HURRAH, CYCLING IS TO BE BOOSTED by the people delivering the Olympics legacy to us northeast Londoners.
Proposals to narrow Westfield Avenueand Montfichet Road to one lane in both directions, and widen pavements, so segregated bike lanes can be built are being worked on by the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC).
What, only now, almost seven years after the event?
Yes, the corporation was formed in April 2012 and as a blogger, Hackney Cyclist, and other critics have pointed out, its green-transport work includes a segregated cycleway that is “useless, linking nothing… almost always full of obstructions”. Other cycleways are useful, he admits.
Londoner Stevie Dee said in the Evening Standard that motorised transport had benefited most from the corporation’s legacy because “active modes of transport have consistently been overlooked or ignored”. Yet more roads had been built.
The main western cycling gateway to the park was “a staircase”. Dee found it “mystifying” that the LLDC thought it could get away with it”. Now it was having to take the installation of green-transport facilities seriously.
What will the redesign of key roads cost? Why, £25 million. That is, apart from the salaries paid by the corporation: its chief executive gets £195,925 the deputy £176,326 — more than the Prime Minister is paid.
LLDC director Mark Camley said: “We are committed to ensuring that people walk, cycle and use public transport in line with the Mayor’s ambitions for London.”
Hamish Scott 150419
* Backstory: Hackney’s Rich List 2015; A London living wage pledge too far; Top whack for top execs; Hackney’s high earners; A Bleak vision of the Olympics
* All pictures on this page © DavidAltheer [at] gmail.com, and all for sale for reproduction. Most photographs are available in bigger formats
* Emboldened underscored words in most cases indicate a hyperlink, a reader service rare among websites. If a link does not work, it is probably because the site to which the URL refers has not been maintained.