Vote Bike on Thursday (Green 1st preference; Labour 2nd preference)

Polling day (5th May 2016) is coming up very soon, and we all want to make sure we have the most pro-cycling administration possible in City Hall post-Thursday.

Boris Johnson was a wet-fish for most of his Mayoralty, putting down lines of blue paint which, especially in East London, have led to the needless, tragic, and horrible deaths of many Londoners.

However, in 2012/3 Boris had what can only be described as a Damascene Conversion, and for the last three years he's become a real champion of safe cycling infrastructure; rolling out 38 miles of safe segregated TfL cycle track, most notably along the Embankment. I cycled many of these routes last Sunday, and they're brilliant.

The fantastic new Blackfriars Bridge cycle track. I think it's my favourite, because of it's typically Danish lack of trench-like kerbs separating cyclists and pedestrians. This lighter, but still clear, touch is more pleasant for everyone.

Blackfriars Bridge segregated cycling underpass. Building a genuine network at last.

The new East-West cycling superhighway outside Portcullis House working well for both cyclists and pedestrians. Massive improvement to the whole area.

Bicycle road adjacent to Upper Thames Street Tunnel

These gains have not been easily won. There was sustained and well-financed opposition from Canary Wharf and the City of London to the Embankment cycle track, as well as trenchant attacks from market traders in Tower Hamlets that mean part of CS2 on Whitechapel Road is still a death trap...

Cycle "Superhighway" 2 in Tower Hamlets even after millions of pounds of upgrade work. Dangerous, unpleasant, and often fatal.

The photo above shows the kind of cycling "infrastructure" we will be left with if our political leader(s) lack(s) the will to push through objectively safe plans, even in the face of local opposition.

Where genuinely top cycling facilities have been built, they're already incredibly busy. Even on a Sunday. Even when they're not even finished yet!

Cyclists waiting patiently at the lights at Embankment cycle lane. Red light jumping is far less frequent when cyclists are given safe facilities.

So we need a Mayor who will invest in safe cycling infrastructure, and will have the bravery to make sure that it is built to a high standard so that it isn't a death trap (like the recent photo of the CS2 above). If we want that I believe we need to vote:

1st preference: Sian Berry (Greens)
2nd preference: Sadiq Khan (Labour)

And for London Assembly Members, the orange ballot paper:

Vote Green

The reasons behind this are simple. The Greens have consistently backed cycling in the London Assembly for the last 8 years. Assembly Members (AMs) Darren Johnson and Baroness Jenny Jones have not only criticised Boris Johnson's 5 years of folly, when he put blue paint over dangerous, arterial roads. But, perhaps even more impressively, they have had the objectivity to praise Mr Johnson's genuinely brilliant cycling plans of the last 3 years, and the fruits they are already yielding.

Yay! I can guarantee that the next Green AMs will be as passionate as me and @DarrenJohnsonAM about #cycling. https://t.co/60v5XoWzzE

— Jenny Jones (@GreenJennyJones) 3 May 2016

The Green candidate for Mayor, Sian Berry, has similarly consistently championed cycling throughout her career, as well as clean air which I'm sure we all care about. She's been to many cycling and air pollution protests which every other mayoral candidate has ignored.

Great to have @sianberry Mayoral candidate and @highburyonfoot Assembly Member hopeful at the #PollutionProtest pic.twitter.com/ndNemwpnca

— StopKillingCyclists (@StopKillingCycl) 27 April 2016

However, it is unlikely the Greens will win the Mayoralty. The top two candidates will get put into a run-off, and all first preference votes for other candidates reallocated to their second preference vote. This diagram from a recent poll indicates how this would happen:

Recent poll for London Mayoral Election 2016

So, even if one was inclined to vote Green, we still need to be tactical with our second preference: essentially between Labour and Conservative in this two-horse race.

Sadiq Khan, the Labour candidate, hasn't been as bullishly supportive on cycling as Boris Johnson, but he has been significantly better than Zac Goldsmith, his Tory rival.

Sadiq met with Chris Boardman from British Cycling many weeks ago and committed to maintaining TfL's cycling budget. Zac initially fobbed this meeting off, and only met Chris Boardman very recently.

Similarly, Sadiq was the first mayor candidate to agree to the London Cycling Campaign's campaign pledges. Namely:

1. More space for cycling on main roads and at junctions

LCC secured a huge investment in cycling at the last election. But London urgently needs more high-quality, protected space on main roads and at junctions – these places force cyclists to mix with heavy or fast moving motor traffic, which can put people off cycling. Our next Mayor must triple the number of miles of protected cycle lanes on London’s roads, to help people of all ages and abilities access the road network by bike.

2. A ‘Mini-Holland’ for every London borough

‘Mini-Holland’ schemes create cycle-friendly town-centres. They encourage people to make local journeys by bike or on foot, help regenerate communities, and bring more customers to local businesses. We’ve already secured new schemes in Waltham Forest, Enfield, and Kingston. Now we want every borough to get its very own Mini-Holland.

3. An end to lorry danger

Lorries are the largest vehicles on our streets and pose the greatest risk to cyclists - their design restricts the driver’s vision. London’s next Mayor must act to end lorry danger. This must include upgrading the Safer Lorry Scheme and using planning powers over major construction projects so that only the safest lorries, with ‘Direct Vision’ cabs and minimal ‘blind spots’, are allowed onto London’s streets.

To be fair to Zac, he has also now signed the same pledges. However, Mr Goldsmith decided to sign the day after Sadiq Khan did, which suggests he was more playing 'catch-up' with his rival, than being genuinely committed to a progressive cycling programme for London.

In terms of air quality - a crucial issues for cyclists that are so over-exposed to pollutants drivers create - Sadiq is also ahead of Zac. Mr Goldsmith won't bring in an 'Ultra Low Emission Zone' (ULEZ) - essentially extra taxing of super-polluting motor vehicles to discourage their use - until 2020 (that's FOUR YEARS!). Sadiq has said he will look at bringing in the ULEZ by 2018, and expand it's scope so it's not only Londoners in Zone 1 that can avoid adult-onset asthma, respiratory failure, and heart disease.

Tactics! If @SadiqKhan isn't your 1st or 2nd preference you're voting for @ZacGoldsmith ie diesel cars till 2020... pic.twitter.com/PlA6cZBllO

— Clean Air in London (@CleanAirLondon) May 2, 2016

Mr Goldsmith also threatened to 'rip up' London's new cycle lanes (which are so self-evidently brilliant) on LBC Radio, as well as to ignore the 6,000 respondents to the Cycle Superhighway 11 consultation which had majority support for proper cycling and walking improvements in Regent's Park and Swiss Cottage.

Since then Zac's recognised than some of the new cycle lanes do work for everyone, particularly the new TfL cycle track in Vauxhall (CS5), and that minority local opposition can stoke unrealistic fears, for example in terms of congestion, that never materialise.

Vauxhall Bridge Cycle Track (CS5) - new design, safe for all. Pic via I Bike London.

Vauxhall Cross Old Layout. Terrifying, incompetent, fatal. Pic via Cyclists in the City.

However, it's a case of too-little-too-late, and it's certainly not enough to challenge Sadiq's more consistent and caveat-free support of London's cycling programme.

Pic via London Cycling Campaign. A charity worth being a member of!

So vote bike on Thursday, vote for safer cycling, cleaner air, less congestion, less obesity, more happiness, and fewer road accident fatalities.

(and for your first-past-the-post local London Assembly Member you'll have to look at their personal record on cycling, but speaking generally the Labour Assembly Members have been far more pro-cycling than the Conservative ones, so if you don't have time to research then vote Labour.)

Also, if this was confusing, there's a handy explanation of how London voting system works here: https://www.londonelects.org.uk/im-voter/counting-votes

Jim Fitzpatrick MP lies in Parliament

This is disappointing to have to write, but I fear it must be done. Last week Jim Fitzpatrick, MP for Poplar and Limehouse, stood up in Parliament and said of plans to put a segregated track along the Embankment that, "TfL plans to prevent 80% of that traffic using the road". This is a complete lie. The plans are widely available online (TfL have been paying money to advertise them even on Facebook!), and they clearly show that only 1 lane of motor traffic is going to removed from the Embankment. That is not "80% of the traffic".

Fitzpatrick then went further, claiming that only "9% of traffic on the Embankment is private cars", when TfL's data shows that the actual figure is a whooping 69%. This is a big mistake for someone who has previously worked as both Parliamentary Under-Secretary and Shadow Minister for Transport. Given his prior experience in the Transport department we can only put the wild inaccuracy of his comments down to deliberate lying.

Jim Fitzpatrick MP

And why would a man deliberately lie in this instance? Well, it's not hard to find an answer:

Jim Fitzpatrick on a free holiday courtesy of Canary Wharf Group. Thanks to @peterjuan23four on Twitter for finding this.

Jim Fitzpatrick has had free holidays (and perhaps free gifts and money?) from Canary Wharf Plc, an organisation which has admitted to spending large amounts of cash privately briefing against Boris Johnson's segregated cycle programme. So when it comes to crunch-time he gets up in Parliament and sings blatant and obvious lies from Canary Wharf's hymn sheet. Despicable.

He's as bad as Peter Anderson.

David Cameron and Patrick McLoughlin's 'Cycling Announcement': amount pledged is pitiful, but politically striking to see them directly associate themselves with cycle advocacy and the segregation of cyclists from pedestrians and motor vehicles

On Monday 12th August 2013 David Cameron and Patrick McLoughlin (Minister for Transport) announced a total of £148 million 'new' funding for cycling between now and 2015 (that's £77 million per annum). It was heartening to see this get such substantial, in-depth coverage from the BBC, especially the comment from Chris Stewart, their Look North Chief Reporter who castigated authorities for building 'cycle lanes' alongside 70 mph dual-carriageways that forced those on a bike to risk their lives crossing 70 mph slip roads at right angles.

However, as Christian Wolmar (who is seeking the Labour nomination for 2016 mayoral election) and Mark Ames of the ibikelondon blog have pointed out, the total funding we're getting is only getting about £17 million a year more than we got every year until 2010 with Cycling England, a quango that distributed £60 million per annum to cycling projects. Why was this money cut off in 2010? David Cameron, Nick Clegg, and the Coalition immediately cancelled it, of course, when they came to power. So the government now is, in fact, woefully trying to make up for three years, and £180 million, of missed investment in cycling with a pitiful £77 million a year. That's a joke, if you ask me.

So, the total funding announced for cycling by our national government is, we can all admit, an insultingly small amount. There are, however, are a few rays of light for cycling advocacy in the UK. The first is the language that this new spending announcement is couched in. In the government's own press release the word 'segregated' occurs three times, including 'a new segregated Super Highway from east Leeds to Bradford City Centre'. This is a substantial improvement on the situation even three years ago, and will hopefully prevent large amounts of government money being wasted on schemes that do a negligible amount to promote cycling (such as the £500,000 travesty that is Scotland's Nice Way Code). Moreover, the use of the key word 'segregated' will help stop local authorities getting away with putting blue paint in the middle of a general traffic lane which Boris Johnson choose to use for most of his largely useless 'Cycle Superhighways' (which were even lambasted by his political ally and new Cycling Commissioner, Andrew Gilligan).

Given that there are still significant numbers of 'cycling advocates', especially in organisations like CTC (The National Cycling Charity), who neither understand nor support the segregation of cyclists and motor traffic – nor cyclists and pedestrians – it is in many ways remarkable that a largely Conservative government is in a small way helping establish segregated cycle lanes as the 'gold standard' that local councils should be aiming for. The fact the government has embraced segregation (at least in name) is a testament to the effectiveness of The Cycling Embassy of Great Britain (which formed partly in response to the ongoing opposition to segregation in existing cycling advocacy groups like CTC), the London Cycling Campaign's 'Love London, Go Dutch' campaign, The Times' 'Cyclesafe' campaign, and Andrew Gilligan and Boris Johnson's 'Cycling Vision for London', published in March 2013, which implicitly established segregated routes as the ideal road-layout to ensure cycle safety and high rates of cycling.

Another significant element of Monday's announcement is the extent to which David Cameron and Patrick McLoughlin have publicly associated themselves with cycling. (Patrick McLoughlin even wrote a comment piece for The Times in support of it! Hard to imagine Philip Hammond, the previous Minister for Transport, doing the same.) This public association of key politicians with cycling not only helps further normalise it as a majority mode of transport, but also makes the government more accountable for future cycling deaths. When someone dies because of using a form of transport which you have actively 'sponsored' and encouraged, you are more responsible that if someone dies using a form of transport you have completely ignored for the last 3 years (as the Coalition has done). With Monday's announcement the Conservative majority of the Coalition has started a conversation about cycle advocacy which they were refusing to engage in, even last year. This is surely a good thing.

David Cameron cycling in opposition. He's largely ignored it since. As has the rest of his party, excluding Boris Johnson and Dr Sarah Wollaston MP. Might this be about to change?

The personal contributions of specific politicians and parties also opens the arena for cycling to become a truly political issue, in the sense that different politicians may well begin to actively compete with each other to show they are representing the interests of those that cycle better than their competitors. This hasn't happened an awful lot in this country yet. But we got a taste of what could become quite common with Maria Eagle's (Shadow Minister for Transport) spot-on comments following the announcement:

No amount of cynical spin from David Cameron will make up for the fact that, immediately on taking office, he axed Cycle England, the Cycle Demonstration Towns scheme and the annual £60m budget to support cycling that he inherited. 

Since then he has axed targets to reduce deaths and serious injuries on our roads, reduced traffic enforcement, cut the THINK! awareness campaign and allowed longer HGVs. 

Only last month the prime minister set out plans for Britain's roads that failed to include a single commitment to the investment in separated cycling infrastructure that is the best way to boost cycling and make it safer.

I couldn't have put it better myself. Admittedly Maria Eagle's actions in office might not match up to her comments in opposition, but she is bang-on the money here, especially in regard to the government's £12 billion a year road building scheme that makes a few million spent of cycling pale into insignificance. The fact that David Cameron is attempting to spin himself as being pro-cycling opens up 'cycling' as an area of competition between Labour, Conservative, and Lib Dems which will hopefully create an 'arms-race' (if you will) on cycling policies as each party seeks to capture the ever-increasing cycling vote. Similarly, in terms of the London Mayoralty, Boris Johnson has been largely unchallenged by any major politicians over his cycling policies (though Jenny Jones AM [Green] and Caroline Pidgeon AM [Lib Dem] have been fantastic over the last few years on the London Assembly). Nor has Boris had any challenge from within his own party as a 'cycling-champion'. I believe this political wasteland is what has allowed him to push through policies that are extremely damaging to cycling (such as blue-paint cycle superhighways or scrapping the pedestrianisation of Parliament Square) without losing his image among the wider-public as someone who does his best for cycling because he's got no competitors in terms of promoting it. Hopefully this will change, and awful policies will be exposed for what they are not only by cycle campaigners, but by politicians and political parties looking to gain an advantage on rivals (e.g. Cameron vs. Johnson, etc.).

Ultimately this announcement by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Transport is a recognition of the political strength of cycling advocacy in this country (especially following the recent and impressive sports success in cycling). However, in their championing of 'segregation' this government is helping to unify advocacy groups on the issue, thus making the cycling voice stronger and more uniform. Moreover, by entering into a dialogue about cycle safety the government have made themselves far more accountable for cycling deaths in the country, as Boris Johnson is increasingly finding himself to be for anyone killed on a bike in London. It's an insultingly small amount of money, but the announcement itself is big news.

Cambridge Local Elections - 2nd May 2013

EDIT (6/5/13) - It gives me great pleasure to observe that the vice-chairman of Cambridge Conservatives, Timothy Haire (with whom I engage in a quite fiery confrontation in the comments section of this article) lost his seat in the 2013 Local Elections.

Timothy Haire was beaten by the Labour candidate, Sandra Crawford. It is heartening to note that when responding to the Cambridge Cycle Campaign's survey, Sandra Crawford had infinitely more intelligent things to say than Timothy Haire.

Here's the hoping that in the wake of extremely poor electoral results, the Cambridge Conservatives might re-think their currently idiotic policy on cycling...

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Continuing with this blog's 'call-a-spade-a-spade' approach, I thought it might be constructive to take a cycling-related stance on the upcoming County Council elections. Should you...


Vote Conservative? ... NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! This blog is a massive supporter of what Boris Johnson is doing in London, but the sad reality is that local conservative candidates up here in Cambridge are complete cretins. To name just one such cretin (although they are virtually innumerable), Timothy Haire, vice-chairman of Cambridge Conservatives, wrote some absolutely ridiculous responses to the Cambridge Cycle Campaign's questionnaire, including a breathtakingly patronising: "you really are being silly now". [if you'd prefer an extended exploration of Timothy Haire's mendacity please see the comments section]

Hello, my name's Timothy Haire, but even being photographed in black and white can't stop me looking fat, ill-informed and idiotic. [disclaimer: I have no idea what Timothy Haire's weight is and it was unnecessarily inflammatory to call him fat. I am sorry about doing that. But his responses in the comments section (below)  unfortunately demonstrate that he is indeed ill-informed, idiotic and a liar when it comes to cycling issues. Pretty poor given he wants to be an elected official of the UK's cycling capital...]

Vote Labour? ... NO! NO! NO! While some of their manifesto promises look good, they're not backing up claims like "We will push for investment in high-quality strategic cycle routes across the county"with actual proposals. We need specifics. It's not enough to say you support cycle routes. Where are they going to go? Where's the money going to come from? How will you negotiate opposition from motor-idiotic local residents? Labour are all words, no substance.



Vote Liberal Democrats? ... YES! YES! YES! The Liberal Democrats are the only party to have laid actual specifics on the table about what they would do. These deserve quoting in full:

• Build the Chisholm Trail, a strategic cycle route that would run from Addenbrooke’s to the Cambridge Science Park, alongside the railway
• Provide more cycle parking in areas of greatest demand.
• Invest in enhancing cycle links around the county.
• Bring junctions that are dangerous for cyclists up to a safe standard.
• Introduce 20mph zones in densely populated residential areas, not including A and B roads, in consultation with local communities, to make travelling safer for all road users.
• Grit more of our cycle routes, among the busiest in the country.

Dr Belinda Brooks-Gordon (left) is one of many Lib Dem councillors that want to see the Chisholm Trail go ahead.

Moreover, the Liberal Democrat politicians are also happy to expand on these ideas using twitter, stating:

• In our alt budget we proposed an extra £8m for cycle links (but £4m of that is earmarked for the Chisholm Trail in Cambridge)

If we want to see positive change on our roads, Lib Dem on a local level is clearly the way to go.

It is also the Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge, Dr Julian Huppert, who has been relentlessly pushing the government's report 'Get Britain Cycling' in Parliament. Yet another reason to vote for a Lib Dem local government.

Julian Huppert MP (far right), sorting out cycling in the UK

Vote Green? ... NO! Like Labour, the Greens are saying the right things about cycling (isn't everyone nowadays?), but woefully lacking in specifics. We need specifics.

I'm not even going to dignify UKIP's "I would prefer more car parks" approach with a sarcastic putdown. This response to Cambridge Cycle Campaign's survey is hilarious though...

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.... Finally, if you haven't already signed the e-petition for the government to implement the proposals contained in the 'Get Britain Cycling' report, please please please do so now by clicking here! 35,000 signatures in 5 days!... But we need 100,000 to trigger a debate in Parliament!

Kate Hoey MP is a complete disgrace

Given the news today (that was even lauded in the Daily Mail!!!) of how forward-thinking politicians like Boris Johnson (supported by his ever impressive 'Cycling Czar' Andrew Gilligan) are making ground-breaking advances in terms of cycling policy, I thought it might be a good time to reflect on those politicians that are at the other end of the spectrum.

Kate Hoey, Labour MP for Vauxhall, is an absolute disgrace, and I would urge anyone who is her constituent or has any contact with her to let her know this in writing.

Kate Hoey has been dangerously cycle-toxic for all of her 14 years as MP for Vauxhall

Danny from Cyclists in the City has previously written about her cretinous attitude towards cycling.

However, her latest piece of idiocy has been to block the installation of a large Cycle Hire Docking Station on Cornwall Road, SE1, in order to preserve car-parking bays.

It is completely ridiculous to block the installation of 35 bike hire racks that can be used by hundreds people during the course of a day in order to preserve 3 on-street car parking spaces.

Moreover, SE1 a part of London that, located so close to Waterloo and the South Bank, is already extremely congested and busy, and therefore unsuitable for heavy on-street car-use.

What especially annoys be about Kate Hoey's despicable actions is the amount of grief that TfL and the Mayor sustain for problems with the Boris Bike system, when it is politicians like Hoey (and the Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea councils that won't let TfL move Boris Bikes around in the early morning) that are actively preventing improvements to the Cycle Hire Scheme.

Mark Field, Conservative MP for Westminster, does exactly the same thing in his constituency.

Those who like cycling to get from A to B should be ever aware that often it is not TfL that are the problem, but idiotic politicians like Kate Hoey and Mark Field who are deliberately disrupting and retarding TfL's efforts to improve cycling in London.

The importance of emailing your local councillors with 'Write To Them'

Perhaps the most important reason for starting a blog like this would be to try, even if it is only in a very little way, to do something concrete to make cycling in London safer and better. So here goes. This post advises (a little) action:

A few weeks ago while trawling the extremely worthwhile 'Cyclist in the City' blog (@citycyclists), I came across this link: http://www.writetothem.com/.

I dutifully followed the link, typed in my postcode, and wrote to my councillors, my London Assembly Members, and my Member of Parliament, sending all three quite a similar email asking for better cycle infrastructure in my area and better Boris Bike provision. What surprised me was that within about two weeks all of them had personally replied to me (or at least got their PA to send me something if they were over 60 and clearly did't understand emails); and even if they weren't quite in agreement with my suggestions, they had at least read them and were happy to engage in a back-and-forth email 'conversation' with me over the issues in question.

A politician like Julian Huppert (LibDem MP for Cambridge) needs to be reassured by the electorate (i.e. you) that his pioneering concern for cycle safety is extremely popular with the electorate, and will only become more so as cycling rates across Britain continue to increase.

Clearly they were all, at some level at least, interested in my opinions, even if all I represented to them was a name and address at the bottom of an email. So I tried to put myself in the politicians' shoes and work out why they were taking the time to email me back.


For a start, since all local leaders are democratically elected I, at the very least, represent one vote. And that's probably worth keeping. But there's more to it than that. If I've gone to the trouble of emailing my local politicians I could well be a floating voter (since in the next elections I might just vote for whoever I percieve as having the best cycling policy rather than saying "I'm a Tory" etc.). And, of course, in our 'first-past-the-post' system, floating voters are the the ones that really count.

Furthermore, if I've gone to the (even though it is comparatively minor) trouble to send an email, I'm probably more politically active than the average resident. In fact, I may well talk about local politics with politically-apathetic friends in the run up to a local election and perhaps influence them to vote for whoever sent me the nicest email the year before.

So there's actually quite a few good reasons for local leaders to listen to their residents when they contact them using a service like: http://www.writetothem.com/.

Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere, making cycling safer and more popular in London are both incremental inter-linked processes; we should realistically be aiming for a Cycling Evolution instead of a Cycling Revolution. In this context, anything you can do which incrementally increases support for cycling groups at a government level is a good-thing-to-do.

Especially since so much of town planning is a compromise, there's a real opportunity here for achieving solid incremental improvements (in a way in which there isn't for an issue like the Iraq War, where Britain was simply either going to go to war, or not go to war). For instance, say a local leader is considering a difficult decision about extending a cycle path on a road or in a park near you. There are clearly arguments either way. If he/she gets 5 emails the week before asking for better cycling infrastructure that might just tip it. And it is these kind of incremental improvements that cyclist should be aiming for as well as bigger changes (e.g. the redesign of Blackfriars Bridge that LCC have rightly proposed).

What Blackfriars Bridge could look like. More info from LCC.

Furthermore, now is the perfect time to persuade local leaders to devote more money/road space to cyclists. Not only do more cyclists cycle in summer anyway. Not only have there been consecutive year-on-year increases in cycling rates in London for the last decade. But most importantly we've just seen the major cycling success of British athletes in the Tour de France and at the Olympics, and everyone is asking about an Olympic 'Legacy' and how the government could fulfil this ("how about cycle lanes?"). To top it all off, we've got the Paralympics and then Bradley Wiggins racing in the Tour de Britain in September which will ensure that cycling is kept firmly in the public's imagination over the next few weeks. In short, cycling at the moment is as close to political gold-dust as it has ever been. If local leaders are ever going to listen and be persuaded, they'll be persuaded now.

Bradley Wiggins destroying the Olympic Time Trial race, and, in the process, generating massive amounts of political good will, on the part of the general public, for Utility Cycling.

Do these local leaders have any influence? Yes. Unlike other political issues such as the Iraq War or Fiscsal Easing, Cycling Infastructure is an issue which can only be implemented with a national, mayoral, and local impetus. (Okay, I know the national impetus side of things could be greatly improved by that's a separate issue I've discussed here). After emailing the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea suggesting the installation cycle lanes on Holland Park Avenue for commuters coming in through Sheperd's Bush from West London, I got this reply from Kathryn.King@rbkc@gov.uk

'We are awaiting plans from TfL regarding their next Cycle Superhighway which will run down Kensington High Street.  That, and pressure from the Mayor, may well have an effect on our cycle lane policy but I’m afraid that at present our Councillors do not support segregated lanes in the carriageway.'

Even though there is clearly a distinct mayoral pressure here, it is not enough unless there is also local support. At the end of the day, local support is essential to achieving good cycle infrastructure because local authorities have such a big say in deciding what gets built in their area and how road space is divided up.

A politician like Kate Hoey (Labour MP for Vauxhall) needs to be told by the electorate (i.e. you) that completely neglecting the very real needs of her constituents for safer cycle infrastructure in South London is deeply unpopular and will lead to her losing her seat in the next election, especially with cycle champion Simon Hughes MP reigning in neighbouring Southwark.

Therefore, because they could well listen, and because now is the best time to persuade them, and because persuading them would make a real tangible difference to the cycling conditions on the streets you live in (since BoJo unfortunately can't run London as a cycling dictator), get onto http://www.writetothem.com/, get involved, and get persuading your local Councillors so that they do 'support segregated lanes in the carriageway'. I believe it's always best to express yourself in your own words, since then politicians are much more inclined to believe there is real grass-roots support for better cycling infrastructure (which there clearly is).

In your message I'd recommend - if I may be so impertinent - at the very least asking your local leaders to (1) improve local cycle infrastructure in line with best international practice (esp. Holland - we're talking protected cycle lanes, more cycle park spaces etc.), and as I've already argued here, (2) either get Boris Bike Docking Stations in your area, or if they are there already, get the existing Docking Stations expanded, and lastly, (3) improve the current Boris Bike tariff by making the first 60 minutes free to registered users.

There are over 11,000 people currently following @londoncyclist on twitter. That's a lot of people interested in cycling in London. If anywhere near 11,000 emails found themselves in our local leaders inboxes tomorrow morning then we would certainly see more real local improvements to our cycle infrastructure, and by happy consequence, to overall cycling levels too. So, to my mind, its worth doing.

http://www.writetothem.com/

(comments welcomed)

P.S. If you want to do even more to make an active difference you can also write/email (as I have done) the following people:

- mayor@london.gov.uk (although Boris may not personally read this...)
- Your local MP through this slightly different contact detail: http://findyourmp.parliament.uk/
- Your local council using the 'contact' section on their website.
- The Parks administration to get them to improve the current cycle infastructure in Hyde Park, Regents Park, Green Park, St James Park etc. (Email: hq@RoyalParks.gsi.gov.uk)
- TfL using the contact section of their website or email LondonStreets@TfL.gov.uk
- BCH Scheme using the contact section of their website or email BarclaysCycleHire@TfL.gov.uk
- Signing the LCC petition to 'Love London Go Dutch': http://lcc.org.uk/sign-go-dutch-petition.
- Signing up to your local borough cycling group. Easy to find: just put '[Borough name] cycling' into Google.