• AS a member of Bloomsbury Residents’ Action Group I was invited by email to their “public” meeting last Tuesday, although I’m not sure how the wider public (that is, non-BRAG members) would have found out about it, (No entry! Backlash at plans to shut off Judd Street to cars, July 26).

However, I attended this well-run meeting on behalf of London Living Streets (LLS). Predictably the majority of the 70 or so people present were against the schemes but I did have an opportunity to express LLS’s views, which, in brief, were that the schemes were approved in the context of Camden Council’s long-standing commitment to more sustainable, active, healthy forms of travel which puts pedestrians, cyclists and public transport ahead of private motors (including taxis and PHVs) in the transport pecking order.

It is also firmly in line with the Mayor of London’s transport strategy, which aims for healthy streets by increasing sustainable active travel and reducing the dominance of private motors. A key component Vision Zero, which aims for the total elimination of deaths and serious injuries by 2041, also cannot be achieved without changes like this one.

While, in summing up, one of the BRAG committee members expressed the view that all at the meeting would be in agreement with these general healthy active travel objectives, it was clear from the barracking and cat-calling that I and others received, in going against the general mood of the meeting, that a significant proportion of BRAG members do not agree and wish the status quo to continue to the detriment of us all.

JOHN HARTLEY
For London Living Streets