On the night of Monday ninth January 2012 cyclists and pedestrians protested at Kings Cross within the night rush hour calling for an finish to the killing of cyclists on metropolis roads.
Bikes Alive wished Transport for London to make adjustments of their insurance policies that are resulting in too many cyclists being killed on London’s Streets and have been taking extra direct however peaceable motion to place stress on them to make biking within the metropolis safer.
Kings Cross was chosen as one of the vital harmful areas for cyclists with main roads together with Euston Street, Pentonville Street, Caledonian Street, Kings Cross Street all assembly in a gyratory system of complicated one-way streets.
Specifically they need adjustments in any respect main highway junctions with longer gaps between totally different phases that will permit each pedestrians and cyclists to clear junctions earlier than visitors from different instructions dashes throughout, in addition to adjustments that can result in reductions in non-public automobile use in London and a rise in bike use.
Comparable protests in later years have been organised by Cease Killing Cyclists who started with a significant ‘die-in’ protest outdoors TfL’s HQ in November 2013.
I arrived early for the Bikes Alive protest and located a bunch of mates of bike owner Deep Lee (Min Joo Lee), a 24-year outdated pupil who was killed using her bike there on 3 Oct 2011 got here to place contemporary flowers on the ‘ghost bike’ which is chained to a lamp put up on the centre of the junction.
Others quickly started to reach on bikes and on foot, gathering on the huge pavement in entrance of Kings Cross Station, together with a dozen or so law enforcement officials on bikes. In addition to Bikes Alive spokesperson Albert Beale who had stated that this protest “is step one in a marketing campaign to cease – by no matter nonviolent means wanted – the fully pointless stage of deaths, accidents and concern inflicted by motorists on the extra susceptible“.
Inexperienced Celebration mayoral candidate Jenny Jones took half, stating “London’s roads should be mounted urgently if we’re to make them secure for cyclists and all different highway customers. That is the Mayor’s duty, and I hope that if we make an announcement by means of peaceable, direct motion he’ll begin to pay attention.”
Additionally current was Tamsin Omond of Local weather Rush, who’ve organised a number of cycle protests, together with one in July 2011 in opposition to London’s horrible air high quality with briefly blocked a junction a little bit to the west of tonight’s protest.
Finally the protester started to cycle slowly, accompanied by protesters on foot on the roads across the junction, turning up York Method after which returning again down Caledonian Street and returning to Kings Cross the place some stopped to dam the field junction. When police got here and informed them they needed to transfer they made a number of circuits alongside a brief part of the Euston Street in entrance of Kings Cross, making a ‘U’ flip on the visitors lights and going again east alongside the highway to go across the one-way system once more. By the point they have been on their second or third circuit I felt I had seen sufficient and left.
London’s roads eleven years later stay harmful for cyclists, and this junction particularly was among the many three nonetheless named as essentially the most harmful of twenty-two that the London Biking Marketing campaign named in parliament in November 2022 as needing pressing motion. There have been some enhancements, with new cycle ‘super-highways’ and adjustments in visitors mild phasing, however rather more nonetheless must be accomplished to make town safer, with large advantages in public well being as many extra individuals who would cycle in the event that they felt secure. Sadly some London councils, partly because of lobbying from taxi drivers and others, nonetheless have virulent anti-cycling insurance policies.
Extra at Bikes Alive – Finish Killing Of Cyclists.
Bhopal: Drop Dow From London Olympics
Earlier that day I had photographed one other protest, the place Farah Edwards, a survivor of the Bhopal Catastrophe, challenged Lord Coe, and Mayor Boris Johnson, to style some Bhopal consuming water, bottled as ‘B’eauPal’ mineral water. 200 days earlier than the beginning of the London Olympics they known as for London to drop Dow Chemical compounds as a significant sponsor, as thousand of households in Bhopal are nonetheless being poisoned by the Bhopal catastrophe, when Union Carbide, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical compounds, launched an enormous dense cloud of deadly gasoline from their plant on the night time of December 2-3, 1984.
Authorities estimates say greater than 3,700 died instantly and since deaths have risen to between 8,000 and 25,000 folks. Round 100,000 to 200,000 individuals are thought to have everlasting accidents and the quantity continues to develop as a lot of the contamination produced by the catastrophe has not been cleaned up.
However after all the concept Lord Coe or Johnson would fear for even a break up second about taking soiled cash for the Olympic venture was ridiculous.
Bhopal: Drop Dow From London Olympics
Tags: Albert Beale, Bhopal Catastrophe, Bikes Alive, Boris Johnson, B’eauPal’, Local weather Rush, complicated one-way, ctclists, Deep Lee, soiled cash, Dow Chemical compounds, environmental catastrophe, ghost bike, Inexperienced Celebration, gyratory system, Kings Cross, London, London Biking Marketing campaign, pedestrians, peter Marshall, police, non-public automobile use, protest, rush hour, Cease Killing Cyclists, Tamsin Omond, TfL, visitors lights, Transport for London, Union Carbide
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