Flood Tory mayoral candidate with cycling pledge requests, say campaigners

Campaign group Stop Killing Cyclists is calling on people to 'flood' one Conservative London mayoral hopeful's email, social media and telephone accounts with requests to sign up to concrete pledges on cycling ahead of his selection.

So far Labour selection Sadiq Khan, the Lib Dems' Caroline Pidgeon and Green candidate Sian Berry, have responded to the ten point pledge, which includes that 10% of the Transport for London budget will be spent on cycling, up from the current 1.4%.

However a key absence is Conservative candidate, Zac Goldsmith, whose selection or otherwise will be announced before the end of the month, less than two weeks away. Sayed Kamall is the only Conservative candidate of four potential Tory runners to have signed.

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McCarthy said: "Having successfully got the successful Labour, LibDem and Green Party candidates and the independent Rosalind Victoria Readhead to reply to our 10 by 2020 London Mayoral Safer Cycling Challenge prior to being selected, we now need your help to flood Zac's email and twitter account with polite requests to reply asap."

The group claims pressure is being put on Goldsmith by certain Conservatives to "drop Boris' cycling stuff". The upgraded cycle superhighways have proved controversial with a minority of businesspeople, although the cycle superhighways schemes have received enormous levels of support from major London-based companies. 

Last month London's cycling commissioner, Andrew Gilligan, told road.cc campaigners needed to get concrete commitments on cycling from candidates ahead of May's Mayoral elections, as happened ahead of Boris Johnson's re-election in 2012. The commitments elicited by the London Cycling Campaign included pledges to upgrade Cycle Superhighways to Dutch standards, while creating showcase "mini Hollands" in outer London and improving safety at some of the capital's most dangerous junctions, a significant proportion of which are now being realised.

At the launch of the campaign last month McCarthy said : "At the core of our ten mayoral cycling safety challenges is our demand that 10% of the TfL budget must be allocated to cycling infrastructure by 2020. The current pathetic 1.4% of the budget being spent on cycling safety is an insult to those dying every day from collisions, pollution and inactivity diseases."