Previous Campaigns
St. James's Park
St. James's Park is one-way residential street in West Croydon, and is part of London Cycle Network (LCN) route 5. In late 2001, CCC fought hard to get contraflow cycle measures installed; we were opposed by a hostile senior officer who has since left the Council. At that time, the northbound LCN route was instead routed along St. James's Road, Whitehorse Road and Windmill Road, a one-way, multi-lane gyratory with a poor safety record. This required cyclists to ride an 860m further than the southbound direct route (which is just 240m).
Cllr. Ryan investigates
The officer argued that St. James's Park could not be made safe for northbound contraflow cycling, and suggested that if Councillors still voted this through, they could be held legally liable for any accident there, and face fines and imprisonment. His stance effectively ignored advice published by the DfT in 1998, which describes how to implement appropriate contraflow cycling schemes. Also, more obvious to councillors was the fact that riding much further along the gyratory outweighed any supposed risk in St. James's Park. Happily councillors were very familiar with the issues... in summer 2001, Councillor Gerry Ryan (the chair of the Traffic Management Committee) had got on his bike with CCC to ride the route.
At the meeting, the officer also claimed that some cyclists were against the scheme - something we were later led to understand had been untrue (then again such a claim is so vague that it would be hard to disprove). Interestingly, this same excuse has been given recently by a cycling-unfriendly councillor defending the Grange Park Road scheme.
Members of the Traffic Management Committee unanimously decided that the St. James Park project should be re-examined with a view to implementing it. The contraflow measures were implemented in 2003.
