Cycling in London - Future Plans

Future Plans

Former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone set a target of a 400% increase in cycling between 2008 and 2025. On 9 February 2008 Livingstone announced an estimated £400 million of initiatives to improve and increase cycling and walking. To be co-ordinated by the TfL and London boroughs the aims include having 1 in 10 Londoners making a round trip by bike each day and five per cent of all daily trips by bike by 2025.

These initiatives include:

• Barclays Cycle Hire: From 2010, 6,000 bicycles were available for rental. The scheme, run by Montreal-based BIXI, will initially cover about 17 square miles (44 square kilometers) over nine central London boroughs, and will include 6,000 bikes and 400 docking stations. The docking stations will be at every 300m and mainly at key destinations and tube stations (but not at any train stations) in central London. There will be a charge for hire but there will be free use to encourage the scheme. The scheme was designed based on the feasibility study produced by German Dector-Vega and Charles Snead in Nov 2008.

• Extra cycle parking : There will be thousands of new bike parking facilities at train and tube stations.
• Cycle routes: New cycle routes from inner and outer London and cycle zones around urban centres will be established, the first by 2009. This will include 12 Cycle Superhighways across central London.; The firsts two pilot routes will be implemented by July 2010 and will go from Barking to Tower Hill in the East of London and from Colliers Wood to Bank in the North. The concept was designed by German Dector-Vega and will include the trial of cycle lanes through junctions (as in Denmark), convex mirrors at traffic signals to reduce the blind spot between lorries and cyclist (as used in Switzerland), new signage, and the re-design of some traffic junctions to improve safety among other things.
• Bike Zones: Throughout Greater London 15 Bike Zones will be created for shoppers and children going to school around "urban town centres". These areas will have cycle priority streets, 20 mph limits and "quick, clear and simple" routes along roads, through parks and alongside waterways. This will complement TfL's school cycle parking programme which was to add 5,000 cycle parking spaces in schools by 2005.

London Mayor Boris Johnson is considering schemes to allow cyclists to turn left at red traffic lights.