The biggest thing Londoners need to get cycling is a network of safe, direct cycle routes. Some areas of our capital now have that.

But there’s lots of Londoners who need something more on top to get cycling – they can’t afford to own a bike or store it securely, they need specific types of cycles and can’t access them or they’re facing other barriers to cycling. (And when we say “bike” we include trikes, cargo cycles, adapted cycles and basically all forms of inclusive micromobility.)

We think Sadiq can and should step in, working with government and councils to sweep away the additional barriers to cycling some Londoners face.

That includes reforming cycle to work so for starters it’s not just for the employed, but also adding ‘try before you buy’, cargo and adapted cycles and loans and hire credits too – for those whose jobs or home life means they can’t securely store cycles.

A few councils are delivering that already – but not many, and Sadiq has the power to help move all of these forward.

Outer London has the biggest potential to grow and diversify cycling. But it’s often more car-dominated and the distances to ride to and from work can be longer than most will ever tackle, even on an ebike.

But we know what to do in outer London. The Dutch have for decades been planning suburban cycling around town centres and amenities. And that’s what Waltham Forest did with their award-winning ‘mini-Holland’ schemes that started rolling out during previous Mayor Boris Johnson’s reign.

It took circa £27 million from TfL across 5 years to kickstart the family cycling revolution visible around Walthamstow, Leyton and Leytonstone.

Sadiq followed the ‘mini-Holland’ approach with his ‘Liveable Neighbourhood’ schemes, but so far they’ve been too slow, often not bold enough and for less money.

So we’re asking Sadiq to fund something closer to the mini-Holland programme, with a super high quality bar, intensely focused on a few borough town centres in outer London and to only fund the best bids that focus on families and active travel.

We want more of outer London to get what Waltham Forest families have – where you see cargo bike parents and kids riding independently frequently on the cycle tracks and in the Low Traffic Neighbourhoods.

And we think ensuring these schemes are co-designed by kids and families will help make sure locals really ‘buy in’. But don’t take our word for it – we asked children living in outer London about what they wanted for their town centre and where they lived.

Bogotá does these every single Sunday across over 100km of roads and about two million residents turn up each week, a fifth of the entire city.

So come on Sadiq, why can’t we have local family-friendly rides and nice to cycle areas for a couple of hours monthly in town centres across London through spring and summer? We’ve shown you how it can be done with LCC and Lime’s London Cycling Festival this year!

Need a reminder? Here’s some photos of the events that we ran with councils across London and without needing to incur huge policing bills. It’s a no-brainer, Sadiq!

London Cycling Festival Photography

* Closing streets to moving motor vehicles, or removing cars entirely for a few hours so that just about everyone can walk, play, wheel, scoot & cycle can be done with necessary emergency, Blue Badge etc. access – and we can see how many cities are learning to balance ‘car-free’ spaces and temporary events with broader inclusive mobility issues.

The slow motion arrival of a scheme to pedestrianise Oxford Street is about the only big bold thing Sadiq has done since the elections in May a year ago.

It’s not really big or bold enough though. Even if Sadiq can crack on using a government-backed Mayoral Development Corporation, to get past the opposition from (some) Westminster residents, then the scheme goes nowhere near far enough and will itself cause knock-on issues that means the rest of the west end will have to change too.

Meanwhile, Paris has just announced it’s pedestrianising another 500 city centre streets on top of the 200 it already did!

Obviously for LCC, a big concern is also that cycling is set to be banned along Oxford Street under the pedestrianisation scheme.

TfL’s own analysis of cycling potential in the area demands four high-quality and direct routes in the area – but so far Sadiq and Westminster Council are only talking about one wiggly route riding in ratruns far north of Oxford Street itself.

At the same time, the scheme proposed for Oxford Street is likely to see buses moved off the street and into surrounding areas, as well as taxis, and there’ll be a lot of traffic moving in the area still.

Unless Sadiq works with Westminster to tackle the surrounding areas, then it’s likely the broader west end could get more crowded, congested and cycle-unfriendly. We need Sadiq to step up on the whole west end – for London’s centre to be better than Paris’.