At 6pm on Friday 12 July, all Londoners are invited to join the London Cycling Campaign protest ride from Tower Hill to Aldgate calling on the Mayor to provide dedicated space for cycling across the capital.

Protest ride details

Meet 6pm for 6.15pm start at Tower Hill (where it meets Minories) http://goo.gl/maps/8Czme

The protest ride will last approximately 20-30 minutes, including a brief stop at the junction of A11 Whitechapel Road and A1202 Commercial Street to pay respects at the place where last week's victim died

The ride will be marshalled by LCC staff and volunteers, and will finish at Altab Ali Park around 6.30pm

In the wake of two cycling fatalities in recent weeks - one in Aldgate, the other in Lewisham - the protest ride will remind the Mayor and local councils that Londoners cycling on busy roads need dedicated space to protect them from fast-moving and heavy motor traffic.

The protest ride takes place exactly a week after the death of a 20-year-old female student who was run over by a lorry while cycling along Whitechapel Road, part of the Mayor's Cycle Superhighway 2.

London Cycling Campaign is also supporting the vigil at City Hall from 5.30 pm in memory of recent lorry deaths, including the pedestrian killed by a lorry in Fulham on Monday.

The City Hall vigil has been called by the Action on Lorry Danger group including RoadPeace, Living Streets, CTC, British Cycling and LCC

Since the first designs for Superhighway 2 were put forward, we've repeatedly told the Mayor that this route – supposedly put in place to encourage more Londoners to cycle – fails to come anywhere near providing a safe or comfortable cycle route.

In a letter to Transport for London dated February 2011, before construction started, we said the project as planned should be halted, and funds should be spent improving flaws in the existing Cycle Superhighways and that Superhighway 2 should be redesigned a genuinely safe cycle route.

As far back as 2009, we put forward a Superhighways manifesto calling for the Mayor to make these commuter routes safe and inviting for novice cyclists, as well as experienced commuters.

Superhighway 2 follows the A11 trunk road, a busy multi-lane road used by high volumes of fast-moving motor traffic; however, despite being one of the Mayor's flagship commuter cycle routes, the section of Superhighway 2 from Aldgate to Bow roundabout provides no dedicated space for cycling.

Cyclists of all abilities, including children, are expected to jockey for position among lorries, cars, motorbikes, buses and taxis, with only a smattering of ineffective blue paint and a few bike symbols to protect them.

This week's victim is the third cyclist to die in collision with a lorry on or near the Superhighway 2, with Brian Dorling and Svitlana Tereschenko both killed at Bow roundabout in 2011.

In stark contrast to this section of Superhighway 2, proposals from Transport for London for the CS2 route extension from Bow roundabout to Stratford provide for wide cycle tracks in both directions, with a raised kerb to protect cyclists from motor traffic and junction treatments to reduce conflict between cyclists and motorists.

The wide tracks on Superhighway 2 from Bow to Stratford are to allow faster commuters to overtake slower cyclists comfortably.

This plan to provide safe and dedicated space for cycling makes the complete absence of space for cycling between Aldgate and Bow very difficult to comprehend.

Until the Mayor and Transport for London accept that on London's busiest roads clear space for cycling must be allocated, then cycling fatalities such as these will continue to happen regularly and cycling growth will be stifled.

We're calling on all Londoners to join our protest ride to tell the Mayor to design our city streets for cyclists of all abilities, so no more families suffer the heartbreak of losing a loved one as has happened so recently at Aldgate and in Lewisham.

A 60-year-old man run over by a bus while cycling in Stamford Hill earlier this week is still critically ill in hospital.