Year of inaction at Dangerous Junctions

Wandsworth’s Upper Tooting Road cluster is, for the second year in a row, the most dangerous cluster of junctions in London for cycling on LCC’s mapping. This underscores the absolutely horrific toll families and friends face when councils and London fails to act over junctions.

In the latest single year of data, now added to the map, this cluster of four closely-spaced ratrun/side street junctions is responsible for a further two serious collisions with cyclists and six slight collisions. Yet Wandsworth Council has refused to take any responsibility or any action for this toll, while Transport for London (TfL) has confined itself to tinkering on parking bays and some of the turns and entry options – but this has failed to tackle the clear main issues here, the actual solution for which is simple and cheap.

Filtering the ‘ratrun’ side streets that make this cluster so dangerous was in part done during Covid, but removed by the council within weeks when some businesses and residents complained. The ratruns continue to cross Upper Tooting Road, so despite these being in theory minor side streets, those cycling along Cycle Superhighway CS7 on Upper Tooting Road continue to face motor vehicles constantly turning across them at these junctions. Filtering side roads like these has worked well all over London and is cheap and easy – if you’ve got the political bravery to really prioritise lives.

Such lack of bravery and action means from 2020, when Wandsworth dismantled its own LTN programme, to 2023 the cluster has seen nine serious collisions involving those cycling and a further 19 that required emergency services support at the scene. Filtering side streets is a not only a cheap intervention but could be done by Wandsworth Council rapidly if they wanted to – many other London boroughs manage to be far bolder and better.

Also in 2023, Hackney faced three cycling fatalities in as many weeks – with the death of Harry Webb (aged 27) on Kenworthy Road, 36 year old mother of two and professional fundraiser Gao Gao on Whiston Road and an as yet still unnamed 40-year old victim killed in a collision involving a Tesla and a private hire vehicle on 14 August, at the junction of Great Eastern Street and Curtain Road. This latter junction is one of the most notorious and dangerous in London, has been for years and is part of the hostile and complex ‘Shoreditch Triangle’. It could and should have been made far safer long ago.

In 2023, the same year as this fatal collision (counted in Stats19 data as a ‘serious’ collision, rather than fatal as the victim remained alive for over 30 days in hospital after), the same junction saw another serious collision with someone cycling. LCC’s new, updated map puts the junction as 2nd most Dangerous Junction for cycling and 6th for pedestrians. Yet, despite the Shoreditch Triangle, including this specific junction, being a clear collision hotspot, Hackney Council, the Mayor and TfL are yet to act.

At the junction, Great Eastern Street is a high-speed four lane road, while Curtain Road is a 2 to 3 lane one-way road, again suffering routinely from high-speed motor vehicles. Both roads clearly have room for cycle tracks, while the junction itself could be easily redesigned to improve safety for both those cycling and pedestrians.

Chujiang ‘Christina’ Kong, a 23 year old “exceptional” young scientist, was killed by a lorry driver turning across her at the notorious junction of Wood Lane and the A40 Westway on 19 October 2021. It has been over 3 years since the fatal collision, yet delay after delay (the latest being work on A40 slip roads leading to the junction) has meant that Hammersmith & Fulham Council and TfL are yet to make any substantive safety changes at this junction.

The latest emergency services data available shows that in 2023 another person cycling suffered serious injuries at the same spot, when an Audi Q8 driver hit a 28 year old man. LCC has been offered repeated assurances that changes to this junction will be forthcoming – but there have already been numerous excuses and periods of complete silence from Hammersmith & Fulham Council as well as TfL on this junction and the delays to delivering change here.

The Holborn cluster of one-way junctions is known to have both some of the highest cycling flows in London outside of the TfL Cycleways, and also some of the historically most dangerous junctions. Indeed, given our mapping uses 5 years of data to build a statistically robust picture of risk, it’s unsurprising two of the junctions in the Holborn system remain on the most dangerous junctions list – but neither is likely to be there for long.

Since LCC protests in 2021 following the fatal collision with Dr Marta Krawiec at the Southampton Row/Theobalds Road junction and the following year with Shatha Ali at the High Holborn/Kingsway junction, Camden has taken repeated and rapid action with TfL.

Within weeks of Dr Krawiec’s death TfL and Camden Council had installed temporary measures to improve the Theobalds/Southampton Row junction (currently 5th most dangerous in London on our list), and since then has gone on to provide high-quality permanent schemes to improve safety at both junctions (the High Holborn junction where Shatha Ali was killed is currently 18th most dangerous for cycling in London). Proof that if there is political will to make our roads safe, this can be achieved – even in some of the knottiest, most complex and congested junctions in London.