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news
Park Lane segregated cycle lane (via Transport for London)Elaine Paige blames empty cycle lane for traffic jam woes and accuses Sadiq Khan of 'killing' London
Elaine Paige took to Twitter to vent her fury at being stuck in traffic while trying to drive across London at 7pm on a Friday. Her target? Sadiq Khan and cycle lanes.
The singer tweeted: "Sat in horrendous traffic on Park Lane trying to get from Sth London to Nth London whilst staring at a wide empty cycle lane while there's another empty cycle lane adjacent in Hyde Park! @SadiqKhan despite a dubious appeal hearing you are killing this great city of ours!"
Paige referenced a "dubious appeal", likely hitting out at Transport for London's appeal victory earlier this week which saw the Court of Appeal reverse a High Court ruling that Streetspace active travel measures were unlawful.
Streetspace initiatives began during the first lockdown last spring and aim to promote active travel and making roads safer for cyclists and pedestrians by providing more space and safer infrastructure.
Paige also shared a picture advertising the 'Stop the Road Closures' march protesting against low traffic neighbourhoods in the capital next Saturday. In 2019, the singer hastily deleted a tweet complaining about Ride London road closures preventing her driving home.
"If cyclists paid road tax, as I do, I wouldn't feel quite so disgruntled," she tweeted at the time.
Sat in horrendous traffic on Park Lane trying to get from Sth London to Nth London whilst staring at a wide empty cycle lane while there's another empty cycle lane adjacent in Hyde Park! @SadiqKhan despite a dubious appeal hearing you are killing this great city of ours! pic.twitter.com/WROnY9kuwh
— Elaine Paige (@elaine_paige) June 18, 2021
Many of the replies to Paige's latest Twitter rant reminded the singer that she is part of the traffic and that congestion in London has been a problem for far longer than since cycle lanes. Others simply suggested she buy a bike and make use of the empty lane.
Elisabeth Anderson had a go at rewording the rant: "Causing horrendous traffic on Park Lane trying to get from Sth London to Nth London which is an easy journey by public transport! Despite our dubious appeal hearing trying to block safe infrastructure we are still killing this great city of ours!"
Another reply said: "Not having a cycle lane would make little difference, the road would still be congested. And people's lives would be put at risk by not having safe cycle infrastructure. I suggest you use the rail network if you want to avoid traffic (which you are adding to by the way!)"
This is not the first time the cycle lane on Park Lane has caused outrage. Last month, Conservative politician Tony Devenish called it a "nonsense" and demanded it be removed to "reduce congestion and improve air quality".
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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29 comments
I cycled to and from work in London for 48 years, from experience I can tell her that we had huge traffic jams a long time before there was bus and cycle lanes - that's why they were put in place - one person per car motorists was causing huge delays to buses and cyclists.
"The singer could not understand why she was sat in gridlocked traffic while trying to drive across London"
Newsflash Elaine: You are the traffic. Being in London probably doesn't help either. It's not like London has never been bad for driving in before now...In fact I believe it's a well established gripe.
She's a singer? Who the hell have I got her mixed up with?
Pearl's a singer. maybe it's her
I think Elaine is one of those people who is paid to whistle through their dentures at weekends on Radio 2, on shows where Lord Sir Saint Andrew Lloyd Webber is lauded as a musical genius to rival Schubert, and not just someone who wants to charge you £150 to see Cinderella.
Top tip: Cinderella will be on in panto at your local theatre within the next couple of years and the jokes will be better (oh yes they will).
Poor old Elaine, too posh for public transport, too dignified to ride a bicycle, too famous to walk in public, too important to sit in traffic jams with the other oiks.
Maybe instead of bemoaning the different urban transport choices available to lesser mortals, if she encouraged their use, then the roads would be freer for the elite to enjoy.
Maybe that could be a good tactic to reduce car use - persuade all the rich self-important people that congestion charges need to be so high that it prices everyone else off the roads. No more jams!
Are there any cities in the UK (the world?) where you could happily drive around at 7pm on a Friday and not encounter any congestion?
Atlantis is pretty quiet at that time of day.
Yes. Peoria, IL, USA, where I live. Our roads are overbuilt and we have "rush minute" instead of rush hour.
When traffic is really bad, there are a couple of lights where you may have to wait through more than a full two-minute cycle.
Wow. Most of the UK has rush-days, which kind of smoosh together into rush-weeks...
That's the whole point.
Motorists look over enviously at the cycling option and therefore get on their bikes.
Btw I m fuming that my road tax is being used to support drivers polluting the environment whilst sitting in traffic when they could be on bikes.
Not just your "road" tax - your income tax and council tax are being merrily shovelled into the same black hole
Will the campaigners for the STOP THE ROAD CLOSURES all turn up in cars and protest in their cars? Surely that is the only way they can protest.
So just an ordinary day then. Perhaps as a sign of protest they could honk their horns in futility.
One might have expected such a famous singer to not hit quite such a horrendously wrong note. Argentina might not be weeping for you, but some of us are.
Paige seems too dim to be true- is she just a synthetic caricature of a moron?
You know her so well
I'm sure she speaks for many motorists who don't see the irony of the moaning about the traffic. I'm not sure when it's going to register, that they, themselves are the problem.
I blame the TV ads. Almost without exception they show the vehicle being driven on deserted streets. No wonder some motorists feel they have been duped.
And I wonder how Paige explains the traffic jams on the M25, there are no bike lanes there.
My advice to her would be to take taxi if she doesn't want to use public transport, or alternatively buy a navigation system with realtime traffic updates.
"Sat in horrendous traffic on Park Lane trying to get from Sth London to Nth London whilst staring at a wide empty cycle lane while there's another empty cycle lane adjacent in Hyde Park!"
Yet whose transport choices does she criticise?
Ironic that the 'freeourstreets' web site shows the carriageway given over to walking. Is it possible they can see again and haven't realised?
Ah, bless!
She hasn't yet realised that cycle lanes can be so efficient that people get to where they want to go without needing to sit in a long queue and holding up everyone else.
Just imagine if the Hyde Park lane was given over to cars to use for transport - everyone would suddenly be where they wanted to be. Or would it just be used as another car park?
It seems almost childish to complain about the traffic when you are part of that same traffic - it's like a three year old throwing a tantrum but on Twitter.
How are they going to be able to both take part in the march and at the same time not disrupt the oh so precious traffic flow?
You beat me to it!
March in the bike lane, obviously. I can hear them already: "what do we want, more traffic. When do we want it, now!"
Selfishness knows no bounds. The attitude from Elaine Page is "I'm richer than you, more important than you and I deserve to get where I am going faster than you" while the humble bicycle is the great social equaliser. Bike infrastructure that prioritises that mode of travel over cars is messing with the social order where the wealthy are always advantaged. They can pretend all they like that it's about congestion, it's not. It's only about preserving their supposed advantage over those they think are beneath them.
Its like RBKC ripping up the cycle path. The amount of traffic hasnt diminished, Still just as many cars holding up other cars.
But they feel better because they are not see cyclist moving past freely.