The new-look corner as envisaged by an artist, 2018

• READING your December 2 news in brief report about the Just Stop Oil protest at Highbury Corner, reducing traffic to “a snail’s pace behind” (an event which by chance I had witnessed) I could not suppress a wry smile.

Just Stop Oil might have saved themselves the trouble, as a snail’s pace is actually quite fast compared with what Transport for London and the London Borough of Islington have achieved at enormous cost to the public purse.

Since the old roundabout, a system which used to work quite well, was redeveloped in line with the current “two-way-is-the-new-one-way” orthodoxy, traffic is frequently at a standstill from all approaches to the corner (particularly from St Paul’s Road).

The funnelling of vehicles caused by the ill-conceived and autocratic introduction of low traffic neighbourhoods, LTNs, has left Highbury Corner as a pinch point, thick with stationary traffic pumping fumes.

Far from being a “welcoming public space” as touted, the lamentable design has left it as somewhere to avoid, unless you seek the company of loitering delivery riders, fast-food detritus, large puddles, pavement cyclists, and the unfortunates who congregate there because they either have nowhere else to go or want to sell you something.

The generous road space apportioned to cycling lanes at the cost of a number of mature trees is largely empty, cyclists choosing instead to nip across the pedestrian area; and who can blame them for not wanting to wait alongside stationary motor vehicles at several sets of traffic lights?

And the inexplicable absence of bus lanes has vastly increased the time it takes buses to negotiate the system. Whatever you may feel about Just Stop Oil tactics, at the new improved Highbury Corner they are largely redundant.

JOHN KEANE
Highbury Hill, N5