The Hoxton Chronicle. 074 Lord Leslie Hore- Belisha

On Pitfield Street, a zebra crossing is marked out in broad white stripes, offering a safe pedestrian crossing leading to the Shopping Tree grocery store. The crossing is announced by black and white posts and flashing yellow globe lights commonly known as Belisha Beacons. They are named after Lord Leslie Hore-Belisha (1893-1957), who introduced the signalled crossings to the highways of the UK as Minister of Transport between 1934 and 1937.

Belisha served as Minister of Transport during a time when car driving was becoming increasingly popular yet staggeringly dangerous. In 1934, the UK experienced a record number of road casualties, with 7,343 deaths and 231,603 injuries reported; half of these casualties were pedestrians, and three-quarters occurred in built-up areas. For perspective on this level of slaughter, comparative figures for 2021 were 1,558 killed and 128,000 injured, despite a vastly increased number of vehicles and road miles travelled.

The introduction of the Belisha Beacon faced fierce opposition from drivers who viewed it as an affront to an Englishman's freedom of the highway. It was the first automatic electronic signal ever used on British roads, and they found it offensive to human dignity to accept guidance on behaviour from an inanimate mechanical device. Despite the opposition and campaigns of vandalism, Belisha pressed on with his transport innovations, rewriting the highway code for a new era, introducing a compulsory driving test and imposing 30mph speed limits on urban roads.

The driving lobby received a boost to their desire for much faster traffic speeds from post-war town planners who regarded speeding up urban transport as essential to their modernising agenda. The need was so compelling that they seriously proposed demolishing and rebuilding almost all of London’s East End to accommodate a new, more efficient and fast-flowing highway network of arterial roads and parkways serving tidily planned functional city zones.

The 1940s Planners’ scheme proposed a significant widening of Pitfield Street to connect a traffic gyratory plaza at Old Street to a ‘Sub-arterial’ dual carriageway ring road alongside the Regents Canal to the north. As the Hoxton Chronicle has frequently noted, economic reality and popular opposition prevented the implementation of these plans.

In 2008, London’s Mayor Ken Livingstone initiated the development of London’s Cycle Superhighways. Twelve radial routes were proposed, with routes numbered as on a clock face. Instead of becoming a priority route for cars, Pitfield Street was designated as part of Cycle Superhighway No. 1, a 16-mile route connecting Ponders End to the City of London. Along the route, junctions were redesigned to prioritise the needs of cyclists and pedestrians. Where possible, road widths were reduced and pavement areas increased, and areas of the carriageway were raised to provide places for level road crossings. In the morning and evening rush hours, an ever-increasing flow of bicycles, electric bicycles, and cargo bikes now hurry along the street in response to these innovations. Safer cycling has become the preferred means of transport, particularly among young Londoners.

Pitfield Street is a much more pleasant place than the post-war planners proposed, and the danger from cars has been significantly reduced. However, the crossing illuminated by Belisha Beacons is still required as protection for pedestrians from the flow of rushing cyclists rather than the speeding motorists Belisha legislated to control.