Boris Johnson reveals how he will bring in “new golden age for cycling”

Infrastructure is very useful for getting people on their bikes as some of it ensures a safe cycling experience for beginners. Once this phase is complete, however, you need to get on the roads in order to commute, do the shopping, go into town for a coffee, etc. etc. At this point the attitude of drivers comes into play and puts many people off. I was talking to a couple down the allotment just last week. They had been cycling down during lockdown and are now too frightened to cycle with the increased traffic. I can't see a local segregated cycle lane from their house to the allotments being put in place so that's that.

Once the majority experience cycling on the road they will be more careful around cyclists when in their cars and cycling becomes safer. Unfortunately its a vicious circle and needs to be broken into.

How do we change driver attitudes? More convictions for dangerous driving with meaningful sentences. Make passing cycling proficency mandatory before learning to drive and taking the test. Bring in presumed liability for drivers. Make cycling part of police training. More 20 mph speed limits. I'm sure there are others but we need something in addition to infrastructure.

I would echo many of the sentiments here. For me though the biggest issue is the huge oversight of British suburbia. I  live in a relatively wealthy commuter town of about 20k people. The town is circumnavigated by two main roads whilst the interior is criss crossed by many minor interconnecting roads. From the main shopping centre to the outskirts of the town is no more than 1.5 miles. And you guessed it everyone drives. Hundreds and thousands of journeys under 2 miles are made every week in an environment that's perfect to cycle and walk. For 99% of people living in my town this is the default position. I suspect there are hundreds of other similar settlements in Britain with similar behaviours. London and it's cycle super highways and the token gestures in other major urban areas are all well and good but until people can be enlightened to  walk or cycle to get the tin of dog food 500 yards down the road we are pissing in the wind. 

Like most people here - I'll believe it when i see it.

For the time being my level of confidence that anything will be done leans heavily on the scale of doubt.

Didn't the Golden Age of Cycling last for about 2 weeks, back in March or April. When there was fewer cars on the road?

All the things mentioned in the article, can be filed under total bollocks.

I'll just leave this here: https://eurasianet.org/obese-politicians-signal-corruption-study-finds

On the face of it this is all wonderful news. 

But after so long, and with so many vocal opponents of anything being built, it's difficult to resist the suspicion that power being pushed down to local authorities means it's being distributed around to more people who can, individually, continue to do sod-all as they always have without it being "the government's fault" that nothing gets done. 

They can say "we made funds available" knowing full well that they won't be taken up, because Ken T Councillor wants to keep getting re-elected in Gammon-in-the-Wold and will therefore not do anything to upset the local community.  Ken doesn't care that young families have no safe way to get to school, because they don't vote in local elections anyway.  He doesn't care that old people can't safely ride to the post office, because he can get a photo in the local paper in front of a charity minibus.

The requirement that all new infrastructure must be built to official standards ( https://cyclingindustry.news/what-do-the-new-cycling-infrastructure-desi... ) looks great, but in reality it means a large number of projects will get rejected as not meeting the standards.  "Oh dear, how sad, we wanted to support it but..."

Some people will be lucky to have enlightened local councils, but mostly... I'll believe it when I see it.

There are two petitions on Change.org. One is to push for converting the Monsall Trail back to a railway. The second is to retain it as a walking/cycling/horse riding trail. It is presently used by some 330,000 people each year from toddlers to pensioners, wheelchair users and beginner cyclists and is 100% off road with a good surface bike hire facility at each end and two good cafes. This needs as many signatures as possible for the retention option or this will mean approx 1/3 of a million people not able to excercise on it. Wonder how BJ will deal with this.

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Boris Johnson reveals how he will bring in “new golden age for cycling”

This is the man who lied led us into Brexit and who claims that Coronavirus will be all over by Christmas... Not holding my breath, here.

There is a caveat in that the govt won't force any councils to provide protected cyclways so if your council recently failed to provide popup cycling/walking space then they're not going to give a toss about following this strategy.

As pointed out elsewhere this isn't a new strategy but a rehash of Andrew Gilligan's, the funding isn't new but existing active travel money, updating the Highway Code for vulnerable users isn't new as the tories have been sitting on requests to do this for years, they allude to persumed liability which again has been requested for years but they've failed to deliver and cycling on prescription will likely be where there are existing cycle hire schemes and council will to participate so limited availability .

Overall it'll achieve little except in areas where the will to change already exists. The motoring lobby will be up in arms (and MPs have to think of their backhanders) and motorists will be further antagonised and see it as another 'war on the motorist' further entrenching attitudes and potentially making the roads more dangerous for cyclists.

Agree with most people - it's a start, but only a start.

We do however have a very prominent model for currently not-the-fittest people to start utility cycling, which is where it needs to be happening.

There were achievements and changes in London under BJ,  even if we weren't all happy about all of it.

Time to lobby all those red wall Tory MPs, and make the practical implications of 'active travel' targets clear.

Target  One: road junctions.

No mention at all of anything for rural areas then?

I'm not sure about a 'culmination' of the campaigning, etc. - more like a first breakthrough, perhaps? It's still clearly a long way from the shift to an active travel first mentality that's needed:

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For example, a small number of routes from key suburbs into a city could become bus and cycling corridors, while the other main roads remained through routes for motorists.

Surely the wrong way around?

Tackling obesity while offering a government subsidised 50% off McDonald's

We are certainly in an age of cack-handed buffoonery. 

Empowering local authorities to crack down on traffic offences? My impression is that local authorities love motor cars and hate bikes, so I'll be interested to see what happens there. Also, wasn't that £2billion allocated to mainly be spent on buses?

I'm sceptical that this vision won't be ripped to shreds by the motorist public, but let's see if this is more than just hot air.

Cycling boom happened in 2012 and my purely seat of the pants impression is that there are considerably more cyclists on the road now than there were before that time.

But what exactly has changed to make cycling more accessible, safer, more enjoyable since then? what improvements have been made to the infrastructure to make this happen?

London may have it's super highways but here in South Manchester in the commuter belt  the roads are just as unsuitable for cycling as they ever were -in fact they're worse as there are more potholes than I can ever remember.

They put some ridiculous cones up on one arterial road into town recently and called it a cycle lane but howls of indignation saw the cones removed the following day.  Apart from that I can't think of one single thing that has been done to improve the life of the cyclist in my area so let's not hold our breath on this one . 

Anyway, why don't they bite the bullet and make those electric scooters legal? I'm sure more people would be willing to give those a try than would cock their leg over a bike, especially people who are not used to physical exertion.  Anything that gets people out of cars is surely a good thing.?