'Give us space to cycle' demand Brent Cyclists ahead of the election

Brent Cyclists, the local group of the London Cycling Campaign  launches its Space for Cycling campaign this Sunday (23 March) with a short ride round the borough, meeting at 10:30am at Gladstone Park railway bridge (at the foot of Parkside), and at 11:00am at the café in Roundwood Park, then riding through Willesden and Harlesden to the Grand Union Canal in Park Royal, and back again. Anyone with a working bike is welcome to join in.

The Space for Cycling campaign is timed to coincide with the run-up to the local elections in May, to bring home to local politicians the changes that need to be made to Brent’s roads to make them cycle-friendly. It is part of a London-wide Space for Cycling Campaign being run by the London Cycling Campaign.

Brent Cyclists coordinator David Arditti said: 

Brent has great potential as a cycling borough but is held back by the poor routes and infrastructure for cycling compared with other parts of London. We need a network of safe routes on minor roads and protected cycle tracks on bigger roads, which would allow everybody to make daily journeys by bike and especially allow children to cycle to school, but these can only come about if there are more restrictions placed on where motor traffic can go. 

We’ll be cycling along Park Avenue North, which is a road which, if it ceased to be a through-route for cars, would make an excellent way to access Gladstone Park by bike. In other places, to get a safe network, we need bikes to be excepted from one-way systems. This is what we would like built into the new design for Harlesden Town Centre, but Brent doesn’t seem to have considered this need. 

Our ride will draw attention to these measures that would make cycling in Brent so much better, in advance of the local elections, and we will be asking the candidates to pledge support for our specific demands, ward by ward.

Declaration of Interest: I am a member of the London Cycling Campaign.