Great video, as usual. I think it's important to note that Transport for London is a multi-modal agency, which is rare in North America. The US has DOTs (Department of Transportation) but they're almost exclusively responsible for roads. TfL is also responsible for roads, but they are also responsible for running the tube, the buses, and the cycling paths. This is why they're able to take a holistic view of transportation in the city, and not just focusing on, say, "level of service" for car traffic, like many US and Canadian cities do.
Thanks Jason. Great point. It's also important to have an agency with a wholistic view like this to cut through the local borough politics. These inter-jurisdictional squabbles hobble improvements in all kinds of cities in North America.
@@Shifter_Cycling Unfortunately TfL is only responsible for the "main" roads and we do still get squabbles between boroughs on all the other roads. Frequently when you're riding along a nice separated bike lane and it suddenly ends, the reason is that you have just crossed a borough boundary. In fact, that point where you turned off CS3 onto the temporary experimental infrastructure towards CS2 at Tower Gateway is exactly the point where the wide, newly constructed protected cycle lane on a main road gives way to a narrow, decades old cycle lane on a minor backstreet and is also the point at which you travel from the City of London into the borough of Tower Hamlets. Another couple of miles along CS3 it turns into sharrows. Another example is the gap in CS4 where TfL have done their bits but the Borough of Greenwich hasn't and you just have to mix with traffic for a mile or two.
Yes, I experienced some of these in London, and I've seen them here in Canada too where there are abutting jurisdictions. The really sad part is that I live in a city that lacks multiple jurisdictions but we still have these gaps in the network.
The Borough concilshave more power when i comes to roads. As a result you sometimes get odd situation where bike lanes will suddenly stop as you cross the invisible borders.
I visited London last september, as a Dutch guy I found the biking infrastructure quite good for a foreign country, although I saw many intersections and roads that wouldn't fly at all in the Netherlands, but they are improving rapidly I heard from a friend that lives there. I hope the better cycling infrastructure quickly attracts more 'normal biking' instead of everyone on racing bikes cycling like they are in the final sprint of the tour de France, I wasn't relaxed at all and we couldn't keep a normal conversation because of the constant ringing and people wanting to get past us while we were cycling relatively fast already, in the Netherlands you can easily hold a conversation because the cycling culture is way more relaxed.
Referring to your latter point, that's probably because everyone's in a hurry in London and I don't think that's ever gonna change, it's not about cycling culture it's more about the city itself
You don't have any "normal cyclists" in Amsterdam, as a person who rides a "normal" racing bike at a high pace i found it very frustrating riding in amsterdam. There are no cyclists and the city is not cyclist friendly, its made for pedestrians on bicycles, not cyclists. A cyclist is a person who rides a bike while in uniform, helmet and clipless pedals. All others are pedestrians. And if you are talking whilst riding you are one of the most obnoxious types. Talk at home, in the pub or in the park ffs. Road is not a place for conversation, you must be focused and concentrating on the road.
@@MalcolmJameson_1 TBH your whole post sounds pretty obnoxious, so pot kettle black. Your way is not better, it's just different. Some people want to go fast, some people don't. There should be options for all. Not everyone wants to race around like Chris Boardman. London is a working commuting city but it's also a tourist city and a city with families and old people. We all need to find a way to get along somehow.
The quiet streets are probably where London has made the most progress recently. London has been putting in loads of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) especially since the pandemic, which use traffic filters to cut off through routes for cars forcing them onto main roads and discouraging shorter car journeys. These are a really cheap and effective way of creating many routes for cycling especially when combined with strategically placed cycle crossings over main roads to connect LTNs only for bikes, as the traffic levels are reduced so much that they're really pleasant to cycle and walk through.
Definitely. One of the biggest issues of cities that aren't currently prioritizing alternative modes of transport is the insistance (or perhaps 'necessity') for complete car routes to absolutely everywhere. Not does this encourage more car trips, it also encourages the presence of more cars in places that might do better without them. Not only is turning these former car roads into bike/pedestrian exclusive routes a good thing to better delineate the flow of car traffic, but it also gives people a really good excuse to not need a car just to reach every nook and cranny of a city.
A lot of the small roads and shortcuts I used to use when I learned to drive are now shut off to traffic. I now cycle and these small routes are great little shortcuts, I can get all the way up to central London and back from zone 3/4 southeast London without coming into contact with major traffic, then straight up onto the Cycleway. Only crap bit is in the City, that junction at London Bridge is horrible.
Yes! And there a couple of London cycling channels focused on exactly that, I've subscribed to two of them, as in effect, they state: "Yes, it is safe to cycle in London again, and here's how"...I've visited suburbs of London I've never been through before, and you can almost *taste* them on some of these safe *civilized* routes. I was rightly terrified most of the time cycling in London, even being raised there as a youngster, and learning to acclimatize to cycling on the left hand side. I watch some of the vids of cycling through the centre of London (and I have in days of bravado) but I couldn't do it now on the main roads. It's just not worth it. Thank God for Kate's org.
As a Calgarian I enjoy your local content but I also quite like seeing what is happening in other cities around the world. Lots of ideas as to what is possible. Great work! Carry on sir!
I think something to keep in mind about London's public transit is that it's really good at moving people into the centre of the city and back out but it falls short at connecting the outer boroughs to one another. For those kinds of trips often a wonky bus route or driving are your only options (or worse - the 40 min trip into central London, followed by another 40 min trip back out to the neighbouring borough where your friend lives), which is often why you get so many car trips in zone 3+. I'd love to see more cycling accommodation for these kinds of inter-borough trips as the options right now are severely limited.
I think they're not as bad as you think in some areas. It's a mixed bag as different boroughs have put in differing levels of investment but I think even in the last 2 years some boroughs have woken up to this and have started working on it. One issue is just that London is actually pretty big so going from one outer borough to another can feel like going from one city to another! I really notice it when I go to other cities where I can easily get from one side of the city to the other and it feels like crossing just one borough in London!
I’ve been to London 3 months ago, first time since the pandemic. The last time I’ve been there in 2019. The improvement in cycling infrastructure and the increase in number of cyclists is massive. It might not be as visible for a local who sees the changes happening gradually, but for an outsider like me, who just sees it every now and then, it’s huge. Also, this last trip really made me want to get a Brompton, many people there are using them and these bikes just seem super fun.
I saw so many Bromptons, and so many different types of people riding them. I had never seen a full Lycra athlete riding a Brompton until I visited London!
@@pbilk I’ve been to London many times, usually I’ve been there about once a year. I only had a bigger gap due to pandemic lately. In terms of cycling there it feels like nothing happened for years and then suddenly it started. Now there are lots of cyclists there, at least in central London. It sadly also seems that London is the only city in the UK that has really upped its cycling game. All the other places Ive been are much worse. Earlier last year I visited Manchester for the first time. I was actually surprised that anybody was cycling there because the cycling infrastructure was either nonexistent or awful. I consider myself an experienced city cyclist and I’m no stranger to cycling in traffic but I wouldn’t feel safe being on a road on a bike there.
Yes, Brompton is a high quality folding bike brand, but there are also Reiss & Müller and Vello, an Austrian brand of high quality folding bike to consider.
@@rabomarc Cardiff in Wales is trying to up it's cycling game. Its started implementing cross-city routes similar to London's superhighway but it leaves much to be desired at junctions. A lot of non traffic light control junctions cross it and drivers are not realising they cross a two way cycle lane before entering into what is a single carriageway. So they'll look right not left... see no cars, see no bikes, and immediately pull out into a cyclist coming from the left. Additionally, there's been an uptick in left hooking by motorists, again not checking their mirrors as they cross the mostly segregated cycle infrastructure. Plus with these routes now in, police have started issuing fines for cyclists failing to dismount when using the wide shopping streets that are pedestrianised and technically cycling is prohibited, but the streets span such a large area the cycle path routing follows the normal car routing, again placing cyclists in conflict with motorised traffic at every junction.
I live in Croydon, an outer borough in the south of London. My experience is that cycling around here is still pretty terrifying. It only improves when you get into the centre. I used to cycle from Croydon to Wimbledon, another outer borough, but quickly stopped after a few near death experiences. The only people brave enough to cycle to work seem to be blokes in lycra. There is no comparison with the Dutch system, where you can safely traverse long distances at ease. In the Netherlands there are children and old ladies out on their bikes - totally unthinkable here! I think we have a long way to go, but things are slowly improving, and thankfully buses and trains are pretty good round here. Great video, thanks!
I absolutely love seeing what other cities are doing (and in this case, seeing familiar cycle lanes in my own city). So often when a city first starts building bike lanes you get objectors claiming that it can't possibly work and that no one will cycle, and after pointing out that it works in Amsterdam the inevitable retort "We aren't Amsterdam!". Having lots of examples of cities around the world at various stages in their journey is the best way of pointing out that any city can be a cycling city with just a little bit of work. Another big benefit is being able to visually demonstrate what does and what does not work. Being able to point out to a local councillor in Australia that the bike lane they have designed is identical to one built in London ten years ago that was subsequently ripped out and replaced because it wasn't good enough might just be enough to get the one in Australia built the right way the first time. So thanks! I love it and I'm looking forward to seeing more.
I recently had to cycle from Paddington to near Tower Bridge, near where you were on the film. The cycle super highway is excellent and I was able to get to my destination very easily. Thanks
Great to see you in london, it’s definitely improved for cyclists since I lived there. I’m now in Birmingham which as the second city has also been doing pretty well these last few years, cycling has become far more pleasurable as a result. That has resulted in more cyclists on the road and I feel more awareness from car drivers.
I know a lot of Londoners might disagree, but I also felt that drivers in central London were pretty aware of cyclists. I was quite apprehensive riding in such a busy city on the left side of the road, which I'm unaccustomed to, but drivers were generally pretty patient.
@@Shifter_Cycling It does look like it’s improved a lot over the years. When I used to commute in central london over 10 years ago it was dicey to say the least…remember getting deliberately shunted from the back by an impatient driver and cab drivers especially were a law on to themselves…
Live in Birmingham myself too, and I agree with you it looks like things are getting better especially with the new 'superhighway'-style routes like the A38 and A45 ones, but I dunno I think we still have a long long way to go. In addition for a city our size our public transport network is really not fit for purpose, it's honestly depressing realising that Manchester and Birmingham started rebuilding their tram networks around the same time in the late 90s but Manchester now has a whole network while we still just have one line :(
@@Shifter_Cycling coming from up north, where there is little-to-no infrastructure, drivers in London are far more accommodating. Simple things like the "bike box" aren't well understood outside of London and drivers like to stop in it and will be offended if you decide to filter and actually use it on your bike!
Woo hoo! In our neck of the woods.👍🚴♀️🇬🇧 Keep meaning to cycle up to London for a day out, as only 30 miles away.👍 Great to see your views on London👍🚴♀️🙂
I lived in London from 2019 - 2021, before moving to Toronto. I felt 5x safer cycling in London than I do in Toronto. In fact, I've stopped cycling in Toronto due to how bad the drivers are. The slow car traffic in London definitely is the top reason for this, as is the fact that there are normal cars there and not trucks with hoods bigger than I am.
I agree with many comments here, London has come a long way in the last 4 years, but we need to go further, much further to catch up with the Netherlands. I look forward to a time when the majority vehicles will be bikes of all types ,and descriptions
Awesome to see you here in London Tom. As a cyclist born and bred in this city, it's refreshing to see an outside perspective on how far our infrastructure has come in recent years, but also how much better it can be! Totally agree that the nicest bike lanes are always the "Q" Quiet routes on back streets. Hope you enjoyed your stay and will be back again soon :)
Totally agree - pootling on the back roads and finding routes that connect across in quiet ways is such a lovely way to go. Also you find things you never knew were there! The LTNs we've been campaigning for massively help with creating the quiet roads needed for this sort of transport cycling - some of the roads assigned as 'quietways' in outer London are much too busy to deserve the name.
Great to see you on my side of the pond! A good roundup. I live in Maidenhead, 25 miles west of London. Because of the capital's cycleways I often feel safer cycling in London than in my much smaller and quieter home town.
I agree with this. I come from near Maidenhead but I wouldn't cycle there, it is just too dangerous on the A4 main road etc. too many fast and irresponsible drivers and few if any properly segregated cycle lanes. You can't even cycle easily along the Thames because of all the blinking footpath gates. I now live in Dresden, Germany and cycle about happily all the time. I could also, in theory, cycle easily all the way along the Elbe from Dresden to Hamburg (310 miles) and there (probably) wouldn't be any gates!
I agree with your comments at the end Tom. What I would also say is that London is pretty much unique in the UK, most towns have very little and poor infrastructure. I often feel like we don't take a long term view, politicians only seem interested in re-election and the UK still appears very car centric. It can be a little depressing when one looks across to our near neighbour NL to see what is possible when there is a real will to make change happen. All this said there is evidence of a slow shift in attitudes, last year changes were made to our highway code to emphasize the importance of protecting more vulnerable road users and this has made a difference. The ultimate goal however should be to separate cyclists from motor vehicles and that looks to be a very long way down the road. I look forward to seeing your analysis of some other European cities.
I really enjoy your content and as someone who cycles a lot in London I was intrigued by your video. I use the super highway on a daily basis and it is a great piece of infrastructure in a very busy vehicle oriented city. There are plus points but the one major negative point is how vehicles seem to be given priority at traffic lights and indeed there are so many lights from the Tower of London to Westminster that your journey is very stop start. The lane from Tower Hill to Limehouse is painted blue which makes it highly noticeable but the local council (Tower Hamlets) aren’t really taking care of it and therefore a lot of the paint has worn off. In a way it shows how many people actually use the route along Cable Street. London has tried and in some respects it has achieved a pass mark but it is still heavily dominated by motor vehicles. I don’t feel the city is very progressive and with a lot of in fighting and certain boroughs NOT wanting to have cycle paths there is still so much work to do. If you head out east where I live there is no cycling infrastructure apart from a random bike painted on the road. I think the U.K. as a whole is far behind and cycling seems to be a second thought over motor vehicles.
welcome to my home town, I'm in my mid fifty's and have been cycling in London most of my life, it's been great seeing the changes to cycling in and around London and it's looking very promising in the near future.
London is definetly one of the better cities in the UK. I have to spend a lot of time in cities like Birmingham and Sheffield and oh boy, those are truly just carcentric urban wastelands... The volume of traffic alone around Birmingham New Street Station alone makes it impossible to bike without being killed, even if the speeds are slowish.
Great video! I’ve been living in London for 8 years, cycling in it for 4, and absolutely love it! Definitely the best way to explore the city’s nooks and crannies, loved seeing those quiet routes between London Bridge and Blackfriars here! Have to say that for me even the non-cycling-infrastructure sections are still enjoyable to ride on, the average speed of cars is quite slow so I rarely feel uncomfortable. Definitely agree that the Victoria Embankment bike lane is a standout, always a pleasure!
Great episode, thanks for coming to the UK and covering London. As a former London resident, it is good to see the cycling infrastructure improvements. Hopefully these improvements will start to prolificate to other UK towns soon.
I love to watch the videos put up by Londoncycleroutes. He has been showcasing all the different cycles routes around London and the suburbs from suggestions by his viewers. I am going to London for the next few months and hope to ride some of the more scenic routes he has put up.
The brilliant London Cycle Routes channel th-cam.com/channels/GACjprwPEV2cmcTLooxXvg.html is run by one of our long-term members and volunteers. He does a simply brilliant job picking out ways that people can connect up places safely.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, why are we still building two way bike lanes on one side of the road? Mikael Colville-Anderson, formally of Copenhagenize, wrote about the folly of this back in 2014, mentioning the design had been removed from best practice in the Netherlands more than two decades earlier! Why are we still doing it 30 years on?
You're 100% correct, but I think the answer comes down to space and, ugh, car parking. The optimistic side of me thinks that two-lanes are the bridge between nothing at all and proper lanes. I hope we get there.
@@Shifter_Cycling Yep. You can see this in some of the consultations and design documents where you can see that they often explicitly design and evaluate one-direction-per-side cycle lanes and reject them due to the loss of parking or travel lanes for cars (or occasionally just objecting to a loss of width of the travel lanes). I'm with you on the optimistic side though. Despite CS3 having some annoying compromises due to the both-on-one-side design, it is nonetheless massively popular and a lot of those new cyclists join the LCC and vote in local elections which is what will eventually get us to the best quality designs.
It is worth noting the reason bi-directional cycling lanes are no longer being recommended is safety, with risk at crossings being higher by "a factor of 2" not to mention the difficulty for pedestrians crossing. Surely safety should be the major concern for any such design? Personally I can't see how 1 lane on each side takes up more space than two on one side either. And I do have to quote Mikael from his article, "Another excuse oft heard is, "Well... it's better than nothing" - often spoken in a defensive tone. It is a flawed argument, lacking vision, commitment and experience." 😉
Nice video: what a change! I was last in London in 2017 and besides the bikeshare, London was essentially sharrow-central. Nice to see they've been doing some thinking, and that they are thinking regionally and trying to build out a network. Like this series. When you're back in Canada you should make a stop in Montreal. South of the border Chicago and NYC would be good places to visit. Safe travels!
London is where I live and cycle (and walk, take public transport, ride my motorbike and, if all else fails, drive😉) and I think you’ve made an excellent ideo summary of the current situation, and the developments over the last few years, in the short time that you had available. The LCC are great btw so that was a great choice. Great work Tom! 👍🏽
Those are some great improvements, and with that crazy success of the bike super highways it becomes harder for people to argue that nobody wants bike infrastructure in the city. Great video!
Central London has some great places for cycling. In Outer London suburbs, where I live, it varies a lot from borough to borough - but some such as Waltham Forest have shown how it can be done effectively, so the others just need to catch up - and I think they will!
like she said, if you build an awesome safe cycleway but each end is messy and it all falls apart, no one will use it and it ruins the point. I have noticed this A LOT in the great city of Sydney Australia. It is great, great, great and then it turns really bad and as a result only few people end up using it. Great point she stated there.
Living in London for 10 years and I can say cycling changed my experience of the city. All of a sudden your connecting all these areas which you would have only associated to a tube station.
Good to see these changes, but as a Dutch bike rider I'm struck by the lack of visual cues (mostly done with red asphalt here) where the lanes go. The double traffic light for cyclists is simply done with a no-cars-box near the traffic lights here - but I get as an emerging bike city it's best to not surprise (antagonise?) drivers with cyclists just pulling up in front of you.
Agreed. As a cyclist, London has radically changed since I lived there in the 1980s/90s. Now I wish other UK cities will make some effort to catch up. Long overdue.
This was one of your coolest videos yet! I like this theme keep them coming! Also I was super impressed how much great content you were able to pack into 8 minutes that was awesome
Great to see you in London and I hope you enjoyed it! I've been a silent watcher since I started cycling a few months ago and while I haven't cycled through central London I've not had to because the public transport is so great but for the outer areas cycling is my go-to now! Lots of backstreets and dual-use paths keep me safe enough that I can opt out of the car.
I find that visits to other cities to be both entertaining and enlightening. Keep them coming, either with you visiting or guests from the other city submitting a video. They are all good.
I cycle around 60 miles a week in London for fitness and love taking in this city on a bike, started during lockdown and haven't stopped. It's relatively flat here too so you can find non exertion routes pretty easily. Cycle routes are just getting better and better here ( with a few exceptions. ) I'm always finding new routes and places to ride around. A bit chilly in the winter but glorious when the sun comes out. Can't recommend enough.
Hey Tom I found your Channel this past summer after I reignited my love for biking. I'm 48yo and live in the Midwest. As a kid tha grew up in Chicago bike riding gave me so much freedom. Thank you for all your awesome videos and excellent content.
As a Cdn/Brit Dual, with my immediate family moved back to the UK forty years ago, and an absolute fascination with cross country cycling in the UK, this was an extremely valuable gauge to revisit London with as per cycling and staying alive, let alone enjoying it. Socially , I'm now Cdn, but spiritually, the UK countryside is enchanting. The question for me as a cyclist is: "Could I every live in London again, or do another work sojourn there?" Watching many Brit cycling channels, it's very hard to gauge their 'self-examination' as they 'already speak the language'. But seeing it through your eyes, and knowing that even as a Westerner (Calgarian) you speak on the issue in a very neutral way in Cdn terms, it gives me a vastly better take on the 'do-ability' of living in London again. Your host Katy said some magic words too that allows one to avoid the *incredibly intense* London main roads. NYC looks tame in comparison! (And I write from Toronto, not a great cycling city) Many thanks for this!
I've been cycling in London for a lot of years now and I'm really pleased that some of these protected lanes are finally arriving. Back when I started cycling in the city on a fixed-gear bike there wasn't many cyclists and drivers didn't really give you much thought but cycling then was only for the fit and the brave. Then more people started cycling and that started to cause conflict when motorists started noticing cyclists and, incorrectly of course, blaming them for the traffic jams they themselves caused. Now I hope we're getting to a new phase where cycling infrastructure exists away from motor traffic which will reduce that conflict. However there are a *lot* of people actively trying to block new cycling infrastructure and to rip out existing infrastructure so half of the battle is protecting what we have. However there are new lanes appearing all over London. now and nothing is more powerful than an idea who's time has come. Great video, thanks!
I love that it has taken a Canadian to show me how London has improved for cyclists in the last few years. I live about 120km from London, but would never have taken my bike because it was so biased towards cars. Next time I go, my bike will come with me!
If London is getting to be a bit more like central European cycle-friendly cities, I wonder if people are taking to buying more city-type bikes, rather than the usual road bikes and mountain bikes. Being from the UK originally, I am now living in Germany and love my 7 speed hub , upright bike with dynamo lights!
I was surprised at the diversity of cyclists in London. I certainly saw upright, Dutch-style bikes, but there were also a lot of people in Lycra on road bikes, and lots of people on folding bikes. It felt to me like a middle-ground between the athletic cyclists we see in North America and the more casual cyclists of Europe. Maybe that's a sign of a city in transition.
Yes and no there's still a load of lycra clad cyclist in a never ending race bombing around London, but there's slowly getting a good mix of different cyclists the Ebike market is getting very popular along with cargo bikes.
@@Shifter_Cycling I guess if you are commuting from an Outer borough or from just outside London (10-20 miles each way) then a faster road bike is more suitable. Shorter distances where you remain in-borough then a more upright city style bike works well. Obviously with ebikes you can also do those longer commutes without a road bike without a problem.
They are. I live in one of the more cycle friendly boroughs and I've started noticing loads of city/upright/dutch bikes everywhere in my neighbourhood - I've also seen a lot of cargo bikes as well.
I think the Lycra/road bike thing you see is a hangover from when there was no infrastructure. Cyclists had to work hard to keep up with car traffic and the only people riding were the super keen ones. I think that’s why so many people go as fast as possible down the cycle paths, it’s what they’re used to.
I really loved this video, super interesting. Also found the temporary "trail" bike lane fantastic, I will use it in my arguments to stop twiddling thumbs and do something in my city.
Thanks for the cool video! I visited London in fall and I noticed more people on bikes than the last time I was there (about three years ago). Now as a tourist it's difficult to judge if this was due to the weather, Covid, or better bike infrastructure, but your video gives me the impression that it might actually be a real change in the right direction!
Love everything you do, Tom! As a Brit now living in eastern Canada, I enjoyed seeing how central London has progressed in the last 20 years in terms of cycling infrastructure. I also appreciate your reports from North American cities and your advice about cycling in general.
Very interesting series, Tom, and I'd definitely like to see more videos like this. Seeing how various cities around the world implement bike infrastructure is a real eye-opener and highlights how bad it is where I live, where cycling on the roads is often a hazardous endeavor. I don't know if it'll ever change, but it's nice to see what options are being utilized elsewhere. That bike gate feature is very clever and effective. Cheers.
London DID turn over too much space to motorised vehicles. Archway Road is a case in point- widened to six lanes to accommodate the M1 entering London, it runs straight through residential neighbourhoods. Some changes have taken place but not before serious incidents - a friend of mine was crushed by an articulated lorry and another survived being thrown into the air by a commuting driver. These are two of my childhood memories. I am sure other Londoners have similar.
That's so awful, sorry for your loss and your poor friend. Too many of our most ardent campaigners and activists also come from tragedy. As a city and society we should never let it get to this point. We normalise road violence to a shocking degree. The incidents you describe are NOT accidents. They are predictable outcomes of a poorly designed system. We refuse to accept this system.
Great video. And while you could not go into too much details how they made it, it is inspiring. And that is one of the most important things to help people to push for more cycling infrastructure. Two cool ideas, I took from the video (a) use of temporary bike lanes as an active tool to test different ideas. In Germany it is usually just a temporary measure without evaluation and then later some road designer designs something totally different. (b) you need to have dedicated politicians and in turn you need people pushing and supporting politicians in pursuing change.
You good point about road design. One thing that struck me in London was that the bike lanes sometimes felt a little inconsistent, as if it really was a different person designing them. For a visitor to the city, I found this confusing. Bike lanes are great when you don't have to think about them, they are just consistent, connected and reliable.
@@Shifter_Cycling The lack of consistency might be to do with TfL having to roll-out the cycling network via piecemeal upgrades and haggle with borough councils when making them. On top of that, London has inherently messy urban design. It's the result of over a century of anarchic urban growth and botched civil works programmes, leading to such wonderful occurrences, like the main road to Dover (A20) having a section with just two lanes to share with all the local traffic. Now there's a route that's never getting any cycling infrastructure.
Come to Milton Keynes... 50 miles north west from London. Bike and car infrastructure set up jointly. Also is now classed as a city since last year. Great video
MK is a very unusual and interesting city. It's somehow managed to build excellent car and bicycle infrastructure so it's enjoyable to both bike and drive round. It somehow has an American style grid layout with big box stores yet it doesn't feel difficult to walk or bike around. It feels both urban, suburban and rural at the same time. The only thing missing imo is a proper rapid transit system to get around longer distances. Something like the DLR would be perfect there.
Great to see you cycling where I live. I agree 100% with your analysis of london. It's the politics that's holding london back from being a true cycling city, but as I understand it, it was the same situation in the Netherlands 50 years ago.
It’s nice to see a video from an outside perspective. But for me a bit further out from central it feels like they have only made a start to improving cycle infrastructure and never continued with it. Where I am in Merton, the plans to improve cycling finished in 2020 and nothing has been done since.
Love seeing what's happening in other cities! Keep it up man! Btw, I recently read your book -- Fun read! Totally put me in the mood for the winter cycling season!
I grew up in London in the 80s & 90s and rarely cycled anywhere. I've returned to the city in my 50s and cycle everywhere now. It's a massive, massive improvement. I can cycle from the suburbs to central london in under and hour with very little stress.
Great content. Love seeing what cities are doing and how cycling infrastructure is developing over the years. Hopefully you can come to Australia and critique
Great Video, keep them coming when you get an opportunity. It‘s been a while since I have been to London, great to see such process. I would love to swing my brompton around - thats what this bike was built for.
Hope you had a good time in my home city - London. Please plan for a subscriber meet up next time you are here - I am a subscriber for many years. Have actually taken up urban bike commuting in London since following your channel, its definitely a healthier (both physical and mental) and cheaper option. Also agree with Katie that London that the cycling infrastructure here is very good in places - we are not yet like the Netherlands but getting there slowly
Great video. So glad to see London making great strides as a bike friendly city. Pls visit NYC for a judicious critique. Very hit and miss for cyclists, as there’s too much congestion and a paucity of protected bicycle lanes.
I am a survivor! Biking in London for over 30 years. There have been times when it has been scary but now is so much better. In London there used to be only two types of cyclist - the quick and the dead. 🙂 I am glad it is so much better.
Interesting. I have just watched your video immediately after cycling home from central London, where people work, to the suburbs (what you called the “outer boroughs”) where people actually live. I live in the middle/outer suburbs 9 miles from my office. A cycle commuter typically would travel between five and 10 miles each way because London is a big place. It also has hills by the way! I’m sure the cycling superhighway is brilliant if you want to go a short flat distance through central London east-west or west-east. However, there is nothing like that going out to the north. and I can see one of the other comments says there’s nothing like it in the south either. London does have the most brilliant public transport system in the world though. So it gets some things right. The cycle superhighway is a nice start, but the rest of London is still a place where cars dominate. The only factor that makes it a little safer than some other places is the relatively slow speed of the traffic because of congestion. Other than that, junctions and road layouts make quite it a dangerous place. Come back in five years’ time, and it would be great to think more progress will have been made by then! I hope you enjoyed your visit , and thanks for the video.
There's a difference in what the words "suburbs" and "big" mean in Europe vs North America. In Canada and the US, a suburb would probably be anywhere from 10 miles to 50 miles away from the central city. London as a city is big, and even when you go to the suburbs it still looks and feels like a slower city connected to the hustle and bustle of Central London. North American cities are small, but the metropolitan area comprising of the city + suburb is absolutely massive and the sprawl just kills any possibility of cycling or public transportation.
I would love to see you do something similar to this is Sydney Australia! Sydney has had great infrastructure for many years but has slowed down drastically and now many politicians are trying there best for better safer bicycle infrastructure. There are many campaign groups out there as well helping with this cause. Sydney is very different to London and more like Canada or USA in road design and idea so maybe it might be a bit easier to navigate. Thanks Tom, great video
Ayeee welcome to London! Looks like you went in November, right before the cold snap, lucky and glad you enjoyed our lovely little town! Low Traffic Neighbourhoods are a point of contention here with the Nimbys, but as gift to mankind. A city I can recommend that has undergone an pretty crazy almost overnight shift in cycling infrastructure is Tel Aviv. Check out Livable City's video titled "The urban transformation of Tel Aviv" 🔥
We were glad the snow held off for sure! We will cycle in the snow, but it's not ideal for introductory touring with our current infrastructure and cycle lane gritting levels...
Just came across your channel now. I'm dual Brit Canadian currently in the UK but other home is Vancouver BC. I could tell right away within the first few seconds of you speaking that you are a fellow Canuck. Greetings to you! And now I will watch your video. Looks very interesting. Oh and... Subscribed, eh! 🇨🇦 🇬🇧
Thanks for this, Tom. It is very encouraging to see the progress London has made, even if it isn't there yet. (Ottawa ain't either.) I visited England and Wales as a teenager on a cycling trip in 1972. London was judged by the people who put on our tour to be so dangerous that we put our bikes away for the duration of our time there. We cycled through every other city on the tour, including Oxford, Gloucester, Liverpool, and Nottingham. Seeing what you were up to in this video, I would definitely give London a whirl.
Great video, as usual. I think it's important to note that Transport for London is a multi-modal agency, which is rare in North America. The US has DOTs (Department of Transportation) but they're almost exclusively responsible for roads. TfL is also responsible for roads, but they are also responsible for running the tube, the buses, and the cycling paths. This is why they're able to take a holistic view of transportation in the city, and not just focusing on, say, "level of service" for car traffic, like many US and Canadian cities do.
Fun fact, TfL have only built one road since it was formed in 2000 (the A23 Coulsdon Relief road on the edge of the city).
Thanks Jason. Great point. It's also important to have an agency with a wholistic view like this to cut through the local borough politics. These inter-jurisdictional squabbles hobble improvements in all kinds of cities in North America.
@@Shifter_Cycling Unfortunately TfL is only responsible for the "main" roads and we do still get squabbles between boroughs on all the other roads. Frequently when you're riding along a nice separated bike lane and it suddenly ends, the reason is that you have just crossed a borough boundary. In fact, that point where you turned off CS3 onto the temporary experimental infrastructure towards CS2 at Tower Gateway is exactly the point where the wide, newly constructed protected cycle lane on a main road gives way to a narrow, decades old cycle lane on a minor backstreet and is also the point at which you travel from the City of London into the borough of Tower Hamlets. Another couple of miles along CS3 it turns into sharrows.
Another example is the gap in CS4 where TfL have done their bits but the Borough of Greenwich hasn't and you just have to mix with traffic for a mile or two.
Yes, I experienced some of these in London, and I've seen them here in Canada too where there are abutting jurisdictions. The really sad part is that I live in a city that lacks multiple jurisdictions but we still have these gaps in the network.
The Borough concilshave more power when i comes to roads. As a result you sometimes get odd situation where bike lanes will suddenly stop as you cross the invisible borders.
I visited London last september, as a Dutch guy I found the biking infrastructure quite good for a foreign country, although I saw many intersections and roads that wouldn't fly at all in the Netherlands, but they are improving rapidly I heard from a friend that lives there. I hope the better cycling infrastructure quickly attracts more 'normal biking' instead of everyone on racing bikes cycling like they are in the final sprint of the tour de France, I wasn't relaxed at all and we couldn't keep a normal conversation because of the constant ringing and people wanting to get past us while we were cycling relatively fast already, in the Netherlands you can easily hold a conversation because the cycling culture is way more relaxed.
its awful compared to even germany
Referring to your latter point, that's probably because everyone's in a hurry in London and I don't think that's ever gonna change, it's not about cycling culture it's more about the city itself
You don't have any "normal cyclists" in Amsterdam, as a person who rides a "normal" racing bike at a high pace i found it very frustrating riding in amsterdam. There are no cyclists and the city is not cyclist friendly, its made for pedestrians on bicycles, not cyclists. A cyclist is a person who rides a bike while in uniform, helmet and clipless pedals. All others are pedestrians.
And if you are talking whilst riding you are one of the most obnoxious types. Talk at home, in the pub or in the park ffs. Road is not a place for conversation, you must be focused and concentrating on the road.
@@MalcolmJameson_1 TBH your whole post sounds pretty obnoxious, so pot kettle black. Your way is not better, it's just different. Some people want to go fast, some people don't. There should be options for all. Not everyone wants to race around like Chris Boardman. London is a working commuting city but it's also a tourist city and a city with families and old people. We all need to find a way to get along somehow.
@@MalcolmJameson_1 ofc you have a fuckin ukip pfp
The quiet streets are probably where London has made the most progress recently. London has been putting in loads of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) especially since the pandemic, which use traffic filters to cut off through routes for cars forcing them onto main roads and discouraging shorter car journeys. These are a really cheap and effective way of creating many routes for cycling especially when combined with strategically placed cycle crossings over main roads to connect LTNs only for bikes, as the traffic levels are reduced so much that they're really pleasant to cycle and walk through.
Definitely. One of the biggest issues of cities that aren't currently prioritizing alternative modes of transport is the insistance (or perhaps 'necessity') for complete car routes to absolutely everywhere. Not does this encourage more car trips, it also encourages the presence of more cars in places that might do better without them. Not only is turning these former car roads into bike/pedestrian exclusive routes a good thing to better delineate the flow of car traffic, but it also gives people a really good excuse to not need a car just to reach every nook and cranny of a city.
A lot of the small roads and shortcuts I used to use when I learned to drive are now shut off to traffic. I now cycle and these small routes are great little shortcuts, I can get all the way up to central London and back from zone 3/4 southeast London without coming into contact with major traffic, then straight up onto the Cycleway. Only crap bit is in the City, that junction at London Bridge is horrible.
@c0wqu3u31at3r I used to go out of my way to cross over Southwark bridge instead of London Bridge because it's a much less stressful cycle
@@ruth649 I go all the way to Blackfriars on the Quietway, it's a great route as I work near farringdon anyways
Yes! And there a couple of London cycling channels focused on exactly that, I've subscribed to two of them, as in effect, they state: "Yes, it is safe to cycle in London again, and here's how"...I've visited suburbs of London I've never been through before, and you can almost *taste* them on some of these safe *civilized* routes. I was rightly terrified most of the time cycling in London, even being raised there as a youngster, and learning to acclimatize to cycling on the left hand side. I watch some of the vids of cycling through the centre of London (and I have in days of bravado) but I couldn't do it now on the main roads. It's just not worth it. Thank God for Kate's org.
As a Calgarian I enjoy your local content but I also quite like seeing what is happening in other cities around the world. Lots of ideas as to what is possible. Great work! Carry on sir!
Thank you! It's good to hear what you enjoy watching.
Ready to see a review of how horrible it is in windsor.
If I remember right, It was recently rated the most unfriendly city for bikes in Canada.
@@clarkwatson9721Hi
I think something to keep in mind about London's public transit is that it's really good at moving people into the centre of the city and back out but it falls short at connecting the outer boroughs to one another. For those kinds of trips often a wonky bus route or driving are your only options (or worse - the 40 min trip into central London, followed by another 40 min trip back out to the neighbouring borough where your friend lives), which is often why you get so many car trips in zone 3+. I'd love to see more cycling accommodation for these kinds of inter-borough trips as the options right now are severely limited.
I think they're not as bad as you think in some areas. It's a mixed bag as different boroughs have put in differing levels of investment but I think even in the last 2 years some boroughs have woken up to this and have started working on it. One issue is just that London is actually pretty big so going from one outer borough to another can feel like going from one city to another! I really notice it when I go to other cities where I can easily get from one side of the city to the other and it feels like crossing just one borough in London!
I’ve been to London 3 months ago, first time since the pandemic. The last time I’ve been there in 2019. The improvement in cycling infrastructure and the increase in number of cyclists is massive. It might not be as visible for a local who sees the changes happening gradually, but for an outsider like me, who just sees it every now and then, it’s huge.
Also, this last trip really made me want to get a Brompton, many people there are using them and these bikes just seem super fun.
I saw so many Bromptons, and so many different types of people riding them. I had never seen a full Lycra athlete riding a Brompton until I visited London!
That's great you get to see that quick improvement from 2019.
I was last in London in 2018 and I don't recall that much bike infrastructure.
@@pbilk I’ve been to London many times, usually I’ve been there about once a year. I only had a bigger gap due to pandemic lately. In terms of cycling there it feels like nothing happened for years and then suddenly it started. Now there are lots of cyclists there, at least in central London.
It sadly also seems that London is the only city in the UK that has really upped its cycling game. All the other places Ive been are much worse. Earlier last year I visited Manchester for the first time. I was actually surprised that anybody was cycling there because the cycling infrastructure was either nonexistent or awful. I consider myself an experienced city cyclist and I’m no stranger to cycling in traffic but I wouldn’t feel safe being on a road on a bike there.
Yes, Brompton is a high quality folding bike brand, but there are also Reiss & Müller and Vello, an Austrian brand of high quality folding bike to consider.
@@rabomarc Cardiff in Wales is trying to up it's cycling game. Its started implementing cross-city routes similar to London's superhighway but it leaves much to be desired at junctions. A lot of non traffic light control junctions cross it and drivers are not realising they cross a two way cycle lane before entering into what is a single carriageway.
So they'll look right not left... see no cars, see no bikes, and immediately pull out into a cyclist coming from the left.
Additionally, there's been an uptick in left hooking by motorists, again not checking their mirrors as they cross the mostly segregated cycle infrastructure. Plus with these routes now in, police have started issuing fines for cyclists failing to dismount when using the wide shopping streets that are pedestrianised and technically cycling is prohibited, but the streets span such a large area the cycle path routing follows the normal car routing, again placing cyclists in conflict with motorised traffic at every junction.
I live in Croydon, an outer borough in the south of London.
My experience is that cycling around here is still pretty terrifying. It only improves when you get into the centre.
I used to cycle from Croydon to Wimbledon, another outer borough, but quickly stopped after a few near death experiences. The only people brave enough to cycle to work seem to be blokes in lycra.
There is no comparison with the Dutch system, where you can safely traverse long distances at ease. In the Netherlands there are children and old ladies out on their bikes - totally unthinkable here!
I think we have a long way to go, but things are slowly improving, and thankfully buses and trains are pretty good round here.
Great video, thanks!
I find most of London is too scary to cycle.
I enjoy seeing what other cities are doing regarding cycling. The intersection where cyclists went all directions before cars is genius. Thanks Tom.
I absolutely love seeing what other cities are doing (and in this case, seeing familiar cycle lanes in my own city). So often when a city first starts building bike lanes you get objectors claiming that it can't possibly work and that no one will cycle, and after pointing out that it works in Amsterdam the inevitable retort "We aren't Amsterdam!". Having lots of examples of cities around the world at various stages in their journey is the best way of pointing out that any city can be a cycling city with just a little bit of work.
Another big benefit is being able to visually demonstrate what does and what does not work. Being able to point out to a local councillor in Australia that the bike lane they have designed is identical to one built in London ten years ago that was subsequently ripped out and replaced because it wasn't good enough might just be enough to get the one in Australia built the right way the first time.
So thanks! I love it and I'm looking forward to seeing more.
Thanks! I love seeing you travel different cities and report on their bicycle infrastructure.
Thanks again Brad. Glad you liked it. Your support is super helpful.
Thanks! London Ontario; I've always wanted to ride my bicycle there. Just kidding, fantastic as usual.
Lol. It's amazing how popular Fake London has gotten 😂. Thanks again for the support Philip!
Thanks for the video! That looks a lot better than when I lived in southern England several years ago.
Thank you for the support! It was great to see the progress in the city, and I'm glad you got something out of the video.
I recently had to cycle from Paddington to near Tower Bridge, near where you were on the film. The cycle super highway is excellent and I was able to get to my destination very easily. Thanks
To be fair, that stretch of infrastructure is one of the best in London!
That was fun, thanks! Travel and seeing other places is awesome.
Glad you enjoyed it, and thank you for the support. And it's great to hear you like videos like this exploring other cities 👍🏻
Great to see you in london, it’s definitely improved for cyclists since I lived there. I’m now in Birmingham which as the second city has also been doing pretty well these last few years, cycling has become far more pleasurable as a result. That has resulted in more cyclists on the road and I feel more awareness from car drivers.
I know a lot of Londoners might disagree, but I also felt that drivers in central London were pretty aware of cyclists. I was quite apprehensive riding in such a busy city on the left side of the road, which I'm unaccustomed to, but drivers were generally pretty patient.
@@Shifter_Cycling It does look like it’s improved a lot over the years. When I used to commute in central london over 10 years ago it was dicey to say the least…remember getting deliberately shunted from the back by an impatient driver and cab drivers especially were a law on to themselves…
Live in Birmingham myself too, and I agree with you it looks like things are getting better especially with the new 'superhighway'-style routes like the A38 and A45 ones, but I dunno I think we still have a long long way to go. In addition for a city our size our public transport network is really not fit for purpose, it's honestly depressing realising that Manchester and Birmingham started rebuilding their tram networks around the same time in the late 90s but Manchester now has a whole network while we still just have one line :(
Same stands for the Ontario equivalent.
@@Shifter_Cycling coming from up north, where there is little-to-no infrastructure, drivers in London are far more accommodating. Simple things like the "bike box" aren't well understood outside of London and drivers like to stop in it and will be offended if you decide to filter and actually use it on your bike!
Thanks
Thank you so much! The support is truly appreciated.
No way! I know Katie from when I used to work in Amsterdammers bike shop in Brighton! She's a wonderful cycling advocate.
Woo hoo! In our neck of the woods.👍🚴♀️🇬🇧 Keep meaning to cycle up to London for a day out, as only 30 miles away.👍 Great to see your views on London👍🚴♀️🙂
I lived in London from 2019 - 2021, before moving to Toronto. I felt 5x safer cycling in London than I do in Toronto. In fact, I've stopped cycling in Toronto due to how bad the drivers are. The slow car traffic in London definitely is the top reason for this, as is the fact that there are normal cars there and not trucks with hoods bigger than I am.
I hear what you're saying about the trucks. God, I hate those things.
I think if I ran into you in London I'd have been star struck 😅 Great video and fun to see some of that infra I've used
I agree with many comments here, London has come a long way in the last 4 years, but we need to go further, much further to catch up with the Netherlands. I look forward to a time when the majority vehicles will be bikes of all types ,and descriptions
Awesome to see you here in London Tom. As a cyclist born and bred in this city, it's refreshing to see an outside perspective on how far our infrastructure has come in recent years, but also how much better it can be! Totally agree that the nicest bike lanes are always the "Q" Quiet routes on back streets. Hope you enjoyed your stay and will be back again soon :)
Totally agree - pootling on the back roads and finding routes that connect across in quiet ways is such a lovely way to go. Also you find things you never knew were there!
The LTNs we've been campaigning for massively help with creating the quiet roads needed for this sort of transport cycling - some of the roads assigned as 'quietways' in outer London are much too busy to deserve the name.
Great to see you on my side of the pond! A good roundup. I live in Maidenhead, 25 miles west of London. Because of the capital's cycleways I often feel safer cycling in London than in my much smaller and quieter home town.
I heard this a few times, which is the opposite of some other places. Hopefully those safe lanes will continue to spread beyond the central city
I agree with this. I come from near Maidenhead but I wouldn't cycle there, it is just too dangerous on the A4 main road etc. too many fast and irresponsible drivers and few if any properly segregated cycle lanes. You can't even cycle easily along the Thames because of all the blinking footpath gates. I now live in Dresden, Germany and cycle about happily all the time. I could also, in theory, cycle easily all the way along the Elbe from Dresden to Hamburg (310 miles) and there (probably) wouldn't be any gates!
I agree with your comments at the end Tom. What I would also say is that London is pretty much unique in the UK, most towns have very little and poor infrastructure.
I often feel like we don't take a long term view, politicians only seem interested in re-election and the UK still appears very car centric. It can be a little depressing when one looks across to our near neighbour NL to see what is possible when there is a real will to make change happen.
All this said there is evidence of a slow shift in attitudes, last year changes were made to our highway code to emphasize the importance of protecting more vulnerable road users and this has made a difference. The ultimate goal however should be to separate cyclists from motor vehicles and that looks to be a very long way down the road.
I look forward to seeing your analysis of some other European cities.
I really enjoy your content and as someone who cycles a lot in London I was intrigued by your video. I use the super highway on a daily basis and it is a great piece of infrastructure in a very busy vehicle oriented city. There are plus points but the one major negative point is how vehicles seem to be given priority at traffic lights and indeed there are so many lights from the Tower of London to Westminster that your journey is very stop start.
The lane from Tower Hill to Limehouse is painted blue which makes it highly noticeable but the local council (Tower Hamlets) aren’t really taking care of it and therefore a lot of the paint has worn off. In a way it shows how many people actually use the route along Cable Street.
London has tried and in some respects it has achieved a pass mark but it is still heavily dominated by motor vehicles. I don’t feel the city is very progressive and with a lot of in fighting and certain boroughs NOT wanting to have cycle paths there is still so much work to do. If you head out east where I live there is no cycling infrastructure apart from a random bike painted on the road. I think the U.K. as a whole is far behind and cycling seems to be a second thought over motor vehicles.
welcome to my home town, I'm in my mid fifty's and have been cycling in London most of my life, it's been great seeing the changes to cycling in and around London and it's looking very promising in the near future.
London is definetly one of the better cities in the UK. I have to spend a lot of time in cities like Birmingham and Sheffield and oh boy, those are truly just carcentric urban wastelands... The volume of traffic alone around Birmingham New Street Station alone makes it impossible to bike without being killed, even if the speeds are slowish.
Great to hear how different cities embrace cycling. Problems, solutions...etc.
Awesome. Thanks for the feedback.
Great video! I’ve been living in London for 8 years, cycling in it for 4, and absolutely love it! Definitely the best way to explore the city’s nooks and crannies, loved seeing those quiet routes between London Bridge and Blackfriars here! Have to say that for me even the non-cycling-infrastructure sections are still enjoyable to ride on, the average speed of cars is quite slow so I rarely feel uncomfortable.
Definitely agree that the Victoria Embankment bike lane is a standout, always a pleasure!
Great episode, thanks for coming to the UK and covering London. As a former London resident, it is good to see the cycling infrastructure improvements. Hopefully these improvements will start to prolificate to other UK towns soon.
Fantastic video. Indeed, it is informative how bicycling is accommodated in other places.
Excellent even-handed appraisal. Thanks for the objectivity... it really helps!
I love to watch the videos put up by Londoncycleroutes. He has been showcasing all the different cycles routes around London and the suburbs from suggestions by his viewers. I am going to London for the next few months and hope to ride some of the more scenic routes he has put up.
The brilliant London Cycle Routes channel th-cam.com/channels/GACjprwPEV2cmcTLooxXvg.html is run by one of our long-term members and volunteers. He does a simply brilliant job picking out ways that people can connect up places safely.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, why are we still building two way bike lanes on one side of the road? Mikael Colville-Anderson, formally of Copenhagenize, wrote about the folly of this back in 2014, mentioning the design had been removed from best practice in the Netherlands more than two decades earlier! Why are we still doing it 30 years on?
You're 100% correct, but I think the answer comes down to space and, ugh, car parking. The optimistic side of me thinks that two-lanes are the bridge between nothing at all and proper lanes. I hope we get there.
@@Shifter_Cycling Yep. You can see this in some of the consultations and design documents where you can see that they often explicitly design and evaluate one-direction-per-side cycle lanes and reject them due to the loss of parking or travel lanes for cars (or occasionally just objecting to a loss of width of the travel lanes).
I'm with you on the optimistic side though. Despite CS3 having some annoying compromises due to the both-on-one-side design, it is nonetheless massively popular and a lot of those new cyclists join the LCC and vote in local elections which is what will eventually get us to the best quality designs.
It is worth noting the reason bi-directional cycling lanes are no longer being recommended is safety, with risk at crossings being higher by "a factor of 2" not to mention the difficulty for pedestrians crossing. Surely safety should be the major concern for any such design?
Personally I can't see how 1 lane on each side takes up more space than two on one side either. And I do have to quote Mikael from his article, "Another excuse oft heard is, "Well... it's better than nothing" - often spoken in a defensive tone. It is a flawed argument, lacking vision, commitment and experience." 😉
I really enjoyed myself last summer riding all over london on a Gocycle. I perfect bike for cities
Infrastructure and cycle paths in London are actually pretty good
Nice video: what a change! I was last in London in 2017 and besides the bikeshare, London was essentially sharrow-central. Nice to see they've been doing some thinking, and that they are thinking regionally and trying to build out a network.
Like this series. When you're back in Canada you should make a stop in Montreal. South of the border Chicago and NYC would be good places to visit. Safe travels!
I love what you're doing and I hope that you will keep doing it. Stay safe during your travels and keep preaching the gospel of the bicycle.
Thank you! You too!
Welcome to my city! Your videos gave me a lot of confidence on the roads in London even though you hadn’t come here yet ☺️
London is where I live and cycle (and walk, take public transport, ride my motorbike and, if all else fails, drive😉) and I think you’ve made an excellent ideo summary of the current situation, and the developments over the last few years, in the short time that you had available. The LCC are great btw so that was a great choice. Great work Tom! 👍🏽
Those are some great improvements, and with that crazy success of the bike super highways it becomes harder for people to argue that nobody wants bike infrastructure in the city. Great video!
Central London has some great places for cycling. In Outer London suburbs, where I live, it varies a lot from borough to borough - but some such as Waltham Forest have shown how it can be done effectively, so the others just need to catch up - and I think they will!
like she said, if you build an awesome safe cycleway but each end is messy and it all falls apart, no one will use it and it ruins the point. I have noticed this A LOT in the great city of Sydney Australia. It is great, great, great and then it turns really bad and as a result only few people end up using it. Great point she stated there.
Living in London for 10 years and I can say cycling changed my experience of the city.
All of a sudden your connecting all these areas which you would have only associated to a tube station.
Good to see these changes, but as a Dutch bike rider I'm struck by the lack of visual cues (mostly done with red asphalt here) where the lanes go. The double traffic light for cyclists is simply done with a no-cars-box near the traffic lights here - but I get as an emerging bike city it's best to not surprise (antagonise?) drivers with cyclists just pulling up in front of you.
Agreed. As a cyclist, London has radically changed since I lived there in the 1980s/90s. Now I wish other UK cities will make some effort to catch up. Long overdue.
Other cities just don't have the funding to be able to, north-south divide etc
This was one of your coolest videos yet! I like this theme keep them coming!
Also I was super impressed how much great content you were able to pack into 8 minutes that was awesome
Great to see you in London and I hope you enjoyed it! I've been a silent watcher since I started cycling a few months ago and while I haven't cycled through central London I've not had to because the public transport is so great but for the outer areas cycling is my go-to now! Lots of backstreets and dual-use paths keep me safe enough that I can opt out of the car.
I prefer cycling in Summer in Central London than taking the tube, with the Hire bikes so I dont have to worry about locking the bike up!
Hell yes, my wife and I are currently contemplating a move to the UK and this is much valuable beta on a place we could end up.
Fantastic video Tom! London had some really interesting bicycling infrastructure.
I find that visits to other cities to be both entertaining and enlightening. Keep them coming, either with you visiting or guests from the other city submitting a video. They are all good.
Love this format! It’s nice to compare different cities’ progress.
Always enjoy your content Tom. Good to hear your passion for bike friendly cities.
I cycle around 60 miles a week in London for fitness and love taking in this city on a bike, started during lockdown and haven't stopped. It's relatively flat here too so you can find non exertion routes pretty easily. Cycle routes are just getting better and better here ( with a few exceptions. ) I'm always finding new routes and places to ride around. A bit chilly in the winter but glorious when the sun comes out. Can't recommend enough.
Thank you for making a video in London. It's my favourite city (been there 3 times) and would like to try cycling the next time I'm in London.
Hey Tom I found your Channel this past summer after I reignited my love for biking. I'm 48yo and live in the Midwest. As a kid tha grew up in Chicago bike riding gave me so much freedom. Thank you for all your awesome videos and excellent content.
What an amazing comment - this is exactly what I hope to inspire with this channel. Your comment made my day. Thank you so much for the support!
As a Cdn/Brit Dual, with my immediate family moved back to the UK forty years ago, and an absolute fascination with cross country cycling in the UK, this was an extremely valuable gauge to revisit London with as per cycling and staying alive, let alone enjoying it. Socially , I'm now Cdn, but spiritually, the UK countryside is enchanting. The question for me as a cyclist is: "Could I every live in London again, or do another work sojourn there?"
Watching many Brit cycling channels, it's very hard to gauge their 'self-examination' as they 'already speak the language'. But seeing it through your eyes, and knowing that even as a Westerner (Calgarian) you speak on the issue in a very neutral way in Cdn terms, it gives me a vastly better take on the 'do-ability' of living in London again. Your host Katy said some magic words too that allows one to avoid the *incredibly intense* London main roads. NYC looks tame in comparison! (And I write from Toronto, not a great cycling city)
Many thanks for this!
Super good video sir! I enjoy your content a lot.
Welcome to London Tom!
I've been cycling in London for a lot of years now and I'm really pleased that some of these protected lanes are finally arriving. Back when I started cycling in the city on a fixed-gear bike there wasn't many cyclists and drivers didn't really give you much thought but cycling then was only for the fit and the brave. Then more people started cycling and that started to cause conflict when motorists started noticing cyclists and, incorrectly of course, blaming them for the traffic jams they themselves caused. Now I hope we're getting to a new phase where cycling infrastructure exists away from motor traffic which will reduce that conflict. However there are a *lot* of people actively trying to block new cycling infrastructure and to rip out existing infrastructure so half of the battle is protecting what we have. However there are new lanes appearing all over London. now and nothing is more powerful than an idea who's time has come. Great video, thanks!
That guy flying onto the pavement at 1:23 😂😂😂 sums up cycling in London for me. Cool video!
I love that it has taken a Canadian to show me how London has improved for cyclists in the last few years. I live about 120km from London, but would never have taken my bike because it was so biased towards cars. Next time I go, my bike will come with me!
Bits of the cycling network have definitely got better! It's not good enough, but it's a start. Come and see 😁
If London is getting to be a bit more like central European cycle-friendly cities, I wonder if people are taking to buying more city-type bikes, rather than the usual road bikes and mountain bikes. Being from the UK originally, I am now living in Germany and love my 7 speed hub , upright bike with dynamo lights!
I was surprised at the diversity of cyclists in London. I certainly saw upright, Dutch-style bikes, but there were also a lot of people in Lycra on road bikes, and lots of people on folding bikes. It felt to me like a middle-ground between the athletic cyclists we see in North America and the more casual cyclists of Europe. Maybe that's a sign of a city in transition.
Yes and no there's still a load of lycra clad cyclist in a never ending race bombing around London, but there's slowly getting a good mix of different cyclists the Ebike market is getting very popular along with cargo bikes.
@@Shifter_Cycling I guess if you are commuting from an Outer borough or from just outside London (10-20 miles each way) then a faster road bike is more suitable. Shorter distances where you remain in-borough then a more upright city style bike works well. Obviously with ebikes you can also do those longer commutes without a road bike without a problem.
They are. I live in one of the more cycle friendly boroughs and I've started noticing loads of city/upright/dutch bikes everywhere in my neighbourhood - I've also seen a lot of cargo bikes as well.
I think the Lycra/road bike thing you see is a hangover from when there was no infrastructure. Cyclists had to work hard to keep up with car traffic and the only people riding were the super keen ones. I think that’s why so many people go as fast as possible down the cycle paths, it’s what they’re used to.
I really loved this video, super interesting. Also found the temporary "trail" bike lane fantastic, I will use it in my arguments to stop twiddling thumbs and do something in my city.
Yes! Loved this !
Thanks for the cool video! I visited London in fall and I noticed more people on bikes than the last time I was there (about three years ago). Now as a tourist it's difficult to judge if this was due to the weather, Covid, or better bike infrastructure, but your video gives me the impression that it might actually be a real change in the right direction!
Thanks! Love the work you do and always enjoy your videos!
Thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to watch, and for the support. It really means a lot!
@shifter_cycling, come and check out cycling around in Sydney in NSW, Australia. Maybe check out Canberra too.
Oh yeah, it’s summer here.
Worth checking out BicycleDutch's videos on Sydney and Perth before you go.
Love everything you do, Tom! As a Brit now living in eastern Canada, I enjoyed seeing how central London has progressed in the last 20 years in terms of cycling infrastructure. I also appreciate your reports from North American cities and your advice about cycling in general.
Belgian here, I visited London last month. It made me appreciate how good my country is lol
Trying out temporary bike lanes to see how they work for all transport users is a responsible planning process that all cities should implement.
Thanks Tom for another great video!
Thank you for watching!
Very interesting series, Tom, and I'd definitely like to see more videos like this. Seeing how various cities around the world implement bike infrastructure is a real eye-opener and highlights how bad it is where I live, where cycling on the roads is often a hazardous endeavor. I don't know if it'll ever change, but it's nice to see what options are being utilized elsewhere. That bike gate feature is very clever and effective. Cheers.
London DID turn over too much space to motorised vehicles. Archway Road is a case in point- widened to six lanes to accommodate the M1 entering London, it runs straight through residential neighbourhoods.
Some changes have taken place but not before serious incidents - a friend of mine was crushed by an articulated lorry and another survived being thrown into the air by a commuting driver. These are two of my childhood memories. I am sure other Londoners have similar.
That's so awful, sorry for your loss and your poor friend. Too many of our most ardent campaigners and activists also come from tragedy. As a city and society we should never let it get to this point. We normalise road violence to a shocking degree. The incidents you describe are NOT accidents. They are predictable outcomes of a poorly designed system. We refuse to accept this system.
Great video. And while you could not go into too much details how they made it, it is inspiring. And that is one of the most important things to help people to push for more cycling infrastructure. Two cool ideas, I took from the video (a) use of temporary bike lanes as an active tool to test different ideas. In Germany it is usually just a temporary measure without evaluation and then later some road designer designs something totally different. (b) you need to have dedicated politicians and in turn you need people pushing and supporting politicians in pursuing change.
You good point about road design. One thing that struck me in London was that the bike lanes sometimes felt a little inconsistent, as if it really was a different person designing them. For a visitor to the city, I found this confusing. Bike lanes are great when you don't have to think about them, they are just consistent, connected and reliable.
@@Shifter_Cycling The lack of consistency might be to do with TfL having to roll-out the cycling network via piecemeal upgrades and haggle with borough councils when making them. On top of that, London has inherently messy urban design. It's the result of over a century of anarchic urban growth and botched civil works programmes, leading to such wonderful occurrences, like the main road to Dover (A20) having a section with just two lanes to share with all the local traffic. Now there's a route that's never getting any cycling infrastructure.
Lovely video. Thanks for covering London and meeting up with the amazing Katy!
Come to Milton Keynes... 50 miles north west from London. Bike and car infrastructure set up jointly. Also is now classed as a city since last year. Great video
Ooh, this sounds interesting. Currently Googling Millton Keynes.
MK is a very unusual and interesting city. It's somehow managed to build excellent car and bicycle infrastructure so it's enjoyable to both bike and drive round. It somehow has an American style grid layout with big box stores yet it doesn't feel difficult to walk or bike around. It feels both urban, suburban and rural at the same time. The only thing missing imo is a proper rapid transit system to get around longer distances. Something like the DLR would be perfect there.
Fantastic work so far London 🤘🚴
Thanks for the video. Really hoping London keeps getting more cycle friendly. Greetings from London 🇬🇧.
Thanks!
Thank you so much for the support. It means a lot to me!
Great to see you cycling where I live. I agree 100% with your analysis of london. It's the politics that's holding london back from being a true cycling city, but as I understand it, it was the same situation in the Netherlands 50 years ago.
It’s nice to see a video from an outside perspective. But for me a bit further out from central it feels like they have only made a start to improving cycle infrastructure and never continued with it. Where I am in Merton, the plans to improve cycling finished in 2020 and nothing has been done since.
Yes, these videos are very helpful and informative! Motivates me to talk to my elected leaders about what is possible if prioritized.
Those London temporary lanes are like 57x nicer than the permanent lanes that my city was boasting about painting down lol
Yes, show us more cities and developments, a bit more on the history of the changes as well.
Love seeing what's happening in other cities! Keep it up man!
Btw, I recently read your book -- Fun read! Totally put me in the mood for the winter cycling season!
I grew up in London in the 80s & 90s and rarely cycled anywhere. I've returned to the city in my 50s and cycle everywhere now. It's a massive, massive improvement. I can cycle from the suburbs to central london in under and hour with very little stress.
Great content. Love seeing what cities are doing and how cycling infrastructure is developing over the years. Hopefully you can come to Australia and critique
It would be a pretty sad critique gvien how poor cycling infrastructure is here.
@@amandajane8227 Exactly!! Would serve as what gov't/councils need to do
Great Video, keep them coming when you get an opportunity. It‘s been a while since I have been to London, great to see such process. I would love to swing my brompton around - thats what this bike was built for.
Hope you had a good time in my home city - London. Please plan for a subscriber meet up next time you are here - I am a subscriber for many years. Have actually taken up urban bike commuting in London since following your channel, its definitely a healthier (both physical and mental) and cheaper option. Also agree with Katie that London that the cycling infrastructure here is very good in places - we are not yet like the Netherlands but getting there slowly
Having a meetup is a great idea. Hopefully I'll be back there soon. Thanks for watching, and I'm so glad to hear you've taken up the bike!
Great video. So glad to see London making great strides as a bike friendly city. Pls visit NYC for a judicious critique. Very hit and miss for cyclists, as there’s too much congestion and a paucity of protected bicycle lanes.
Nice. I haven’t been to London in 35 years but am returning in April 2025 and will be bringing my bike!
I am a survivor! Biking in London for over 30 years. There have been times when it has been scary but now is so much better. In London there used to be only two types of cyclist - the quick and the dead. 🙂 I am glad it is so much better.
Interesting. I have just watched your video immediately after cycling home from central London, where people work, to the suburbs (what you called the “outer boroughs”) where people actually live. I live in the middle/outer suburbs 9 miles from my office. A cycle commuter typically would travel between five and 10 miles each way because London is a big place. It also has hills by the way!
I’m sure the cycling superhighway is brilliant if you want to go a short flat distance through central London east-west or west-east.
However, there is nothing like that going out to the north. and I can see one of the other comments says there’s nothing like it in the south either.
London does have the most brilliant public transport system in the world though. So it gets some things right.
The cycle superhighway is a nice start, but the rest of London is still a place where cars dominate. The only factor that makes it a little safer than some other places is the relatively slow speed of the traffic because of congestion. Other than that, junctions and road layouts make quite it a dangerous place.
Come back in five years’ time, and it would be great to think more progress will have been made by then!
I hope you enjoyed your visit , and thanks for the video.
There's a difference in what the words "suburbs" and "big" mean in Europe vs North America. In Canada and the US, a suburb would probably be anywhere from 10 miles to 50 miles away from the central city. London as a city is big, and even when you go to the suburbs it still looks and feels like a slower city connected to the hustle and bustle of Central London. North American cities are small, but the metropolitan area comprising of the city + suburb is absolutely massive and the sprawl just kills any possibility of cycling or public transportation.
I would love to see you do something similar to this is Sydney Australia! Sydney has had great infrastructure for many years but has slowed down drastically and now many politicians are trying there best for better safer bicycle infrastructure. There are many campaign groups out there as well helping with this cause. Sydney is very different to London and more like Canada or USA in road design and idea so maybe it might be a bit easier to navigate.
Thanks Tom, great video
Ayeee welcome to London! Looks like you went in November, right before the cold snap, lucky and glad you enjoyed our lovely little town! Low Traffic Neighbourhoods are a point of contention here with the Nimbys, but as gift to mankind.
A city I can recommend that has undergone an pretty crazy almost overnight shift in cycling infrastructure is Tel Aviv. Check out Livable City's video titled "The urban transformation of Tel Aviv" 🔥
We were glad the snow held off for sure! We will cycle in the snow, but it's not ideal for introductory touring with our current infrastructure and cycle lane gritting levels...
London has great potential to be a bike city
Just came across your channel now. I'm dual Brit Canadian currently in the UK but other home is Vancouver BC. I could tell right away within the first few seconds of you speaking that you are a fellow Canuck. Greetings to you! And now I will watch your video. Looks very interesting. Oh and... Subscribed, eh! 🇨🇦 🇬🇧
That's good news - looks like London is making progress.
Thanks for this, Tom. It is very encouraging to see the progress London has made, even if it isn't there yet. (Ottawa ain't either.) I visited England and Wales as a teenager on a cycling trip in 1972. London was judged by the people who put on our tour to be so dangerous that we put our bikes away for the duration of our time there. We cycled through every other city on the tour, including Oxford, Gloucester, Liverpool, and Nottingham. Seeing what you were up to in this video, I would definitely give London a whirl.