"Catboy" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
"]news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:For several weeks now, I have been trying to get some information
from
Quoted message said:Barnet Council and TFL as to why the cycle lane was not replaced
after
Quoted message said:road re-surfacing on the East Finchley High Road.
So have I, and I am London Cycling Campaign Coordinator for Barnet, and CTC Right-to-Ride rep'.
There's not much point really, I think, in talking to the bureaucrats. It's a political decision,
and the Tories are doing about what they promised to do before the last election.
The best thing to do, if you live in Barnet, is to go along to one of your councillors' Saturday
surgeries, and talk to them, especilly if they are tories. Try to keep things civilized - you are
objecting to a policy, not a person - and if you do it right, you can establish yourself as somebody
worth listening to next time, because of your knowledge and civilized behaviour.
This is especially true if you live in Totteridge ward. One of their councillors is Brian Coleman
(ph 020-8349-2024) who is Cabinet Member for the Environment, i.e. roads, and parks, and planning.
He will probably tell you to send him a letter. This is probably worth doing, although only for its
long term effect. Politicians like to develop policies that the public like, and one way of telling
this is by counting letters. An individual letter counts more than just one more copy of an
identical mass porduced letter.
There are sone subsidiary issues.
One thing I don't know about is "Traffic Regulation Orders" (TRO). If there was a mandatory bike
lane the council would have had to pass a TRO to prohibit cars from that lane. Whether that would
have prevented cars from crossing the bike lane to get in and out of the parking places, I don't
know. The council is supposed to publicise TROs, and normally send Barnet LCC and the CTC a letter
when they do so. Presumably it would take another TRO to remove the prohibition. Unless something
somehow slipped by us, I don't think we got any such letter about the E. Finchley High Road.
All that being said, although I object to being kept in the dark, I hated those bike lanes. I am not
alone, either. If you look at the TfL bike map, you will notice that the bike lanes now being
removed are not shown on that map. This is because when the map was being developed, the surveyor
from Cycle City Guides thought the bike lanes were so dangerous that beginners, who might not
recognise the dangers, should not be encouraged to ride in the lanes.
This is one of four places in Barnet where the facilities were omitted from the map for that reason.
Actually, I'm surprised that if Cycle City Guides removed that bit from the map, they kept the bike
route where it crosses the North Circular Road. One quarter of cyclist fatalities in London occur
when cyclists get inside left turning lorries. With the amount of traffic turning off the High Road
onto the N. Circ' those intersections look like killers, although, so far as I know, they haven't
killed anyone yet, and I'm not volunteering.
In other news from Barnet, the council, which cancelled adult bike education a few months ago has
now cancelled children's bike education as well.
A few years ago, because of general dissatisfaction with the quality of bike facilities in London,
the steering committee of the London Cycle network had a mass quality audit of London bike
facilities. Barnet's audit, by consultants Colin Buchanan and partners, was issued in June 2000.
None of the suggestions in the report have been and, apparently, none will be implemented. My prize
for bad locations is where station Road, Edgeware, intersects the Edgeware Rd. Again we get the
turning traffic problem. The straght on bike lane is at the kerb, the left turn only general traffic
lane is to its right.
Jeremy Parker
Barnet LCC Borough Coordinator CTC Right to Ride rep', Barnet
