Mayor of London to Invest £1 Billion in Bicycle Infrastructure

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has announced his plans to invest nearly £1 billion ($1.49 billion) in a cycling project in the capital city, which aims to reduce traffic and improve the general air quality.

Johnson stated that, “the reason I am spending almost £1 billion on this is my belief that helping cycling will not just help cyclists. It will create better places for everyone. It means less traffic, more trees, more places to sit and eat a sandwich.

It means more seats on the Tube, less competition for a parking place and fewer cars in front of yours at the lights. Above all, it will fulfill my aim of making London’s air cleaner. If just 14 percent of journeys in central London were cycled, emissions there of the greatest vehicle pollutant, NOx (nitrogen oxides), would fall by almost a third and over the years literally thousands of lives could be saved.”

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The first route will be more than 15 miles long, making it the largest in Europe, and stretch from the centre of London to Canary Wharf and Barking. The final product after four years will see a segregated cycle path network that mirrors major tube lines and bus routes, criss-crossing the city.

The Mayor remarked that he wanted “to de-lycrafy cycling. I want to make it normal, something for everyone, something you feel comfortable doing in your ordinary clothes. Our new routes will give people the confidence to get in the saddle. I do not promise perfection, or that London will become Amsterdam any time soon. But what I do say is that this plan marks a profound shift in my ambitions and intentions for the bicycle.”

By. James Burgess of Oilprice.com