Great excitement broke out on Nick Ferrari’s LBC Radio show last week when Boris Johnson’s fellow Telegraph writer and cycling commissioner Andrew Gilligan called the station’s political editor Theo Usherwood “a liar”.

Usherwood had compiled a report from Vauxhall Bridge, where a fully segregated, two-way cycle track has recently been opened as part of the mayor’s cycle superhighway 5 (CS5). He said pedestrians and motorists were inconvenienced by the new road infrastructure and that many cyclists were ignoring it.

Gilligan disagreed. “I think that report I just heard was a complete lie,” he said, sounding very cross indeed. Ferrari doubted this, but Gilligan insisted: “Yes, I think he is quite clearly lying.” He said that he himself had stood at the same spot as Usherwood on the three preceding days and had “observed that about 95% of cyclists were using the superhighway.”

He went on: “I counted, with my own eyes, 750 people using it, in an hour,” and urged Ferrari to “deal with the fact that your reporter is a liar.” Ferrari said that this suggestion was angering him and asked Gilligan to stop, but the mayor’s man was not deterred: “I’m sorry but your whole report was an absolute lie.”

Ferrari asked why cyclists aren’t compelled to use a facility that’s been provided for them at great expense. Gilligan said there was no need, “because they’re all using it.” Ferrari challenged this – Usherwood had said that 40% of cyclists crossing the bridge weren’t using CS5. “Only a tiny fraction aren’t using it, despite the lies of your reporter,” retorted the mayor’s aide.

What should we make of this? Gilligan, of course, wished to defend the cycling infrastructure for which he’s responsible, but calling Usherwood “a liar” and his report “an absolute lie” seemed most unbecoming. Usherwood, fully-backed by LBC, has firmly denied the accusations.



Intrigued, I spent some time on Vauxhall Bridge early this week. On Monday morning, between 07:50 and 08:20, I counted 211 cyclists using CS5, a rate of 422 an hour - far fewer than Gilligan’s 750, a figure also used in a mayoral press release. The vast majority, as you’d expect at that time of day, were heading from south London to north, from Lambeth into Westminster.



From my vantage point I could see that a significant number of cyclists heading in the same direction weren’t using CS5 at all but going with the flow of motor traffic on the other side of the bridge where there is no cycle infrastructure at all.



The reason for that was pretty obvious. Almost every cyclist approaching from the west on Wandsworth Road and turning left on to the bridge simply kept going rather than making their way across to CS5, which involves stopping and using the wide, signalised crossing point they’ve been provided with. For all but a handful, the interruption of their progress - including a wait of up to 75 seconds for the red cyclist figure to turn green - just wasn’t worth it.



Instead, they rode up a wide stretch of pavement at the junction with the bridge approach, as bicycle symbols on the paving indicate that they’re entitled to. They passed on either side of a Vauxhall Underground station entrance/exit and in front of a branch of Pret A Manger, filtering in to the motor traffic on the road at various points.



On Tuesday morning I went to Vauxhall Bridge again. This time, I counted the morning peak’s non-CS5 cyclists too. Between 07:35 and 08:05 I saw 98 go by on the west side of the bridge, a rate of 196 per hour. Most came straight up from Wandsworth Road, but some joined the Westminster-bound carriageway from the direction of Vauxhall bus station, working their way across the motor traffic stream from one stretch of bus lane towards the one that lines the kerb further on. Two of the 98 crossed the bridge from the north side of the river to the south, using the narrow pavement strip.

I then again counted the cyclists who did use CS5. Between 08:10 and 08:40 there were 265, equating to 530 an hour – higher than Monday’s figure, but still well short of Gilligan’s 750. What about that contested percentage split? What I saw indicated that during the morning peak roughly 70% of all cyclists using Vauxhall Bridge use CS5 and roughly 30% don’t. The latter figure is much closer to the 40% Theo Usherwood had estimated than the 5% (or less) that Gilligan had claimed.

What explains these wide discrepancies? Let’s not rush to judgements. All my counting took place in the early morning. During the evening peak hours, when the majority of cyclists using Vauxhall Bridge travel in the opposite direction - from north of the river to south - they all, perhaps apart from the odd pavement artist, use the opposite side of the road, which is where CS5 has been installed.



Assuming that the vast majority use it at that time of day, then Gilligan’s figures start sounding more persuasive: if all the CS5-users I counted in the morning also used it in the opposite direction in the evening and were joined by those who hadn’t used it in the morning, the evening peak total would have been 726 cyclists an hour on Cs5. That’s very adjacent to Gilligan’s 750, and in inclement weather too - it was freezing on Monday and drizzling on Tuesday. Considered from that perspective, his 95% claim seems more persuasive too - if CS5 is right in front you, why wouldn’t you ride on it?

So maybe both Usherwood and Gilligan were both about right and both about wrong, depending on the counting criteria and time of day. In any case, firm conclusions about numbers cannot really be reached without far more exhaustive observation than I’ve been able to undertake. That said, the two mornings I spent on Vauxhall Bridge were instructive enough to raise questions and cause a few concerns.

The concerns are mostly about pedestrians. The first time I came up the steps from the Tube station onto the street I was quite alarmed by one cyclist cutting across my path from my left and another going past me on my right, both of them moving quite quickly. If this bit of streetscape is formally “shared space”, then it’s one where the interests of cyclists and those on foot often conflict rather than being co-operatively resolved. Not ideal.



On the other side of the southern approach to the bridge, CS5 has apparently required a narrowing of pavement space around the Secret Intelligence Service Building (which I could have sworn a Bond villain blew up, but maybe I just imagined it). As with the unappealing bus stop by-pass in Whitechapel High Street it seems that the mayor’s Vision for Cycling has penalised pedestrians in this location.

The wider goals of that Vision are already being met by Cs5 as whole, according to the mayor’s press release. As mentioned above, it claims that “more than 750 cyclists are already using the new, dedicated segregated lane” and that this figure represents a 29% increase on the number of cyclists crossing Vauxhall Bridge before. As we’ve seen, however, that 750 figure is at variance with what I saw during the morning peak at this early stage of CS5’s life, although the bad weather on those days might well have had something to do with it.



The press release also says that “the number of extra cyclists using the segregated route is already the equivalent of taking 113 cars off Vauxhall Bridge.” What exactly does that mean? Is it “the equivalent” of 113 fewer cars per hour or per day or per travel peak ? Whichever, being “equivalent” to 113 fewer cars doesn’t mean that there actually are 113 fewer cars than before using Vauxhall Bridge during whatever the time frame in question is. And if there are fewer cars using the bridge, why might that be? Because fewer people are using cars or because congestion resulting from CS5 being installed has slowed the rate at which cars cross the bridge? It’s hard to know.



The Vision for Cycling aspires to persuading people to switch from cars to bikes, but the press release figures, whatever they may be worth, do not amount to evidence of such switching taking place. Each time I’ve asked Transport for London for evidence of “modal shift” between cycling and other transport options in recent times, I’ve drawn a blank.

A clearer picture of CS5’s effects can only emerge over time, including the extent to which they deliver the Vision for Cycling’s various goals: increasing the amount of cycling in London overall, broadening the cycling demographic from its present narrow base, and so on.



If I’d been more alert last Monday, I could have tried asking Mayor Johnson himself. Standing on the corner at the end of Wandsworth Road, I thought there was something familiar about a warmly-clad, middle-aged cyclist in an insulating hat heading in my direction from the bridge. Not until he’d passed me did I realise that it was “Boris” on his way to break ground for the Northern Line extension in Nine Elms. One day, I must ask him what he thought of Andrew Gilligan’s conduct on LBC. I’m sure his answer would bear no trace of a lie.

Listen to Theo Usherwood’s report and Andrew Gilligan’s response here.

