Yet another cycling death is the moment for another mass protest calling for meaningful change, argues the London Cycling Campaign

On Monday we heard the awful news that there had been yet another fatal crash in London on a main road where there's no dedicated space for cycling.

Only the day before, the traffic-free RideLondon event had attracted tens of thousands of participants who were hungry to cycle in protected space.

Sadly, as soon as the weekend festival of cycling closed, it became 'business as usual' and those choosing the bicycle as their mode of transport faced an unacceptably high risk of injury and death.

The man who died in Archway, 67-year-old retired GP Clive Richards, was the fourth victim in the capital in just a few weeks, with each fatal collision taking place at a location where cyclists are forced to share the streets with fast-moving heavy motor traffic.

The London Cycling Campaign responded to these earlier deaths by organising two protest rides – one at Aldgate and another in Holborn, where thousands of ordinary people joined with us to vent their anger and frustration at the continued lack of action from the mayor, Boris Johnson.

On Monday 2 September, we're asking you to take part in a third 'space for cycling' protest ride to tell the mayor that it's time for change.

Our ride will meet in Jubilee Gardens from 6pm (for a 6.30pm start), and will pass through Parliament Square at the precise time that the House of Commons debates the future of cycling in the UK.

MPs will be debating Get Britain Cycling, a report that proposes a raft of measures to make cycling safe and inviting for everyone, and to which we (along with many others) contributed earlier this year.

The report concludes that strong political leadership is needed to bring about change, and we call on the mayor of London and the prime minister to provide this leadership.

We believe that high-quality Dutch-style segregated tracks, along with cyclist-specific traffic lights to remove conflicts, are the only way to truly protect cyclists on the busiest streets.

The mayor's Vision for Cycling, published in March, supports the principles of providing space for cycling on main roads and, where there isn't space, reducing motor traffic speeds and removing through-motor-traffic.

We want to believe the mayor and his cycling commissioner, Andrew Gilligan, are sincere in their pronouncements, but there's evidence that powerful forces within Transport for London are not in accord with their vision.

In recent years, countless urban improvement schemes have been vetoed by Transport for London, which claims there is a paramount need to maintain motor traffic capacity.

Its traffic-modelling software effectively blocks any project that aims to reallocate road space away from private motor vehicles to bicycles and other more efficient transport modes.

This attitude contradicts a compelling body of evidence from London, the UK, the Netherlands, the EU, and even the USA that says that – far from causing motor traffic congestion – installing high-quality cycling facilities increases the capacity of streets to move people around.

It's desperately sad that so many urban improvement projects (Aldgate, Blackfriars, Elephant & Castle and Vauxhall, to name just a few in central London, are vetoed because it's not accepted that people can switch from one mode of transport to another.

Because of this blindness to behaviour change, we in the UK are missing out on the vast societal benefits of sustainable transport, including increased economic prosperity.

Whether the inertia comes from the mayor or his civil servants is irrelevant: the buck stops with Boris and it's imperative we tell him how important it is to allocate safe space for cycling.

If you don't live in London, why not organise your own ride, just as others have done in the past?

And if you can take part, please join the thousands of others expected on our peaceful 'space for cycling' protest ride on 2 September – it's never been more important to tell our politicians how strongly we feel.

Mike Cavenett is communications manager for the London Cycling Campaign