A Legacy for London

This article was originally written by Dr Ashok Sinha for Cycling UK

It’s not often you win a £100 million programme named after the campaign that led to it, but that’s what happened to the London Cycling Campaign. The so-called Mini-Holland Programme was launched by London Mayor Boris Johnson not long after LCC’s Love London, Go Dutch campaign in 2012 persuaded him (and all the candidates in that year’s election) to ditch the blue paint and Go Dutch. It’s a story I’ve dined out on ever since (and will no doubt bore people by continuing to do so after my upcoming departure from LCC). But it’s worth recapitulating, not least because so much has flowed from that moment.

When I joined LCC as its CEO late in 2010 the situation was not pretty. The best protection that people cycling could expect was narrow strips of blue paint on the road, with transparent deficiencies. Plus, the cycling campaign movement was riven between the “segregationists” – proponents of the Dutch approach, in which the backbone of the cycling network is physically protected cycle tracks – and the “vehicularists” who, broadly speaking, contended that success would lie in radical constraints in traffic and sharing roadspace. On top, the style, tone and imagery of at least LCC’s campaigning spoke more to the revolutionary vanguard than the masses. Something had to change.

Based on my past experience of leading national campaigns, the path ahead was obvious: go for broke and focus every resource we had on a single, compelling political idea; construct a positive, propositional campaign centred on that idea; target the 2012 London Mayoral Election with the biggest cycling campaign mobilisation the UK had ever seen. Plus – crucially – put the topic of that campaign to the vote amongst LCC members. Simple. Except it wasn’t. There was pushback against Go Dutch even being on the slate of choices on the ballot form, with people fearing that it would irreversibly split the movement.

But we went ahead, and Go Dutch topped the poll overwhelmingly. Even then, opponents of the populist approach we sought to adopt condemned it as fluffy, vacuous PR and a waste of resources. Indeed, with preparations for the campaign launch in full swing, an anxious contingent of senior folk from Cycling UK (CTC as was) visited me to entreat LCC to tread cautiously for fear of the consequences.

The die was cast, however. The next challenge was tabled by our Communications Manager who walked over to me, furrowed brow, to ask “how on earth do we articulate something as complex as cycling infrastructure, area-wide treatments, roadspace reallocation and the rest?” My answer? “Don’t try. Draw pictures of people and places”. Following this light-bulb moment we used computer-aided, high design value, people-centred redesigns of iconic locations to communicate Love London, Go Dutch, buttressed with high quality visuals of cyclists representing London’s diversity – with barely any lycra in sight. An approach largely new and untested for cycling campaigners.

We succeeded. And the 42,000 people who signed the Love London, Go Dutch petition and 10,000 people who joined the Big Ride just ahead of the election were and remain, I think, high water marks for UK-wide cycling mobilisations.

In case you find this all a bit of a puff piece for LCC, I’m happy to admit that credit, ultimately, goes first to Boris Johnson. Palpably restraining his own instincts as to what was required, he honoured his commitment to our three key demands: create three flagship, Dutch style area-wide treatments; install flagship protected cycle tracks (the “North-South” and “East-West” cycle Superhighways, now renamed); and adopt international best practice road design (made manifest through the London Cycling Design Standards).

Equal credit goes secondly to Boris’s successor, Sadiq Khan, who accepted and delivered on the three promises we subsequently won from him (and all the other candidates) in the 2016 mayoral contest: triple the mileage of protected cycle tracks in London during that mayoralty (which has reached five times as of today), make Direct Vision lorries the norm (being implemented through TfL’s Direct Vision Lorry Scheme), and offer every borough the support needed to deliver at least one neighbourhood level walking and cycling scheme.

But that was all a long time ago. Where are we now? Politically, the battle has been won at the London-wide and national levels about how best to deliver a safe and inviting cycling network (with all due caveats about not anything for granted). Conversely, we now face granular, borough by borough, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, school by school, street by street struggles to win political and public support for contested measures like Low Traffic Neighbourhoods; and at the other end of the telescope, struggles to win transformative policies such as Smart and Fair Road User Charging and radical traffic restraint.

Speaking of which, this is the right moment to pay tribute to all the extraordinary staff I have had the privilege and pleasure to work with, and express my admiration for our grass roots activists. Despite being confronted with innumerable difficulties they have prevailed – or just simply never given up – in advancing our cause. LCC’s successes have been founded on their dedication, passion and belief. We’re going to need all that in spades in to overcome the challenges ahead.

As for regrets? I’ve had a few. Despite our successes we still haven’t found a way to get LCC to the attention of many of London’s cyclists – LCC membership is fantastic value, gives us our clout, and I wish we could have found the wherewithal to take our story to even more people. There is still a partisan divide on cycling: despite a supportive government (recent active travel budget cuts aside), borough councils of the same hue remain blind to the urgent necessity to promote active travel and other solutions to private car over-dependency, despite substantial support from individual councillors. We still haven’t cracked Outer London (the Waltham Forests of this world aside). And LCC is still far short of visibly reflecting the diversity of the city we serve; as a Brown man, I often wonder if I could have done more and better (and often conclude that I could and should have).

But to return to my theme. Happily, the discord I mentioned above between different camps of cycling campaigners has long since evaporated. The climate emergency, air pollution crisis, continuing death toll from road collisions and a crisis of sedentariness together make low/slow traffic shared spaces, protected cycle lanes and a mass expansion in public transport and shared (micro)mobility all absolutely essential. Our cities must become places where cycling is the natural choice and most citizens need never actually own a car, being able instead to access convenient and affordable motorised transport whenever required. In achieving this we can create safer, happier cities, where the roadspace liberated is used for communing and play, as well as for greening and enhancing biodiversity, helping us adapt to the level of climate change already baked in. It’s an exciting and compelling vision, and I’m sure we are all pretty much united around achieving it.

It just shows how, when you start with creating safe Space for Cycling (another LCC campaign of which I’m fond) you end up envisaging and advocating for innovative, human-centred ways of organising urban spaces and empowering local people to fashion vibrant communities that thrive within planetary boundaries. To campaign for cycling is, as ever, to campaign for something far more than just cycling. That’s why, as I leave LCC, I shall miss it so much.