GREEN PARTY PROPOSAL COULD HAVE CUT ROAD DEATHS BY 75%

Proposals for a default 20mph safety limited across Islington have been unexpectedly blocked by the Liberal Democrats. Wrecking amendments tabled at the last minute at the Council meeting on 4 December mean that the plans to bring the safety and environmental benefits of 20mph zones to all residential roads in the borough will not now go ahead. It’s a shameful example of political cowardice, said Green Party Councillor Katie Dawson, who proposed the motion. Here was a chance to bring the benefits of 20mph limits to all Islington’s residents, not just those on the leafy side streets. But the Council would not even agree to ask traffic experts to examine the practicalities of a single 20mph zone.

20mph zones save lives and money by turning serious accidents into minor ones, or avoiding them altogether. On the Council’s own figures, the Green Party’s proposal to extend these benefits to all Islington residents would have avoided over 300 hundred serious accidents over the next three years, and saved at least five lives. ”

The Council says that they are already introducing 20mph zones where residents ask for them. But for the latest scheme, around Highbury Fields, it took local people five years to negotiate all the hurdles the Council put in their way. The Council has also blocked extending 20mph limits to major roads, even though this is where most of the lives are lost. The Council has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds marketing itself as ‘cleaner, greener and safer. Here is a measure that the Council itself admits would cut pollution, reduce carbon emissions and save lives – but they lacked the courage to turn their rhetoric into reality.

“I believe that another Council in London will now pick up the challenge and bring in a single 20mph zone. Already Green councillors in Camden, Hackney and Southwark are working on their own proposals. Once again, Islington Council has bungled the chance to show some leadership. The sad thing is that if only one Liberal Democrat councillor had had the courage to vote for the proposal or abstain, it would have gone through. Perhaps after the next tragedy on our roads, they will think again.