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Lindsay Williams
DTLR
Great Minster House
76 Marsham Street
London
SW1 4DR
10/5/02
Dear Lindsay Williams,
RE Cable Street cycle way, London E1
I write regarding a raised bicycle lane in Cable Street which was recently subjected to improvements on behalf of your department.
The cycle lane is a fast, quiet segregated route, providing cyclists from the City of London safe access to Canary Wharf. It runs parallel to Cable Street, on the north side.
In the last couple of months, some street works were carried out on this route, resulting in GIVE WAY signs being painted on the cycle lane where it formerly crossed side roads. These give way signs, proposed by your department, have ruined this route because a cyclist must now stop every 20 yards or so.
Lyndal Peters our cycling officer said your department proposed these give way signs because it felt that motorists could not see into Cable Street from the side roads. This is untrue. Because of the cycle lane, cars are no longer parked on the north side of Cable Street, giving a relatively clear field of vision. This is not the case in many surrounding roads where car parking bays obscure vision at junctions. As this scheme is currently only experimental, I write to request you to withdraw your support for these give way signs.
Please provide me with the name of the officers, or department, or lobby group which proposed these give way signs. Clearly they do not consider cyclists to be part of the overall transport system, and are probably unaware that local as well as national government are trying to increase cycle usage.
I will be taking this issue up with Lyndal Peters, my councillors and my GLA member John Biggs, head of the GLA Transport Committee.
It saddens me that a massive government department appears to be so fantastically thoughtless in its regarding sustainable transport issues.
Yours sincerely |
