Boris Johnson has been making the most of Jakarta on car free Sunday (Picture: PA)

Car-free Sundays could be introduced to central London, Boris Johnson suggested today, after being inspired by cycling alongside thousands of Indonesians in Jakarta.

The London mayor took part in a mass cycle alongside the recently-inaugurated President Joko Widodo on the latest stop of a high-profile six-day regional tour.

Every Sunday, several main boulevards of Jakarta are closed to all traffic from 6am, allowing tens of thousands of Indonesians to pour into the streets on bikes and on foot, with street stalls and music offering a carnival atmosphere.

After breakfast with the president, Mr Johnson said: ‘Wasn’t that sensational? I have to admit I was blown away by the popularity of the car-free Sunday here in Jakarta.




‘We have been thinking about it for ages – I don’t think you are going to get the British people out of bed at six in the morning to do it quite like that but it is certainly food for thought.

‘I will certainly be asking TfL (Transport for London) to dust down those old ideas and let’s have a look at them again.

MORE: Tube strike to affect large parts of London on Monday

Boris: ‘Wasn’t that sensational? I have to admit I was blown away by the popularity of the car-free Sunday here in Jakarta.’ (Picture: PA)

‘I think it would probably take time to bed in and it would take a few years before people got into the swing of coming out into the streets and making use of the space that a car-free Sunday provided. But it was very stimulating.’

In a later interview with the BBC Radio 5 John Pienaar’s Politics show, Mr Johnson said it would be important to look at the traffic implications and other logistics of such an event.

For the past two years, several miles of central London streets have been closed on a Saturday in August for the Freecycle event, a key event in cycling festival which also include the Ride London 100 mass participation and pro-cycling races.

Jakarta’s event has been running for 16 years and become a weekly, rather than monthly, event when Mr Widodo was governor.

Since his meteoric rise to the presidency earlier this year, Mr Widodo has met only a handful of foreign leaders, including Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Prime Minister David Cameron had a brief encounter with the new president at the G20 meeting in Brisbane earlier this month.

Mayor of London Boris Johnson takes the train from Kuala Lumpur Airport into the centre of the Malaysian capital (Picture: PA)

Following the business breakfast, Mr Johnson said it had been a useful meeting.

He said: ‘We discussed co-operation in the financial sector, the investment Indonesia is hoping to attract from Britain and other European countries… transport infrastructure.

‘We talked about the coming Asian Games and our experience in London of dealing with the Olympics and the lessons of some of the ideas we could share about security, providing for the athletes’ village, which is always a very difficult issue.

‘All those sorts of things – exchanges of students, we are very keen to have more Indonesian students come and study in London. We had a very wide wide-ranging discussion.’



Asked by the BBC if Mr Widodo had tips on ‘fulfilling the dream of going from mayor to head of state’, Mr Johnson laughed off the question and added: ‘No… it was a very interesting conversation.

‘I think genuinely there is a real eagerness to see more investment from Britain but also to discover more about what Britain has to offer by way of trade and the opportunities for Indonesians to invest in our country.

‘That was the bulk of it.’