There’s little space for pedestrians…

• WALKING along Liverpool Road in Barnsbury on Saturday morning it struck me how little space is allowed for those of us getting about on foot compared with those driving.

Car after car passed us, mostly with a single person within and four empty seats, often in a bizarrely enormous vehicle designed for off-road use.

Meanwhile we pedestrians squeezed past each other on congested pavements.

This is especially striking at the foot of Liverpool Road where large supermarkets and Chapel Market face a shopping centre.

An inadequate pavement area is additionally cluttered by street furniture and hemmed in by a noisy, polluting, taxi rank (inexplicably reinstated after a respite during Covid-19).

Approaching the junction with Upper Street pedestrians are faced with a multi-lane highway, a relic of 1970s traffic planning that severs Angel tube and Camden Passage from Barnsbury and is even equipped with a dual-carriageway style central reservation.

Islington has made great progress in civilising our public spaces by restraining motor traffic and returning our residential roads to their intended use rather than as cut-throughs for commuters.

However it is also vital that we do not neglect busier roads such as Liverpool Road and Upper Street.

Across Europe these roads are being reimagined as urban “boulevards” with wider and better pavements, lane reductions, removal of parking, cycle tracks, speed restrictions, more crossings, more seating, trees and planters.

Together with road traffic limitation through workplace parking levies, parking restrictions and – in the future – road charging we can transform our environment.

London’s population is set to grow by up to one million this decade and there is no time to delay. There is simply no room to fit more of these people, singly, in sport utility vehicles on Liverpool Road.

K FALLON, N1