‘London is not truly fit for cycling’ says Tessa Jowell before pledging to address that

Whilst pro-cycling statements are welcome - that pic makes me sick.
Tessa Jowell was MP for Dulwich & West Norwood, which straddles Southwark & Lambeth, two of the worst boroughs for cycling in London.
The guy she is pictured with (Cllr Peter John - Labour leader of Southwark) oversaw and agreed a transport plan that expressly ruled out segregated cycling - approving a policy that said it wanted cyclists on the roads "to slow traffic down". He removed ALL cycle routes in new Peckham and Nunhead Plan.
Refused all cycling proposals for new huge Aylesbury and Heygate Estate developments etc etc .

Neither borough built hardly a single meter of segregated cycle lanes over last 4 years.
If we are to judge Tessa Jowell on what she did rather than what she promises, then she would be a disaster.
I note many of the pledges she has made are basically meaningless.
Cycle training is already available in most schools in London?
She promises to complete the Quietways scheme - wow that is kind of her not to promise to abolish an existing Boris scheme. But will she make them genuine Quietways removing parking on at least one side of the streets and make them access only to traffic?
She promises to speed up the hugely slimmed down junction- improvement programme Boris started - she only mentions the 33 junctions - not the 500 Boris started with.
She says she will complete the mini-holland scheme - wow again a promise not to do something new but not to abolish an existing Boris scheme - will she extend it to all 32 boroughs from the measly 4 boroughs currently working on one?
Enforcing 20 mph is a good proposal but where is a commitment to make all of London 20 mph on TfL roads?
Getting all HGVs to have latest equipment is also a good idea but she makes no mention of how she will do this?

Finally and most importantly there is no concrete financial pledge on how much of the TfL budget she will alliocate to "doing everything we can" to make London safer for cycling.

Politicians' pledges?

The phrase has almost exactly the same meaning as the word "lies".

posted in error

Or maybe just start with those drivers causing accidents being visited by the police, or even if they just took a glance at the cc tv. The police will wait for a serious incident before taking action. Obviously the wrong approach.

I'd take a punt that David Lammy doesn't cycle anywhere at weekends or in fact any time. The 'rush' hour is about the safest time to be out on a bike imvho, traffic is barely moving. It's the bit between 10 and 4 when it really gets up to speed and the weekends where there are no laws that I'm less keen to venture out, both times when our amazing cycling infrastructure reverts to parking infrastructure.

It's a shame she's never been part of the cabinet and could do something to make councils uphold proper cycling design standards.

Oh, wait a minute...

OK, "so that these senseless tragedies can be avoided as much as possible". Think about that for a moment. You only have one life, and for the religious or the atheist life is important, but these politicians are not taking the deaths in London seriously. One life taken is too much already! I'm sure if it was someone 'important' it would focus their attention more.

Perhaps we need some good lawyers that get payouts from London of one million for each death, perhaps then they'd do something about it.

The same way we have special police, perhaps we could have similar with radar guns catching offending drivers.

More than anything the mindset has to change. Roads are not just for cars. Why hasn't there been any national campaign regarding cycling?
Shouldn't it be shameful for this 'first world country' to have so many cycling deaths in it's capital city?

She can promise anything as she is not in power. With the likelihood of Corbyn winning the leadership Liebour will never ever be in power ever again so she has no credibility what so ever.

on the subject of more Bikeability - an academic study came out recently which indicated that it made absolutely no difference to cycling rates. But it does make it look like the government is doing things

(full reference; Goodman, Anna, Esther van Sluijs, and David Ogilvie. "⁎ A28 Impact of ‘Bikeability’, a national cycle training scheme for children in England." Journal of Transport & Health 2.2 (2015): S19.)

Good to see cycling as transport continuing to rise up the political agenda but what we need is a genuine commitment to build the infrastructure that we desperately need.

Christian Wolmar still has the lead on that front.

Meh.

We've had a borough wide 20 mph blanket speed limit in Camden for coming up to 3 years. Widely ignored and not Policed as according to borough police commissioner, they don't have the resources. With further budget cuts its only getting worse...

Ah, the London mayoral election. Just as tedious as the real elections but irrelevant to anyone outside the M25 Yawn.

More and more Londoners are cycling, and by appealing to them I might get their votes.

She's a politician, so if her lips are moving she's only ever one deep breath away from a lie. Better than that studied buffoon Boris, but that's like the difference between typhoid and cholera.

Meh, I like Jowell, and I may well end up voting for her anyway, but none of this gets me excited.

Meh, I like Jowell, and I may well end up voting for her anyway, but none of this gets me excited.