Cycle schemes have stagnated for 10 months, writes the former cycling commissioner. Will new cycling delegate Will Norman get London up to speed?

Under its first two mayors, London became important for the whole country as a leader in cycling. But Will Norman, Sadiq Khan’s new walking and cycling commissioner, starts work with the capital’s cyclists in a gloomy mood. Not just because of the deaths of three cyclists – and two pedestrians – in a single week last month, but because of the last 10 months’ stagnation in what was previously Britain’s most active programme to promote the bike.



I ran that programme for Khan’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, so perhaps I’m biased. But the figures aren’t biased. Over eight years, cycling increased by 53%. Not bad: but on the new central London segregated superhighways, which we opened in May, we saw the same percentage rise in six months.



Khan pledged during the election campaign to “accelerate” the cycling programme and “triple” the length of segregated lanes. On Norman’s first day, the mayor published a document, Healthy Streets for London, promising to make the streets less motor-dominated, better for cyclists and pedestrians, and used by more of them. But the new administration seems to be abandoning the very instruments which we proved bring that about.

City Hall is wringing its hands over closing gates in Regent's Park. A minority of locals dislike losing their rat-run

As well as the successful new superhighways, Sadiq inherited eight further superhighway or junction remodelling schemes at advanced stages of implementation. All had been designed and traffic-modelled. All had been put to public consultation, and approved by large majorities. All were to have started building in 2016. Of the eight, four have been cancelled or are in limbo, three have been delayed and only one has actually started building. Not a single meaningful new scheme has yet been proposed.

In December, City Hall announced “record investment” on cycling, an average of £154m a year. But close scrutiny of the Transport for London business plan reveals that new capital investment on the roads (which has to cover a lot more than cycling) will in fact fall by 17% next year and the year after, to £123m. Two future superhighways, likely to be consulted on later this year, have been shortened, and there is no commitment that they will be segregated.

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Andrew Gilligan (@mragilligan) CS4 was London Bridge- Woolwich, now "Tower Bridge to Greenwich." City Hall says only a feasibility study of rest https://t.co/UaZXhAKCOJ

Because of all this, Norman and the deputy mayor for transport, Val Shawcross, had a slightly tricky time at their first encounter with London’s main cycling campaigners last Wednesday. They spoke almost entirely in generalities. As one of those present, David Arditti, wrote afterwards, the audience “wanted to know what this administration would actually do on the ground, why key projects the last mayor had proposed were stalled, and what would come next. They did not get this information, and there was an increasing level of frustration palpable at being given ‘motherhood and apple pie’ recipes for the healthy city of the future.”



The problem may lie in Khan’s January statement to the London Assembly that “what I do not want is for there to be confrontation” over new cycling schemes. This quite simply rules out anything serious for as long as he is mayor. Given the pressure on London’s road space, no meaningful change to the status quo can avoid inconveniencing or upsetting somebody. There is nearly always majority support for serious cycling schemes – less than half of Londoners drive at all, and fewer than one in 20 drive in the centre – but there is absolutely always opposition, too, some of it highly confrontational.

From what they said at the meeting last week, Shawcross and Norman appear to be looking for some kind of formula that can avoid what the deputy mayor called “backlash” and make schemes acceptable to everyone. They will waste a lot of time (as, in fact, did we) finding out that this municipal Philosopher’s Stone does not exist. You certainly should – and we did – consult, listen to honest objections, and make sensible changes.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘An early test looms of whether the mayor’s words about making London less traffic-dominated mean anything at all.’ Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

But asking nicely, appealing to reason, and stressing the benefits to non-cyclists only gets you so far. It cuts no ice with the impassioned minority who care only for their ability to drive in exactly the same way they always have. And the inventions employed by some of our opponents should never be held equivalent to the truth.

London’s streets are, of course, places of daily confrontation between motor vehicles and vulnerable road users. Reducing that kind of confrontation, which costs lives, mattered much more to me, and should matter much more to Khan, than reducing the kind that involves occasionally being shouted at in church halls.



An early test now looms of whether the mayor’s words about making London less traffic-dominated, more pedestrian and cyclist-friendly mean anything at all. The easiest place imaginable to keep that promise is surely a park – Regent’s Park, to be exact, which currently doubles as a rat-run for speeding cars.

Last February, we consulted on closing four of its eight gates to motors. We received 60% support for the proposal from the public, and would, if still in office, have implemented it – which would have taken one bloke in a van about three-quarters of an hour.



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A year later, City Hall is still wringing its hands about closing a few gates. A noisy minority of the locals dislike losing their rat-run and a certain amount of the dreaded “confrontation” has occurred (most of it from their side, I might add).



The great crusade does now seem to be losing steam. Only 24 people, not all of them opponents, turned up to a protest meeting this week. But it hasn’t stopped Team Khan performing contortions to try to please all sides. Shawcross told last week’s cyclists’ meeting that TfL was looking at “alternatives” to the gate closures, the main one of which appears to be installing a segregated cycle track in the park. This absurd idea would require reconsultation, take at least two years, cost another £1m, do nothing for pedestrians or traffic reduction, and still leave cyclists in danger on the roads leading to the park. Nobody wants it.



It’s an example of the greatest danger in trying to avoid confrontation – that you end up in a confrontation with everyone. The nimbies still hate the scheme because of a separate element, which does have the go-ahead, to remove a gyratory. The cyclists hate it because of the failure to close the gates. This is one case where being a little bit brave would be politically far easier.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Traffic in Brixton road. ‘London streets are lined with fume-spewing, often rather empty double-deckers ... their health-giving qualities aren’t that obvious.’ Photograph: Elizabeth Dalziel/Greenpeace

One other concern about the new disposition: the potential for conflict between the “healthy” modes themselves. I was fascinated to see that buses appear in the Healthy Streets for London document to be promoted as an allegedly healthy form of “active travel” alongside walking and cycling. On many London streets, lined with fume-spewing, often rather empty double-deckers, their health-giving qualities aren’t all that obvious.

Perhaps the health benefit is the walk to the bus stop – though it’s hard to see how that works up much of a sweat. And what if you used to walk all the way to the station, but now get the bus because it’s free on your Travelcard? What if you previously cycled to school, but now use the bus with your child’s free pass? How is that healthier?

Cut TfL open and a bus will be engraved on its heart. I have a horrible feeling that the bus’s improbable new status as the transport equivalent of the Stairmaster will be used to block cycling schemes – as was regularly tried during my time – on the grounds that they cause even tiny delays to bus journeys.

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And even though the interests of pedestrians and cyclists are usually pretty similar, they aren’t always. Contrary to some of the claims coming out of City Hall now, we did a huge amount for pedestrians, with thousands of square metres of new pavement, dozens of new and improved crossings and better streetscapes.

But how do the “healthy streets” agenda and the walking and cycling commissioner cope if there’s a clash – on Oxford Street, for instance, whose proposed pedestrianisation is likely to bring pressure for bikes to be banned? And what policy instruments are there to increase walking with the same proven record that segregated cycle lanes have of increasing cycling?

Among cyclists, there’s been a willingness until recently to give Sadiq the benefit of the doubt. As the prospect looms of a cycling programme consisting largely of 20mph signs, free hi-vis vests and some very attractive new paving slabs, that’s now fading. As British Cycling’s Chris Boardman put it this week, “I’m beginning to agree that big talking coupled with political timidity is likely to be the pattern for this administration.”

Perhaps Norman can get some air back in the tyres – but by the time he is up to speed, it will be about a year since Sadiq’s election. That will have been a lost year for cycling in London. Let it not become a lost four years.

