or anything for any problems they cause - apart from the (ab)use of motor vehicles.

The pollution is just TOO DAMN HIGH!

Thanks Concorde. Highgate is in Camden, which had 48,000 cars in 2015 for a population at the same time of 241,000.  That is one car for every five residents, or, given an average household size of 2.1, one car for every 2.5 households (of course this won't be true as some households will own multiple cars).

When you look at it like that, it's genuinely puzzling that Khan is more worried about upsetting people who own cars more than people who own bicycles.

"...where the elite... have subverted the democratic rights of the population"

she's not lacking in irony, just self-awareness!

a lawyer with a name like Learmond-Criqui claims to speak for the people... she's probably a bit worried that some dark-skinned folk might cycle her way by accident

A few quotes from the lady herself.  I was going to call them highlights, but that didn't seem appropriate.

" The folly and stupidity of the decision making around CS11 is leading to a crisis in air quality in our neighbourhoods."

"The Regents Park cycling lobby is pushing for Regents Park to become even more of a velodrome which will lead to the further dramatic, if not catastrophic, impact on local residents and on emergency vehicular access through the park. "

"To those who say that this letter is from a few NIMBYs, we reply that it is on behalf of the unaccounted carers of 11,000 non-resident school children who go to school here, the over 80s who cannot travel on public transport, the disabled and those trying to access the Royal Free."

"Our challenge to you is to examine why you are in politics and whether you have truly considered the issues around CS11 or whether you have been subsumed into “the system” where the elite and special interest groups behind the cycling lobbies have subverted the democratic rights of the population"

Read the whole article here http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/environment/opinion_solicitor_jessica_lear...

I trust then that Jessica never ever drives a car...?

Excluding blue badge holders, there should only be taxis and and private hire cars within zone 2/1, as like others have said you can easily jump a bus or tube to where ever you're going, or grab a boris bike, on top of that, and seeing a large amount of cycle accidents are caused by goods vehicles, they should only be allowed within zone 2/1 from 10pm to 6am, and if you need to make deliveries within zone 2/1 outside of that time, cycle courier or motorcycle courier. 

Drives Overfinch Range Rover with massive V8 for school run - complains about environmental impact of cyclists. 

NIMBY mentality at it's finest. Don't want to be late for expensive coffee with the idle rich. 

Didn't someone once calculate that if you taxed bicycles £10 a year VED and then made cars pay an amount proportional to how much more Co2 and no2 they produced compared to a bicycle. Each car would pay £5 million pounds VED?

"Cyclists cause pollution." That's a new one on me...

As a petrolhead, i really wouldn't choose to sit in 2 lanes of static traffic rather than 1, I'd choose neither. Petrolheads prefer to drive in places that are enjoyable, much like cyclists, we like trafficless open country lanes etc.

I think the people opposed to this are mostly the "motons". People who believe they have a right to drive everywhere and exercising that right makes them feel more important than everyone else. Obviously, if we all choose to drive everywhere the problem of traffic and pollution simply evaporates, right?!

I'm trying to understand why you'd even own a car in within zone 2. OK I don't live in London, so I guess I don't know what it's like but whenever I've been there I certainly haven't thought "Hey, you know what? I could really do with a car about now!"

There's tube stop every few hundred metres and bus stops in between. I can't imagine an area better served by public transport. Out here in the sticks we get a bus twice a week and car ownership is a pre-requisite of living in the country even if you're an avid cyclist. In London, especially the centre... why would you bother? I exclude those with mobility issues from this, because I don't have first hand knowlege of the solutions available but for the vast majority - why would you have a car?