The new cycle hire scheme in London will officially begin next Friday, July 30. I think it’s great to encourage cycling as it is a wonderful form of inner-city transport: environmentally friendly, healthy, convenient, quick and cheap. But unless there is investment in the necessary infrastructure for bikes in London, this city will not radically transform itself into a cycle-friendly city straight away.

The car (and other 4-wheeled motorised transport) remains king in London while bicycles and pedestrians have to tought it out in the margins of the roads, leading to countless daily confrontations between members of these two groups and risk of injury to both from motorised vehicles.

Surely a good integrated transport planning regime would protect cyclists from cars and pedestrians from cars and bicycles. However, even the new so-called ‘Cycling Superhighways‘ provide only very limited protection — there is a painted lane but no physical barrier between bikes and cars. I have always felt that a more radical solution is necessary to separate the two types of traffic and so prevent more people from being killed on the road.

Cycling has become more and more popular in the last decade and with the new cycle hire scheme I anticipate that numbers will rise at an even greater rate. I hope that this increase in the numbers of cyclists will create more pressure to radically and imaginatively overhaul London’s road system (e.g. ‘cycle lanes in the sky — see pic below) to at last make it more friendly for non-motorised transport and less friendly for cars.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 20th, 2010 at 5:03 pm and is filed under Architecture & housing, Transport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.