Is cycling really Boris Johnson’s top priority? | Dave Hill

London is a city full of bicycles, but many of them don’t get out much. The thing that’s stopping them most is fear: the fear on their owners’ part of injury and death. As a Londoner whose bicycle rarely sees the great urban outdoors, I have no trouble believing a Transport for London analysis of cycling potential, published this time last year, which found that concern for personal safety “was the most significant barrier to cycling in general”.

The dreadful news that a 16th cyclist has died on London’s roads in 2011 – dubbed by the city’s mayor Boris Johnson the “year of cycling” – provides no reassurance. Two of those 16 perished in the autumn after colliding with lorries on one of Johnson’s four “cycle superhighways” that goes through a busy roundabout in Bow, just a stone’s throw from the 2012 Olympic Park. The mayor claims to be leading a “cycling revolution” in the capital. How is that “revolution” going, and at what cost?

The story told by the Tory mayor and those who implement his policies is that “cycling is on the up”, although what kind of “up”, and why, is in dispute. A recent written answer said that “cycle flows” on the capital’s main routes grew by 15% between 2009/10 and 2010/11, but does that mean that many more Londoners have started cycling? That TfL analysis of cycling potential found that between 2001 and 2008 there was a high degree of churn, with people trying out pedal power then thinking better of it. An increase in cycle travel was down to people making more cycle trips rather than more people taking up cycling.

The mayor claims that his commuter-route superhighways and loss-making cycle hire scheme – which benefits only central London so far – are popular triumphs. Yet these high-profile, Barclays bank-sponsored initiatives have been developed while funding has been slashed for a London-wide cycle route network that critics say would have done far more to foster cycling across the metropolis as a whole. Team Johnson and TfL are now insisting that safety is a priority, and are reviewing the design of all superhighway junctions, while rejecting accusations that these routes are little more than a few lanes of blue paint.

But the mayor is coming under sustained attack over an area of transport policy – where London mayors have their greatest powers – that overlaps inconveniently with his public image as a lovably eccentric “cycling mayor”. Brian Paddick, his Liberal Democrat challenger for next year’s mayoral election, has claimed that Johnson’s roads policy “puts peoples’ lives at risk” due to his prioritising “smoothing traffic flow” for private cars and commercial vehicles.

The Green party’s candidate, Jenny Jones, who is also a member of the London Assembly, is unimpressed by the way Johnson has distanced himself from the failure of TfL, whose board the mayor chairs, to implement recommendations by London cycling campaigners and its own consultants that would have seen the Bow superhighway designed differently. According to the “cycling mayor”, this was all news to him.

Johnson’s fellow City Hall Conservatives had a tricky time last week after a walk-out by the assembly’s Tory group meant that a cycling safety motion couldn’t be debated. Such sabotages have become routine, whatever the subject – they stem from a long-running complaint about scrutiny committees – and the Tory AMs do have cyclists in their ranks, including one who has backed the campaign against Johnson’s proposed junction redesign at Blackfriars bridge. But they might not have anticipated the father of the most recent fatal victim telling BBC London News that politicians should be “thoroughly ashamed of themselves”.

Nobody disputes that there is more cycling in London than there was 10 years ago, but the mayor’s progress towards creating the “cyclised city” he says he craves is coming under the spotlight not only from rival politicians – he’ll come under more pressure about safety at his monthly question time on Wednesday – but also articulate and energetic campaign groups mobilising on the blogosphere. Even the planning inspectorate’s response to the draft of Johnson’s new London Plan, the master document signposting the capital’s future development, thought his target for increasing cycling’s transport “modal share” unambitious.

It said he ought to find a place for a hierarchy of road-users, with more sustainable forms such as cycling at the top. There’s not much chance of that. Johnson’s encouragement of cycling falls short of causing too much nuisance to his first priority – the motorist, especially the suburban variety whose electorally loyalty he needs. He is, after all, a Conservative.

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