Revenue generation trumps road safety

[Martin Cassini]

Marked by flowers is the spot at the Elephant & Castle where a cyclist was killed this week. Next to it is a congestion charge sign. Livingstone preferred to spend millions on punitive control than on making roads fit for people.

Elephant & Castle is typical of our roads that are allowed to carve through communities and dominate the public realm at the expense of quality of life and space. I wanted to cross the road at this point. It meant leaping over the barrier and facing fast-moving motorists, some sensitive to a stray ped in their path, others jaundiced by the rules of the road and forging ahead unswervingly.

[Martin Cassini]

The cyclist killed at the Elephant & Castle was Meryem Ozekman, 37. Another cyclist, Rebecca Goosen, 29, was killed as she turned left from Old St into Goswell St. Imagine the grief hidden by those bald facts. See The Standard's report here. Johnson wants to legalise left turn on red for cyclists. O ye of little imagination! The traffic control system of priority and signals - that's the fatal flaw which causes such devastation, and which needs fixing! Streets should be re-designed to allow egalitarian space-sharing and civilised filtering. Then there will and end to these unspeakable "accidents". I accuse traffic engineers and policymakers of negligence. They should be accountable.