London Cycling Campaign | 22nd May 2020
As the Covid-19 crisis has developed, the case for supporting walking and cycling has grown and grown. Of course, this was something we’ve been campaigning for for decades, but since the start of the pandemic in London specifically around the response to lockdown and social distancing.
Way back in early April, we
made the case for radical action outlining specific measures and strategies that should be pursued at national, city and borough levels in the short and long term to create healthier, happier places.
Alongside our local groups, we’ve been vocal about the need for boroughs and the Mayor to ensure motor traffic levels do not return to where they were before the crisis, or higher, while also enabling millions of journeys to be walked and cycled across the city.
Which is why we are so pleased to see so many of our recommendations contained in the Mayor’s new Streetspace plan, from emergency cycle lanes, pavement widening, implementing 20MPH, to a rolling out of ‘low traffic neighbourhoods.’
Our long-term campaigning has paved the way for more recent, rapid responses, showing what bold thinking and action on the ground can achieve. Our Love London, Go Dutch campaign in 2012 put Dutch-style cycling infrastructure at the heart of new cycling schemes – and ensured the Mayor embraced cycling.
Our guidance on Low Traffic Neighbourhoods – residential areas where through motor traffic routes have been ’filtered’ (by use of bollards for example) so that cars cannot drive through from one side to another – has been held up as the solution to many residential areas rat-running woes, with our guidance proving influential across London and far beyond. Looking forward, our
Climate Safe Streets report sets out just what London needs to do to achieve a low carbon, low pollution future so desperately needed right now. And once more, the detailed report is already proving influential across the capital and beyond.
As a result of the experience accumulated in these areas, when the Covid-19 crisis hit and officials finally turned their attention to what happens to our streets as lockdown is lifted, we had the ideas ready.
We still need your support to make sure the measures recently announced are delivered though. Together we need to make sure everyone can keep walking and cycling safely as we transition out of lockdown and towards a low-carbon, low pollution future.
Be part of LCC –
become a member today – to help us transform London into a healthier, happier, greener city.