Letters: On yer bike

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Readers respond to Janet Street-Porter's disdain for the London cyclist (Getty Images)

On yer bike

If Janet Street Porter thinks that proper cycle lanes on just 15 out of 3,000km of London's main roads are such an offence, she ought to visit cities like New York, Berlin or Amsterdam, which are all far ahead of us in providing safe space for people on two wheels.

While on holiday she might learn that when road space is taken from general traffic people switch to public transport or cycling, or avoid pointless car journeys. Traffic has a tendency to evaporate, just as it will appear to fill any new road space provided.

Her attack on lethal road users would be best directed at dangerous drivers, who killed 64 pedestrians and 13 cyclists in 2014, the last year for which figures are available. Cyclists didn't kill anybody.

Street Porter ended her piece asking where the London Cycling Campaign got its claim that many more Londoners would like to cycle. Had she picked up the phone to ask them, I'm sure they would have pointed to surveys and studies over the past 15 years produced by Transport for London.

A little research can go a long way.

Tom Chance

London

Pedestrians should, I think, continue to use the pavement in the way that they have always been entitled to. It helps if one drifts about as if on the telephone.

Chris Noël

Ledbury

Growing pains

Please tell Matthew Norman that growing older means growing up and in the process recognising that the ‘simple truths’ you believed in are far from simple and often not true, but based more on perception than fact. Older people have more experience in reality than younger – how could they not? And the ‘purity’ of political belief does not always fade with time. My father was as fervently communist when he died as when he’d been as a young miner in Llantrissant.

Lou Morse

Animal Welfare

The Environment Secretary's decision to effectively deregulate farm animal welfare codes reminds me of Thatcher's deregulation of slaughterhouse waste. This led to the waste being fed back to cows (vegetarians for thousands of years) and the onset of BSE. Not only did this cause 120 human deaths but eventually cost billions in beef exports and new slaughterhouse controls. Do these politicians never learn?

Chris Copeland

Belper

Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk