Making cycling safer should be a priority for London's universities, and their unions

royalhollowayucu

May 2

Today Londoners will be casting their vote in the Mayoral elections. Today's guest post has been written by Anika Heckwolf (Policy Analyst, Grantham Research Institute, LSE), Antonina Scheer (Policy Fellow and Research Project Manager, Grantham Research Institute, LSE) and Peter Wyckoff (PhD Candidate, Department of Government, LSE) about the campaign for cycling safety they have been coordinating. The RHUL UCU Branch Committee have signed the open letter that they mention in this post.

With London's mayoral election taking place today, the safety of active travellers should be a higher priority for candidates. There are several reasons why London's universities – including its staff and student unions - should be engaged on this issue.

Protecting members of the academic community in London

Cyclists (and potential cyclists) at London universities deserve to be able to get to and from campus safely. Cycling here is still too dangerous. In 2023, two staff members of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) died while cycling, as was a postgraduate student at the London College of Contemporary Music. And just last month, a PhD student at LSE was tragically killed in a collision while cycling in Clerkenwell.

Many other universities in the city have lost staff or students to collisions while cycling. With 1.26 million journeys cycled daily and casualty numbers declining, cycling in London is increasingly popular and safe. However, with more than 1,000 serious injuries and seven deaths recorded in 2022, more needs to be done to make cycling safer still.

University unions must help build a cleaner, healthier environment around campuses by encouraging cycling

Demanding safer cycling helps prevent the loss of life of union members and members of our academic communities – but it also has other benefits:

Cycling and other forms of active travel have major physical and mental health benefits.
A 'modal shift' from driving cars to cycling or walking reduces carbon emissions as well as noise and air pollution. Facilitating active travel is therefore a key way for universities to promote cleaner and healthier environments in their local communities and tackle some of their scope 3 emissions and in line with UCU's ambition of greener campuses.
During a cost of living crisis, cycling to work is an affordable alternative to commuting by public transport or private vehicle, benefiting particularly casualised staff with low and/or irregular income.
Improving safety is important for current cyclists, but would also encourage potential cyclists; (lack of) safety is considered one of the main barriers to further uptake, with disproportionate effects on women and ethnic minorities.

A cross-university letter to the mayoral candidates

For these, and many other, reasons, we have jointly addressed a cross-university open letter to London's mayoral candidates, asking them to pledge to:

put a stop to cyclist and pedestrian deaths caused by motor vehicles in London by 2028, the end of the upcoming mayoral term; and
bring forward the deadline from 2041 to 2032 for London's Vision Zero.

Since the launch in February, senior leadership of several London universities, heads of academic departments, and a number of London's UCU branch committees have all signed the letter. An additional 800+ individuals that study and work at over 40 academic institutions in the city, including some of the world's leading public health and urban design experts, have also signed on.

How can these pledges be achieved?

In 2018, Transport for London committed to "Vision Zero", a target to eliminate all deaths and serious injuries on the capital's transport system by 2041 – but London is not on track to do so.

Thanks to research conducted at London's universities, we know how to get back on track – and even go faster. Solutions will need to include a range of measures, from building more physically segregated cycle lanes and fixing London's junctions, where the majority of serious and fatal collisions occur, to introducing stricter lorry vision standards and measures designed to discourage motorised traffic.

What's next for London's universities

In the past month, we've met with two of the mayoral candidates to hand over the open letter and to discuss policy priorities. These are only the first steps in our effort to pursue sustained engagement by London's academic community on this topic – we hope UCU will be a key part of this effort. Sign the letter and tick the 'I'd like to be kept informed' option for updates, or get in touch (Gri.Cycling at lse.ac.uk) if you'd like to be involved in the next steps.