Full text of Boris Johnson speech on cycling this morning:

Good morning and thanks for coming. I want in particular to thank Sir Peter Hendy for the work he has done over many years to make cycling safer, and you will hear from Peter in a moment.

I think we have reached a very important moment in the development of transport in the city, because there is now a growing chorus of voices who say that the cycling revolution has been going too fast and that we should somehow get all these cyclists off the roads and people look at me in an accusing way…
and so I am obliged to reply by saying first that this analysis grossly exaggerates my messianic abilities. I am a passionate cyclist, but I am not some kind of Pied Pedaller

People go by bike because they love to go by bike, because it is clean, it is green, it is beautiful, it is enjoyable and it is the way to go for our city.

I want London to be famous not just as the financial, cultural and artistic capital of the world. I think our streets should be as famous for cycling, and as popular with cyclists, as the streets of Copenhagen or Amsterdam

And that means we must make it ever safer,and wherever accidents take place we must respond. We must see what could have been done to prevent them. We must immediately work out what we can do to stop them happening again, and we must address people’s fears, well-founded or otherwise

It is true – and for this I pay tribute to the work of TfL and many others – that cycling is getting safer in London, and the rate of serious and fatal collisions has fallen by about a quarter in the last decade.

But we all know that we must do better

People say to me, what about educating all these cyclists? And yes, we have launched our cycle safety tips campaign and we have so far funded training for 8723 adults and 38,743 children

And yes, if you want to learn to ride in London, and you are apprehensive then we will certainly help you

And then people say what about the lorries? And I say yes, we are driving up safety standards for all vehicles. All lorries contracted to Tfl, the GLA or our supply chains will have side bars, audible and visual warnings, driver training and other ways of reducing the risk of collision.


We are working as you know on a new Safer Lorry Zone for London. And together with the Dft we have launched an HGV taskforce that is targeting bad operators with dangerous machines, and so far we have fined 243 and actually impounded 14 of them.

And then people say, well, that’s all fine but what about behaviour? What are you doing to tackle the cyclists and the motorists who disobey the laws of the road? And that is why we have launched Operation safeway in the past few weeks, in which 755 cyclists have been fined for offences such as jumping red lights.

And before you accuse me of picking on cyclists let me assure you that we have also fined 1,392 motorists for talking on their mobiles or jumping the red light.

And then there is the fundamental question: how do we continue to modernise London’s essentially mediaeval road layout to take account of these conflicting demands?

So let me repeat that we are spending the thick end of a billion pounds on creating better infrastructure for all road users

Just in the next few months we are setting out our programme to make 33 junctions safer. We are publishing the map of our new network of Quietways across Zone one, many of them following the lines of the Tube map. We are getting on with the mini-Hollands, and starting new safety schemes in Bexleyheath and Twickenham.


We will continue to expand and improve the superhighways. And yes, where it is possible and sensible, we will segregate those routes, as we have done at Stratford. And by 2015 I hope we will have begun work on the great east west superhighway – the biggest continuous urban cycle route in Europe

The cycling revolution will continue, and it will accelerate


This is not the time to slacken off or give up, because if we get this right, the prize is huge. London should be in many ways a perfect city to ride a bike. We have a flat or gently undulating landscape – much less hilly than Paris. We have more green space and parks than any other city in Europe. We have perfect temperate weather.

And if we can get Londoners on to bikes we can take the pressure off public transport. We can reduce traffic. And I believe we can help people to be fitter, calmer, less hassled and to enjoy the glories of the city in a way that is different every day.

There is a huge amount of work to be done. It will take time and patience and humility, but with your help I have no doubt that it can be done.

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