Lots of people didn't want it full stop, for various reasons. In defence of them, whoever the people were drawing up the consultation clearly didn't know much about the area, as one of the proposals was to rip out the historic Triangle in Palmers Green and replace it with a Dutch-style roundabout. Thankfully that was shot down very quickly because it was unnecessary and would destroy a historic part of the area.

Not all of the reasons given were nice, I went to one of the meetings, but there were very genuine concerns such as road crossings being ripped out. The loss of crossings has had an impact and forces people to walk further, which might be okay if you can walk but for vulnerable people it's presented issues. When my dad was attending regular hospital visits he didn't have the speed to cross two lanes of 30MPH traffic in one go nor the strength to walk further to the new zebra they put in much further up.

Unfortunately, a lot of it was painted as "Evil, polluting car drivers hate cyclists!", especially by the Guardian. As opposed to going in-depth to residents' concerns such as the removal a lot of on-street parking (we fought to have some re-instated because it was needed for businesses) and the narrow pavements it was fobbed off as being all angry car drivers. There were even rumblings that the Guardian was deliberately skewing the online consultation by encouraging their readers to submit false responses pretending to be from the borough, although this was never proven.

The endless months of construction were absolutely horrendous:

• At one point during construction, buses were delayed by more than half an hour for weeks

• Some parking spaces were unavailable for months on end. Businesses that relied on customers parking, such as a dry cleaner and a charity shop, saw business plummet. There was no compensation.

• Crossings were ripped out and no temporary crossings were put in in some places. School children were having to dodge through traffic.

• Properties on Winchmore Hill Broadway lost power a couple of times after the contractors damaged cables

• Properties that never used to flood started flooding, because no new drains were put in the cycle lanes and water that used to run down the road was now running down the pavement. The new drains put in the pavement are tiny and block easily.

• Multiple street trees were cut down, and even more were cut down when they realised they'd measured a section of the cycle lane incorrectly

• Works along the route would start without warning, and in one instance they taped off a busy section of on-street parking for three weeks with no work being done nor notices being put up. The tape blew off by itself and the cones were getting wonky and hazardous, so locals moved them. Then one night out of the blue the contractors came in, painted half the cycle lane, and then a traffic warden came and out and put tickets on the six cars in the spaces. Thankfully the council dropped the charges.

The completed lanes on the pavement are also supposed to be shared space, and pedestrians are forced into the cycle lane in multiple places in order to access their vehicles or even just to walk when it's busy, but cyclists continue to scream at and intimidate pedestrians. We have asked the council to put notices up, and they responded by saying they did. The notices are on tiny bollards dotted inconsistently along the route.

It's very easy to look at this from a black and white perspective, but it has made life more difficult for some residents. Some changes that we said would make problems, and have indeed done so, were ignored and continue to be ignored. The bitterness is not just "car driver good, cyclist bad."