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We’ve been coshed
• WITHOUT warning Islington Council tore out the Dalmeny Road traffic gate seven weeks ago. After 20 years of effectively excluding 600-plus rat-running motorists per hour, it suddenly constituted a “danger to cyclists”.
Embarrassed into consulting retrospectively, traffic engineers distributed a statement of intention in unaddressed envelopes, offering no alternatives beyond their design, to a handful of local houses, seeking comments on the (Transport for London-funded, ugly, expensive, easily vandalisable and insecure) proposed installation.
These comments were strategically selected and distorted. For example, residents’ comment: “Council’s current whole-road temporary closure has forced cyclists onto the pavement.” Engineers: “Our plan will segregate pedestrians and cyclists, keeping cyclists on road.” Fact: the gate never forced cyclists onto the pavement, only the current arrangements have.
They promised to hold off work until talks with (some) politicians were held. Even this undertaking has been broken. With the “consultation” results unknown, and in the teeth of near-universal (and spreading) thumbs-down from residents, the work will proceed.
A forest of lit signs and bollards, a cctv camera, road markings, warning signs, and a roving enforcement team are being installed to achieve what the simple gate managed unaided: excluding cars, discouraging speeding motorbikes, keeping cyclists slow and safe.
This conservation-area street is to be despoiled. Residents, cyclists and pedestrians (chiefly children accessing schools and the play park) are to be put at risk, and children deprived of areas in the street they’ve adopted as play spaces.
The leadership of the council and their staff have forgotten their task is to provide for all constituents equally. And not, particularly at this time, spend huge sums (£12,000 basic and much more given their muddles) on the unnecessary, when so many real dangers to cyclists are left unattended. The majority party (with honourable exceptions) do not listen nor do they often speak, except in praise of one another. Your street too could be coshed like ours is being. Be warned.
G McIver
Dalmeny Road, N7
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