• ARE permanent residents of central London being airbrushed out of the picture? During the past two years the Bloomsbury Residents’ Action Group (BRAG) has been campaigning for the council to listen to residents of south Camden who simply wish to lead an ordinary, everyday life and move easily around the streets that define their home.

But the short piece about the cabinet’s decision on Tavistock Place (Cycle lane set to stay, despite taxi drivers row) makes no mention of many residents’ deep concern about this, and other contentious traffic schemes being imposed on our neighbourhood. Why not?

In 2016 BRAG organised a petition (over 1,000 signatures, 760 from people who live in the vicinity of Tavistock Place), we provided evidence to the public inquiry in 2017, we have given deputations to Camden’s cabinet in 2018.

We have held well-attended public meetings and provided detailed reports to our councillors, and the leader of the council, of what local people think. We agreed with the independent inspector’s recommendation that the protected cycle lanes should remain on both sides of Tavistock Place, with a westbound flow of traffic along the corridor.

Why are the views of so many residents in the streets south of the Euston Road consistently ignored? It would seem that our votes and voices are irrelevant in today’s climate of vested commercial interests and influential lobby groups.

Residents of south Camden cycle, use public transport, walk, run and sometimes need a taxi. And what about the residents who are taxi drivers? Shouldn’t their jobs be respected too?

So why does the press always latch on to the simplistic (and inaccurate) mantra of “cyclists versus taxi drivers”?

DEBBIE RADCLIFFE
Chair, BRAG