Get ready for racing on Regent's Street as a new Tour of Britain route comes to London!

It's no secret, I love the Tour of Britain!  I like the smaller scale of it compared to the Grand Tours of Europe, the opportunity for emerging riders to taste success, and of course the route through green and pleasant Great British Countryside.

But I've always felt the final stage - right here in London - has always been a bit of a let down.  Yes, you get the finish line photo of racing in front of Buckingham Palace, but the rest of the day is spent riding up and down the Embankment and Upper Ground which makes for a dull stage that is not very exciting for spectators.

So I'm thrilled to see that this year's final stage has a new route in our beautiful capital - and it's all because of London's everyday cyclists!  Because of construction work on the Embankment to build the new East / West Cycle Superhighway the Tour can't ride there.  So in 2015 it is adopting a new route, which promises fast down-hills on Haymarket, tight corners around Trafalgar Square, and racing up and down magnificent Regent's Street which is, in my opinion, the most beautiful street in the world (ESPECIALLY when it is closed to traffic!)

The final stage comes to London this Sunday the 13th of September, heralding the end of a fantastic summer of cycle racing.  The start and finish line is just south of Piccadilly Circus, and the riders will make a three-pointed loop of Regent's Street, Whitehall and the Strand, passing some of London's most famous buildings and attractions along the way.  It is free to spectate and makes for a fun day out for all the family.  The riders are fast, but you might even catch a glimpse of favourites Sir Bradley Wiggins, Mark Cavendish, Alex Dowsett and Andre Greipel, or even local boy Tao Geoghegan Hart from Hackney racing for British Cycling's development team.

Seeing as the stage is hosted and paid for by Transport for London (did anyone check the balance of the cycling budget recently?) Londoners might as well get their money's worth and have a nice day out of it...

All the details of the London stage can be found on the Aviva Tour of Britain website here.  The beautiful picture of Piccadilly Circus featured in this post is by artist Will Barras and was specially commissioned by cycling website Rouleur, where it is available for purchase.

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Utrecht welcomes the Tour de France but what's the legacy for a city that already cycles?

It's a year since the world's greatest cycle race kicked off in Britain and 'Tour fever' swept the country.  From the hills of the north York moors, to the streets of London, millions turned out hoping to catch a glimpse of their favourite Tour de France rider flash past.

Thousands of spectators packed the tiny Essex village of Finchingfield to watch Le Tour pass by in 2014.  With roads closed for miles around, most arrived by bicycle (including me!)

Everything has to have a "legacy" these days (thank you, London 2012) and the Grand Depart in Britain was no exception. Echoing last year's route, members of the public can now emulate their cycling heroes and ride Britain's hills alongside pro riders in the Tour de Yorkshire, encouraging more people to take to their bikes.  There was even a Knighthood for Grand Depart organiser Gary Verity.

This Saturday the Tour de France is heading north once more, this time starting in the Dutch city of Utrecht.  Home to canals, festivals and Miffy the bunny, it's a compact and charming university city stuffed with cycle tracks and people on bikes.  So, in a city that already has a mainstream cycling culture, will the Grand Depart be all of that big deal for the Dutch?

'Cyclists' riding in Utrecht, where the Tour de France will begin this weekend.

I've heard cycle campaigners on both sides of the equation disparaging sports cycling in mass cycling countries.  On one hand, the argument goes that sports cycling is all well and good but it is not the "right kind" of journey by bike that cities so desire.  On the other, some dedicated roadies discredit cycling provision in case it detracts from their right to ride as quickly as they can.  I can see merits in both arguments, but on the ground in successful cycling cities the reality is very different.

Sports cycling is alive and well in the Netherlands (as multi-time world champion and Olympic gold medallist Marianne Vos and 2014 Tour de France stage winner Lars Boom attest) and there is no shortage of people pulling on their lycra on a Saturday morning to head out for a long spin in to the country.

The Dutch use bikes like we use cars and buses; it is an everyday and ordinary activity.  So it seems perfectly natural that their language makes a distinction between 'being a person who uses a bike' and 'being a cyclist'. A fietser is someone who uses a fiets (a bicycle) whereas someone with all the kit and the fancy sports bike is called wielrenner, literally a 'wheel runner'.  When the Dutch say cyclists don't wear helmets or special gear they mean it sincerely as 'fietser' is only ever a description of someone using a Dutch bike going about their day in a very ordinary way.  This is not to say sports cyclists don't exist in the Netherlands and people aren't out there in all their kit putting in the miles.



As this video by Mark from the always excellent BicycleDutch blog demonstrates, the cycle tracks of the Netherlands are home to plenty of wielrenner.  The reason you don't see them so much in bike blogs and photographs about the country is that they are somewhat obscured by the everyday and ordinary fietser all around them, much as Britain's sports cyclists are overwhelmed by the everyday and ordinary car journeys going on around them.

I can't help but feel that if we had the same linguistic distinction here in the UK, perhaps Transport for London wouldn't have dipped in to the cycling safety budget to the tune of £6million in order to host the Tour last year, instead of spending that money on making roads safer for bike riders of every hue.  (Rumours abound that TfL bosses, keen to spend the cycle budget on anything other than actual changes on the road, are keen to lure the Grand Depart to London again soon)  If we had the same linguistic distinction between cyclists and cyclists as the Dutch do, perhaps there might be a clearer understanding of what is needed to bring about those everyday and ordinary journeys by bike? 

Utrecht is a beautiful energetic cycling city and I have no doubt it will give Le Tour a fantastic send off this weekend, heralding a summer of brilliant cycle racing.  It would be interesting to see - once the professional wielrenner have wheeled out of town - how Utrecht carries on being an everyday and ordinary successful cycling city; it could be a 'legacy lesson' for us all.

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As the LTDA goes to war with cyclists, we ask just who runs London? Is this a Cycle Superhighway stitch up?!

Unless you've been living under a rock it won't have escaped your attention that Mayor of London Boris Johnson announced on Tuesday his intention to proceed with ambitious plans to build a "Crossrail for Bikes"; two new segregated Cycle Superhighways across central London, running from north to south and east to west. But those plans are seriously threatened due to the self-serving actions of two business groups, who could jeapordise the democratic balance of Transport for London's Board in the process.

Johnson's announcement follows one of Transport for London's largest ever consultations on a project, with a staggering 21,500 responses. So many people wanted to respond, they extended the length of the consultation to allow everyone time to air their views. But the results are conclusive; even when you discount responses automatically generated by the London Cycling Campaign's website, some 73% support the more contentious east / west route running along the Embankment. 

This reflects a recent YouGov poll of Londoners of all backgrounds, the majority (64%) of which supported the cycleway plans even if it involved taking a lane away from traffic. It's also worth remembering of course that the consultation is not a referendum on the proposals; the scheme is the brain-child of our directly elected Conservative Mayor, who is mandated by the population of London to deliver his manifesto promises, of which the Cycle Superhighways were one. So far, so democratic, right?

Within minutes of the announcement on Tuesday, the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association let it be known they were furious that the Cycle Superhighways were going ahead and planned to lodge a Judicial Review. Here's what Steve McNamara, the LTDA's Secretary, had to tell Vanessa Feltz on her BBC London radio show on Tuesday morning: 

"It’s an abomination!... ...The ideal route would have been to run it along the Southbank, in front of the old LWT [London Weekend Television] building all the way along there, it would have been lovely, it would have been out of the way, it would have been ideal... ... We’re against it, lots of businesses are against it.  We are considering a Judicial Review against the scheme in conjunction with Canary Wharf and others." 

McNamara went on to give his opinions as to exactly why the Cycle Superhighways - which represent a tiny percentage of London's roads - were a BAD THING, especially if they benefit CYCLISTS:

"...they all try and tell you this myth, that it is wealthy people driving around in cars that we need to combat, and that it is the poor man on the cycle.  And of course it’s not.  What we’ve got now is this metropolitan elite who can afford to live in the centre of the city, afford to cycle a few hundred yards or half a mile to work, they’re the people campaigning for this.  The vast majority of Londoners, working Londoners, business Londoners – the majority of your listeners who are coming in from the suburbs and trying to move around this city – are going to be severely disadvantaged by this scheme...

 

We’re the only people in London who can actually stand up for working Londoners, us and a few businesses who have come together.  As I say, Canary Wharf – a massive business that employs tens of thousands of people at the Wharf - they’re concerned about their people getting to work, we’re concerned about moving people around the city, lots of freight companies are very, very concerned about it, they’ve got to make deliveries.  London is a working city, it’s got to be able to work the 23 hours a day when them cyclists are not down on the Embankment – and they’re not.... ..it’s madness.  They must see it, and we’re hoping the Courts will see it."  [Click here for a full transcript of his interview]

I think it is fair to say that the LTDA has gone to war against cyclists.  In November 2013 - the same month six London cyclists died on our roads in just two weeks - they gave the Evening Standard cooked up footage which claimed to show the majority of London cyclists run red lights.  

 

Then, in March 2014 their Director wrote this frankly bizarre editorial in their member's newsletter, claiming that cycling is "bringing this city to its knees":

And now, in 2015, they're coming out all guns blazing against the Cycle Superhighway project, threatening legal action and mouthing off to anyone who will listen.  But there's more to it than that, unfortunately.  I'll deal with McNamara's ridiculous assertions firstly, but please do read on to the end because what happens next is even more ridiculous...

The idea that the LTDA is a paragon of working class, salt-of-the-earth virtue is preposterous: this is an organisation that gives discounts to its members for country hotel leisure breaks, golf clubs and designer glasses. (And cheap legal representation to those facing driving bans who accumulated too many points on their license)  Most of their members will be earning around £60,000 a year (that's twice the national average).  

Let's contrast that with the 13 people who were killed cycling in London last year: two teachers, two students, a ventilation engineer, a conference organiser, a pharmacist, a hospital porter, a bus depot worker, a solicitor, an IT worker, one person unknown and a security guard. Hardly what I'd call a "metropolitan elite".

And were those who were killed cycling "a few hundred yards or half a mile to work"?  Of course not.  The majority of all cycle journeys in London originate in the fringes of zone 2 and 3 and make their way to the centre and back again. Commuting patterns like my own journey to and from work which is 10 miles, versus the city-wide average of 15 miles (That's 15 miles regardless of which mode of transport you use).

Proposals for Victoria Embankment

Taxis ferry about businessmen on expense accounts and unwitting tourists for the majority of the time, and are out of reach for most ordinary working Londoners.  The last time I took a taxi from Heathrow to central London it cost nearly £100 (an awful journey during which the driver stopped his car to scream obscenities at a woman on a pedestrian crossing and deigned to share with me his abhorrently racist views for the duration of the trip).  The Piccadilly Line can do the same journey - opinion free - for about a fiver.

As for sticking the Cycle Superhighway south of the river (presumably because Black Cab drivers don't go there) frankly, why should they?  For a starter the whole point of the project is to get people by bicycle to centres of work quickly and safely.  London's bridges are already a danger spots for cyclists, but to put it in language the LTDA would understand: around half of all the vehicles on Blackfriars Bridge during the peak hour are bicycles (that's one bike every two seconds) Are you sure putting more bikes on the bridges to get south of the river is such a good idea?

To put things in a clearer light, and to completely discredit McNamara's idea that cycle journeys are somehow unnecessary and get in the way of "working London", let's look at some actual statistics.  

 Via As Easy As Riding A Bike, with thanks.

According to Transport for London's latest data, taxis make up 2% of all inner London road users.  Bicycles make up 4%.  Cycle rates in the same area have doubled over the past 10 years, whilst journeys by car have consistently declined.  Across greater London there are approximately 650,000 cycle journeys every day - they can't all be Bradley Wiggins wannabes making laps of Richmond Park.

The LTDA's stance is astonishing.  That they'd channel so much effort and resource in to giving such a knee-jerk and provocative reaction to a scheme that will cover a tiny percentage of London's roads (whilst their members lose massive market share to credit-card accepting mini-cab firms and book-by-app discount drivers Uber) is sad to watch. If I was an LTDA member I'd be telling them to pick their battles.  As a cyclist I'd laugh if this wasn't so serious.

Uber take a pop at the LTDA's pre-historic attitude 

via their Twitter account @Uber_LDN

A Judicial Review could see the Cycle Superhighway project delayed by up to 14 weeks, and it's TfL's fare-paying customers who will pick up the bill for fighting it (you know, ordinary working Londoners).  But the madness doesn't stop there.

The LTDA's McNamara said they "are considering a Judicial Review against the scheme in conjunction with Canary Wharf." You'll remember that the Canary Wharf Group were behind an anonymous briefing filled with untruths about the Cycle Superhighways which was distributed to politicians and business leaders late last year.  They've also paid for a lobbyist to tour the political party conferences to try and drum up opposition to the scheme.  Their strategic adviser, Howard Dawber, has appeared on television and radio claiming the project would be bad for their business and has attended numerous stake holder planning meetings.

And this is where things get ridiculous.

If a Judicial Review doesn't materialise, next Wednesday the Board of Transport for London will meet to decide whether to fund the Cycle Superhighway project or not.  This is not just a case of rubber-stamping the Mayor's plans.  As Cyclists In The City points out, they've picked over cycling plans in minute detail before.
But two members of the Board have a direct conflict of interest, and it would be a democratic failure were they to be allowed to participate in the funding decision...

Peter Anderson sits on the Board, and is also the Finance Director for.. ..Canary Wharf Group. 
Bob Oddy sits on the Board, and is also the Deputy General Secretary of... ..the LTDA!  

The LTDA's Bob Oddy, above, and Canary Wharf Group's Peter Anderson, below.

In the long term I would ask - considering there's more of us on the roads every day than there are of them - why taxi drivers are represented on TfL's Board when cyclists are not.  In the short term I'd ask this: what will the Mayor do to ensure that those whose employers have been actively lobbying against this scheme are totally excluded from the process which will decide its future?

London's cycling community has fought long and hard and waited for many years for this: just ONE safe segregated cycle route across our city.  This project cannot be scuppered by members of the Board who no longer have a right to be involved in it.  If Anderson and Oddy think they can turn up at the Board after all their companies have done they've got another thing coming.

Transport for London's Board meeting takes place at 10AM on Wednesday 4th Feb at City Hall, committee room 4.  It is open to the public and the Board papers are available online to review.

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Never mind "cyclists stay back", what about "drivers, watch for cyclists"?

They're big, they're yellow, they're angry and they're everywhere.  "Cyclists! Stay back!" they shout, and they seem to be stuck on the back (or even the side) of just about every working vehicle in London.

The ubiquitous yellow safety stickers first appeared on lorries as a warning to cyclists that they had massive blind spots, and slipping down their sides was a potentially fatal thing to do. But when Transport for London began requiring every contracted vehicle to also sport the stickers, they began to appear on vehicles ranging from-mini buses to ordinary cars; vehicles which are hampered not by blind spots but by the driver's failure to look.  Peter Walker of the Guardian explains very well just why these stickers seem particularly impertinent to cyclists.

There was uproar last summer as the yellow menace spread, and Transport for London agreed to begin replacing the stickers with more gently worded warnings to "avoid passing this vehicle on the inside".  But I can only assume the replacement stickers are lost in the post somewhere as just last night I saw what looked to be brand new "stay back" stickers on the rear window of two different taxis.

Popular cycling website Road.cc turned their hand to sticker making and came up with these "Cyclists! Stay Awesome!" stickers, and I can appreciate the humour: too often it seems that signs shouting at people on bikes lurk around every corner.  Cyclists! Stay Back! Cyclists! Dismount! Cyclists! Stop at red! Cyclists! Proceed directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect £200!

So I was really happy to see the below sign on the exit gates of the Crossrail station construction site at Bond Street, which is busy with lorries day in and day out.  The message is bold, the message is simple, the message makes sense: "Drivers! Watch for cyclists!"



Maybe I bear a two-wheeled bias, but I'd like to see a lot more of these around town.  In fact, I have a proposal to make: I'll agree to anyone slapping a "Cyclists! Stay back!" marker on the back of their vehicle so long as they also agree to stick "Driver! Watch for cyclists!" on their steering wheel.  Seems like a fair deal to me, don't you think?

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Policy lag (or why bike lanes will be crap for a while yet)

Mark from As Easy As Riding a Bike blog tweeted a screen grab from Streetview recently of a newly painted bike lane in Horsham with the caption "Where that Department for Transport 'cycling money' is going. Brand new (2014) cycle 'infrastructure' painted in Horsham with Local Sustainable Transport Fund cash".  It doesn't take a rocket scientist - let alone a road engineer - to work out that this is crap:

This shouldn't just make cyclist's blood boil. Not only is at best unusable and at worst downright dangerous, it's also a complete waste of tax payer's cash; something we are frequently reminded is in short supply these days.

However Horsham is not alone in splashing the cash (and the paint) around.  Here's a shot I recently took in London's shiny new Olympic Park.  This road layout is little more than a year or two old, and yet contains poorly painted sub-standard bike lanes which really help no one and serve no purpose:



There's a faction of cycle advocates who would say it is not worth asking for cycle infrastructure at all, because all you get is nonsense like this.  I can empathise with their position - the internet is filled with pages and pages of examples just as bad as this (or worse).

I've argued before that you need three things to make successful cycling cities:

• Political Will
• Money
• Design knowledge

And in the above cases I would strongly argue that it is the latter - design knowledge - which is lacking.  There are plenty of road engineers out there who don't have a clue how to accommodate cyclists in their designs, but there are plenty more who would like to do so but are nervous from straying from the manual.

In UK road design circles innovation cowers in the shadow of liability, perhaps understandably when you consider that it is people's safety potentially at stake.  As a consequence most of the space between buildings is filled in like a "Paint by Numbers" picture, fitting in whatever the manual says is appropriate.  
Busy road with lots of vehicles?  There's a pre-defined solution for that.  
Quiet cul-de-sac with heavy pedestrian activity?  There's a pre-defined solution for that, too.  Call it "tick box urbanism", if you like.

The trouble is that most streets take a few years to get from the drawing board to reality, and in that time I would argue the aspiration of cycle campaigners has evolved whilst the guidance has struggled to keep up.  In just a few short years in London we've gone from a situation where campaigners (and campaigns) could not even decide whether they wanted cycle provision or not, to a much broader consensus with far more ambitious aims.  The London Cycling Campaign and others are now asking for - and getting - high quality, European-style separated infrastructure.

How wide do you want your spanking new bike tracks?

Transport for London have been quick to get their design skills up to date (see the Cycle Superhighways proposed for central London and the construction work currently ongoing around the Oval) whereas some of our local borough authorities are much further behind the curve.

And here's the trap. For those behind the times who are still following guidelines to the letter, there's a real policy lag.  As has been remarked elsewhere, not all of the guidelines designers and engineers are employing are particularly effective at prescribing environments suitable for cyclists of all ages and abilities.  Whilst there has been much in recent years to help make streets more attractive, there has been less about improving the actual subjective experience of riding a bike.

This policy lag - the inability of the paperwork to keep up with the aspiration - will ensure that for every fantastic new cycle track built over the next few years there's going to be plenty of crap, as well.

Further reading:

Rachel Aldred: what's wrong with place and movement hierarchies?
As Easy As Riding a Bike: when will design guidance think of cycling as something for all?
A View From The Cycle Path: 3 types of Cycle Safety


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What next for London's Cycle Superhighways?

The official consultation on the Mayor of London's ambition to build two new separated Cycle Superhighways across the city has come to an end, but those who are against the plans are still making their case strongly behind closed doors.

Transport for London received over 20,000 consultation responses, one of their highest response rates ever.  Of those, approximately 80% are said to be in favour.  Transport commissioner Sir Peter Hendy has hinted that TfL will listen to all concerns raised, and will publish revisions to their designs in approximately two months "that will work for everybody."

Cyclists make their concerns known in May's Space4Cycling protest.

Talking with the Evening Standard's correspondent Matthew Beard, Hendy said:
“One of the characteristics of this is that it’s highly emotional. I think the support for the scheme from the cyclists and the objections from the businesses are both heartfelt.  For one side to represent that the other has no case is false.”

However Chris Kenyon from CyclingWorks.London has been quick to point out that it is not accurate to portray the debate around the cycle tracks as one just between cyclists and business leaders:

“Rarely if ever has a scheme by TfL gathered so many CEO level signatures of support.  Surely that is the big story.  The backers represent every major industry sector and show that Londoners are in it together and believe that it's time for kerb protected lanes in the heart of the city.”

When the consultation closed at the weekend over 160 city businesses, institutes and organisations had written to Transport for London expressing their support for the Cycle Superhighway plans.  Support has continued to roll in past the deadline, including that of publishing group Pearson who employ over 4,000 staff, many of who cycle in London.

Whilst London Assembly member Kit Malthouse was busy last week telling the Mayor his constituents were desperate for the Cycle Superhighways to be extended through his borough, opposing forces were working to undermine the plans.

The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry has proposed that the cycle tracks should be narrowed and only 'partially segregated' from traffic, allowing other road users to utilise the same space as cyclists.  A similar system operates for the existing Cycle Superhighways which have seen an increase in cycling numbers but have been roundly criticised by campaigners following a series of deaths on the routes.

Cyclists take over part of the proposed route of the east / west Cycle Superhighway.

Meanwhile lobbyist Howard Dawber, Strategic Adviser for the Canary Wharf Group, is clear that they believe the Cycle Superhighways will lead to unacceptable traffic congestion in east London.  He would do well to talk to academic and modelling expert Dr Rachel Aldred who goes in to detail on her blog as to why he needn't worry about the 'worst case scenario'.  Detail aside, the Canary Wharf Group is not an opponent the cycling community can afford to underestimate; they have unprecedented access to influential ears and a lie - or a badly researched briefing document - will get half way around the world before the truth has got it's shoes on...

All this is set against the backdrop of more consultations on further significant changes planned for London's road network; on revisions to Cycle Superhighway route 5 through Oval and Vauxhall, at Archway Gyratory, at Stockwell Cross, and plans to remove the Old Street roundabout.

Those who were around for the Battle of Blackfriars just a few short years ago will remember how cyclists had to fight and fight just to stop cycle lanes being ripped out in order to "maintain traffic flow".  It would seem that some elements of Transport for London have come a very, very long way since then.

But when it comes to winning over the rest of London - most especially its most influential interests - we can't afford to rest easily just yet.  Watch this space.

Think tank the Centre For London are hosting a debate on the 10th December; "Are Cycle Superhighways good for London?".  The Mayor's Cycling Commissioner Andrew Gilligan, CyclingWorksLondon's Chris Kenyon and Canary Wharf Group's Howard Dawber will all be there.  Register to attend here.

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Who is undermining plans to make London's streets safe for cycling, and why? Find out how to get involved...

London's Mayor Boris Johnson recently unveiled his proposals for two new Cycle Superhighways in London; a north / south route via Blackfriars Bridge, and an east / west 'Crossrail for Bikes' along the river Thames via the Embankment.

Plans for the east / west cycle superhighway along the Thames, on Victoria Embankment.

The proposals - though not perfect - are the boldest plans for cycling ever tabled by the Mayor and Transport for London, and will certainly lead to a large increase in the volume of cyclists along these routes, riding in a safe and inviting environment suitable for a wider range of ages and abilities.  Credit where credit is due: Johnson has not always endeared himself with the cycling community, but his plans - delivered by his cycling commissioner Andrew Gilligan - are outstanding.

These incredible new bike tracks, substantially segregated from traffic, are the end result of a long and sustained campaign by the cycling community.  In 2012, grass roots protests on Blackfriars Bridge about plans to tear out cycle lanes and increase traffic speeds helped to bolster the ambition and strengthen the voice of the London Cycling Campaign.  Their 2012 Mayoral campaign, "Love London, Go Dutch" saw 40,000 Londoners sign up and over 10,000 cyclists take to the streets urging all the Mayoral candidate to create safe space for cycling on London's busiest roads.  In a huge campaign success, all of the Mayoral candidates signed up, with Boris Johnson represented at the Go Dutch Big Ride by Daniel Moylan - then Deputy Chairman of Transport for London, and still a serving member of the Board.  The proposed new superhighways is that rarest of things; a politician coming right on their election promises.

Conservative politician and TfL board member Dan Moylan pledging to "Go Dutch" on behalf of the Mayor alongside other politicians and young cyclists at the LCC's 2012 Big Ride.

The consultation on the new routes is already open, and as you can imagine they are attracting considerable attention.  With such radical plans for central London, you'd expect some concern from other road users, especially taxi drivers, as par for the course.  But there's something stranger going on here...

The Evening Standard's transport correspondent, Matthew Beard, reported that "business leaders are in revolt" over plans, but failed to name who those business leaders are.  The Standard also spun a line that the new highways would delay car journeys by 16 minutes, despite Tfl's modelling showing this is the worst case scenario for just one type of journey - from Limehouse to Hyde Park - and totally ignored other journeys which would actually be quicker under the proposals.  They also failed to mention the thousands of square metres of new public space the new highway would capture for pedestrians.  As Easy as Riding a Bike blog does a good job of demolishing some of the more outlandish claims made against the proposals.  A bizarre and hole-filled statement claiming the superhighways would damage their business appeared to come from the Canary Wharf Group, whilst another press briefing revealed by Cyclists In The City purposefully distorts the facts to try and discredit the superhighway plans.

Plans to make Parliament Square - what should be the heart of London - accessible to pedestrians for the first time, under cycling plans.

There's something fishy going on here.  This is more than just the mutterings of a few taxi drivers and white van men.  Indeed, journalist Adam Bienkov revealed on Politics.co.uk that those who are briefing against Boris Johnson's cycle superhighways are actually from inside Transport for London itself.  He writes: "Senior figures at Transport for London (TfL) believe Boris Johnson is trying to rush through his plans for segregated cycle lanes in London too quickly, Politics.co.uk can reveal."  That is to say, employees of London's transport body, whose job it is to enact Mayoral transport policy, policy which is enabled by the democratic process of Londoners electing their own Mayor, are directly working against his wishes, and by default the wishes of Londoners.  How's that for democracy in action?  

If we needed any re-assurance that this dissent is coming directly from within Transport for London itself, TfL board member Michael Liebreich tellingly tweeted on September 26th "Make sure the voice of non-limo-driving Londoners is heard on cycle super-highways!"  Clearly, not everyone on Boris' board agree with Boris himself, and are out to undermine our Mayor and his cycling vision

Make sure the voice of non-limo-driving Londoners is heard on cycle super-highways! Quick yes/no questionnaire: https://t.co/9vP6SMyuiU
— Michael Liebreich (@MLiebreich) September 26, 2014

In PR they say a good story will walk around the world before the truth has had a chance to get its shoes on, and those who are briefing against the superhighways are hoping hand-picking figures and using scare tactics will have the proposals thrown out, the Mayor's cycling commissioner discredited and the kaibosh put on future cycling plans.  In other words, your help is needed now more than ever.

One day soon, with your help, children will be able to ride through central London more than just once a year on a SkyRide...

The London cycling community has been incredible in their vociferous dedication to calling for better cycling facilities in the past.  You've signed petitions, attended protest rides, badgered newspapers and pestered politicians.  And you are winning, as these latest plans attest.  But we need your help again.  It is time, once again, to get involved to help create the city you'd like to ride in in the future and to drown out the spinning voices of dissent who don't want to see safe space for cycling on our roads:

• Sign the London Cycling Campaign petition saying you back the superhighway proposals.
• Respond directly to the consultations positively - it only take 2 minutes of your time - to drown out those who respond negatively.  Here for the north / south route and here for the east / west route.
• Business voices count in London. Do you run a company, or work for one?  Make sure they pledge their support with Cycling Works London and join firms like The Crown Estate, Barts NHS Trust and Knight Frank in showing their support. Follow @CyclingWorksLDN on Twitter and add to their voice.
• Stay tuned!  The consultation period has already been extended due to negative responses, so there will be lots more action to come.  Keep up to date and make sure you're involved!

Mark

PS. Sorry for the long delay since my last post.  I go on holiday for a few weeks and come back and all of London is up in arms about cycling. Honestly, I can't turn my back on you lot for more than a minute!

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A question of speed: why you're better off by bike

This poster from 1915 extols the virtues of the London Underground, pointing out how fast their trains are compared to the traffic crawling along at street level up above.  Nearly a hundred years have passed, and things have changed.  Horse and carts (and barrel organs with monkeys onboard!) have become a very rare site on our streets, and the buses, taxis and motor cars of London now crawl along even more slowly...

The London Congestion Charge, introduced in 2003 by previous Mayor Ken Livingstone, allowed vehicles to begin moving more quickly again by reducing the quantity on the road, though not by enough to avoid This Is Local London publishing the immortal headline "London cars move no faster than chickens"!  

In the first year of its operation, Transport for London estimate over 60,000 journeys by car "evaporated"; moved to public transport, car sharing, and more trips by walking and cycling, against a background of growth in the city, as detailed in Tom Barry's excellent Street Talk on the state of London transport.

A decline in the volume of traffic kilometers travelled in London against a background of a growing city continues even today, as evidenced in the most recent Travel in London report from TfL.  Whether it is inside the inner London congestion charging zone or elsewhere, the distances journeyed are decreasing.  Traffic speeds during peak hours in inner London continue to hover around 15km/h (about 9.5 miles per hour, or a very gentle bike ride).

Fellow blogger Mark from As Easy As Riding a Bike has all the data that's fit to print on the fluctuations in vehicle speeds and volumes in an excellent blog post here.  

And even the motor-headed cast of the BBC's Top Gear have shown that when it comes to a race across town, the bicycle wins.

If less traffic in London means there is more space (and certainly there seems to be enough new space to justify ridiculous carriageway narrowing schemes in the City and in Westminster), then that space could be put to good use getting more people around more quickly.



The "Speed" poster from 1915 is not just a charmingly aesthetic relic from a city of another age.  It shows there have always been smarter and faster ways of getting about than by filling the city with traffic.  I'm as interested in the economics and efficiencies of cities as I am in cycling and cycle infrastructure, and it seems clear to me that not only is there latent demand for more safe space for cycling, but that it makes very good sense to introduce it: not just for the cyclist, but for the sake of the city itself.

Even if you spent billions burying half the roads in London there will never be enough space to allow many motor vehicles to be driven here at any useful speed.  But creating a city that allows people on bikes to move around quickly and safely is an easy goal to win.  As London Underground's poster shows, time is of the essence.

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Why Kings Cross plans shows Transport for London MUST try harder

There isn't a cyclist in London who would describe riding around Kings Cross as a pleasurable experience.  The scene of numerous collisions, it's a mini-gyratory where the heaving traffic of the A501 north circular is squeezed round the smaller roads surrounding Kings Cross station.  Harried passengers dash for space, taxi drivers chase fares blasting their horns, buses splutter and fume as construction traffic roars through, heading for the massive redevelopment area behind the station.  It's long overdue for an overhaul and safety improvements, but plans from Transport for London fall far short of providing safe space for cycling.

A ghost bike at the sport where Min Joo Lee was killed.

It was here in 2011 that 24 year old student Min Joo Lee was struck and killed by a construction lorry whilst riding to college, in front of horrified rush hour onlookers.  Three female cyclists - Madeleine Rosie Wright, 27, Wendy Gray, 42, and Min Joo Lee, 24, were all killed by lorries within a few hundred metres of one another over the space of 5 years on this stretch of the A501.  A 4th cyclists, Emma Foa, was killed by a left turning cement mixer just up the road in 2006.  All of these deaths share similar tragically predictable elements; a lack of safe space for cyclists interacting with very large vehicles, whose drivers are unable to see vulnerable road users all around them.

Last year, at an inquest in to Min Joo Lee's death, the Coroner heard how a report commissioned by TfL in 2007 described future casualties on this site as "inevitable".  In another report, transport engineers Colin Buchanan noted that cyclists made up 20% of casualties on the site but specifically excluded pedal cyclists from their modelling of the junction at the request from Transport for London, in order to assure the smooth flow of traffic.

Speaking in 2011 and referring specifically to the death of Min Joo Lee, TfL's Leon Daniels said "Any fatal road collision is one too many. The Mayor and TfL will work night and day to reduce that number."

 TfL's plans - hardly exemplary

But the latest plans for the Kings Cross area fall far short of being either safe or inviting for cyclists.

Dribbling a chain of minor improvements in to the existing roads, TfL's plans do include some wider and mandatory cycle lanes, and a little protected space.  However, there is much more which is wrong with their ideas.  This is where their proposed "north - south" cycle superhighway will intersect with the North Circular, bringing thousands of additional riders to the area, yet there are no protected cycle lanes or safe passage through the junction in every direction.  There's also considerable risk of left or right "hooks" from turning vehicles - especially lorries - risking repeat deaths like those of the cyclists who have already been killed there.  Their plans also include putting cyclists on pavements (rather than ceding any road space to them) in some of the busiest pedestrian space in central London, yet the entire surface of all the carriageways in the redevelopment area will be resurfaced - all on the back of the cycling budget.  That is to say, you might find yourself on a terrible pavement cycle lane soon, whilst motorists glide smoothly past on beautiful new tarmac paid for with money set aside to supposedly make you safer.  

You couldn't make it up.  As London Cycling Campaign point out "it will not possible to go through the junction in any direction without being exposed to unacceptable levels of danger. Some sections do not even meet the old cycle design standards set out a decade ago."  Indeed, Twitter has been awash with reports of how a 17 year old Sixth Form student from Kent has done a better job than TfL's engineers with his own proposals for Kings Cross (follow @maidstoneonbike, check out his plans, and maybe chuck him a few quid for his RideLondon plans to say "Chapeau!")

The consultation on these "improvements" closes today (Monday 24th March) and the LCC are encouraging everyone to write to TfL to tell them to go back to the drawing board.  I'd urge you to do the same, even if you miss the consultation deadline by a few hours.  Maybe then the people whose job it is to design streets that are supposed to keep us safe will be made aware of just how badly they are failing.

I think the designs at Kings Cross open wider and more worrying questions about the pace of the Mayor's so-called cycling revolution programme.  We've all been enticed by the images of protected cycle lanes and the mock ups of cycle tracks yet to be built, but when it comes to proposing actual work this is what we are met with.  The plans for Kings Cross are so bad at first I assumed the 1st of April had come early, but the safety of riders in this area is no laughing matter.  It's time for Transport for London to start listening to the Cycling Commissioner, and to cyclists themselves, and to start proposing plans that really make a difference.  

Click here to go to the Transport for London King's Cross consultation page.

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"Smoothing traffic flow"? It's FINISHED - we won the battle for Blackfriars Bridge!

In 2011 Transport for London proposed to tear the cycle paths out of the north junction of Blackfriars Bridge, increase the lanes for motorised traffic from two to three, increase the speed to 30mph and take out vital pedestrian crossings - all on one of the busiest river crossings in central London where people on bikes make up the majority of all traffic.

Cyclists had been killed on the bridge before, and the cycling community's response to Transport for London's plans was unified and unequivocal; if they went ahead then cyclists or pedestrians would be killed there again.  Thousands of you signed petitions and added your image to a picture protest wall.  Cyclists forced the Mayor of London Boris Johnson (who is Chair of TfL) to state that "more work needs to be done on cycling over Blackfriars Bridge".  All of the major parties (including the Conservatives) backed an Assembly motion calling for TfL to retain the existing 20mph speed limit and "revisit the plans for the bridge".  Campaigners even discovered that TfL's own safety audit recommended they review their own plans.

Protests on Blackfriars Bridge captured the media's attention - and helped to put pressure on TfL and the Mayor.

Exhausting all democratic options, cyclists and pedestrians joined forces to demonstrate on the bridge.  Called to the streets by myself and fellow blogger Danny Williams from Cyclists In the City, there were three demonstrations on the bridge, each larger than the last.  The demonstrations - which saw thousands of cyclists cover the entire bridge as BBC and ITV cameras looked on - were the beginning of a resurgent and more direct force for cycle campaigning in London.  The London Cycling Campaign also joined the demonstrations and were overwhelmed by the response their own proposed designs for the bridge received.  As a battle ground, Blackfriars became the launch pad for the Love London, Go Dutch campaign and the biggest cycling protest ever seen in London, not to mention more guerrilla campaigns such as Stop Killing Cyclists with their die ins and Bikes Alive with their Kings Cross flashrides.  This zeitgeist of protest inspired The Times to be bold in their reaction to one of their own journalists being run over, launching their Cities Fit For Cycling campaign and financing the Get Britain Cycling parliamentary enquiry.  And the Mayor, re-elected on the back of the cyclist vote, announced the largest and most comprehensive cycle spending program ever seen in the UK.

Politicians of all political colours join the protests on Blackfriars Bridge

In short, the battle for Blackfriars Bridge marked a turning point in London cycle campaigning where the space provided for safe cycling was seen as the key to success, as oppose to just the competence of the cyclists who use it (or perceived lack of).

And now, two years after those initial heady protests, people power has finally won on Blackfriars Bridge.

This week Transport for London announced they will shortly introduce an 18 month experimental traffic order reducing the speed limit to 20mph limit on the bridge, and surrounding roads - one of the protest's key initial demands.  

Furthermore, the bridge's north junction will now be completely redesigned and reconstructed in order to accommodate a new largely separated north-south cycle route from Elephant and Castle to Kings Cross, which will intersect with the Mayor's east-west "Crossrail for bikes" which is slated for construction later this year.

TfL's proposals for Blackfriars Bridge Road - we're not quite there yet, but we're a thousand miles away from the rhetoric of 2011.

Whilst we haven't quite yet got to the point where construction is underway, this week's news is nevertheless a highly significant turning point.  In 2011 the Mayor stated "...a speed limit of 20 mph isn't necessary and could be a serious impediment to smooth traffic flow".  On Blackfriars Bridge we've shown that the 'smoothing traffic flow' arguments simply don't add up, and that people have to be put first.  In my opinion, it's a milestone that everyone who wrote letters, signed petitions and protested should be extremely proud of.  

The 20mph 'test zones' on Blackfriars and London Bridge will join with a larger 20mph zone across the City of London which will be consulted on shortly after being voted for by the Corporation last year; another scheme initially requested by cycling and pedestrian campaigners.

In real terms this means that the the authorities are now proposing to make possible exactly what they said was impossible just two years ago.  Their old argument that it would disrupt too much the smooth flow of traffic has been an impediment to progress on schemes across London; now the lid of that Pandora's box has been lifted there can be no turning back.

In short, it may take a lot of blood, sweat and tears, it may take a long time -and we may have to wait before organisations like TfL are prepared to admit to losing face - but above all campaigning works.

Well done London!  Next stop, space for cycling 2014....

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