You may already be aware that the Labour party has just set up a new group, Labour Cycles, “a community of Labour members and representatives committed to ensuring that everyone has the ability to be involved in active travel.”
You can look up their website to find out what their aims are, but it may be better to check what transport campaigner (and former LCC Board member) Christian Wolmar has to say about it on the Labour List blog.
Amy Foster, one of our local members and a current LCC Board member, has used this as an opportunity to contact her local MP and councillors to raise her concerns about cycling and road safety; check out her Tweet about it
Her e-mail is set out below, and you can use that as a guide to creating your own personal message to your MP, councillors and London Assembly representatives. You don’t have to be a Labour party supporter or live in a Labour area to do this – if you belong to another party or are in a Conservative area, you could ask your representatives what they will do to make your transport of choice – cycling – safer and easier.
To find out who you should contact, pop your postcode into this website https://www.
Remember, this is a very good time to contact your politicians as with council elections taking place in May, the next few months will see an increasing flurry of activity from current and potential councillors, supported by party activists and MPs to get your vote.
Cheers. Share your experience of how you get on, whether it be positive, negative or indeed no reply at all (don’t they want your Xs in May?).
Austen
Dear …..
I am writing to you in order to ask you to please join the Labour Cycles forum and to attend their national event on February 3rd (https://labourcycles.wordpress.com/).
The forum’s aims are to make our roads safe for all citizens, from 8-80. As a parent of two small children, I am gravely concerned by the fact that pedestrian fatalities actually increased in 2016 and that 26% of these fatalities were children aged under 15. Furthermore, the number of child cycling casualties rose by 24% to 152 children killed or seriously injured on our roads last year.
I am sure you are aware of the horrific incident of December 11th, in which a young woman was run over in four separate hit and run incidents. She was struck on a pedestrian crossing, just a few miles from Croydon. How hostile must our roads be that such an incident can occur on what is a urban road?
As you are aware, active travel is vital to our health and wellbeing, but clearly this is absolutely dependent on our roads being safe for vulnerable users.
Please, I urge you, to join the forum so that you can join the call for safer streets for all of us in south London.
Yours,
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