What’s wrong with how things are now?

Our key roads are choked with traffic - Salusbury, Harvist and Chamberlayne carry up to 13,000 cars a day on roads meant for no more than 2,000.

Traffic is backed-up on these roads most of the day, increasing congestion and leading to angry, aggressive driving.

Residents on these roads are exposed to undue noise, traffic danger and pollution. They find it harder to cross the street, drive or open their windows.

From 2019-2022, this resulted in over 290 traffic accidents in our community, according to a Brent Council study. The people most at risk from a road accident are the children and other pedestrians in our community, but they also represent a danger to us when cycling and driving.

This daily congestion and traffic is a blight on our community - it makes our public sapaces unpleasant, forces even more people into their car, and makes our community less safe, pleasant and healthy than it could be.

More pressingly, it creates a dangerous and unhealthy environment for our children when they’re walking around and crossing our roads.

Learn more about the issues we face in Brent’s healthy neighbourhood report for Queen’s Park

Why isn’t more being done?

The Brent council has selected Queen’s Park for street improvement. But local resident’s associations such as QPARA and the Kensal Rise Resident’s Assocation have been opposing the changes.

The recent response from the Queen’s Park Resident’s Association to the Brent proposal was a seven-page report on the driving impact - with not one mention of pedestrian safety.

Similarly, the KRRA response focuses almost entirely on car traffic impacts, giving little consideration of pedestrian or cyclist safety within Queens Park.

If they they think only drivers matter, it's no shock that they’ll oppose any plan to make walking and cycling safer in the neighbourhood. But our children are some of the most vulnerable road users, and they’re pedestrians.

Queen’s Park deserves a more thoughtful and inclusive approach to our street planning.

We think pedestrians matter, too.

Are you anti-car?

We drive, as do many families in Queen's Park.

However, we also recognize that two out of three households in Queen’s Park don’t own a car. This is predominantly a neighbourhood where people don’t use a car on a daily basis.

We aren’t against residents being able to drive, but we feel that those needs should be balanced with the safety and health of the other two-thirds of Queen's Park residents. Improvements to street safety benefit everyone, including drivers.

We’re ok with driving an extra block or two if it means a safer community.

What are you asking for?

We want to see more equity in how Queen’s Park thinks about the usage of its streets. We are all at various times pedestrians, drivers, and (maybe) cyclists.

The usage and design of our shared public spaces - our streets - should reflect this diversity of usage and ensure a safe and healthy space for all residents, regardless of what mode of transportation they’re using at the moment.

We believe that increasing the diversity of the voices answering Brent’s consultation is the right way to increase the equity of the outcome.