HGVs/lorries/cyclists: Inquest into death of Meryem Ozekman

whereas cars constitute around 90% of traffic.

You must mean 'motor traffic'. Traffic is people on foot, on bikes, etc., too. To use 'traffic' for 'motor traffic' only is as loaded as talking about 'accidents'.

Furthermore, I disagree that it is of any use to use the congestion charging zone (CCZ) cameras to ban lorries (or regulate them) in the city centre. Why? For a start, less than 10% of fatalities occurred within the central London CCZ, so the number of deaths prevented would almost certainly be negligible - because, as long as there are lorries (indeed, as long as there is motorised transport), cyclists are going to die.

Please don't focus so much on fatalities only at the expense of serious injuries. I would also argue that no number of deaths prevented could conceivably be considered 'negligible'. The most central zone is by far the busiest place and by far the most logical place to start--measures can then 'radiate out'.

Please clarify 'less than 10% of fatalities occurred within the central London CCZ'--cyclist fatalities?, in which years, compared to the number of fatalities in London/the UK?

I would suggest that the only way of dealing with the problem is to remove all heavy goods vehicles from urban roads. I do not think this is unrealistic: there are plenty of alternate ways of getting goods etc into London - for example, rail and or river (why not use the underground system outside of peak time periods? Why not use other underground rail systems such as that owned and operated by the Royal Mail? Why not make greater use of the River Thames and port/docking facilities in the City? Why not use smaller vehicles such as the electric vans now being brought into use by companies such as UPS, tescos, etc?). I would also suggest that larger freight vehicles could potentially be used in the future if the cabs were redesigned. Redesigns should ensure that the cabs are lower down with improved vision - such as those found in buses, which are at a much closer level to an ordinary car - and which are purposefully designed to maximise visibility.

Well, the answer to some of your questions is logistical laziness, to others the answer is official inaction or foot-dragging (e.g., about setting up freight consolidation centres), and to others that there is no way you can take all heavy good vehicles out of the streets, e.g. for carrying building materials to, or spoil away from, certain sites inaccessible by other means. But yes, there's a lot to play for.

As for Thornberry - well, she happens to be the local MP of my parents and she entirely ratified the position that I consider her being: one of Blair's bimbos. Yep, she spoke very eloquently and emotionally for about 10-15 minutes, but only after turning up 50 minutes late and not having listened to anything that had been said previously. Nor did she acknowledge a single bit of scientific evidence but entirely went on about various people in her constituency that she knew/knew of.

Give a politician a message and people to give it to and they'll be worth their weight in gold. Give them a complex, unemotional technical case, and they'll be completely hopeless. Reduce it to a couple of key facts that are not hopelessly reductionist or distorting and rely on them to be able to communicate it and influence accordingly. Of course Emily will talk about people in her constituency--much of her work as a constituency MP is with these people. It's only natural. All you have to do is enable politicians to play to their strengths.

I'd also say that politics is confusing: overlaps and differences between what is the remit of City Hall and what is the remit of central government (i.e. the Houses of Parliament) are difficult to decipher for most of us. The recent (I believe - or are they upcoming?) trials with cyclists going the "wrong way" down one way streets is central - but banning lorries is local.

Not 'central' or 'local' but 'national' and 'regional' or 'local'. Changing the TSRGD is a DfT matter nationally, with the possible result that 'no entry except cyclists' may be permitted nationally soon. A London-wide lorry ban would be a matter for regional government (currently a mish-mash of GLA, TfL, London Councils, as well as erm, individual London Councils, and a couple of other agencies).

Another comment. The data about who uses the road, the hows and whens are extremely poor and unreliable. With my co-researchers, I found no evidence of a decrease in cyclist fatalities, despite an apparent almost doubling of cyclists on the road since 2001. This is most likely due to the low number of fatalities that we already have - but also due to the low number of cyclists - remember, a doubling of 0.75% means that there is still only 1.5% of the traffic being cyclists, whereas a doubling of 5% would mean a far greater number in absolute terms. Lies, damned lies and statistics.

As you (nearly) say--the flow data that's available is rubbish. Perhaps you'll be able to do a fuller comparison at some point with all traffic casualties? What appears to be happening in London, completely unscientifically, is a sustained increase in cycling combined with a lowering of the casualty rate. Fully reliable figures will have to wait until an improvement in modal share methodology for London.

Finally, the thing I find most abhorrent about the whole current debate on cycling in London is that we are stuck in this idea that the British "need to undergo a cultural shift" and that we "are not the same as Europeans" - both sentiments expressed by Emily Thornberry at Parliament last week. What we should be doing - as London - is signing up to initiatives such as the Charter of Brussels that was launched earlier this year. This aims "to set a target of at least 15% for the share of cycling in the modal split of trips for the year 2020 and of further growth if this target is already achieved". As mentioned above, the current level for London is less than 2% so we would have some way to go - but given that Brussels increased from 1% to 5% between 2001 and 2006 (and, I used to live in Brussels in the late 1990s and the traffic was furious!) this is not totally unachievable. Indeed, it is far better to have aimed high and to keep on struggling to achieve that lofty aim, than to aim low and sit back and relax once you have got there when in fact you could have done much better.

The LCC has consistently called for the timid T2025 Strategy to at least double its unambitious target of a 5% modal share by 2025 (or 400% growth from 2000 levels). We firmly believe that this is achievable, just as we correctly predicted that the timid 80% growth target for cycling by 2010 that was set in the 2004 London Cycling Action Plan (which, to be fair, was formally part of the Mayor's Transport Strategy that came out in 2001, and should have come out then), would be achieved way early--it was passed in 2005.

The 'cultural differences' thing is much overplayed, although it is certainly the case that British land use planning since the War has basically been more chaotic than Continental land use planning (although despite the greater American influence on the UK some aspects of Continental land use planning are certainly more American than over here, e.g. compare the small number of motorways in this country to a place like Germany, much as there are also loads of quasi-motorways in this country in the shape of massive A-roads, which are motorways in anything but name) and has left a destructive trail in its wake of terrible transport decisions.

In fact, the only major difference worth noting is the size and central pull of London. It's a supertanker with a very problematic political history that will take longer to turn around than a much smaller place like Brussels, but it is happening.