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Croydon council urged to make borough safer for cyclists

Croydon Cycling Campaign says local authority is underspending - but council says it is making investment

A cycling campaigner in Croydon has urged the borough to spend more money to make roads safer for cyclists, citing figures that show a rise in the number of cyclists seriously injured on its streets. The local authority, however, says that it is already investing in cycling.

Austen Cooper of the Croydon Cycling Campaign told the Croydon Advertiser that according to research he has conducted, the London Borough of Croydon had sought £2.8 million for funding for cycling from Transport for London (TfL) between 2006/07 and 2008/09.

He says that the borough received £1.8 million of that, but has spent only £1.4 million of it. Meanwhile, from 2005 until 2012, the last year for which figures are available, the number of cyclists killed or seriously injured in Croydon rose from eight to 20.

In November last year, cyclist Roger De Clerk lost his life near East Croydon railway station following a collision with a bus – one of six London cyclists who died during a two-week period.

The Croydon Advertiser said that Mr Cooper intends to "beat the council round the head" with the figures until more investment is made.

He accused both the ruling Conservative party and the Labour opposition of lacking the “political will” to change the situation but says that there are opportunities to grow cycling there.

"Croydon has Westfield coming and plenty of section 106s which could fund a cycling project," he explained.

But a spokesman for the borough said: "Croydon has bid as aggressively as any other local authority for cycle funding and has generally been successful in obtaining and spending substantial sums of money.

"We have a wide range of capital projects designed to improve cycle routes and we have an annual programme of cycle training and road safety campaigns designed to encourage more people onto two wheels."

Last year, we reported that the borough had ruled out bringing the Barclays Cycle Hire Scheme to Croydon, but added that it wanted to become one of the areas of outer London where Mayor Boris Johnson plans to trial his “Mini Holland” initiative.

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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6 comments

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kie7077 | 10 years ago
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Seems to me like a lot of London's best cycling infrastructure was put in 30 years ago by the GLC

And TFL did f*** all after that... In fact worse than f***all, they put in new infrastructure whilst 100% deliberately not designing in good infrastructure for cyclists. They actively commissioned reports asking for cyclists not to be factored in (kings cross). This lead to people getting killed.

TFL should be abolished, the people working for it should not be allowed in to the replacement.

Hackney Council said:

We have quite ambitious targets for cycling and I remember when we had to respond to Boris’s transport strategy in 2011 and when we sent in cycling targets, we were sent them back saying ‘Hah, can you be a bit more realistic please, this is ridiculous’. And then when the census came out it transpired that we were way above what our targets were at the time.

So according to TFL, decent cycling targets are "ridiculous".

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briano 55 | 10 years ago
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I don't mind cycling in Croydon, it's no worse than any other area in South London.

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briano 55 | 10 years ago
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I don't mind cycling in Croydon, it's no worse than any other area in South London.

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fancynancy | 10 years ago
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I don't like driving in Croydon, let alone cycling!!

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Yorkshie Whippet | 10 years ago
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Oh no, another gormless stat that proves nowt, "the number of cyclists killed or seriously injured in Croydon rose from eight to 20." The more people do something the more likely there will be accidents. And just how many more people cycled in the same period?

There used to be long cycle lanes along Addiscombe Road, High Street/Brighton road, also out Wallington way. Have they all gone?

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SteppenHerring | 10 years ago
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Rumour has it that there is a cycle lane in Croydon that is longer than 25 feet. I haven't discovered it yet.

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