Full write up of the Make the Lane (again) here !
Meet at the junction of Honduras Street and Old Street on Thursday 22 September.
- If you can make the lane, be at the briefing at 0750, take highviz and your bike with you.
- If you can cycle through the lane, please be there for around 0800 onwards; the end time will depend on local conditions but we expect it to be about 0830/0845.
After the event, please take 5 minutes to help !
- Send the email below to the list provided – customise as you wish – and
- respond to our survey
Open the email below in your email app. For outlook users only use this link to open the Outlook email app
mail to: willnorman@tfl.gov.uk
copy to: rowena.champion@islington.gov.uk; adam.harrison@camden.gov.uk; julian.fulbrook@camden.gov.uk;Valerie.Bossman-Quarshie@islington.gov.uk;troy.gallagher@islington.gov.uk; Phil.Graham@islington.gov.uk;sem.moema@london.gov.uk; anne.clarke@london.gov.uk;islington@lcc.org.uk;camden@lcc.org.uk
Ringfence Funding for the Old Street to Holborn Cycle Route
Dear Will,
I took part in the Make the Lane (again) protest on 22 September along the Old Street to Holborn cycle route.
As you know, since 2014, discussions about making this route safe for all cyclists have been ongoing with Camden and Islington councils and TfL but no changes have been made.
I am pleased that TfL has finally agreed their funding settlement with the DfT and would like your assurance that some of the £80m agreed in the settlement for active travel will be ringfenced for protecting cyclists on this route.
With thanks from
[ENTER YOUR NAME]
History and context
We Made the Lane at Old Street back in 2019 and since then, in spite of promises from Camden and Islington Councils and TfL, there have been no spades in the ground to make this key east/west route safe for cyclists. Three women have lost limbs there. There have been, and continue to be, incidents where cyclists are injured, the most recent in June 2022. There is no safe cycling infrastructure.
- 2014: Initial planning work by Camden Council (Holborn to Rosebery Avenue)
- 2014: Islington council secured £900,000 for design work
- 2018: Camden Liveable Neighbourhood bid. Accepted and funded by TfL in 2019 but then frozen in 2020. This included segregated cycle lanes on Theobalds Road as far as Gray’s Inn Road.
- March 2019: Cycle Islington held a “Make the Lane” between Central Street and Bath Street. The evening before this action, LBI’s Cllr Claudia Webbe, the council’s executive member for transport at the time, said that LBI was “developing plans to close Old Street and Clerkenwell Road to through traffic”. No plans for this have been released.
- May 2020: TfL announced that two corridors would be created for walking and cycling – Holborn to Waterloo and Holborn to Old Street.
After another tragic cyclist death at Holborn junction in September 2021, minor and insufficient changes were introduced there. This followed seven other cyclist deaths there over the past 14 years, which led to the junction being designated as one of the top Dangerous Junctions in London by the London Cycling Campaign. Apart from this, there has been no progress in eight years in making this busy east-west route safe for cycling.
We’ve had enough. We are organising another Make the Lane with our sister group Camden Cyclists on Thursday 22 September (World Car-Free Day). So put this date in your diary as we will be calling on campaigners to help us make A Big Noise to highlight this unacceptable lack of action.
Here is a map of fatal/serious cycling incidents along the East/West route up to 2020 (and so not including 2 cyclist fatalities at Holborn in 2021 and 2022).
With the recent announcement at the end of August of the funding deal reached by the government and TfL (£80m/year for active travel until March 2024) we are demanding that some of this be ringfenced to deliver a safe East/West cycing route.
working together 