This year's Healthy Streets Scorecard, the annual league table produced by a coalition of health and transport charities, has been published.
There's a sliver of good news for Tower Hamlets: we have nudged up from 10th to ninth place among London's boroughs, our score rising from 5.74 to 5.84 out of 10.
But look closer and the picture is less rosy.
According to the Scorecard, that small climb was driven almost entirely by our figures improving relative to other boroughs – chiefly a falling cyclist casualty rate – and not by a single new scheme on the ground.
We moved up the table because the numbers moved, not because the council built anything.
And it follows a bruising 2025, when the same Scorecard recorded Tower Hamlets suffering the biggest fall of any borough, down four places.
The fundamentals in the borough are the envy of London: near-universal 20mph limits, great public transport access, and one of the lowest rates of car ownership in the country.
Yet on the measures the council actually controls, we have simply stopped.
Low-traffic neighbourhood coverage is unchanged, protected cycle track sits at under 7%, and School Streets cover just 33 of our 99 schools – with none added since 2022.
Contrast that with our neighbours.
According to the Scorecard, Newham climbed to seventh by putting down more cycleways and adding School Streets, while Hackney stays near the very top.
The difference is simple: their councils keep delivering, and ours doesn't.
We know the council has spent years, and hundreds of thousands of pounds, fighting to rip out three Bethnal Green low-traffic neighbourhoods – a plan the Court of Appeal ruled unlawful in January.
In our view, that time and money would be far better spent building the network residents were promised.
So we're asking Tower Hamlets Council to act.
Unblock Cycleway 37 from Victoria Park to the Isle of Dogs, which Transport for London says has stalled awaiting the council's consents.
Expand School Streets.
And refresh a cycling strategy untouched since 2016.
Our children breathe some of London's worst air: they deserve a council that makes their streets liveable.
- Oli Rake is a Tower Hamlets Wheelers campaigner, the borough branch of the London Cycling Campaign.
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