London Cycle Routes YouTube channel showcases safe routes round city

A London cyclist has set up a YouTube channel showcasing how to cycle between various points in the capital while keeping to quiet streets and protected cycling infrastructure.

So far, Jon Stone – a 32-year-old northwest London based journalist who has also done an occasional bit of food delivery riding – has uploaded eight videos to the London Cycle Routes channel, covering a variety of routes in the city.

Routes featured so far include Camden to Westminster, shown above, Pimlico to Rotherhithe and Hackney to Bank, and obviously cover points between the start and finish.

Here's the map - mostly pretty direct pic.twitter.com/gIKeQY2slu

— Jon Stone (@joncstone) February 7, 2021

As a result, the videos provide a good overview of just how the cycling infrastructure built in the city over the past decade or so is starting to come together to produce joined-up routes.

Most of the videos also include in the title the time taken to travel the route, highlighting how quick it can be to get around London on two wheels, typically much quicker than it would take on public transport.

Each video includes an overview map – some routes are surprisingly direct, while others meander a little – and are accompanied by a commentary, including how to negotiate the trickier bits where it may not be obvious which is the correct way to go.

We asked Jon what had led him to launch the YouTube channel? “There’s been a lot of cycling infrastructure put in over the last year in London and I found myself cycling to go and look at it – I would tweet out photos and short clips of it,” he said. “The channel came out of thinking about how I could make something a bit more useful for new cyclists.

“I think if you tell someone about a route or show them on a map they are reasonably a bit wary about following it, because everyone has a different threshold for what a ‘decent route’ is, especially in London. But with a video everyone can see exactly what the conditions are like in advance.

“I had this experience going on rides with friends last year, where I’d say ‘let’s cycle to Greenwich’ and everyone would look at me like I was about to lead them onto the motorway. But when we were on the backstreet route people would rave about how nice it was. I suppose it’s a case of ‘show, don’t tell’.”

It’s not just new or inexperienced who can learn from the videos, however. We suggested to Jon that people who have been riding the same routes for years could discover alternative routes through the videos that they might otherwise have been unaware of.

“Absolutely! I’ve been struck by the mix of different audiences for the videos,” he said. “I think in London there’s an understandable tendency to just learn a route for your commute and stick to that – hopefully this gives people other ideas.”

Jon has invited cyclists to get in touch with him through Twitter to suggest routes they would like to be covered, and said: “People have been really positive! I’ve had lots of route requests, some of them are definitely doable, others tougher to do to the standard I want the videos to be.

“What I mean by that is I’m keen to keep the videos at a level where you’d be happy to ride them with a friend who didn’t normally cycle, and not traumatise them. That’s tougher, particularly in certain boroughs that don’t seem to care about making things safe for people on bikes.”

How to cycle from Euston to Waterloo station in 15 mins... recent street changes mean its basically all on backstreets and protected bike lanes https://t.co/0v2OS0c0T9

— Jon Stone (@joncstone) February 14, 2021

Anyone who rides regularly in London will be familiar with the routes in their own area, but we asked Jon how much planning went into the videos that are further afield from where he is based.

“It’s a real mix,” he explained, “I started off doing ones I already knew were good to test the concept – if there’s somewhere I don’t know too well already I’ll check out the maps and Street View. Sometimes I’ll only find out what a particular section is like when I get there, and if it doesn’t meet the standard I will scrap the video – that’s happened a couple of times.”

Asked which boroughs he thought were making the greatest efforts in improving cycling infrastructure, he said: “Waltham Forest, Camden, and Hackney are the best in my experience. Lambeth and Islington definitely get awards for most improved, their low traffic neighbourhoods have made a big difference.

“The City of London is also surprisingly decent at the moment, hopefully the temporary changes will be made permanent. Kensington and Wandsworth are the worst, Westminster is also pretty bad too but benefits from TfL schemes.”

As for where we can expect to see featured in forthcoming videos, he said: “I haven’t filmed anything in Waltham Forest yet and I think people would be surprised by how easy it is to get to by bike, so I want to do something there.”