ROAD humps and bus and cycle lanes are being ripped out by a self-proclaimed motorists’ champion who has dared to challenge Ken Livingstone’s policy of discouraging cars in London.

Drivers are even being allowed to park on the pavement in the London Borough of Barnet, the inspiration for a growing band of authorities that are turning back the tide of anti-car measures engulfing Britain’s towns and cities.

Traffic is now flowing uninterrupted on roads where drivers once had to negotiate a dozen humps. Cars that had to funnel into a single file to avoid a bus lane are now cruising again on two lanes in each direction. Cycle lanes that always appeared empty to the drivers queuing beside them have been obliterated.

But Brian Coleman, the author of the changes as Barnet’s executive member for the environment, is facing a ferocious backlash from the combined forces of the Mayor of London and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (Rospa).

Mr Livingstone fears that the approach in the Conservative-controlled borough will spread across the capital and wreck his policy of pushing motorists out of their cars and on to buses. The neighbouring borough of Enfield is already following Barnet by removing humps and Kensington and Chelsea is removing bus lanes.

The Mayor has accused Mr Coleman of endangering children’s lives by cutting funding for cycle proficiency schemes and bulldozing measures designed to reduce traffic speed. He has instructed officials at Transport for London to challenge Barnet and try to block the £8 million that it gives to the borough each year.

Mr Livingstone has even contributed an article to the local newspaper denouncing Mr Coleman. He wrote: “The transport agenda being driven through in Barnet is recklessly anti-public transport, antipedestrian and anti-cycling.

“Barnet has become a laboratory experiment for some very ill thought-out policies that, in the case of cycling training for kids, must surely be dangerous. Councillor Coleman and Barnet should urgently go back to the drawing board.”

Rospa has produced a special report condemning Mr Coleman’s flagship scheme at a notorious bottleneck on Finchley Road at Temple Fortune. The report says that the scheme, which involves removing humps and narrowing the pavement to create extra lanes for traffic, will result in a “major safety disbenefit” and should be scrapped.

Mr Coleman insists that the scheme is supported by most residents, who are fed up with having to queue on the road.

“My whole approach is to get traffic moving on the borough’s principal roads and then no one rat-runs down the side streets,” he said.

“The traffic engineers who promote road humps are like the local-authority architects of the 1960s who thought high-rise flats were the answer to our housing problems.”

Mr Coleman admits he has cut spending on cycling proficiency, but says: “How could I justify £20,000 on cycle training when we have had to shut two libraries and an old people’s day centre?”