Commuting by bike set to overtake cars in London by 2018
Posted on in Cycles News , Political News
If current trends continue, there will be more people bike commuting in central London than car commuting by 2018.
Boris Johnson says that one of his goals as mayor of London was to make cycling "more popular and more normal," and following the recent publication of Johnson's ‘Human Streets - The Mayor's Vision for cycling, three years on' it looks as though this goal has been achieved.
If current trends continue, bike commuters will outnumber car commuters in central London by 2018, according to the report. Citywide, Transport for London estimates people already make 645,000 bike trips on an average day.
In his first term, Johnson championed the construction of "cycle superhighways" on some of the city's busiest streets. However, with little or no physical protection, most cyclists were not satisfied with them and staged huge protests calling for safer bike infrastructure.
In recent years, Johnson has devoted more resources to protected bike lanes, upgrading the existing "cycle superhighways" and laying out a plan for more. He says his "single biggest regret" was not doing so sooner. In a recent YouGov poll, 71 percent of London residents said they support the cycle superhighways.
Johnson has tripled the city's 10-year budget for cycling, from £273 million to £913 million.
With Londoners heading to the polls this week to elect their next mayor, all five candidates have announced they will continue to expand the city's bike network, with most of them having pledged to triple the amount of protected bike lanes in the city.
Whoever wins this week's election, the next mayor seems very unlikely to change course. "Cycling is now a mainstream policy in London politics," writes the BBC's Tom Edwards.