Why isn't cycling normal in London?

Me? Cycle in London? No! I'll die.

You've got to be stark raving mad to cycle in London.

I would cycle, but there are too many roads.

I tried cycling once, but there was a bus on the other side of the road. Aargh!

What's wrong with these people? Cycling is good exercise, it's free, it's fun

You can change your route as you please, you can park anywhere, it's usually faster than the bus,

sometimes faster than the Tube, and yet for some reason, cyclists in London are still

a rare and strange breed.

So, why isn't cycling normal in London? Is it to do with the way the streets were built?

Or is it something embedded in our culture?

Or is it a complicated and nuanced mixture of the two combined with several other surprisingly interesting

factors that will take about ten minutes to discuss?

♫ ♫ ♫

Cycling infrastructure in London has been around longer than you might think.

As far back as the 1930s when hardly anyone drove, the wise town planners decreed that

cars and bikes don't mix.

New suburbs in Morden, Perivale and Romford were furnished with shiny, wide, segregated,

cycle tracks. The first of its kind was opened by transport minister Leslie Hore-Belisha in 1934.

But they weren't really used much.

Cycling groups at the time hated these so-called cycle tracks.

They were worried that they'd be forced to use them and then banned from regular roads.

Indeed, that's exactly what Leslie Hore-Belisha wanted, saying that cyclists were

"the most dangerous people on the road today."

So a cycling revolution never came. But a new revolution was just around the corner.

Introducing the new Car.

Think you can't afford a car? Thanks to technology, the new car is more affordable than ever.

You can afford the new car.

With the new car, you can drive around in your new car.

- Do you like your new car? - I love my new car. (giggles)

(continues giggling)

As cars became more affordable, the roads became more full of them. And so, the 1960s planners

in their finite wisdom, altered London's existing streets to make more room for cars.

and cyclists were completely forgotten about.

Historic Hyde Park Corner was turned into a massive scary roundabout where every lane is the wrong lane.

So was Archway, Elephant and Castle, Waterloo and Hammersmith.

(car horns)

The Westway was built. Bleurgh! And nearly all the 1930s suburban cycle tracks disappeared.

Some becoming lanes for cars, others becoming parking spaces.

Unsurprisingly, over the next few decades, the number of cyclists in London plummeted.