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Pedestrians face a dance of death
• IT is pretty obvious the architects appointed to make an even further “dog’s breakfast” of the crossing over the three major roads going towards the City of London beyond the Angel are not based here (but rather in Notting Hill) and only drive through Islington in cars.
The plans sent out to residents do not include the enlarging of the bus stop to travel in the City direction, which residents choosing not to drive would approve of, as the proximity and amount of traffic by that stop is terrifying.
Two years ago, as a member of the Angel Association committee, I and its secretary walked two council officers through the highly dangerous set of crossings, pointing out the bizarre contradictions of the signage, something which has to be studied carefully to be believed.
To move between Colebrooke Row-Duncan Terrace Gardens, the Sadler’s Wells area across City Road, the island to be “prettified”, Goswell Road and St John Street and back is to take your life in your hands. One person lost theirs (a young teacher) and another was badly injured.
City and Islington College and many hundreds of new flats have been or are being built in the immediate area. Outsiders seem unaware that this area is residential.
The greatest difficulty has always been to get the bodies responsible for the different types of road – council, London-level representatives and Transport for London – to negotiate with each other to come up with a workable solution. Each must have studied the situation in situ.
It is no use leaving it to a distantly-placed group of pie-in-the sky dreamers advocating stone benches and murals to make us feel better about the “dance of death” experienced while attempting to cross.
One essential is to make clearly separate paths for pedestrians and cyclists, making them obvious to both, and gearing the signs accordingly.
AVIS BALDRY
Gerrard Road, N1
• I AM having difficulty understanding the motivation for the “improvements” being proposed to the Goswell Road-City Road junction and island.
The consultation document uses extravagant language to describe how these “improvements” will make the island a “vibrant, welcoming meeting place”.
This suggestion seems absolutely laughable to me, since the area is so heavily polluted with both exhaust and noise that the only vibrancy you are ever likely to experience is heavy trucks going past.
As far as I am aware the only “problem” in this area is the pedestrian-cycle route crossing from Colebrook Row to St John’s Street, which has been a blackspot for years and desperately needs improving.
The other works, such as closing the “loop-back” road, banning the right turn into Upper Street, and putting mosaics all over the octagon strike me as unnecessary.
Moreover, the proposal to extend the pavement into Duncan Terrace Gardens, involving the loss of that area of the gardens, is plain wrong, and I doubt that anyone living in the area would support this.
I welcome the element of this scheme which relates to improving the crossing for pedestrians and cyclists, but the other 80 per cent strikes me as a misguided and pointless waste of money, not to mention the loss of public green open space.
I hope the designers of this scheme will think again when the consultation results come in.
CLLR MARTIN KLUTE
(Labour, St Peter’s) |
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