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Cycle link scheme would hit estate’s security
• LET me make it crystal clear following the letter from Paul Braithwaite (New Journal, April 17) about the cycle link proposed between Camley Street and Agar Grove, I’m not opposed to cycle lanes.
What worries me is that the scheme designed by the council engineers means the cyclists will come and go right through the main entrance of an estate and through a massive hole created in the wall by the entrance which has served as a much needed security wall for the safety and security of the residents of Agar Grove estate.
The hole, two car spaces long, will allow drug dealers to come in and out of the estate at night when the cyclists have gone home. Who will stand there to make sure that the dealers, potential burglars etc don’t use the hole to come and go without anyone stopping them?
What is the council to do to protect the Agar Grove estate residents? Are the police and Safer Neighbourhoods police group going to have personnel standing by to make sure that there is security for all residents on the estate?
How does Cllr Braithwaite envisage control of the security of this part of the estate being managed to the contentment of the estate residents? The police don’t want this gap in the security wall either – and have said so to the council.
Surely even Cllr Braithwaite can see the reason for my concern and that of 100 per cent of the estate residents.
The residents of Agar Grove estate were only consulted because I made a fuss. Everyone consulted on that estate was opposed to it.
I did not go for a “call-in”. I went for what I thought was the right way, to get public meetings with those who mattered, the residents, to ask them what they thought of the cycle path coming into their estate and their estate being treated as a public highway.
If Cllr Braithwaite really believes that the submission we have put that the cycle path will be used by drug dealers as “downbeat tosh” then how is it he does not know of the presence of drug dealers nightly (indeed daily) by and on the footbridge over the railway that goes from Maiden Lane estate to Camley Street by the Elm Village estate?
How does he not know of the usage of that part of Camley Street by drug dealers?
Cllr Roger Robinson
Labour, St Pancras & Somers Town ward
Petitioners beg to differ
• CONCERNING (Pedestrian and cycle link will be well used, Letters April 17), long may Councillor Roger Robinson continue to annoy Councillor Paul Braithwaite and anyone else who doesn’t care what local people think and feel.
Complacent reassurances from politicians and representatives of the lobby for the right of cyclists to ride along the pavement regardless of the personal safety of pedestrians are not worth responding to.
As for the cycle track/footpath having “overwhelming support”, the 160 residents of Agar Grove estate who signed a petition opposing the scheme may beg to differ.
Douglas Bateman
Agar Grove estate
Register all the cyclists
• IN any decent, civilised, society the very young, the disabled and the elderly are looked after.
So I was encouraged when I read recently that the London boroughs propose to bring out a £100 fine for those who cycle on pavements.
A giant step forward was my first thought, but unfortunately it will not work unless we register all the riders and make sure that all the bikes are registered and plated.
This may sound draconian but one of the side effects is that it would lead to all bikes having to undetake a yearly MOT-style test, which would not be bad – you see so many riders scuffing their shoes on the ground so that they can stop.
R Williams
Address supplied, NW3
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