Green Assembly Member Darren Johnson praises The Mayor’s plan for two new superhighways, but calls for safer roads everywhere which current plans will “change too little and improve too slowly”.
Cycling Superhighway 7, photograph courtesy of Patrick Mackie.
Darren Johnson has backed the Mayor’s plans for two new superhighways, going East-West and North-South, but has warned that with current investment plans road safety improvements will be slow.
The north-south route will run for more than 3 miles from Elephant & Castle to King’s Cross. The east-west route will run from Barking to Acton, a distance of over 18 miles, including a section on the Westway flyover, where one lane will be removed to create a segregated cycle track.
Protected cycle routes will also be created through dangerous junctions, including Tower Hill, Blackfriars, Parliament Square and Lancaster Gate. Connections will be created to cycle routes servicing other parts of the City, West End and suburbs.
Subject to detailed public consultation – which begins today – work will start early next year and the routes will open in March 2016.
Darren commented, “These plans for two segregated super highways are a welcome step forward after years of Mayoral backtracking on making our roads safer. London is a fast growing city and our only hope of dealing with the congestion on our over-crowded roads is to get people out of cars and onto bikes and buses. I hope that Londoners support these plans, but they don’t address the problem of what happens on all the roads that cyclists use in the rest of London. We need safer roads everywhere and the current investment plans will change too little and improve it too slow.”
“Londoners should remember that the Mayor cancelled the ambitious plans to create a pedestrian and cyclist friendly plaza in Trafalgar Square when Boris Johnson was elected in 2008. He is also the Mayor who failed to back a high quality scheme at Blackfriars Bridge when it was re-engineered just a few years ago. Much of this new cycling superhighway plan is about correcting the mistakes the Mayor made in his first term, when he was encouraging people to cycle without making the roads safer. Pedestrian and cyclist safety should be the big priority for the Mayor’s plans for London’s roads.”