George Allan

The Pentonville Road/Penton Rise junction is notorious.  There have been two cyclist fatalities there in the last 3 years, and dozens, perhaps hundreds of non-fatal collisions.  I estimate that a dangerous incident happens there every half hour and I have personally witnessed two. 

Cyclists wanting to go down Pentonville Road are routinely hit by lorries and cars doing a (compulsory) left turn into Penton Rise, sometimes at excessive speed.

To avoid this, it is necessary for a cyclist either to weave across two fast-moving lanes of heavy traffic, including a lot of buses and lorries; or to dismount and cross at the traffic lights.  The former is not for the faint-hearted.

Yet it has taken Transport for London (who control the road) years to admit that this junction was in need of urgent treatment.  To keep the pressure up,  my ward colleagues and I gathered a petition to Boris Johnson, and improvements are at last in sight - but only next March.  Probably. 

I’ve just been to City Hall today to present the petition to Caroline Pidgeon, Lib Dem assembly member and Vice-Chair of the Transport Committee. 

She and I visited the scene last week with a TfL engineer and we issued a press release about it here.

The TfL solution is to offer cyclists a choice between weaving earlier into a much-extended bus lane, or crossing at an upgraded “toucan” crossing.  It may not be ideal but it will be an improvement - if it happens before another heartbreaking fatality.

Now we are turning our attention to the getting things done about other longstanding problems on TfL-controlled roads in the area, including the problematic “five-ways corner” where Kings Cross Road meets Calthorpe St, Margery St and Lloyd Baker Street.