London

A year ago, LCC held a demonstration at the deadly Holborn gyratory, following a fatal collision there to highlight the lack of action on road danger. Given that the Mayor’s Transport Strategy promises rapid action to reduce fatalities and serious injuries on our roads – of which there were 111 and 3,954 respectively in 2018 – to zero by 2041, he needs to get a move on!

To give him some impetus we are asking everyone to sign our new petition to not only deliver “safer junctions” to a higher standard, but faster too.

Please click here to sign.

In the last year, and in response to our protest, pressure from the London Assembly and our petition run at the time, signed by nearly 3,000 LCC members, we have seen some positive steps. Camden Council won funding to fix issues around Holborn (including for removing the gyratory), and Greenwich and TfL are bringing forward work on the deadly Angerstein junction too.

Both of these are very welcome steps forward. But far too many other dangerous junctions have seen no improvements, and perhaps even more worryingly, the vast majority of the junctions where alterations have been proposed under Sadiq’s Safer Junctions programme are nowhere near good enough.

We have been studying the junctions that have already seen “improvements”, and most that we have looked at have seen further serious injuries and even fatalities since the junction was changed. For instance, Ludgate Circus in 2017 alone saw both a pedestrian fatally killed and another seriously injured, both on the south side of the junction, while Hackney’s Manor Road/Stamford Hill junction saw a pedestrian hit with serious injuries, and the junction of Southwark Bridge and Queen Street has seen two serious injuries to motorbikers since changes.

Now a spate of new Safer Junctions proposals have come forward that retain “critical issues” in TfL’s own Healthy Streets Check – these are objective measures of design for safety, and represent the absolute no-nos for designing safer streets and junctions.

Safer Junctions consulted on recently include Edgware Road and Harrow Road junction. This horrific multi-lane junction is an underpass of the A40 with complex turning movements. The revised design adds pavement width, early starts for cyclists on some arms, bans a turn, but also retains 3 “critical issues”. The crossing of East India Dock Road scheme retains 2, the Kingsland Road/Balls Pond Roads scheme has 2, and Clapham Road at Union Road and Stirling Road has 1. The prize however goes to the Holloway Road Safer Junctions scheme, which retains 5 major safety “critical issues”! (At least it cuts 1 from the previous 6!)

The catch seems to be that these aren’t Safe Junctions, but Safer Junctions. They’re not “Vision Zero” but “Vision A Bit Better”.

The concerns around delays to buses, and even private motor traffic, are trumping the safety of people walking or cycling through them. This simply isn’t acceptable – people’s lives and limbs are more important than a 30 second delay to drivers or bus passengers. These junctions also represent hostile barriers that keep many more people from ever cycling in London.

That’s why we’re asking everyone to sign our new petition calling on the Mayor and his deputy to deliver better Safer Junctions, and faster too.

Please click here to sign.