Category Archives: International Posts

Outside EU / UK / US

Boris Johnson’s cycling policies: putting the motorist first

Guardian Bike Blog video

Boris Johnson’s jolly-good-fun image is so bound up with cycling that it’s easy to forget that his road management strategy as London mayor has always deferred to the London motorist. His 2008 transport manifesto led with pledges to “put the commuter first” by “making traffic flow more smoothly,” and it was clear long ago that the Conservative mayor had no intention of allowing his cycling policies to result in car, van and lorry drivers slipping down the road-user hierarchy. This video clip showing a section of one of Boris’s “cycle superhighways”.

Rise in cycling deaths highlights ‘appalling’ road layouts

On Monday, the fashion student Min Joo Lee, 24, became the 13th cyclist to be killed in London this year. She was hit by an HGV while navigating the Kings Cross one-way system near York Way.

The blogger Olaf Storbeck wrote that Joo Lee’s death was sadly predictable given the “appalling” road layout in the area. He called it one of the “worst death traps for cyclists in London”. Read more

Dublin ranked in top 10 cycling cities worldwide

DUBLIN HAS been ranked within the top 10 cycling cities in the world.

The Danish authors of the list said they were “surprised” that Ireland’s capital ranked as the ninth when they looked at 80 major cities around the world.

They said the city was undergoing a “grand rebound” in cycling thanks to “a wildly successful bike share programme, visionary politicians who implemented bike lanes and 30km/h zones, and a citizenry who have merely shrugged and gotten on with it”. Read more