News

Winter 2001

City Cyclists, as we have decided to be known, has been making up for lost time having only got off the ground in April 2001. There was a leafleting blitz on bike shops and at Car Free Day in September 2001, featuring our new logo of the Corporation of London’s dragon craftily subverted into a cyclist.

We are drawn up a manifesto entitled “World Class not third class – the challenge for cycling in the City” , which is available on our this website below.

We’d like your comments and feedback, particularly as it will form our response to the Corporation’s “Interim Local Implementation Plan”.

It sets out how Ken Livingstone’s transport strategy will be implemented in the City. In the draft version cycling is hardly mentioned – it has been treated as a Cinderella mode of transport.

In the meantime, the Corporation is putting in more on-street cycle stands (Sheffield - inverted U style) with space for 400 cycles and also secure lockers at Liverpool and Fenchurch Street Stations.

The next challenge will be for us to persuade them to install sensitively designed parking at certain controversial sites and to make more of the existing parking secure. We are being consulted on the London Wall cycle crossing near Moorgate, which will complete the Seven Stations Circular route in the City, and have proposed numerous improvements.

It is being delayed because the planners forgot that Fore Street Avenue is being moved so the scheme might have to be redesigned from scratch. We are also being consulted on the detailed design of the new London Cycle Network through Barbican route from Holborn Circus through Smithfields and Barbican to Shoreditch, which is supposed to be started before April 2002.

Another priority for the long promised signs for the London Cycling Network to be put up and the cycle lanes painted green. We are still a small group, so your support if not involvement would really make a difference.

In particular we are looking for people who work in the City to tell us where so we can try to persuade their workplaces to support our plans publicly. We can also help lobby your workplace to improve facilities for cyclists.