Canal now has lovely arch, but it’s in the wrong place

Published: 3 September, 2010

• A DECORATIVE arch has appeared at the entrance to the Regent’s Canal at Danbury Street, Angel, following the rebuilding of the access ramp and steps to the canal at City Road Basin.

It may provide a decorative entrance to Angel Canal Festival on Sunday.

However, I do not think that the arch provides a suitable permanent entrance to the historic 200-year-old canal, nor is it quite appropriate in the conservation area. 

British Waterways erected the arch without planning consent and has been taken to task by Islington planners, who say that they must put in an application.

Quite right too.

Planning consent should not be given, and some more substantial entrance should be provided which will last for the next 200 years of the canal.

The arch is very attractive, even though it is in the wrong place.

I can think of a number of sites around the canal where it could find a good home.

Come along on Sunday to the Angel Festival on the Regent’s Canal at City Road Basin and see for yourselves.

DEL BRENNER
Regent’s Network
Member of London Waterways Commission

• A £200,000 criminal waste of money? Well, you have to congratulate British Waterways (BW).

Apparently, without any consent or consultation in our conservation area, it has knocked down trees, allegedly damaged a house and erected a hideous, cheap metal arch on Danbury Street Bridge to mark its new £200,000-plus towpath access.

It’s only taken six months of noise and traffic chaos and the arch doesn’t fit, so you can’t use the new steps.

In the face of massive public spending cuts, Transport for London (TfL) has funded BW to squander our money on changes that have narrowed the slope and actually made it more dangerous for cyclists to share with the mothers and buggies, children and wheelchair users who will (eventually) be unable to use the new pedestrian steps.

All that was ever needed on the slope were a couple of dismount gate points to calm speed and signs to redirect high-volume, high-speed commuter cyclists onto the parallel road route which BW and TfL mapped ages ago but have never promoted.

I wonder why?

I took part in TfL’s Cycling on Greenways and BW’s local cycling consultations.

They were appalling; I saw evidence from non-cyclists buried and BW had the word “dismount” completely edited out after a London Cycling activist shouted at us all afternoon.

They had asked for “solutions” but with a nice big cycling budget to spend there was a bit of a panic when I presented them with the design for a dismount gate together with a trial offer from a national manufacturer to make and install it for free.

Well, they did ask. Really, they did.

The Danbury Street Bridge fiasco is not about safe, sustainable transport.

It is just one politically correct example of thousands of local schemes spending tens or hundreds of millions keeping public employees occupied creating cycle paths and then “solving” the conflict they cause.

With some basic safety training and proper signs, cycles belong on roads, not weaving around vulnerable walkers and children.

HOWARD PIPER
Address supplied