Paul,
"Holland Park Avenue is still very beautiful as a tree lined urban boulevard despite all the traffic and it would have been fundamentally changed by this scheme with no net benefit to the environment."
I'm afraid you've been taken in by an "alternative fact" courtesy of Jeremy Clarkson. I would rather road be taken than the trees, but here are the actual three trees that would be replaced on Holland Park Avenue. "Tree" might not be the best descriptor for the third.
The real numbers show that this road has a very high casualty rate. It also lies on the travel lines between Imperial College's campuses. I wish Imperial's students could access a safe way to cycle between sites, as many of us enjoyed when we were at university.
Unfortunately the council had decided to ignore any such considerations of the human cost when they pandered to their base on Thursday.