London Cycling News
December 2009: £1.5M investment in 'Cycling Superhighways'A radical plan: a network of 12 clearly-marked cycle routes to help people commute from outer to central London. The first 2 of these to be up and running by summer 2010, with £1.5M in the pot that year to get them launched. The theory sounds good; we're a tad sceptical about how effectively this will be delivered, but let's wait and see. The routes are planned to be 'safe, fast, direct and continuous', so we should soon be able to judge them against these criteria.
September 2009: London Freewheel becomes 'Skyride'
Third annual event, new sponsor, another great day, but still only once a year....
August 2009: London's own 'Velib' operator announced
Transport for London has announced that the London Cycle Hire Scheme, scheduled for summer 2010, will be run by Serco, an international service company. The contract is worth £140M over 6 years. Go Pedal looks forward to the introduction of the scheme (see February 2008 below). The aim is to get 40,000 more people on bikes each day, which has to be a good thing. Here are what the bikes and the docking stations are going to look like.
(pics taken at the Cycle Show in October)
October 2008: Mayor lets motorcycles join cyclists in Bus Lanes
Considering all the rhetoric about encouraging cycling within the capital, ("A cycle-ised city is a civilised city") the new mayor's first year has been punctuated with some pretty dumb decisions, including the abandonment of the Western Congestion Charge Zone (which had improved air quality and encouraged cyclists) and allowing motorcycles, as well as cyclists, to use bus lanes. End of year report: could do better.
Go Pedal fully supports the London Cycle Campaign's response to the Mayor's transport policies, available here
1 May 2008: London's new mayor is Boris Johnson
What this means for cycling in London is yet to be revealed, but the new mayor is himself a cyclist and has indicated that he will continue work already announced to make huge improvements for London cycling (see below). He'd be daft as a brush not to, wouldn't he?
February 2008. Massive Increase in Investment in Cycling
In response to pressure from the Green Party in the London Assembly, in the Mayor of London announced plans to invest £500M over the next 10 years on cycling and walking in the capital. The plan is aimed at quadrupling the number of daily bike journeys by 2025. This ambitious programme includes:
- the provision of 12 major 'cycle commuter routes' into the centre of the city from all points of the compass.
- the creation of 'cycle zones' in London's urban town centres, with 20MPH speed restrictions and priority for cyclists
- a new cycle hire scheme for central London, modelled on the Paris 'Velib' scheme, with bikes available from a network of docking stations.
We at Go Pedal are delighted that cycling is clearly now a mainstream part of the city's political agenda. The Velib scheme in Paris (click on picture on left) has generally been a great success and we would welcome a similar operation in London: the more bikes on the road the better, and we believe the London's cycling future is big enough for everybody. While half a billion over 10 years sounds a lot, to put it in context: the government is spending £2.9 billion on building an extra lane on a 50 mile stretch of the M6 motorway...
You can read more about the plans for London's cycling future here.
September 2007. The Hovis London Freewheel
July 2007. The Tour de France starts from London
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