So it seems London will get its segregated bike lanes after all, admittedly with the caveat that a couple of vested interests are still trying to derail the schemes.

On Tuesday, Boris Johnson, the city’s mayor, announced that two ambitious planned cycle routes would be built much as planned. As the centrepiece of a wider £900m project to boost cycling in the capital, one will go north to south, while the longer and far more contentious one snakes east to west. Extensive consultation found a big majority of respondents were in favour of the scheme.

I’ve written about these routes a few times before on the Bike Blog, and each time I do it’s with a reminder that’s worth repeating: yes, this is a London story, but it’s one that has significant national repercussions for those who ride a bike, or want to ride a bike.

If the routes are built and, as I’d expect will happen, they prove a huge success, it would provide a notable impetus and example for campaigners and councils in other cities. Yes, segregated routes are being built elsewhere – Bristol and Brighton, to take just two examples – but an 18-mile segregated lane running directly through the centre of London is on another scale of ambition altogether.

As a corollary to this, if opponents like the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association (LTDA) and the Canary Wharf Group get their way and either significantly water down the scheme or delay it for many months, then you can probably forget about similarly ambitious projects elsewhere for some time. Councils will think, ‘Well, if Boris Johnson can’t do this, how can we?’

That said, if I had to bet, I don’t think the LTDA and Canary Wharf will have much success. The former group immediately pledged on Johnson’s announcement on Tuesday that it would seek a judicial review of the decision. Canary Wharf, the east London-based property group, merely said it had “not ruled it out”.

For a start, it would be a real public relations risk for such relatively limited interest groups to seek to thwart a policy established by a directly elected city mayor and overwhelmingly endorsed by a consultation process involving the views of more than 21,000 people.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest East-west cycle superhighway plans for Parliament Square.

Then there’s the law. Ralph Smyth, transport campaign manager at the Campaign to Protect Rural England, is also a barrister with significant experience in judicial review. He says any LTDA application faces significant hurdles, not least whether it has any validity. If the taxi drivers’ group is claiming the consultation was flawed they will “have a very steep climb”, he says.

“The case law is clear that something has to have gone ‘clearly and radically wrong’ with consultation if the courts are to intervene: as this was one of TfL’s biggest consultation exercises, this could prove difficult,” Smyth says. “There has to be a ‘substantial point’ that wasn’t taken on board. Consultation is, of course, an opportunity for public comment – rather than a vote or public inquiry.”

The LTDA would also, Smyth believes, find it hard to even derail the process. Changes to high court procedures mean permission for judicial review applications can be refused in as little as three weeks after the claim is served.

So let’s imagine the LTDA fail and in spring 2016, as Johnson plans, Londoners have about 20 miles of new, almost totally segregated, safe cycling routes. What will it mean for the city?

I’m not a professional traffic modeller, but I don’t think I’m being too reckless in thinking the occasional dire predictions of gridlock and chaos will not come to pass. In fact I’d predict instead that lots of drivers of motor vehicles will soon decide it’s actually a boon to not share lanes on major roads with hugely vulnerable cyclists.

And what of the cyclists themselves? Last week I was in Seville for a story about Seville’s experience with segregated bike lanes, 50 miles of which were opened in one go in 2007 (they now have 75 miles).

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The east-west cycle superhighway plan for Embankment.

What struck me most of all was the people who cycled. Stand by a London street and the bulk of people on bikes will be young, probably male, mainly dressed in specific bike gear, and generally riding light bikes at relatively high speed.

Seville’s lanes, separated from the motor traffic by a raised kerb and fence are, by contrast, used by children, people in their 70s, men, women, families. Almost all wear everyday clothes, and ride at relaxed speeds.

The effect is humanising, civilising, relaxing, enchanting. It makes the city immediately more appealing. Beyond all that it also rebuts the perennial complaint that the push for London bike routes is the niche hobby horse of a small coterie of middle-class, male cyclists. The whole point is that if you create safer cycling you necessarily create more inclusive cycling.

Early next month the Transport for London board will be asked to approve the bike scheme. If they do – and its by no means certain given the 17-member panel contains no cyclists’ representatives but does include Peter Anderson from the Canay Wharf Group and Bob Oddy from the LTDA – then the first work could start in March. It can’t come soon enough.