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”.
Category Archives: International Posts
Outside EU / UK / US
There’s more to ‘going Dutch’ than having a separate cycling lane
It has taken the Netherlands 25 years to build up its culture of respect among its road users, and the law plays a big part too. Read more
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
Copenhagen’s novel problem: too many cyclists
Local cycling federation and tourist organisation warn that bike congestion in the Danish capital can make riding intimidating. Read more
David Suzuki: Building bike lanes pays dividends
Most arguments against bike lanes are absurd. Consider this: we have wide roads everywhere to accommodate cars, most of which carry only one person. On either side of many of those roads, we have pedestrian sidewalks. In most large urban areas, we also have bus lanes and transit systems such as subways and rapid transit. When cyclists ride on roads, drivers often get annoyed. If they ride on sidewalks, pedestrians rightly get angry. Full article
Is it a cyclist’s right to ‘take the lane’?
Eilidh Cairns See Me Save Me European HGV safety campaign claims first success
A Tale of Two Cities
Why cyclists sometimes opt for the pavement
Outdated one-way systems designed for a car-dominated world mean even the most law-abiding among us risk a £30 fine … see Guardian Bike Blog