“The Mayor has dithered, delayed and dropped so many of his promises on cycling” says Green Assembly Darren Johnson, as he expresses his concern that the Mayor will leave office without having built the safe cycle lanes that are needed.
London Superhighway 7, photograph courtesy of Stephen Craven.
Two of the cycling superhighways have been dropped. CS6 Penge to City (Borough roads – via Camberwell and Elephant and Castle) and C12 East Finchley to Angel (A1 – A1000). CS9 is also under threat.
Transport for London have said they will delay £5m of spending on cycling superhighways until after the Mayor elections in 2016. The Mayor promised 12 cycling superhighways back in 2009, but only finished four of them. These are now being upgraded and another is being built in sections. Two more are due to be completed after May 2016, whilst the remainders don’t have a timetable for completion. TfL highlighted ‘deliverability constraints within TfL and its supply chain’.
The Mayor has added a north/south and east/west route to his promised Dutch style cycle lanes, but the latter is likely to face three years of disruption because of the construction of the Thames super sewer in 2017.
Darren Johnson said: “The Mayor has dithered, delayed and dropped so many of his promises on cycling. I have a real worry that Boris Johnson will leave office having failed to build the safe cycle lanes that are so desperately needed. This year’s mild weather has encouraged many more Londoners to jump on their bikes, but the promised changes to make the road network safer are still not in place. The safer junctions the Mayor promised, along with his cycling superhighways, are not just for cyclists, as many of these measures will benefit pedestrians. Encouraging more people to cycle by making it safer, will means less people in cars and on the overcrowded public transport system.”