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A central London bike route that sparked a fierce battle between cyclists and taxi drivers is set to be saved after being overwhelmingly backed in a public consultation.

Almost 80 per cent of the 15,000 people who responded to Camden council said they wanted the segregated east-west trial route through Bloomsbury to be retained.

The council today made the provisional results available to the Standard "in the interests of transparency" after attracting the biggest response ever to a single consultation.

It insisted that "no conclusions or decisions" had been made but the scale of the support for making the two cycle lanes permanent will prove hard to ignore when councillors make a decision early next year.

A narrow two-way segregated cycle lane already ran along the northern side of Torrington Place, Byng Place, Tavistock Square and Tavistock Place, giving riders a safe route between Gray's Inn Road and Tottenham Court Road.

Last year the council decided to convert the lane to eastbound cyclists only and add a westbound lane at the expense of a two-way traffic layout.

This infuriated cab drivers, who said it increased congestion and pollution in surrounding streets.

The London Taxi Drivers Association, in a petition that gathered 217 signatures, called for a new layout that kept cycle lanes but reinstated two-way traffic.

The London Cycling Campaign, which helped mobilise thousands of cyclists in defence of the lanes, accused the LTDA of a "calculated attack on cycling infrastructure" and said the trial had the benefit of reducing traffic in the area by 3,500 vehicles a day.

The safe route passes through the UCL campus and the university also backed its retention.

Camden said that the 15,000-plus responses had 78 per cent in favour of making the trial layout permanent, with 21 per cent against. Of the 1,387 residents to respond, 61 per cent were in favour.

Councillor Phil Jones, Cabinet member for regeneration, transport and planning, said: “The impressive number of responses received demonstrates the importance that many people, of differing viewpoints, hold with regards to the street layout in this location.

“We are now in the process of fully collating and analysing the responses.

Due to the high number it will take officers some time to fully collate and analyse all the views and comments received before we can share the detailed results more widely and use them to inform our final decision.”

The trial layout will remain in place until the cabinet decision.