Can Khan do?

The good guy and the bad guy! While London cyclists can now look forward to improved road conditions promised by the newly elected London Mayor Sadiq Khan, Dublin cyclists have been shocked by Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary who last week said:  “Cyclists should be taken out and shot”.

O’Leary – we’ll call him “O’Weary” – expressed his ugly sentiments during his key-note speech to a “Creative Minds Conference” when he criticised Dublin city council’s proposals to improve the roads for cyclists.

I never thought an Irishman could say such a thing!  Most of the Irish guys I’ve ever known have always left me laughing, Sean Lally on the Milk Race, the Irish press on the Tour de France doing a jig in the road when Kelly won at Pau. 

It clearly hadn’t occurred to this sad bad guy, O’ Weary,   that there were probably a few cyclists among the “creative minds” he was addressing, who decided there and than never to board his planes again.  This was incitement and ought to be dealt accordingly.

He’s not the first to make such utterances. Newspaper columnists Matthew Paris and Daisy Waugh have in the not too distant past similarly made outrageous tasteless comments about cyclists.  

Meanwhile, London cyclists say cheerio to Boris Johnson, the outgoing London Mayor for his part in raising cycling’s profile this past eight years, albeit in his hit and miss way. 

And now they must hope Khan can do everything he’s promised, following his landslide victory last weekend when he became the first Labour London Mayor since Ken Livingstone.

Khan has promised to make London a truly safe city for cyclists, to build and improve on the work started under the former conservative Mayor Johnson.  Johnson had turned his predecessor Ken Livingstone’s dream of Cycling Superhighways into some sort of weird reality – because they were delivered with built-in nightmares resulting in the death of two riders!

The Superhighways introduced in 2008 had serious flaws in them. They lulled riders into a false sense of security as they pedalled along what in effect was nothing more than bog-standard cycle lane painted bright blue. 

TfL planners told me they hoped drivers at junctions would treat the blue lane as they do Zebra crossings, and automatically give way to riders on them even though there was no legal requirement for them to do so!  Blue lanes or no, major junctions were still a free-for-all. Despite the welcome advance stop lines allowing cyclists a head start, big junctions remained a nerve-wracking experience to ride across.

And all because TfL didn’t want to further impede traffic with additional cycling designated traffic lights.

The deaths occurred on the Bow – Aldgate Superhighway.  Two riders were killed there in separate incidents.

Johnson was moved to act. He declared that as cyclists made up 24 per cent of rush hour traffic, this clearly justified creating dedicated road space for them and he did what he’d been told he ought to have done all along – begin to take road space from cars to create segregated cycle lanes!

In 2014 Johnson unveiled his £913m commitment to construct a “Crossrail for Bikes” across the Capital.

The Tower Hill to Parliament Square route opened a few days ago and although I’ve only “ridden it” courtesy of YouTube, it took my breath away. It looked splendid and everything a cycle route along a main road should be, with cyclist traffic lights, too. Boris had delivered at the last.

The baton is now with Khan who must know that one segregated cycling Superhighway does not a cycling network make. Every major road in the capital needs, if not segregated cycle lanes, then structural changes to make them safer for cyclists.

As it is, cycling in London still provides me with the kind of adrenalin rush I could do without.

Take the maelstrom of traffic diving into and out of the side streets on the Aldwych for example.  Cars taxis trucks buses cycles motorbikes all eyeballing each other and cutting finely judged lines (you hope) to go where they want – hopefully.  Without colliding - mostly!  

What has Khan promised?  

He told Bike Biz (www.bikebiz.com) he will double Transport for London's annual cycling budget to £164m.

Close Oxford Street to motor traffic.

Triple the number of protected cycle lanes.  

Have a cyclist representative on the TfL Board.

Consider removing tipper trucks and HGV’s from London roads at rush hour.

(According to Cycling UK - formerly the CTC, the national cyclists’ organisation - between January 2008 and July 2015, 56 of the 99 cyclists killed in London were involved in collisions with lorries.)

Consider relaxing rules on night time deliveries.

And in his first term of office, Khan has set himself this challenge, to promote a *Mini-Holland Programme – Nirvana for cyclists  - for all London Boroughs.