Newsletter November 2024

Camden are proposing changes to the pedestrianised section of North Gower Street (from Hampstead Road to Starcross Street) – mainly greening and other streetscape improvements; the high quality cycling through-route will be kept. Proposals include new rain gardens, living walls, Improved lighting, art and surface materials.

A useful cycle route, both for locals and those passing through; enabling access to Euston Station, and offering a quieter alternative from Hampstead Road to Euston Road eastbound carriageway. Once Drummond and Melton Streets are reopened to cycling and the crossing to Gordon Street is improved, this route's connectivity will be increased further still.

Consultation closes 26 November.

Kentish Town Mobility Hubs consultation

A green mobility hub is a recognisable place/point that offers a mix of sustainable and active shared travel options, which can include shared bikes, car clubs, electric vehicle charging point, cargo bikes and e-scooters. Green mobility Hubs can also include other community features such as cycle parking, seating, planting and other amenities designed to improve public space for residents and visitors.
Green mobility Hubs provide a sustainable, accessible 24-hour alternative service to private car ownership. The image above shows an example of what a Green Mobility Hub could look like. Closes 5th December.

Two consultations from Brent Council

1) Kingsbury Green Corridors: send supportive ideas for the Kingsbury area to push Brent to act quickly on improvements. Brent Cycling Campaign suggest calling for:

Modal filters at all side roads on the high street                                                            Improving/enforcing Kingsbury Road cycle lane to and along Roe Green/Stag Lane New cycle route from Kingsbury Road to Princes Avenue via Bacon Lane

2) Queen's Park Healthy Neighbourhood: survey for a range of measures to cut motor traffic and make walking and cycling safer. Brent CC say the proposals are a good start, but need to go further and suggest supporting Option A but with restrictions and filters in effect 24/7; also significant changes are needed on Chamberlayne and Salusbury Roads, and The Avenue for safe cycling.

Please take 5 minutes to respond to the survey on Kingsbury Green here

Please respond to the survey on Queen's Park Healthy Neighbourhood here

Westminster council established a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) to prohibit certain car-user behaviours such as repeated sudden and/or rapid acceleration and performing stunts. The order expires in December 2024 and the council is satisfied that sufficient evidence exists to renew it for a further 3 years. They would like feedback on impacts, before making changes including possible expansion to other areas.

Respond to the consultation here before 27 November 2024.

++ CCC Monthly Meeting 16th Dec 2024 2024 – 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

We are very pleased to announce our guest speaker will be
Sam Margolis, Camden’s Head of Transport Strategy and Projects.

More details, including how to join the online meeting here

++ Kentish Town monthly Cycle Buddies Ride – Sat 7 December

First Saturday of each month, CCC collaborate with local NHS GP practices, to lead a relaxed, social bike ride of about 5-6 miles. Open to all and particularly adult 'returnees', recent learners or those wanting to build up confidence. Complete beginners should get a free lesson from Camden Council before joining. Stronger riders may find marshalling/leading more rewarding. ktride@camdencyclists.org.uk

Sign up for the Cycle Buddies Ride here.

++ Camden Cyclists Christmas lunch and social at the Pembroke Castle – Sat 7 Dec

Welcome to all – old and new friends to celebrate the season together. Members, friends, supporters — come to connect and find out more. Gather from 12:15pm. Informal lunch – no fixed menu or start time (order from menu as preferred).
You can also take part in the Kentish Town Cycle Buddies Ride from 10am the same morning and work up an appetite! The ride will finish at the lunch and is entirely optional – but book your place on the LCC website (details above).

More details on the social here – hope to see you there!

++ Kentish Town Bike Workshop – Mon 9th December

Kentish Town Health Centre, Bartholomew Road, NW5 2BX – second Monday of each month – 6:30 to 8:30pm. Free of charge.                                                                        One participant said: “As well as making me feel welcome, they helped fixed my bike's problems and I learnt a few things too … a really good initiative that takes the stress off doing the mechanics – making my cycling safer, now the brakes are working. I felt I was cycling on a brand new bike”. Free of charge. Monthly KTBW notifications here

View more details about Kentish Town Bike Workshop.

++ End Road deaths, make it safe to cycle in Putney: Protest & Vigil – Saturday 23rd November, 1.30pm, junction of Lytton Grove & West Hill.

On 2nd November, a 27 year old man was killed cycling at the junction of Lytton Grove and Westhill in Putney. On Saturday, November 23 we are meeting to demand action to: End Lorry danger/Make main roads safe/Quieten side streets (LTNs).         Support the protest at this location: w3w:///broker.trees.ducks

++ c86erz Community Ride to help the Homeless – 20th December 2024

“The community is only as strong as the unity that resides in it”
Join Verral Paul-Walcott on the night of Friday, 20 December when “we unite as a cycling group and form a team that takes items such as hats, gloves, toothpaste and other items to help those who are cold and finding life hard sleeping on the streets of London.”
Event lasts 3 hours 30 minutes – 5-7 Buck Street London NW1 8NJ.                        See the BBC news item here

Book your place on this hugely supportive ride here

++ We are deeply saddened by the news that our colleague George Coulouris has passed away.

George was a quietly dedicated campaigner, advocate and an inspiration, whether producing digital representations of the expanding Camden cycling network he helped to bring into being, leading rides into the countryside or attending to people's bikes at the Kentish Town Bike Workshop. He, along with his partner Jean, made a massive contribution to Camden's reputation as a safer borough for cycling.

Our thoughts and condolences are with Jean at this time. 

++ Camden to invest £22m in active travel, public transport and high streets enabling more environmentally friendly, healthier forms of travel and creating more welcoming streets and neighbourhoods. The cabinet agreed on Wednesday 13 November, to implement the next phase of its transport strategy for 2025 – 2028.
The strategy envisages the following improvements to active travel, public transport and high streets.

Read more from the article by Mark Moran at TransportXtra here

Read more about the Strategy reports here

++ Pedal your Parcel: Explore switching to a Cargo Bike for your deliveries and servicing

Camden council are offering money to businesses to either a) purchase a cargo bike or b) switch to a cargo bike based delivery service.

Buying a bike–50% matched funding (up to maximum £2000 per grant) to cover a cargo bike that the business will use, with emphasis on businesses switching from vans/cars to bikes to carry out their work. It can also be used to purchase a trailer.
Switching delivery service – 50% matched funding (up to a maximum of £250 per trial).
This is for two months of deliveries with a company such as Zhero, Pedal Me, Zedify etc.

Businesses can find out more information and register their interest here

++ Belsize Lane & Lyndhurst Gardens Healthy School Street have been made permanent.

The trial timed healthy school street restrictions have been in place on Belsize Lane between the junctions of Wedderburn Road and Ornan Road and on Lyndhurst Gardens between the junctions of Lyndhurst Road and Wedderburn Road.

More details about this good news here

++ Camden cyclist Benedict Cumberbatch reads letter that called for end of 4×4 cars – CNJ 14/11/24

“The writing of US political thinker and atheist philosopher, Edward Abbey, who died in 1989 inspired thousands to take up environmental action. Benedict Cumberbatch read out a letter for an environmental event at Koko in Camden that contained Abbey's advice to 4×4 owners (even back in the 1970s): “…the Jeep, the Blazer, the Bronco, the Land Cruiser, the Ram and all their many 4×4 cousins have become a plague upon the land. The ideal off-road journey? I'll tell you: under water.”

Abbey writes: “What's wrong with the horse? Or the burro? Or the bicycle? Or even, god help us, the human foot?”

See page 13 of the CNJ e-edition for the article by Dan Carrier.

++ Somers Town Future Neighbourhood Healthy School Streets consultation

Following the consultation and trial of Somerstown Healthy School Streets changes from 2023–2024, Camden has made the scheme permanent. A notification will go to all local residents and businesses.

Read more about this Camden update here

++ Reminder that in addition to Twitter/'X', Camden Cycling Campaign now post on Blue Sky. Numbers of followers are growing (up to 900 at the last count!).

See @camdencyclists.bsky.social here.

++ 100 years ago the new “offence” of 'Jay Walking' meant that people getting around, as they had done for a100 years previously and more, could now be legally blamed for their own deaths. Car-users were given more 'rights' and space, aided by the spread of 'traffic engineering' across the globe. This law was finally repealed (albeit with several caveats) in New York City at the end of October 2024.

++ Just two weeks later, and a last minute push by the tireless campaigners at TransAlt, saw victory at last for NY Congestion Charging, as Mayor Kathy Hochul, felt obliged to make some concession to those walking or cycling – though could Trump's promise to cut $14 billion earmarked for NY Transit, have played some part? The new POTUS looks set to scrap funding for any form of sustainable, equitable, healthy, transport infrastructure (from bike lanes to buses); the news that an average of one US driver a day crashes into a 7-Eleven, perhaps has not yet registered via the presidential ear-hole!

++ Elsewhere and leagues ahead of NY and much of the rest of the world too, Paris, continued to show what real leadership looked like, as a 5.5km2 area in the city centre was returned to people who live in, visit, or pass through the city.

++ Faltering in the drive to end unconstrained car-blight is of course having repercussions via climate breakdown, earlier than scientists have been predicting (since who can remember when?). The list of world cities succumbing to once one-in-a-thousand-year weather events, saw Valencia recently subject to a particularly violent bout of flooding. However, the sight of cars being swept far away and stacked like heaps of flotsam and jetsum, has not yet been sufficient, for enough most to join the dots.

++ Note how, the people of Valencia have been able to deliver supplies to those in need, after these appalling events …by bicycle.

++ A different cycling story has emerged in China, while that country takes respite from bouts of rain and floods, as groups of Zhengzhou students on a ‘midnight ride’ to Kaifeng, travelling 50km for dumplings, have snowballed into truly phenomenal  proportions, of some 100,000 strong!

++ In the UK, cautious hopes for actual economical literacy (drive less) and ecologically sanity (use cars less) to transform how Britons travel have been largely dashed – a familiar despondency was again cast – as the chancellor was not even so inclined to remove the freeze on fuel duty – while the AA called for 1000 more traffic police after findings that over half of drivers think they can get away with “being careless” because they won’t get caught.

++ Equally concerning, there are over fifty drivers, free to share the roads and routes we all pay for and cycle, walk or bus on, who have at least 30 points on their licence! Not forgetting that we subsidise these people!

Any positive news?

… Rod Stewart has said he is considering selling his five sports cars (but only due to the potholes on the roads near his home!).

++ But while it is increasingly – in cities at least – evident, that EBike use has massive benevolent potential for society and planet, this is being hindered by a lack of regulation and classification, that risks their being the latest target for demonising by motor industry shills.

++ This comes at great cost to the UK cycle industry, that still has little idea of a cycling for transport culture, even in urban areas where cycling infrastructure shows an increase in cycling (while in the rest of the UK trend is downwards).

++ So maybe last word has to go to the Dutch then, who are cycling even more as E-bike popularity increases. In 2023, they cycled 1,065 kms per person – well over 100kms above the 902 kms of ten years ago.

++ No helmets; no hi-vis; a less inequitable society.

The 2024 LCC Christmas card

LCC Gift Membership includes all the great benefits of membership, plus your choice of free CatEye lights, ABUS D-lock or Lezyne pump, plus a personalised card to go under the tree! https://lcc.org.uk/gift-membership/

Christmas Cards with LCC

London Cycling Campaign is making cycling in London safer and more fun for everyone. There are now 1.26 million cycle trips in London every day: the highest number ever. You can help support the work of LCC by shopping charity cards with us. 100% of profits from each sale help fund our work making cycling safer for everyone. https://londoncyclingcampaign.bigcartel.com/

Many thanks,

Camden Cyclists

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