Parliament Square Protest Ride - Monday 2nd September - 6pm, Jubilee Gardens - Are you coming?

On Monday 2nd September the London Cycling Campaign (LCC) are holding a Protest Ride starting in Jubilee Gardens which will loop around Parliament Square in order to highlight the pitiful state of cycling in this country and this capital.

The LCC have the full details available here on their website. However, in brief, everyone is meeting at Jubilee Gardens (located next to the London Eye) at 6pm for a 6.30pm start on Monday 2nd September in order to coincide with the Parliamentary debate on the Get Britain Cycling report that evening.

It is vitally important that as many people come as possible. Politicians are only going to act to make cycling safer if they think there are votes in it; if they can see big public support for making cycling safer and easier to do. The way to convince them of this is for 10,000 people to take over Parliament Square on their bikes, creating ample video and photo opportunities which will ensure widespread press coverage of not only the protest, but also, and more importantly, the reasons behind it. This protest perhaps changes little in and of itself, but it does provide a platform for the very real dangers inherent in cycling around London (and the rather straightforward solutions that cycling advocates want to fix them with) to be rang out loud and clear in the local and national media.

This is why everyone needs to come along on Monday 2nd September. Would you rate your chances of survival if you were regularly cycling around the King's Cross gyratory, where this ghost bike is placed to remember the life of Min Joo Lee who was killed here in 2011? I wouldn't. These gyratories need to be removed from London, and we need to show politicians that it will be politically advantageous to give us real, safer changes to our street design, not just empty promises.

Moreover, I will be leading a 'feeder ride' from St John's Church on Ladbroke Grove in Notting Hill Gate and it would be fantastic to meet as many fellow cycling enthusiasts as possible. A map of the various feeder rides being organised is available here. If there's one departing from near where you live/work then why not join it? And if there isn't, why not email the LCC and volunteer to guide your own? It's always safer (and more pleasant!) to cycle in a group with other people rather than by yourself.