I’ve thought it for a while but now it’s in the open. Even as the latest vigil mourns the most recent cyclist to die it looks like there’s a campaign to roll back the advances London has made in cycling and reclaim road space for cars.
Right-wing tabloids tell us no one uses the new segregated superhighways. Hampstead nimbies say they “cause pollution”. And last month, to “tackle congestion”, the London Chamber of Commerce openly called for them to be ripped up.
It’s post-truth politics, best left to the speeches of Donald Trump. Official Transport for London counts show that during rush hour the Embankment cycle superhighway that no one uses is in fact used by 1,200 cyclists an hour, one every three seconds.
And if you wondered how pollution can be caused by the only form of transport that emits no pollution at all, puzzle no more. That claim, too, is false. Data from the superhighway routes, published on the London Air website, shows that pollution since they opened has, if anything, fallen.
As for congestion, there are only two solutions. Either you build more roads — surely impossible — or you make better use of the roads you’ve got. Thanks to the superhighway, 52 per cent of all traffic on the Embankment is now bicycles. Just one lane of that four-lane road, which is what we took out to create the cycle track, is now carrying more traffic than the other three lanes put together.
The road lobby may not destroy the current cycle tracks but the real aim, I imagine, is to block any more — and it seems to be succeeding. Despite Mayor Sadiq Khan’s promise to triple protected lanes and “significantly increase” spending, the cycling programme has all but ground to a halt.
The last gap in the east-west superhighway, along Birdcage Walk and past Buckingham Palace, is meant to be finished by now. It hasn’t even been started, though there is work on Constitution Hill. Only one of three other superhighways we consulted on nearly a year ago has the go-ahead. A second, the Westway, will probably be scrapped, and a third — through Regent’s Park — watered down to pointlessness. Proposed segregated lanes on South Lambeth Road have been axed.
My old job under Boris Johnson, as London cycling commissioner, has been vacant for six months. There’s no one in the Mayor’s office to rebut the nonsense or hassle TfL. My successor will work just 11 hours a week on cycling, and sit much further from the Mayor than I did.
Team Khan has claimed we rushed things and failed to build consensus. But the superhighways took three years to build — only in England could that be called rushing it. You should, and we did, build as much consensus as possible. But for some, I learned, no compromise could ever be enough, no consultation ever too long, and the real aim was to filibuster projects out of existence. I hope Khan doesn’t waste too much time finding that out.
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Because we’re worried about the lack of progress, a few of us are starting a new initiative, Human Streets, to keep an eye on cycling, push back against the antis and hold the Mayor to account. We’ll know soon how serious Khan is about cycling. Because it’s difficult, perhaps it will also tell us how serious he is as Mayor.
Visit Human Streets at humanstreets.com.
