• EVERY day, when Cycle Superhighway 11 succeeds in squeezing tens of thousands of HGVs, vans, and HS2 construction lorries off the A41 Swiss Cottage gyratory / Finchley Road/ Avenue Road and onto our side streets, children will be forced to inhale increasingly dangerous levels of toxic fumes as heavy commercial traffic sluggishly stop-starts all the way from the M1 and M25 into the West End, via their school gates.

Val Shawcross (Transport for London) and Phil Jones (Camden Council) continue to bang on about some future “modal shift”, but can they actually deliver?

Will millions of elderly, disabled, visually impaired or cancer-suffering patients with appointments at the Royal Free and University College hospitals suddenly find themselves able to hop onto bicycles? Will trillions of tonnes of manufactured goods and services from factories and warehouses up and down the UK road network arrive in central London via cheeky Deliveroo panniers?

Where exactly do TfL and Camden plan to banish 50 per cent of Swiss Cottage gyratory’s 32 million vehicles per annum – the Bermuda Triangle?

By contrast, Ultra Low Emission Zones can be facilitated by serious investment in hydrogen-fuelled buses, and subsidies for low-emission commercial vehicles and electric cars.

If the Mayor of London and London Air Action were truly committed to improving London’s air quality they would be championing subsidies and, in place of CS11, begin expansion of TfL’s network of cycle Quietways.

This would keep the 10-lane A41 Swiss Cottage gyratory and six-lane arterial A41 Finchley Road / Avenue Road for their intended use: the economy, stupid.

BELLA FRANK
Queens Crescent, NW5