Boris’s new cycleways

Boris Johnson is well known as one of London’s cyclists, as well as its mayor. He nearly faced death some time ago when a lorry door swung open just as he approached on his bike – now he’s opening a huge network of new cycle lanes.

Or is he? The Cyclists’ Touring club is not impressed. Apparently much of Boris’s new cycle network is already there – he’s just panning to repaint the lines on the road. It’s legitimate, I think, to ask how painting a narrow strip of tarmac bright blue – admittedly a much more striking colour, and so probably safer than the dull red or green used so far – can cost £116m, which is what’s been put aside for the project.

(I’d also be interested to know what the maintenance plans look like. Blue paint will need repainting every eighteen months or so, or the cycle lanes will soon be invisible again. I wouldn’t mind betting that there’s currently no maintenance budget.)

Some of the lanes are also too narrow to provide the ‘superhighway’ for cyclists that Boris has been talking about. When a cycle lane is only 1.5 metres wide, it’s actually quite difficult to overtake – so that makes the ‘superhighway’ more like a country lane than an honest-to-goodness motorway. (It also means you can’t cycle side by side with a chum – no gentle conversation on the way in to work.)

There’s also something of a difficulty for suburbanites. London’s road system grew up along the roads that linked the City and Westminster with the provinces, so it looks like a big octopus reaching its tentacles out from the centre. Try to go around London without going into the centre and out again, and it’s more difficult. At least cars have the North and South Circular. But the cycle lanes only go into the centre – there are no ‘rings’ connecting up the lines of the cobweb. That will make it difficult for suburban cyclists – and of course, in a city as big as London, not everybody commutes into the centre.

I think the bright blue lanes could well help London’s cyclists just because they are so garish and so bright that motorists will steer clear. But it’s not the great step forward that some of us had hoped for. And cycling in London, even after all twelve new cycle routes have been completed (only two have been built so far, and the others are expected by the end of 2012), won’t be anything like as pleasant as it is in Amsterdam or Copenhagen.

I think one of the issues is just what we are prepared to do for bikes. For cars, we build flyovers or underpasses, we knock down houses and widen roads.  For bikes, we add a bike phase to the pedestrian crossing, and paint a few lines on the road. Boris still hasn’t changed that, I’m afraid – and until it changes, cycling in London will still have an edge of danger to it.

photo by Garry Knight on