Dear Neighbours
Happy Friday the 13th! FYI, I never watched that movie, or the sequels. I nevertheless feel that I am leading a full and happy life and am acceptably up to speed on pop culture.
I hope you're able to get a bit of a break this summer, and are embracing the UK weather. We decided to give up on the ever-changing goalposts on overseas travel this year and have gone for an all-UK holiday strategy. Last week we were in Camber (hence the feature picture for this newsletter), straightforward to get from Rye via Ashford. It's a beautiful part of the world, highly recommended. And the partially indoor nature of a weather-driven holiday means that I was able to catch up on my knitting, Tom Daley style. He's our Hero🌟🎖
Now, onwards with this newsletter's Joyful Jumble of bits and pieces:
💚 A nice big plug for Cycle Islington's first Family Bike Ride, which is TOMORROW 14 AUGUST - book your ride here. To crib from their website, this ride will be a:
... gentle 12km family ride around Islington (and neighbouring boroughs) at a pace so that parents can keep up with their children.
💚 Self-pedal power has got to be the way forward at commercial level too. We loved this article from The Guardian reporting on an analysis of delivery speeds by cargo bike rather than van.
The bikes also cut carbon emissions by 90% compared with diesel vans, and by a third compared with electric vans, the report said.
💚 Moving from cycling to walking on a get-out-there theme, make sure you hold a spot in your diaries for Living Streets' walk at 2pm on 23 September. I'm passing on this information on a hearsay basis, so watch this space and I'll firm that up as soon as I know more.
💚 Islington Forest for Change fundraiser: with your help, ICAP smashed its £15,000 funding target! A roaring success. The Somerset House trees are now relaxing at a nursery, and the ICAP-led team is busy organising the next stage of this project, which is to finalise a list of potential sites for inspection by the Council's tree experts.
💚 Speaking of trees, here's a brilliant map showing location and name of London street trees. The map has been created using tree data made available by London's local authorities and TfL. It shows information for over 800,000 trees, the majority of which are street trees, with some trees in parks and open spaces.
💚 We asked you to make your voices heard in the Liverpool Road petition. And within a couple of hours you had helped smash the 200 target - thank you. Also, a number of you emailed us with your comments on your own local roads, which is brilliant - we look forward to promoting your stories and improving all our streets!
💚 Hot off the press is the Council's 6-month monitoring report on the Amwell LTN. The report:
shows that the scheme led to a 47% fall in the rate of speeding within the neighbourhood, while London Fire Brigade response times were not significantly affected
Great news - we're delighted to see the continued positive evidence for LTNs, building on St Peter's monitoring report in July.
💚 We've had various conversations with members of the Council LTN teams to continue to prod them on timing for our very own People Friendly Streets. So far, nothing concrete, but the general noises seem to be that Cally and St Mary's triangle schemes will be implemented this year (calendar year or financial year ending March 2022? dunno...) with community engagement for the bigger Barnsbury & St Mary's area progressing this Autumn. If you hear anything more detailed let us know - we'll do the same.
Did you like our natty use of green hearts in this newsletter? If you haven't already done so, download yours here and put it up in your window to show your support for #lowtrafficislington. And if you're way ahead of us, chivvy up your neighbours to do the same, and ask them to subscribe to Barnsbury & St Mary's! 💚💚💚
That's about it for this one. I'm off to plan my next holiday to keep spirits high. Pembrokeshire? The Peaks? Any other suggestions?
All our best
Low Traffic Barnsbury & St Mary's
