Why pinch points are awful for cycling

We came across this photo in the archives from Headington, Oxford which demonstrates exactly why pinch points are such a bad idea for cycling.

When designing new cycle routes, especially so called 'Quietways', across the UK, I'd urge road planners to resist the urge to install pinch points in order to 'slow' traffic. It makes things much more dangerous and unpleasant for those on bikes. Much better to install a segregated cycle lane and reduce space for motor traffic that way. 

In the above photo there could be a segregated bike track where the cycle racks are currently situated, and everyone would be a lot happier!

Consultations Galore! (Part 1)

TfL have been releasing heaps of consultations in recent weeks, so I thought it was worth doing a round up of them.

Archway Gyratory

These plans involve closing an arm of the gyratory and converting it into a two-way off-road cycle track which is quite exciting. It's very good that TfL have not gone for the defunct 'shared space' approach here which would just cause problems for those cycling and walking. Instead you have clear spaces to walk, and a clear space to cycle through. So a big improvement for cycling.

Motor traffic will be routed through the remaining 3 arms of the gyratory which will be made two-way.

Bikes will be physically protected from motor traffic when travelling on one of these 'arms' and on the closed section. Again, big improvement.

But unfortunately some routes through the junction will still involve bikes mixing with motor traffic. For instance, those travelling on bikes from St John's Way to Junction Road will be at risk of the fatal 'left-hook' from drivers turning left onto Holloway Road who have to turn across their path. I believe it's worth highlighting this to TfL.

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EDIT 10/12/14: Here's a nice graphic by Islington Cyclists about what TfL's Archway Gyratory plans should really look like:

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Stockwell Cross

Overall another big improvement for cycling. The creation of safe, segregated cycle lanes here will be a big improvement and allow '8-80' cycling (i.e. anyone form 8 years of age, to 80 years of age, will be safe and happy to cycle through here.

However, as is no doubt clear from these plans, as soon as you leave the specific section of Clapham Road being upgraded, Londoners on bikes will be expected to share a lane with buses (which, by the way, kill more people in London than HGVs every year). That isn't okay, especially given how many buses uses the route, and that this is a 30 MPH road, so when filling in the consultation. I made sure to make this clear to TfL.


Elephant and Castle

TfL consulted specifically on the road layout at Elephant and Castle earlier this year. Their plans were a vast improvement on the current situation, but again didn't bring the junction up to Continental standards of cycle provision. TfL are now consulting on the 'public spaces' they intend to create at Elephant and Castle as part of their planned regeneration.

I believe it's worth those who cycle responding to this because the new public spaces should include off-road routes for those on bikes, i.e. on the section between Elephant and Castle and New Kent Road. This would make cycling more inviting and also prevent unwanted pavement cycle occurring as people naturally follow desire lines of travel.

Moreover, the public space is dependent on the road space for it's quality, and if large amount of vehicles are revving through the junction and turning it into a racetrack, then it won't be very pleasant. So TfL need to consider implementing 20 MPH, traffic capacity reductions, and air pollution limitations into the scheme so that it's a nice place to be.

TfL are also planning on expanding the current Cycle High provision in the area which is usually a very good thing. This should be supported, but effort should also be made to locate Docking Stations at points where they intersect with other transport links or with specific, popular destinations (e.g. right outside the tube station exits, or right outside the planned shopping centre), rather than being hidden down back streets where nobody sees, nor uses them.


Old Street Roundabout

These plans represent a massive step forward and are supported by the newly created group, Hackney People on Bikes, while also being idiotically criticised by those that are currently responsible for the Hackney local branch of the London Cycling Campaign (LCC). Who'd have though it?! But, hey, that's the situation, and hopefully it'll improve soon and the people in charge of the local Hackney branch of LCC will actually support the segregation of bikes and motor traffic.

Anyway, the plans largely seem great. Some tweaks need to be made such as extending physical segregation along the north side of Old Street in both East and West directions (it just stops in the current designs). There is plenty of space on Old Street to do extend segregation in both these locations so I hope it happens.

I would also like to ask that all physical segregation and pavements are fitted with a continual dropped kerb (or gradient) on the cycle lane side, so that maximum use of the cycle lane can be made by those cycling without the danger of clipping one's pedals on the kerb. It's actually worth saying this in all the consultation response, as TfL do record this request if it's made, and if it's made enough they may just start doing it. Below is a photo of the sort of thing I mean, borrowed from The Ranty Highwayman's highly informative and intelligent post on the issue of kerbs.

Kerbs that are graded like this are best of segregated cycle lanes because they allow you to make full width of the lane. The Cycle Superhighway 2 Extension between Stratford and Bow is safely segregated, but has very, unforgiving kerbs that are easy to clip a pedal on.

Finally, if you haven't already, it's worth keeping up with the excellent work of the CyclingWorks campaign and the battle to build Crossrail for Bikes which is covered brilliantly by Mark Ames at IBikeLondon.

Oh, and this blog topped 100,000 hits a few months back which was lovely, so I wanted to say a belated big thank you to everyone that reads it!

#VictimBlamingIdiot, Operation Safeway and the 'Dead Cat' on the table

This week I was asked (again) to speak on LBC Radio (London's Biggest Conversation). I'd been asked quite a few times this month but declined thus far, mainly because I find Nick Ferrari's views on cycling to be quite repulsively ignorant which makes it difficult to have anything near a balanced debate. But I thought I would give it a go on Tuesday because I wanted to air my thoughts on 'Operation Safeway' publicly. As expected, I wasn't given a chance to talk about something sensible, and instead was quizzed by Nick Ferrari about whether it was 'okay' for someone to cycle their kids into school in a cargo-bike if that involved the children inhaling lorry fumes.

I pointed out that at least the kids were being reminded to exercise and that we were the fattest country in Western Europe and that obesity and lack of exercise would kill you much quicker than air pollution. Nick Ferrari, a rather portly man himself, didn't take well to this. Of course what Nick should have asked was, is it okay for Boris Johnson to have created a city where if a man wants to cycle his kids to school they have to inhale poisonous fumes in the first place? Is it okay that Boris Johnson is happy for London to be the most polluted capital city in Europe and it's 'low emission zone' to be nothing more than duplicitous Orwellian double speak? Is it okay for Boris Johnson to allow large numbers of lorries and HGVs to use London's streets at the exact time that children are cycling, and being cycled to school?

Unfortunately none of these questions occurred to Ferrari. His surname's appropriate, I suppose.

I was then cut off before I could talk about Operation Safeway, so I'll set down here my thoughts on the Metropolitan Police deploying 2,500 officers to police London's most dangerous junctions. One of my problems with this is whether it will it actually safe lives. I appreciate that people might drive and cycle slower when police are around, but TfL's own figures show that in accidents were a cyclist was killed or badly hurt the cyclist was presumed to have committed an offence in just 6% of cases. Therefore, making cyclists 'obey the law' won't safe the lives of the 94% of cyclists killed or maimed on London's roads who weren't committing any offence when they were killed or maimed. Moreover, though law-breaking motorists account for a large proportion of those killed while cycling on the capital's streets, in most cases of a driver killing a pedestrian or cyclist, the driver is not arrested, let alone formally charged. How, then, will compelling drivers and cyclists to obey the law help save lives, when people are being constantly killed when they are following the law, trying to get home, going about their daily business?

Operation Safeway, in my opinion, won't save lives. The most dangerous junctions where these officers are being deployed are not dangerous because of law-breaking road user behaviour, but because the design itself is inherently criminally dangerous for vulnerable road users. Bow Roundabout is fundamentally unsafe for someone on a bike (or, indeed, on foot). Putting an officer there isn't going to change this. An immediate temporary 20 MPH limit on the roundabout and approach roads until road layout changes are completed might at least improve things, but Boris Johnson has rejected this measure. Why? For political reasons he wants to victim blame instead.

Operation Safeway is part of Boris Johnson's wider strategy of being a #VictimBlamingIdiot. When he come to power in 2008, partly on a 'cycling ticket', Johnson should have immediately began segregating cycle and motor traffic on London's most dangerous junctions and roads, and lowering speed limits and putting in cameras to ensure safe driving where this was not possible. Instead Johnson has pursued 5 years of 'smoothing the traffic flow' and actually speeding up much of London's motor traffic, while forcing increasing numbers of Londoners cycling to share road space with ever faster motor vehicles (often on his death-trap 'Superhighways'). The intolerably high number of killings in the recent months and years are a result of this. (Although, granted, in the last 5 years Johnson has, to be fair, done a lot to push cycling up the political ladder of issues, even if he hasn't done anything positive for the safety of Londoners using bikes).

So, Boris Johnson finds himself in a position where, to quote the man himself, "you are losing an argument. The facts are overwhelmingly against you, and the more people focus on the reality the worse it is for you and your case." This is his position in terms of London cycling. He's done nothing to make it safer for Londoners while encouraging them to cycle for the last 5 years. The result: 81 Londoners killed. Directly his fault, often on or near 'Superhighways' which he personally had built. The more people focus on the reality the worse it is for him.

So what's Johnson's solution to this problem? Again his own words speak volumes: "Your best bet in these circumstances is to perform a manoeuvre that a great campaigner describes as 'throwing a dead cat on the table, mate'. The key point, says my Australian friend, is that everyone will shout 'Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!'; in other words they will be talking about the dead cat, the thing you want them to talk about, and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief." This is exactly what Johnson has done in response to six Londoners being killed in two weeks while cycling in the capital. He has slung a dead cat on the table, namely blaming the victims for either breaking traffic laws or cycling with headphones in (neither the Met nor TfL can cite a single instant where the latter has led to a cycling fatality). Given that the cyclist was breaking the law in only 6% of fatal crashes, attacking cyclists who break the law in response to a string of fatalities is a totally irrelevant issue. It makes everyone sit up and say, 'bloody hell, that's a dead cat', and forget that the reason these fatalities have happened is because Boris Johnson has refused to segregate, introduce 20 MPH, or tighten lorry restrictions and regulations throughout his 5 years in office.

The kind of 'dangerous cycling' Boris Johnson has hypocritically and maliciously blamed London's recent fatalities on. This is the 'dead cat' Johnson wants us to think about and attribute cycling deaths to, rather than appalling road design, which in many cases the mayor and TfL were explicitly told would mean "casualties were inevitable"

Operation Safeway is part of this victim blaming operation by our duplicitous mayor. He tried it before when he lied and said that in 61% of fatalities cyclists were responsible for their own death, when TfL's own figures actually put this at just 8%. Though some police are stopping and checking lorries (which is to be commended) the primary thrust of the operation is being directed against supposedly errant cyclists, therefore furthering the incorrect public perception that cyclists are at fault for their own deaths, a fatuous lie (and 'dead cat') that Johnson wants the public to swallow so they don't see his own grievous failings on the issue of cycle safety.

Moreover, Operation Safeway allows Johnson to further the 'collective guilt' that is currently thrust on 'cyclists' by the media and politicians: i.e. simply because someone jumps a red light in Holborn that makes it okay for a lorry driver to run me over and crush me to death at Bow. He says, 'I know a lot of cyclists have been killed recently, but they've really got to stop jumping red lights and take responsibility for their own safety'. So if someone jumps a red light in front of me that makes it okay for a driver to turn their car directly into my path and kill me? Imagine if a British political figure said, 'I know a lot of British Muslims have been killed recently, but they've really got to stop being terrorists and take responsibility for their own safety'. Some British Muslims are terrorists, but that doesn't mean that British Muslims shouldn't be entitled to not travelling in fear of being killed, and every other right that belongs to UK citizens. Yet Boris Johnson can say it's okay that six cyclists were killed because a bunch of other cyclists have been jumping red lights? Appalling. You can't treat a minority like this. There is no way that I, or anyone else, should have to assume collective guilt for the actions of anyone else that rides a bike. If I'm not breaking the law, I'm entitled to a safe journey home on my bike where I'm not 7 times more likely to be killed than in Amsterdam. I refuse to accept that whether someone else chooses to wear high-viz, a helmet, or obey a red light should have any impact on the standards of road safety I demand from my political leaders.

Yet this is what Boris Johnson is trying to do with Operation Safeway. He's trying to cement the false image of the law-breaking cyclist whose responsible for his own death, and in so doing divert responsibility away from himself, as Johnson is far too aware that it is the decisions he has made at places like Bow Roundabout or King's Cross that have led to the fatalities there, and that he is actually responsible.

It's vile and disgusting. Politics at its lowest. And it's alienating Boris Johnson from not just cyclists, but also Londoners more widely. A lot of people aren't being taken in by Johnson's 'dead cat' trick, and are instead calling the mayor out on his callous and insulting victim blaming antics. Come 2016, he will be in a lot more trouble.

Moreover, this Friday at 5pm the first ever London 'Die-In' is occurring, where Londoners will lie down with their bikes in Blackfriars Road opposite TfL Headquarters to protest at Johnson's failure to act, or even take responsibility for the spate of recent killings on our streets. I urge you to attend.

Cyclists mass die-in protest Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum 1970's. It's because of protests like this that Holland is now a far safer place to cycle than in the UK. Nothing to do with the country being flat, unfortunately...

5 Londoners killed while cycling in 9 days, and Boris Johnson cowardly blames the victims

If you are reading this you are probably aware that five Londoners have been killed while cycling on our capital's streets in nine days. This is a truly appalling figure, and what is worse is that nearly all the deaths have happened in noted accident hotspots where Londoners have been killed before. To take just one instance, Venera Minakhmetova, 24, is the third Londoner in two years to be killed at Bow Roundabout. Is the key issue, therefore, 'cyclists-jumping-red-lights' or the design of specific killed-junctions? An easy question to answer.

Map of recent deaths, courtesy of the BBC

However, when interviewed on this recent spate of deaths Boris Johnson said cyclists 'must obey the law', implying that these Londoners were killed because they were lawbreaking vandals. This is a vile and cowardly response from Mr Johnson. Errant and irresponsible cyclists do not frequent killer-junctions and roads, such as Holborn and the unsegregated section of CS2, in order to throw themselves under an HGV. People get routinely killed while cycling at these junctions because there is no way to cycle through them safely, because they are fundamentally and criminally dangerous. TfL need to be prosecuted for manslaughter.

If there were a section of tube line, say between Vauxhall and Victoria, where trains habitually derailed killing drivers and passengers, then TfL would close the line and fix it immediately. Yet we have junctions and roads in London were Londoners are continually killed while cycling, and TfL thinks it can wait until 2015 or 2016 (at the earliest) before it does anything to change anything. And instead we're told by Andrew Gilligan, 'well, all the other tube lines are safe so how dangerous can taking the tube really be!'. Just because there are quieter roads in London and some half-decent cycle provision doesn't mean TfL should let roads like Holborn gyratory continue to kill people. They know where the problems are. There are specific streets and roads that are incredibly dangerous and these need to be fundamentally changed.

Announcements are all well and good, but we need to change now, before even more innocent Londoners are killed for doing something that the Mayor, TfL, and all London borough councils are actively encouraging them to do.

Please TAKE ACTION NOW and email TfL and the Mayor asking them to prevent further deaths. Just click this link to go the London Cycling Campaign (LCC) page.

Also, do please consider joining the London Cycling Campaign (LCC) if you aren't already a member. They are the only organisation in London that is consistently pushing Boris Johnson to give us continental standards of cycle safety. They are the primary reason the BBC ran a story today on 'Calls for action over cycle deaths in London'. They deserve everyone's support.

Update on Kensington High Street and Cycle Superhighway 9

Following a slightly ambiguous report in a local paper about Kensington and Chelsea Council stalling on Cycle Superhighway 9 plans, I assumed that the real reason for my Council's hostility to Cycle Superhighway 9 was not the blue paint but the fact that they hate segregation because it means reduced amounts of space for motor traffic. They take this extremely reactionary position because most of the Councillors are rich residents who own two or more cars and drive everywhere. They don't take the bus, and they certainly don't cycle!

I blogged accordingly but also sought clarification from Cllr Timothy Coleridge, Cabinet member for Transport. I've decided to reproduce his reply to me in full here because it sets out the Council's position in clear, specific terms:

Thank you for your e-mail. You are correct that the Council is not supportive at this time of a segregated cycle route along Kensington high Street.  

Kensington high street is extremely busy, but the traffic generally flows well and cars and cycles move through it together and without a great degree of difficulty. The main issues we have is the idea of having a segregated cycle lane on the north side of the street, with cycles going both east and west. Pedestrians wishing to catch the many buses that use the high street would have to cross onto an inner pavement to queue for buses, and more difficult is the very complicated junction with Kensington church street. This junction is extremely difficult to solve. The pinch point as you go east past the Royal Garden Hotel would need to be reduced to one lane of traffic and this would reduce traffic flow to an unacceptable level. Finally the high street has been redesigned to a very high spec and we believe it has greatly improved this busy and important shopping destination.

A few very interesting points to note from this. Firstly, TfL/Gilligan have clearly presented RBKC Council with some very detailed, well thought-out plans for segregation which have been rejected by the Council. The natural corollary of this is that campaigning organisations like London Cycling Campaign need to find a way of putting pressure not just on TfL, but on intransigent local councils too, if they want to see London 'Go Dutch'.

As I blogged about with reference to the Cycle Superhighway 5 consultation in June, sometimes it is not TfL but other local government bodies who are actively resisting the separation of cycle and motor traffic. TfL are far, far from perfect. But councils like RBKC aren't either.

It's also remarkable that the main stumbling block to a 'segregated cycle lane' is that it will mean at one point the eastbound road will need to be reduced 'one lane of [motor] traffic', which the council see as 'unacceptable'. Given that most of the time Kensington High Street functions as effectively a single lane street because of parked cars/taxis, buses stopping, and rush hour cyclists filling the entire inside lane, it is particularly galling that the council will not consider reducing the street to one motor traffic lane at ANY point. Moreover, Kensington High Street is a shopping street, not a distributor road, so why on earth should it have two lanes of motor traffic in each direction?! It's completely idiotic to preserve needlessly high levels of motor traffic capacity at the expense of safe cycling, mass cycling, reducing illegal levels of air pollution, cutting carbon emissions, reducing the number of those killed and maimed in road traffic accidents, and improving bus and tube overcrowding during rush hour.

If you ask me, this current RBKC Council is living in the 1970s. As The Ranty Highwayman pointed out on twitter, RBKC Council don't even see pedestrians or cycles as 'traffic' which they have been legally obliged to do since the Traffic Management Act in 2004. Only cars count.

Come the 2014 elections a large part of this evidently useless chaff will hopefully be threshed out of the Council body so more intelligent decisions can be made on behalf of all Kensington and Chelsea residents (including the 60% of households in the borough that are car-free), not just the predominantly fat and lazy motor-obsessive minority that seem to constitute the majority of the Council at the moment.

Below are some photos I took of Ken High Street (+ Hyde Park Gate and Exhibition Road) yesterday showing just how hostile the current 'very high spec' [Timothy Coleridge's words] design is for cycling, and how frequently it is reduced to one lane of motor traffic:

Absolutely no #space4cycling here.

But many people still forced to use this route due to lack of alternatives.

Fancy a dooring, anyone?

Those on bikes are frequently forced into the very dangerous path of traffic overtaking them from behind due to the lack of a segregated cycle lane. The person in front of me was almost taken out by the blue car (pictured) when I took this.

Another instance of someone being forced into the very dangerous path of traffic overtaking them from behind due to the lack of a segregated cycle lane. Again, there was almost a collision here with the white van (pictured). This road layout is not safe and it's insane to refer to it as 'very high spec' (as Coleridge frequently does).

A bus stop by pass is badly needed here. Would fancy squeezing in the slither of space between the bus and the motor traffic? Or sitting behind the bus and inhaling some lovely carcinogenic diesel until it moved off again?

The road is too dangerous for these people to feel safe cycling, with resultant clogging of the pavement for pedestrians.

This person is cycling across the pedestrian crossing because he's worried about getting killed by the motor traffic.

Pictured again. This is inconvenient for pedestrians. Proper segregated cycling facilities would avoid this.

Exhibition Road. Urgh. What an awful design. Looks terrifying.

It would be difficult to come up with something more hostile to cycling if you tried. Also important to note is the two separate cases of Barclays Cycle Hire users that felt the road, in it's current layout, was too dangerous to use and wheeled/cycled on the pavement instead.

If anyone feels like contacting Cllr Timothy Coleridge on this issue to express their support of TfL's desire to segregate Ken High St, his council email is Cllr.Coleridge@rbkc.gov.uk. It might be worth cc-ing in the Leader of the Council, Cllr Nicholas Paget-Brown, too: Cllr.Paget-Brown@rbkc.gov.uk.

Are Kensington and Chelsea Council deliberately blocking TfL from segregating Cycle Superhighway 9 along Kensington High Street? Yes.

Given that nearly 60% of households in Kensington and Chelsea are car-free, one would expect the council to be prioritising the safety of the majority of their residents who choose not to drive, rather than obstinately preserving road conditions that are straight out of the 1970s and make Kensington and Chelsea one of the worst of London's boroughs for cycling.

However, a recent report in a local newspaper suggests that the Royal Borough council are apparently against plans for a segregated cycle superhighway along Kensington High Street. According to the report, the Council are blocking the proposed Cycle Superhighway 9 on Kensington High Street because they see it as “unnecessary and inappropriate”. It appears the Council are making a big issue about the colour of the cycle lane surface in order to detract from the fact they are also stonewalling on a fully segregated scheme, which TfL have proposed and would require no paint (blue or otherwise) because it would be physically separated from motor traffic.

Despite 'improvement' work in the early 2000s, Kensington High Street remains poorly designed for cyclists, and the large amounts of wasted space in the centre of the road could be far more usefully allocated as space for safe, segregated cycling for those of all ages.

Plenty of space on Ken High Street for full segregation of cycle from motor traffic. This would also radically improve pollution levels on the street for shoppers. But do the council instead want to continue wasting  the space with traffic island bike parking that no one uses because the street is so hostile to cycling?

Indeed, The Council’s own report into casualty records before (1990-2000) and after (2003-2005) the 'improvement' scheme reported a worrying increase of 186% in the number of cyclists killed and seriously injured on Kensington High Street. A map of all road incidents involving cyclists between 2005-12 shows very clearly that the design of the road is failing to provide a safe environment for travelling by bike:

Moreover, the MP for Kensington and Chelsea, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, himself commented last year that “a long-term paucity of proper cycling infrastructure has forced many cyclists onto busy roads, where they are bound to come into conflict with drivers of cars.” The current design of Kensington High Street could not better illustrate this point.

Is the same Council that spends thousands of pounds running 'Bikeminded' (an initiative aimed at encouraging cycling through explicitly non-engineering methods such as free bike training etc.) deliberately ignoring the wise words of their own MP?

It sure looks like it.


If anyone feels like contacting Cllr Timothy Coleridge on this issue to express their support of TfL's desire to segregate Ken High St, his council email is Cllr.Coleridge@rbkc.gov.uk. It might be worth cc-ing in the Leader of the Council, Cllr Nicholas Paget-Brown, too: cllr.paget-brown@rbkc.gov.uk.

Please attend London's Protest Flashride this Friday at 6pm, Tower Hill; we need Londoners there to make change happen.

In the wake of two cycling fatalities in recent weeks - one in Lewishman, the other on Cycle "Superhighway" 2 in Aldgate - Londoners are calling on Boris Johnson, TfL, and local councils to actual cycle-only lanes along busy arterial routes to bring London's road design up to the international standard being set by New York, Paris, Tokyo, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Zurich, and Berlin.

This is not in any way 'cycle infrastructure'. This is just blue paint.
This is not a Cycle "SuperHighway". This is a pile of shit, built at incredible expense to the taxpayer (£2-£4million per mile)

There is plenty of space on London's main roads to create dedicated space for cycling. But Boris Johnson and local politicians have so far completely refused to create actual safe cycle infrastructure,  resorting instead to just putting some blue paint on the road.

This is what cycle lanes look like in Germany (picture is from Heidelberg). If the Germans can do it, why can't we?

In 2009, on the launch of the Cycle "SuperHighways" programme, Boris Johnson said:

“I'm not kidding when I say that I'm militant about cycling, and these Superhighways are central to the cycling revolution I'm determined to bring about. No longer will pedal power have to dance and dodge around petrol power - on these routes the bicycle will dominate and that will be clear to all others using them."

Unfortunately, Johnson clearly was kidding.

If you feel that cycling in London is dangerous, please come to Tower Hill at 6pm on Friday 12th July 2013 and make it clear to Boris Johnson and TfL that we need actions (not consultations) to stop the continual killing and maiming of Londoners travelling on a bike by drivers of motorised traffic.

Blackfriars Bridge flashride in 2011.

Flashride details

• Meet 6pm for 6.15pm start at Tower Hill (where it meets Minories) http://goo.gl/maps/8Czme
• The protest ride will last approximately 20-30 minutes, including a brief stop at the junction of A11 Whitechapel Road and A1202 Commercial Street to pay respects at the place where last week's victim died
• The ride will be marshalled by LCC staff and volunteers, and will finish at Altab Ali Park around 6.30pm
• #Space4cycling

There is also a vigil at City Hall from 5.30 pm in memory of recent lorry deaths, including the pedestrian killed by a lorry driver in Fulham on Monday.

Friday's Flashride is also supported by the Evening Standard

I will be attending the vigil at City Hall at 5.30pm, and then the protest ride at Tower Hill 6pm.

Will you be there too?

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BBC News reporting on the first person on a Boris Bike to be killed by motorised traffic in London (and the third person to be killed by Cycle "SuperHighway" 2):

A woman riding a Boris Bike killed by a lorry on Boris's Cycle "SuperHighway" 2. Paint on the road is not cycle infrastructure; TfL and the local councils need to confront this before even more Londoners are killed.

Last night we heard the tragic news that a woman riding a Boris Bike on one of the Mayor's supposedly top-quality Cycle "SuperHighways" was killed by a collision with a lorry which in all probability drove into her. This is the first time a Boris Bike user has been killed in London, but it isn't the first death along the route of Cycle Superhighway 2 (CS2). Very, very sad.

Photo of the scene via @velorución on Twitter

This recent and shocking death, the first on a Barclays Cycle Hire Bike could be a political catastrophe for the Mayor, Boris Johnson.

You can interpet the story in many ways, but one of them is surely that of a woman lured by TfL's copious and expensive advertising of 'cycling' into riding one of Boris Johnson's new Barclays bikes, expecting to be safe on Boris Johnson's 'international standard' Cycle Superhighway 2, and then being tragically killed because the Cycle Superhighway is in fact a death trap where cyclists mix freely with aggressive motorists and HGVs that can, and do, kill them all too easily.

This death also comes only a few days after TfL released data showing that the total number of people seriously injured or killed on bikes on London's roads last year was up 60% on the long term average 2005 - 2009.

UK road casualty figures for those not on a bike are at a record low, but this figure masks the fact that cycling road casualties are increasingly sharply.

In fact, cycling fatalities are going up more quickly than the increase in riders on the road. Cyclist deaths rose 10% during 2012, with serious injuries up by 4%, the latter increasing for the eighth consecutive year.

Pic courtesy of @geographyjim

As this graph shows, cyclists are coming to take up an increasingly high percentage of all those killed or seriously injured in London. Motorists and pedestrians are getting safer, but cyclists are getting far more vulnerable.

The main reason for this is London's stunning lack of safe bicycle infrastructure. Segregated tracks like Tavistock Place, or the protected contra-flow on King Street in Hammersmith, are notable for their scarcity. Cycle "Superhighway" 2, like most of the cycle "superhighways", is simply some blue paint on the road where cyclists and heavy traffic mix freely.

Picture of CS2 outside Aldgate (near where this woman died) from June 2013, courtesy of Cyclists in the City. The lorry driver overtook these cyclists on a corner, putting them both in a life-threatening situation, stuck between an iron fence and a 30-tonne vehicle. The driver did this because the road is made up of 'general traffic lanes' that encourage lorry drivers to overtake cyclists with 50cm to spare, putting thousands of lives at risk everyday in our capital. The easy solution is to provide a cycle-only lane that those driving motorised traffic cannot enter.

It is easy to see from the above photo just how dangerous it is to mix cyclists and heavy traffic. Fatalities can, will, and do happen. Enough is enough.

And yet, at the City of London Cycling Forum last Tuesday officials representing the City of London explained their plans to spend over £12 million redeveloping the Aldgate gyratory, and in the process delivering just 70m of segregated bike lane.

That's right, £12 million for 70m of actual protected space in which tragic deaths can no longer occur.

What was just as concerning was that both of the City of London and TfL are using the weasel words - this route is for the 'experienced commuter' - to avoid putting in any decent infrastructure to fatal routes like the CS2. The problem with this type of thinking is that if you don't make cycle routes safe then people die on them. It doesn't matter if they are 'experienced commuters' or 'first-time cyclists'. Mixing humans on bikes with steel-clad HGVs is fatal.

It's not rocket science. This map of collisions in the Aldgate area, shown at City of London Cycle Forum,  shows clearly where proper junctions and segregated infrastructure that prevent cyclists and traffic mixing are desperately needed. You can guess where last night's fatality occurred... (Photo via @nuttyxander)

I pointed out to the City officials that rather than focusing on a hard to understand network of routes for cyclists of 'different abilities', wouldn't the simplest thing to encourage cycling be to make those routes that cyclists currently use much safer than they currently are?

Countless surveys tell us that the primary factor putting people off cycling is that they think it's too dangerous. Deaths, like the one on Boris's Cycle "SuperHighway" last night, are only going to further reinforce this view. Surely the best way to encourage cycling is to take routes that already have heavy cycle traffic, like Cycle "SuperHighway" 2 or London Bridge, and create proper segregated infrastructure that means that needless and avoidable deaths like these can become a thing of the past.

If the woman cycling on a Boris Bike on CS2 last night had been on an actually segregated lane (as pictured here, 9th Avenue New York) the fatal collision with a lorry would have been almost impossible.

And yet, instead we find local officials planning 'Quiteways' along roads that continue to contain dangerously and intimidatingly large volumes of through traffic. And, there are no immediate plans to put proper protection for cyclists onto extremely busy cycle routes like Waterloo Bridge where in rush hour over 40% of the vehicles are bikes.

Waterloo Bridge has a cycle lane but it's actually a car park (can you see the outline under all those parked cars?). This is why we need segregated, physically separated cycle lanes on these busy routes. And we need them now before more Londoners die. Photo courtesy Cyclists in the City.

Appalling. Simply appalling.

TfL and London's Councils need to put their heads together and sort all the already busy cycle routes in London, making them subjectively and objectively safe. If they spend their precious time elsewhere they're only going to have more deaths on their hands on heavily cycled routes that are supposed to be safe. Like CS2. Like CS7. Like London Bridge.

And those working in transport planning in London should be forced to get on a bike and cycle our 'Superhighways' like the deadly, fatal CS2, before they come up with schemes that cost £12 million and deliver a laughable 70m of segregated cycle track.

Transport planners need to have ridden a bike on London's busy streets before they create computerised animations (as the City of London team did at the most recent Cycling Forum) that show computerised HGVs turning left over computerised cyclists, and computerised cyclists calming filtering through a 0.5m gap between a stationary bus and a stack of cars waiting at a red light. It is not safe for cyclists to be driven over by HGVs or filter through 0.5m gaps. It is ridiculous that anyone could think in this way.

Yet this is how local transport officials still plan for cycle use. Hence only 70m of segregated space in a £12 million redevelopment.

Appalling. Simply appalling.

Philippine De Gerin-Ricard, a 20 year old French student, was killed by a lorry driver while riding a Boris Bike along one of Boris Johnson's Cycle "SuperHighways" that is now being investigated by police for being of a criminally poor design. Photo courtesy Evening Standard.