Boris Johnson should get on his bike and experience the dangers cyclists are exposed to on the roads around Kings Cross for himself. That's the message from Green Party Mayoral Candidate, Jenny Jones following the death of a young woman cyclist who was killed in a collision with a lorry outside the London station last week.
Blogging under her road.cc username Greenjennyjones, Ms Jones also calls on the Mayor to implement in full the measures contained in 2008 Transport for London (TfL) report into the roads around Kings Cross which advised re-allocating carriageway space to the footpath, creating more pedestrian crossings and introducing traffic calming measures – that report says Ms Jones has largely been ignored as has the 2008 TfL report in to traffic on London's bridges – which was commissioned following the death of cyclist Val McCreery on Blackfriars Bridge.
As well as proposing 20mph speed limits on all London bridges that report also put forward plans for a re-designed T-junction at the northern end of the bridge of the type favoured by the LCC but rejected by TfL itself when it came to re-designing the road layout for the redevelopment of the area. TfL has not moved to implement in full the findings of either the Blackfriars or Kings Cross studies.
Ms Jones contends that despite the talk of a cycling revolution in London the impetus behind Mayor Johnson's transport plans is still to put the free flow of motorised traffic first ahead of the needs of other road users and pedestrians and until that changes problems such as the "bodged redesign of Blackfriars Bridge" will continue and indeed be replicated across London.
You can read Greenjennyjones's blog here
4 thoughts on “Mayor Boris invited to saddle up and experience the dangers of Kings Cross roads for himself”
I’ve said this a couple of
I’ve said this a couple of times to people over the last few days:
It seems that TfL’s motivation to keep car traffic flowing, at the expense of pedestrians and cyclists, is because they are a (congestion charge) revenue stream and the situation will remain the same until either people quit driving en mass or TfL are deposed and disposed of.
@ Zanf:
Not a particularly
@ Zanf:
Not a particularly compelling argument vis-a-vis King’s X, as all the Euston/Pentonville Rd traffic is CC-free. Only the Gray’s Inn Rd side is in the charge area.
I think Boris Johnson, Peter
I think Boris Johnson, Peter Hendy (TfL Commissioner) and Leon Daniels (Managing Director, Surface Transport) should all take a cycle tour of some of Londons gyratorys (Parlament Square, Vauxhall, Elephant and Castle, Hyde Park Corner, Aldgate, etc). Then they can go back to the drawingboard on how to redesign the roads on London.
I suspect Boris is well
I suspect Boris is well familiar with the city’s gyratories, because he does actually cycle around a lot – unlike Posh Dave, who only ever did it for show, with his briefcase following in an official car.
So it does beg the question – why doesn’t Boris actually do womthing about London streets? From what I can gather he is not a hardened vehicular cyclist (far from it – apparently he is amazingly slow) who is content with the road conditions amnd doesn’t wannt his freedom to zoom curtailed. He might be a real pertol head at heart but I doubt it.
My theory is that all politicians feel inadequate in the presence of “experts”. They’re afraid to display their ignorance (of engineering, or modelling, or whatever arcane topic the “expert” is expert in) so they just nod their heads and agree to whatever bullsh*t the experts spout to them.
“Yes Minister” lives on!