Standing next to what he calls the “billiard table-smooth” surface of the new segregated bike route along the Embankment in central London, Boris Johnson is paying tribute to the Transport for London team that helped create it, and the other mixed bag of cycling infrastructure he will leave behind after eight years as mayor.

“They’ve done an amazing job, considering how difficult it is in London to take road space and give it to cycling,” he says. “It’s very, very politically difficult. But it’s the right thing to do.”

With less than two months to go before he steps down, and conducting interviews to announce the 30 April official opening of the first stretch of a planned 18-mile east-west separated bike superhighway, Johnson is thinking about his legacy.

Whatever his next steps in national politics, it’s arguably fair to say that along with a series of high-rise buildings and some Olympics-linked structures, the bike lanes will be the most tangible signs of Johnson’s time running Britain’s capital.

These began with the original “superhighways”, marked in the main only by strips of blue paint and arguably far better as a symbol of the rising numbers of cyclists than actually doing anything to protect them.

But the new generation of superhighways – a smaller north-south one is scheduled to open in the summer – are very different, with full separation and protected junctions.

While still defending the original superhighways (“We tried a compromise approach with the paint, and that’s much better than nothing”) Johnson says that in retrospect he wishes he had gone for the separated lanes straight away.



“Absolutely,” he says. “Looking back on it, yes. If I had my time again, and if I knew then what I know now, I would have gone straight in with a massive programme of segregated cycle superhighways. I probably wouldn’t have been re-elected, unfortunately. That’s one thing to consider. But that would have been the right thing to do.”

Johnson has faced considerable political and public opposition to the idea of taking road space away from cars. At one point just before our chat a taxi driver honks his horn on seeing the mayor’s blond mop, and gestures rudely through the window.

Johnson says there’s no question which is the more fractious debate, the EU or cycling: “Oh God, cycling. Unquestionably. The public hostility about the cycle superhighways has been much worse.”

This has, he adds, included hostility from many of his fellow MPs: “You’ve got no idea. When we started in Parliament Square, people went crazy. But it will all be over soon.”

Whatever Johnson’s overall record as mayor, and his occasionally hazy attitude to cycling facts and figures, he’s always given the impression of being one of the very few UK politicians, and perhaps the only one of real national prominence, who really understands how mass cycling can transform cities.

That’s why his work on cycling in the city is arguably of importance beyond London: assuming the separated lanes can be shown to work in the capital, it could act as a catalyst for other cities.

“These are truly fantastic,” Johnson says, indicating the lane he confesses to using regularly even though it’s not yet officially open and remains blocked off just before Parliament Square.

“I think it will make a huge difference to public attitudes, to public understanding about why London values cycling, and what it means for us as a city. This is a city where we really want to encourage environmentally friendly transport of all kinds.



“Look at our obesity crisis, look at the issues we’ve got as a city, the air quality issues...”

Even as his prospective Conservative successor, Zac Goldsmith, takes a decidedly sceptical view of the new bike lanes, Johnson says he is convinced a future mayor, whichever party they are from, will end up building more: “I think that the logic of this is now irresistible, and the programme will go on, will be protracted for many years to come. There’s a series of cycle superhighways still to be constructed and I think they’ll make a big difference to London.”

While bikes now make up a fairly high proportion of vehicles in central London – 24%, according to Andrew Gilligan, Johnson’s cycling commissioner, who is standing next to him – only about 3% of trips in the centre of the city are made by bike.

What, I ask Johnson, does he think this could reach? After some thought, he goes for 20%. “Yes, it’s a big ask. But it was 20% in 1904. What’s the point of being a Conservative if you can’t turn the clock back to 1904, that’s what I want to know.”