Your voice for a cycling city

Yesterday morning, LCC staff handed in a nearly 3,000 signature petition to four London Assembly Transport Committee members to pass to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan and his deputy for transport, Heidi Alexander.

Transport Committee Chair Florence Eshalomi, Deputy Chair Caroline Pidgeon MBE, Caroline Russell and Keith Prince accepted the petition outside City Hall, representing the main political parties in London. David Kurten, Brexit Alliance, was invited but did not attend. The same morning, Caroline Pidgeon used her slot at the Mayor’s Question Time to directly press the Mayor on his Safer Junctions programme and progress on reducing road danger – the Mayor’s current “Vision Zero” pledge would see all serious and fatal collisions gone from London’s roads by 2041.

However, a year after hundreds joined LCC’s protest at the lethal Holborn gyratory we are seriously concerned about the lack of progress towards Vision Zero on junctions – where the vast majority of road collisions in London happen. Not only have many lethal junctions we’ve been promised progress on, sometimes for years, not been delivered yet, the redesigns of those junctions that are moving through consultation in the Safer Junctions programme are far too weak to deliver the safety improvements required. As a result, we’re seeing ongoing patterns of fatal and serious injuries at those junctions marked as complete in the programme.

The petition calls on the Mayor and his team to “upgrade the Safer Junctions programme, to not only accelerate pace of delivery, but to ensure every junction that moves forward eliminates ‘critical issues’ – removing the most dangerous elements to pedestrians and cyclists according to TfL’s own criteria - and takes a significant step toward your Vision Zero target by eliminating serious injuries and deaths at that location.”

Of completed Safer Junctions scheme, the Burdett Road/Mile End Road junction (on CW2) has seen serious collisions with three pedestrians, a driver and a cyclist in 2017 alone. And Ludgate Circus (on CW6) in the same year saw one pedestrian killed and another seriously injured. Meanwhile of seven recent Safer Junctions consultations, only one did not include any zero Healthy Streets Check score “critical issues”. Holloway Road retained five, Edgware Road/Harrow Road and Camden Street/Camden Road are set to retain three each after implementation.

Mayor’s Question Time

During Mayor’s Question Time, that took place immediately after the hand-in, the Mayor revealed that a horrifying 103 people have died on London’s roads since 1 January. Four in just the last week. And that over 70% of collisions were at junctions. Of 73 junctions on TfL’s roads in the Safer Junctions programme, Sadiq also revealed 31 were now complete, and that on average, completed junctions were seeing a reduction of over 30% of collisions.

Our response, and that of Caroline Pidgeon in the meeting, was that retaining nearly 70% of collisions at a redesigned junction wasn’t good enough. Caroline asked Sadiq “Do you need to get this right first time?”

While praising Caroline and LCC’s work on road danger reduction, and accepting the need for a meeting with his team, Sadiq also blamed boroughs for weak schemes and suggested it was a need to balance schemes for “different vulnerable road users”.

On the latter, the big issues we are seeing with the Safer Junctions programme are not to do with, as Sadiq put it, that “sometimes pedestrians take priority over cyclists” rightly. Junction designs are primarily being weakened in our view because of concerns most about the priority of bus movements through the junction, secondly, impacts to private motor traffic and congestion.

So the question has to be, if we’re to achieve Vision Zero and really reduce road danger – not just to save lives from collisions but to reduce the barriers hostile roads represent to more people walking and cycling – are we really OK to let a 20 second delay to buses or a few more cars stacking at the junction trump safety for vulnerable road users?

On blaming boroughs, none of the Safer Junctions are on borough roads – and indeed, LCC is calling for Sadiq to name and shame junctions under borough control where the boroughs refuse to take action (such as Lambeth Bridge North, which is being blocked by Westminster Council despite it being named the most dangerous junction for cycling in the UK!)

Quotes from the press release

In the accompanying press release for the hand in, Dr Ashok Sinha, Chief Executive, London Cycling Campaign said:

If the Mayor’s promise of zero fatal and serious collisions in London by 2041 is to be achieved, and indeed if we are to remove some of the biggest barriers to more people cycling, it’s vital we make sure collision risk is designed out at every dangerous junction. That means raising the safety bar for TfL’s junction redesigns, as well as acting quicker, to ensure the Mayor’s Safer Junctions programme really does help deliver a future where no one dies in avoidable collisions on London’s roads.

Florence Eshalomi said:

The Transport Committee wrote to the Mayor in March this year on TfL’s Safer Junctions Programme and called on him to expand this programme to areas of London that pedestrians and cyclists avoid because they feel they are too dangerous to use.  We welcome the Mayor’s work on this so far but more needs to be done. As more and more Londoners make journeys on foot and by bike, we need to ensure that London’s roads and footpaths are safe to travel on. We thank London Cycling Campaign for the work they have done on this so far. The London Assembly Transport Committee will continue to work on this issue and call on the Mayor to do more for Londoners who cycle and walk around the capital.

Caroline Pidgeon MBE said:

The Vision Zero objective is incredibly welcome. But sadly TfL’s actions are falling short of achieving this objective. 4,000 people have already signed a London Cycling Campaign petition expressing concerns about a number of recently changed junctions. London Cycling Campaign has highlighted that recent junction improvements funded by TfL are still not safe. Junction standards set by TfL need to further improve, or we face the fiasco of retrospective investment being needed on recently altered junctions.

Caroline Russell said:

It’s absolutely shameful that so many people are still being killed and seriously injured while simply out in our city walking and cycling their everyday journeys. This year we’ve already seen far too many deaths on our streets – more people have been killed walking already in 2019 than the whole of last year. London is riddled with lethal junctions that the Mayor must tackle now. If Vision Zero means anything it must mean sorting out London’s hostile streets once and for all, giving priority to Londoners on foot and riding bikes.