London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Wednesday, Oct 08, 2025

London’s war on motorists isn’t helping anybody

London’s war on motorists isn’t helping anybody

Late one evening in Yangon in Myanmar a few years ago, I noticed a grey Morris Minor van patrolling the streets. It had an old-fashioned double--ended trumpet loudspeaker on its roof blaring out an amplified voice. ‘What’s it saying?’ I asked my guide. ‘It tells the people “It’s late! Stop drinking and go to bed! You have a busy day tomorrow!”’
hat’s the spirit. We should get some of that in London. ‘Stop eating! Get on your bike! Pedal faster!’ Why has Covid brought out a rash of virtuous bullying? I have lost count of the number of times that Radio 4 has asserted that this plague needs to create a better, more caring, more aware, lovelier human race. (And if not, we can, of course, be ordered to be so.)

Now, in the middle of calamity, as we try to save a faltering economy, halt the return of a deadly pandemic, and resume normality, Transport for London (TfL), in league with earnest local councillors and encouraged by the government, has decided to take this moment to force Londoners to adopt a more worthy form of personal transport.

They have arbitrarily closed off Park Lane, Euston Road, the Edgware Road and hundreds of other main arteries. Its ‘world-leading street-space for London’ will ‘stop rat-runs and make London areas access only’. Eh? How? These are the main roads. You may love this if you are fit and 20. The elderly think it’s bonkers. Ordinary working people with jobs and cars are simply confused.

I’m not anti-bike. I love them. I loved mine so much that in the early 1970s, I was just about the only bloke on a bicycle in central London (or so it felt). I used to haul it into the back of a black cab (particularly if I was a little drunk and unwilling to face the back wind of articulated trucks in a rainstorm).

Bikes are more popular now, but still a limited enthusiasm. These days, however, minority zeal is our new master. Mount up, buster. You are either with us or you are with us.

On Not the Nine O’Clock News, 40 years ago, Mel Smith played a man on a phone doodling on an envelope. Hanging up, he handed the squiggles over as the ‘new one-way system for Basildon’.

This comic creation is now at work for TfL, putting in bicycle lanes that end abruptly and arbitrarily, and closing roads everywhere, with planters, modal filters, Copenhagen crossings and Experimental Traffic Orders.

In May, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and TfL launched this ‘bold new Streetspace plan’ to ‘rapidly transform London’s streets to accommodate a possible ten-fold increase in cycling and five-fold increase in walking when lockdown restrictions are eased’. They have reduced the real traffic to a long, honking, choked pipe of polluting fumes, while cyclists weave in and out, scrupulously avoiding the new ‘lanes’.

I rarely drive in London. I live in the middle of all this and walk everywhere. But the other week I got into my mobile ‘Hazchem sealed unit’, my car, and ventured out into the extraordinary new set-up along the Euston Road.

I confronted vast pavement spaces, to enable the nonexistent central London workforce to keep yards apart on their way to those packed basement restaurants and pubs, and a lane to facilitate an imaginary horde of new bikes. With another carriageway taken over to allow the occasional vacant bus to belch past, every construction vehicle, van and ‘rig’ in London was now creeping along a narrow gut, spewing out particulate matter.

ven if there is a ‘ten-fold increase’ in cycling (which there isn’t), central London is already over-provided with lanes. How do I know? Because the crazy-golf chutes are generally empty. Why? First, because the lanes jump around all over the place. They disgorge the law-abiding into dangerous intersections. And secondly, you can’t overtake.

Everybody knows that half the cyclists in London think they are in a race. Bicycle accidents increased by 57 per cent after the introduction of the Tavistock-Torrington Place lane. Every sane cyclist already uses the back roads for their daily commute.

Motorised traffic won’t diminish. It will head for these back roads. (Exactly as I did.) It may not mount the pavements and zip up one-way streets like a self-respecting bicycle boy, but it will pollute the very places where central Londoners live. We only have a rush hour because central London councils want one.

A good proportion of their housing stock remains workplace, stuffed with commuting lawyers and accountants. They have used Article Four directions to prevent anyone turning it back into dwellings. The windfall from business rates means that they prefer old-fashioned zoning.

The most effective planet-saving reforms would be to prevent commercial ‘centres’ and to spread ‘live-work’ across the entirety of London. Instead, we are once again pursuing outmoded and outdated ‘visions’. (Or ‘fantasies’, as London-wide protests by ordinary working people are calling them.) Our capital is a success because people inhabit it.

There is no commercial ghetto rotting away, as in so many British cities. People live right by the largest shopping centres. A few years ago, Khan wanted to pedestrianise Oxford Street. If that had happened, every diesel-powered vehicle that rumbles along it would have gone to pump out its fumes into the back streets where children sleep. He was thwarted by the Marylebone Association, who went to the voters on this single issue.

So if Londoners want to get rid of those who think that a pandemic gives them an excuse to re-order their ten square miles of local borough and save the entire planet, then elect them out. Most of them are hanging on by less than a hundred votes.

But don’t blame the Mayor alone for this failed scheme. After spending oodles of cash, he has now decided to open the Euston Road again. It was all just ‘an experiment’. Nobody wanted to bike in his lane.

Never mind. His cause has been embraced by local councils. The Gray’s Inn Road is next up for works.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×