At our open online meeting next Tuesday, Better Streets for Enfield's special guest will be the founder of Mum's for Lungs. We'll also hear about the big women's cycle ride around central London that's coming up on 3rd March and how you can get to the ride safely from Enfield and Palmers Green, thanks to trained ride marshals from Enfield Cycling Campaign and Edmonton-based London Cycling Club.
The Better Streets for Enfield open meeting on 20th February, held in conjunction with Enfield Cycling Campaign, will take place on Zoom. Guest of honour will be Jemima Hartshorn, one of the small group of mothers of young babies living in south London who in 2017 decided they'd had enough of contending with the toxic engine fumes when they walked the pavements with their little charges.
Cleaner air for London's streets!
Pollution from traffic is bad for all of us, but particularly harmful to the lungs of young children, especially when being wheeled about at exhaust pipe level. The lung damage can then persist throughout the child's life.
Coming together as Mums for Lungs, the women started campaigning to reduce the amount of traffic on the streets they walked. One area they've concentrated on is the "school run", particularly hazardous not just in terms of air quality, but also because of the risk of children (and parents) being hit by cars outside schools.
I was about to write that they've become a "driving force" behind the campaign for school streets - but that would be an unfortunate turn of phrase because driving to school is what they've been discouraging. Walking, scooting or cycling to and from school not only reduces pollution and danger, but it is extremely good for the physical and mental health of both kids and parents - if we could get more people out of cars and taking physical exercise on their journeys, it would take some of the strain off our health service.
These days the mums have been joined by dads, by grandads and grans, and by people without children (after all, we all have lungs and clean air and more exercise is good for all of us! ) The campaigning has widened too, to include a "ditch diesel" campaign, support for the expansion of the ULEZ, and bringing attention to other sources of poisonous air, such as wood burning stoves.
Open meeting of Better Streets for Enfield and Enfield Cycling Campaign
8pm - 9pm on Tuesday 20th February
Achieving fairness for women on bikes (not just mums!)
The second big item on the agenda for next Tuesday's meeting is the Women's Freedom Ride around the West End on 3rd March. It's an opportunity to ride around central London without the cars and to meet like-minded people, but it's also an important part of London Cycling Campaign's fight to make cycling safer for women in the capital.
A report issued last month highlighted the obstacles to cycling encountered by women: the fact that cycle lanes have been built on a mainly radial pattern, to get office workers into central London, when many women need to have safe routes for journeys within outer London; but worse, the ugly truth about the horrifying aggression, harrassment and threatening behaviour that a shockingly high proportion of women on bikes encounter - there are frequent occurrences of men deliberately driving in an intimidating and dangerous manner.
Women's Freedom Ride, 3rd March
This fun, family-friendly, fully-led protest ride will start at 12.30pm from Lincoln’s Inn Fields and tour Central London for around 5 miles.
Marshalled feeder ride
Enfield Cycle Campaign and Better Streets for Enfield are running a feeder ride to the Women’s Freedom Ride.
This is a well led and fully marshalled ride. There will also be a return ride back to Enfield via Palmers Green and Winchmore Hill. This will be 9 miles each way, mostly on quiet roads and cycle lanes but there will be some main roads too (plus the main ride too!). If 18 plus miles is too much then there are some trains back from Kings Cross to Palmers Green/Winchmore Hill/Enfield via Finsbury Park.
| 09:30 | Enfield Town Station |
| 09:55 | Outside Coffee Break cafe (Winchmore Hill N21 2SH) |
| 10:10 | Palmers Green Triangle |
| 10:30 | Turnpike Lane Station |
| 10:45 | Finsbury Park (Manor House gate) |
| 11:30 | Lincolns Inn Fields |
| 12:30 | Main ride |
Latest Enfield news
The meeting will also be a chance to catch up on the some of the news about Journeys & Places projects in Enfield: two new quieter neighbourhoods are on the cards (Bowes East and Edmonton Green) and the council has now released its plans for the first phase of the transformation of Enfield Town into somewhere that will be much friendlier to those of us who go shopping there on the bus or by bike and when we get there are faced with problems crossing roads.