Support road.cc

Like this site? Help us to make it better.

7,500 sign petition urging Sadiq Khan to make London’s junctions safer for cyclists

“It is now time for action not excuses,” says Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon, who will deliver petition to the mayor at City Hall

More than 7,500 people have signed a petition urging Mayor of London Sadiq Khan to make the city’s junctions safer for people on bikes.

The petition, organised by the London Cycling Campaign (LCC), was handed this morning by Simon Munk, its campaigns manager, to Liberal Democrat Assembly Member Caroline Pidgeon.

Pidgeon, who is chair of the London Assembly’s Transport Committee, will deliver it to Khan at a forthcoming Mayor’s Question Time.

She joined Munk and other members of LCC staff today at the junction of Theobald’s Road and Southampton Row in Holborn, where Dr Marta Krawiec was killed in August while cycling to work.

Three other cyclists have been killed at the same junction since 2008, and a further three at other junctions on the Holborn gyratory.

The petition urges the mayor and local authorities across London to “take rapid action on dangerous junctions now … You must remove all critical safety issues for people walking and cycling at junctions and deliver a ‘Vision Zero’ London free from fatal road collisions.”

Munk said: “The rapid, welcome changes TfL and Camden Council have made at this junction show that we do not have to wait years for changes to lethal and dangerous junctions.

> Immediate” safety changes announced for killer junction in Holborn

“Safety improvements do not need to get bogged down in modelling, nor should powerful stakeholders get an effective veto to them.

“Where people’s lives are clearly at risk, TfL and London’s boroughs simply should and must act, and a lot faster,” he added.

Pidgeon said: “It is hugely regrettable that another petition calling for action to address such a dangerous junction and stretch of road is even necessary.

“I only hope that the message is finally heard that no cyclist or pedestrian should have to face such horrific dangers on our roads.

“It is now time for action not excuses,” she added.

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.

Add new comment

15 comments

Avatar
Rendel Harris replied to Lance ꜱtrongarm | 2 years ago
8 likes

It may surprise you to know that I am completely opposed to the Silvertown Tunnel and was furious when it was announced by that stupid London Mayor with the statement that "I promise the Silvertown tunnel will be completed in a decade and will provide an easing of congestion problems and further growth opportunities in east London." That was Boris Johnson in 2012; perhaps no coincidence that it was his party that signed off on Silvertown in 2018 when they could have blocked it. I certainly am not happy with Khan for continuing the project, not happy at all, but it's not just his project.

Prepared to make a modest wager though that had Khan scrapped the project you would have been the first to accuse him of leaving poor areas and those of high BAME residency to continue to suffer excessive pollution. You would have, wouldn't you?

Avatar
chrisonabike replied to Rendel Harris | 2 years ago
4 likes

Say what you like about Boris, at least he brought in those Boris Ken Livingstone bikes. (You can read more in the discredited Wikipedia article). It does sound like he might have frightened some posters here with his vision of a city "filled with thousands of gleaming machines", which would "become as commonplace on our roads as black cabs and red buses".

It is however possible that - though he mentioned pedals - he wasn't talking about bikes...

Avatar
TheBillder replied to Lance ꜱtrongarm | 2 years ago
7 likes
Nigel Garage wrote:

Blaming Boris Johnson doesn't cut it any more, a lot has changed over the last few years with regard to road building and its environmental impact.Take the proposed Oxford - Cambridge expressway for example, the Conservatives have taken the lead and cancelled that road. 

And no I wouldn't have blamed Khan for something else if he'd have followed the Tories in cancelling his projects.

Was the £23bn for roads still in Mr Sunak's budget? And (non road), didn't he just reduce air passenger duty for domestic (ie mostly pointless unless you value a small time saving more than your only planet) flights? And isn't he still subsidising Drax to cut down trees in the US, ship the wood chips across the Atlantic using the dirtiest heavy fuel oil and then burn them, creating yet more CO2?

Johnson understands the power of green-ish rhetoric, especially when he mixes it with nonsense about how no one will actually have to change lifestyle. He's basically a siren voice to take away any guilt some may feel, and give permission to those who through selfishness, don't give a shit (except a shit that's heading for the nearest river). But action is needed more than words.

Sunak doesn't even seem to do the words. Perhaps he thinks that he and his flip flops and his wife's money can retreat to a mountain top hideaway when the conflagration comes.

Avatar
markieteeee replied to Lance ꜱtrongarm | 2 years ago
3 likes

First you give your support for refugees and oppressed minorities around the world; and now you are supporting green, left and XR climate change activists who oppose Boris' Silvertown tunnel project, despite previously implying they were terrorists. Kudos too for pointing out the dumb comments from the Bermondsey MP about the whiteness of the activists - another step up from your dog-whistle racial comments. Keep it up Nigel! 

Avatar
BIRMINGHAMisaDUMP replied to Lance ꜱtrongarm | 2 years ago
8 likes

You are quite a sad little man aren't you? 

Avatar
TheBillder replied to Lance ꜱtrongarm | 2 years ago
2 likes
Nigel Garage wrote:

Enough with the "little" if you don't mind, Rendel Harris gets very angry indeed at heightist comments.

Come to Glasgow some time and meet a Big Man. They're often not very tall. But can be very dangerous.

Avatar
Sniffer replied to Lance ꜱtrongarm | 2 years ago
1 like

.

Avatar
Sniffer replied to Lance ꜱtrongarm | 2 years ago
4 likes
Nigel Garage wrote:

Been to Glasgow. Won't be going again.

Excellent news, could you widen that to the whole of Scotland please?

Avatar
Rendel Harris replied to Lance ꜱtrongarm | 2 years ago
2 likes

Nigel Garage wrote:

Enough with the "little" if you don't mind, Rendel Harris gets very angry indeed at heightist comments.

No, that's racist comments, such as attempting to belittle a person for their height when they are the average height for their race, which is in no substantive way different to mocking someone for the hue of their skin or the nature of their hair. Using 'little' as a metaphor for small minded, spiteful, petty and silly - especially when it fits like a glove, as with you - is fine.

Avatar
Rendel Harris replied to Lance ꜱtrongarm | 2 years ago
3 likes

The average male of Pakistani heritage is 5 feet 5.5 inches tall, Sadiq Kahn is 5 feet 5 inches tall. You can't actually change facts simply by lying. 

Even if those weren't facts, your characterisation of the apallingly racist Donald Trump as "the greatest president in the history of the world" quite clearly marks you out as a racist.

P.S. "He isn't the average height, either for the average British man, or for the average British man of South Asian ethnicity. Hope that helps." Doesn't help much, chap, given that "south Asia" covers Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, an area of 5.2 million square kms that is home to nearly 25% of the world's population (1.8 billion people). One might expect there to be certain regional and ethnic variations in physical characteristics within such a demographic - or do they all look the same to you?

Avatar
Rendel Harris replied to Lance ꜱtrongarm | 2 years ago
2 likes

And your citation for that assertion is....

But I'm sure your disturbingly obsessive hatred for a Muslim politician of Pakistani heritage is as free of racial prejudice as the "no racist bone in his body" Donald's hatred of him, we'll give you that.  

Avatar
AlsoSomniloquism replied to Rendel Harris | 2 years ago
3 likes

Dodgy Numbers Troll wrote:

Sure, my citation is from HSE 2004 Table 6.2, page 179. You're welcome.

Careful Rendel, the Master of Economics might send you a link with the wrong page number again. He doesn't seem to be good with numbers after boasting he is good with numbers. Probably taking after the orange-manbaby god he worships who usually boasts about how good he is at things when reality shows different.

Avatar
Rendel Harris replied to AlsoSomniloquism | 2 years ago
3 likes

Oh come now, he's sent me figures from a 17-year-old survey, based on a sample size of 336, with no deviation for whether the subjects in question are first, second, third, fourth or fifth generation Pakastani immigrants, he's conclusively proved that he has every right to try and mock Sadiq Khan for his racial characteristics. His science and methodology is every bit as valid and accurate as that of his hero!

Avatar
Sniffer replied to Rendel Harris | 2 years ago
1 like

That is why he isn't worth a reply.

Avatar
Sriracha | 2 years ago
4 likes

Latest Comments