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The London Cycling Campaign (LCC) today announced the next phase of its ‘Dangerous Junctions’ campaign at a House of Commons event in Westminster.
Hosted by Labour MP for Brentford and Isleworth Ruth Cadbury, who co-chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Cycling & Walking, the Parliament event highlighted what the LCC called the “longstanding systemic failures that mean many of London’s major junctions remain unsafe for cycling and walking”.
Naming a list of more than 20 central London junctions that require urgent action the LCC highlighted King’s Cross, Shoreditch Triangle and Holborn Gyratory as particularly dangerous and most in need of instant improvement.
As part of the second phase of the Dangerous Junctions campaign the LCC now aims to “move politicians and stakeholders to accelerate safety improvements at London’s most dangerous road junctions, where most serious and fatal injuries to people walking and cycling happen”, with the 22 named top of the priority list.
At today’s event the LCC ‘s report on the findings of the UK’s leading junctions experts was responded to by figures from Transport for London and Active Travel England, with the campaign group hoping authorities will make “rapid, temporary improvements; followed by a programme of permanent improvements that comprehensively remove all critical safety failures”.
“We’re asking for urgent action right now, at three major junction clusters: King’s Cross, Shoreditch Triangle and Holborn,” the LCC’s campaigns manager Simon Munk explained.
“We’re also tracking a much longer list of junctions that are dangerous and known to be for years, decades even, to ensure politicians and officers act to fix them quickly. We need local businesses and stakeholders to take an active role in improving their local areas for staff, visitors and residents.”
Dr Ashok Sinha, CEO of the LCC, added: “This is not just a safety issue. Dangerous junctions sever routes for active travel resulting in far fewer people walking or cycling. We must fix these junctions not just to save lives, but to also help people be more active by cycling and walking more, reducing air pollution and carbon emissions.”
Back in March, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan admitted the current short-term funding provided by the government to Transport for London (TfL) means it is “extremely difficult” to deliver plans to fully overhaul the notorious Holborn Gyratory system in central London to make it safer for cyclists.
The comments came following a 7,500-signature petition demanding the mayor make London’s junctions safer after the death of paediatrician Dr Marta Krawiec who was killed at Holborn Gyratory in August 2021, the eighth cyclist to have been killed at the junction since 2008.
The BBC reports that across the 22 junctions on the LCC’s list, 47 people have been killed in the last 10 years and another 198 have been seriously injured.
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