Campaign success! Fatal Ambleside Avenue/Mitcham Lane junction to be modernised

Some great news!  The junction of Ambleside Avenue and Mitcham Lane is finally to get its much needed overhaul!

Since 2012, Streatham Green Party has been campaigning with local people to make the junction of Ambleside Avenue and Mitcham Lane safe, after a series of collisions and fatalities.

We initially launched a campaign which included a demo with parents and children from St Leonard's Primary School who use the crossing, after a number of other near misses on the crossing at the junction. It received some press coverage which you can read here.

We have since continued to record and highlight the collisions there and met with Transport for London to press for action and highlight the urgency.

We eventually won a review of the junction in 2013.

However, it then seemed that the Mayor of London was backtracking on his plans to make changes to dangerous junctions, as he scaled down his 'Better Junctions Programme'. So we continued to push TfL until they made some promises to make changes.

We had been told that there would have to be another fatality of serious injury before action was taken, and sadly that happened in late 2014.

850 local people then signed a petition online and on paper.  We collected signatures at Streatham Green market when we ran our Christmas street stall. Local shops also helped out as well as Tenderlinks Day Nursery.  And in January 2015, we presented the petition to City Hall.

A year ago, TfL finally came forward with their plans to make the junction safer.  And these will now be implemented with work starting later this month.

The plans include modernising the street lighting to improve visibility, installing advanced stop lines for cyclists, introducing a new 1.5 metre-wide cycle lane on Ambleside Avenue,  modernising the traffic signals to include pedestrian countdown technology, installing cycle safety mirrors on traffic signals at the junction to increase visibility of cyclists, renewing footways for pedestrians, realigning and widening pedestrian crossings and resurfacing the carriageway at the junction.

The work is planned to begin on 25th July. 

Thanks to everyone who helped with the campaign!

For more on this junction and the history of the campaign see the following:

http://streathamnews.blogspot.co.uk/p/campaign-to-make-junction-at-mitcham.html
http://streathamnews.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/kids-demo-at-junction-of-ambleside.html
http://streathamnews.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/children-have-near-misses-at-junction.html
http://www.streathamguardian.co.uk/news/9977414.Parents_call_for_junction_to_be_made_safe/?ref=mr
http://streathamnews.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/another-collision-at-junction-of.html
http://streathamnews.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/review-won-at-junction-of-mitcham-lane.html
http://streathamnews.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/countdown-crossing-at-ambleside-avenue.html
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/make-the-junction-of-mitcham-lane-and-ambleside-avenue.html