Brent environmental groups launch petition: We Need Brent to Build Back Better Now!

Brent associations campaigning for active travel and environmental health have launched a petition outlining how the Council Leader and his Cabinet can ensure Brent Builds Back Better as lockdown eases:

We Need Brent to Build Back Better Now

Having declared a Climate Emergency last July, we have to move with a greater sense of urgency to promote active travel, a healthy environment and clean air in our Borough. We have the largest number of Covid-19 cases in London, reflecting health inequalities across income, ethnicity and race directly related to air pollution and passive travel, as well as poor employment conditions and overcrowded housing. Government-enforced austerity and legacies of racial and economic injustice are largely responsible for this situation, but Brent Council has the opportunity Build Back Better by:

·         Immediately implementing the Borough’s Cycle and Walking Strategies via pop-up cycle lanes and cycle-friendly modal filters.

·         Accelerating the implementation of the ‘Healthy Streets’ initiative between Wembley and Willesden Junction, and pro-actively implement low-traffic neighbourhoods.

·          A faster roll-out of more School Streets across the Borough to improve air quality around schools, make them safer and encourage cycling and walking to and from schools as these re-open.

·          Developing a plan to decarbonise the Borough by creating new, well-paid, secure, unionised jobs; divesting the Council’s pension fund from fossil fuel companies; creating a policy of public procurement; enforcing a rapid transition of the Council’s own fleet of vehicles to electric; and requiring Council deliveries to be by electric vehicles or cycles, including cargo-bikes.

·         Putting in place Clean Air Zones, charging where necessary.

·         Multiplying the provision of cycle hoops and bike hangers, at the same pace, if not faster, as on-street electric charging points.

·         Reallocating parking space to people, particularly around commercial streets, since cyclist and pedestrians have been shown to spend more on local High Streets.

Many of these measures can be delivered immediately and most rapidly if the Leader and Cabinet show the political will, and match best practice across London.

We need to Build Back Better now.

Brent Cycling Campaign, Brent Friends of the Earth, Divest Brent, Willesden Green Residents' Association, Brent XR

SIGN HERE

Green Party supports 'Space for Bicycles' campaign after latest road deaths

From Natalie Bennett's blog: LINK

There was a mood of sadness, but also determination, at two events in London tonight marking recent road deaths in which vulnerable road users were killed by lorries.

First, outside City Hall, Roadpeace with the Lorry Danger group (also including LCC, CTC, British Cycling and Living Streets) held a vigil acknowledging the death of an elderly pedestrian, who hasn't been named, in Fulham. (Short report here) and the death of cyclist Philippine de Gerin-Ricard on Cycle Superhighway 2 outside Aldgate East station.

It was a brief but moving ceremony at which the names of many recent pedestrian and cycle road victims were read out.

The organisers are vowing that they will return to City Hall on Friday at 5pm in any week in which a cyclist or pedestrian is killed on London's roads - sadly I fear it may not be long before they have to return.
National statistics show a steady trend in increasing cycle deaths and injuries, as do those in London.

The second event was organised by the London Cycling Campaign - around 400 cyclists gathered at Tower Bridge and cycled past the site where Philippine de Gerin-Ricard was killed, chanting "Blue Paint is Not Enough", in reference to the limitations of Boris Johnson's cycle "superhighway" scheme.

Some passing cyclists joined the ride as it took the short route - there was a lot of support also from passers-by.

Earlier in the day, in the West End, I'd had seen an awful brush with potential tragedy. A private small rubbish lorry, driven by a man who seemed to be either in a temper or a huge rush, came at undue speed around the corner of Old Compton Street into Dean Street, over-ran a parking space, then reversed into it at speed, stopping inches before an elderly man who was crossing the street, as I and several other people in the vicinity yelled out. If it hadn't been summer and his window open, I doubt he would have stopped.

It's the kind of incident that's almost commonplace - it as one speaker at the vigil said, we need to be aiming towards zero deaths on the road. We won't get that without serious changes in infrastructure, a lot more driver education,and enforcement.