Joel De Mowbray, walking and cycling policy lead for Lambeth council, urges you to get involved with plans to make local streets safer
As a community we all have to do our bit to address the climate emergency, deal with London’s air quality crisis, end injuries and deaths in London from road traffic collisions and tackle many other issues that come from the way that streets are used at the moment.
Reducing our use of private motor vehicles is fundamental to making our streets healthier and safer places for everyone.
It is all well and good to say that we need to rely less on private vehicles, but without providing alternatives, how do we do what we need to do and get where we need to go?
The Brixton Liveable Neighbourhood programme (BLN) is about providing alternatives that are better, quicker, cheaper or more convenient than private vehicles over the next two years, and designing our streets to make them healthier, safer places for people.
Lambeth council is sharing ideas for how this can be done in the Ferndale, Loughborough and Railton areas (Brixton town centre will be coming out in May this year).
We want to know what services would help you rely less on motor vehicles – trade-in schemes, shared electric cars, vans and bikes – we need to know what would make the difference. Alongside this we are asking how the local community feel about the ideas for real change to our streets.
More than 22,000 letters and flyers are going out to every household in the area. We are visiting every single business in the Railton, Ferndale and Loughborough neighbourhoods, on the school run of every school in the area, going to 88 events in and around these areas (see schedule on link below), we are recruiting five local people to join the team (including two apprenticeships) and 12 local young people are running a social media campaign as well as featuring on 34 rolling billboards and through local publications (like this article) throughout the areas to help us get the message out.
We are shouting as loud as we possibly can to help get people involved. If there is any way you can help us spread the word then we would be really grateful for your help.
Visit www.brixtonstreets.commonplace.is, email brixtonln@lambeth.gov.uk or text 07860180545 to get involved now. This round of engagement closes on 7 March.
