Boris Johnson and cycling

​“No major redevelopment will get Mayoral approval without adequate cycling provision,” Boris Johnson’s cycling Commissioner Andrew Gilligan told the NLA London Cycling Summit. He had, he said, already used these powers to obtain improvements to cycling provision on Lend Lease’s Heygate redevelopment in Elephant and Castle.
 

The Cycling Summit, timed to coincide with the Mayor’s RideLondon event - “the largest festival of cycling in the world” - brought together architects, planners and cycle groups to discuss the delivery of Johnson’s Vision for Cycling where he has set out plans to spend nearly a billion pounds on new infrastructure.
 
The event also marked the return of the team of cyclists from the Portland Oregon to Portland Place - of which I was one - who had been researching what American cities are doing to accommodate the increasing demand for cycling.  
 
The conference was held on the site of Derwent London’s White collar Factory on Old Street - an appropriate location since the Central London Cycling Census in June has shown that 50 per cent of ‘vehicles’ using the street in rush hours were bicycles.
 
Gilligan assured the audience that, contrary to reports in the press, his £913 million budget was not under threat from the Chancellor, it was ring fenced and would not only improve conditions for all cyclists but would make life better for everyone - it would cut pollutoin, reduce overcrowding on the tube, allow trees and more places to sit out. “Cycling shapes a city in ways that are almost always good. Forward thinking cites around the world are turning to cycling as they realise heavy metal cannot solve all our transport problems.”
 
Gilligan described some of the projects set out in the Mayor’s Vision with particular emphasis on the East West route which will connect the A40, the Westway flyover and the Victoria embankment to create a ‘Cycle Crossrail’. The route will have capacity for 1500 cyclists an hour in each direction - the equivalent to six Tube trainloads of passengers.  Other new infrastructure includes a network of Quietways, the old cycle network but properly connected and signposted, which are designed to cater for less experienced cyclists, and the Central London Grid which will join up and improve routes in Zone 1. “Cycling is an increasingly dominant force on some roads and has to be catered for meaningfully.” 
 
Ben Plowden Director of Surface Planning, Transport for London put cycling plans in the context of the Mayor’s Road task Force which called for a more sophisticated understanding of the functionality of roads - looking at their social, economic and cultural benefits as well as as carriers of traffic. He talked about the £100million for the development of ‘Mini Hollands’  - suburban areas that would invest substantially in infrastructure to deliver a quality of cycling comparable to that found in the Netherlands. 18 boroughs had expressed interest in the project and the first stage is likely to go ahead at the end of the year. A new London Cycle Design Standards will be published later this year which will focus on creating safe, coherent, direct, comfortable and adaptable conditions for cycling London.
 
Then it was my turn to look at how this compares with what is happening in America.  While only New York is on a par with London in scale, it is clear that the modal shift from car dominance to ‘complete streets‘ is beginning to happen in cities right across the ‘land of the automobile’.
 
The group visited Portland - seen as the cycling capital of the US - which has been developing its cycling infrastructure over the last thirty years and Minneapolis which has an impressive network of Greenways and cycle routes despite only having started serious investment in 2007.   Chicago’s Mayor Emanuel is keen to make his manor the ‘best big city for bicycling in America’ while Janette Sadik Khan, New York’s Commissioner for Transport has been setting the pace with cycle routes combined with public space improvements.
 
There was a lot of discussion in US cities around the idea of Active Transportation, which includes walking cycling and public transport. It makes the leap from limited arguments about safety and bike lanes to the real health, economic and social benefits of cycling. New York’s Center for Active Design further extends this holistic view to include all aspects of buildings and places to help deliver better health.
 
We found lots of neat ideas that could be implemented in the UK - the three foot rule that is law in 21 states means that motorists, give cyclists a wider berth; in Philadelphia canal paths have been widened with timber decking to provide space for cycling and walking, in New York streets were pedestrianised on a temporary basis with a coat of paint - it it worked, then it stayed and made permanent, if it didn’t work then, it could easily be removed.
 
We have plenty in common with the States and can learn much from them. While policy makers are frequently looking to Denmark and Holland for best practice, we can swap relevant experience from other countries who are at similar stages to ourselves in implementing the next generation of cycling cities.
 
But the big surprise in the US was how considerate car drivers and truckers were to cyclists. We had been expecting just the opposite. The ability of all users to share road space in a more civilised manner is a key lesson we could learn form America.