We are finally seeing meaningful action to ban polluting vehicles in our cities and potentially reverse decades of steady deterioration to our quality of urban life. Dedicated cycle lanes, (e-)bike hire schemes and increasing road congestion have shifted things in the favour of cycling for some years now – the current pandemic has just given a lot of us the nudge that we needed to make the jump and actually invest in a bike.

 

The benefits of reducing car movements to our planet and its climate in particular are well-known, irrefutable and widely reported, however, I want to focus on the numerous other benefits to our health and happiness, which are particularly pertinent at this sensitive time. 

 

Across the world, our cars spend the vast majority of their lives gathering dust on huge areas of valuable land in expensive basements, specially constructed garages or on our streets. Land that could otherwise be used for green spaces, playgrounds or allotments. 

 

On the occasions they are used in London, three quarters of journeys are within 5km, which could be cycled in less than 20 minutes. Drivers of these cars are increasingly frustrated in slow-moving traffic, carrying out a mind-numbing activity, practically and legally preventing them from doing anything vaguely productive. They are financially far worse off, as they are likely to be penalised at every turn with ever more parking restrictions, 20mph speed limits, speed cameras, traffic light cameras, ULEZ charges…. and that’s before we get to the running costs and depreciation of owning a car. 

 

Then there is the damage to our health – air and noise pollution causing respiratory problems, impairing cognitive functions, increasing anxiety and disrupting sleep. While journeys in a car just exacerbate our already sedentary lifestyles and car owners have been proven to have poorer health, choosing to drive short journeys where they could easily walk or cycle. This has a huge impact on our already-stretched NHS system, £1.7bn over 25 years in treatment costs could be saved if we all walked or cycled for 20 minutes each day. 

 

Forward thinking cities such as Bristol, Brighton, Birmingham and York have already committed to ban cars from their city centres in the near future and others, including London and Oxford, may not be far behind. First Base are active in most of these cities with upcoming mixed-use developments in sustainable locations that encourage active travel by providing minimal or simply no car parking and generous facilities for cycling such as secure bicycle parking, hire facilities (including cargo bikes), showers and changing rooms for workers, bicycle cafes, e-bike charging and dedicated cycle paths. 

 

Having lived in central London for 15 years, I’ve always commuted on the tube or, failing that, the bus. I haven’t wanted to risk cycling on London’s congested roads having heard a few horror stories about collisions. I thought I was protecting my lungs too, but of course recent reports demonstrate that the air in the underground is every bit as polluted and harmful as the air on our roads.

 

This has all changed in the last few years through a combination of improved and extended bicycle lanes as well as user-friendly, widespread e-bike hire schemes, such as Jump and Lime - which have now merged. Both varieties of e-bike offer a joyous, comfortable and stable ride, which allows you to effortlessly glide past queuing cars and along dedicated bicycle lanes. 

 

The current pandemic has rightly forced a lot of people to re-evaluate cycling in our cities in order to take some much-needed exercise and to avoid public transport when making essential journeys. The recent announcement by Sadiq Khan is in response to this predicted uplift in cycling in London, committing to providing further cycle lanes and closing off some major roads to cars. With any luck, this will persuade vast swathes of commuters to jump on their bikes at Waterloo and London Bridge stations, for example, to cycle to their final destination, knowing that they can fly across those two respective bridges on wide cycle lanes free of cars. Measures such as this, combined with the expansion of the ULEZ next year, will hopefully make driving anywhere in central London prohibitively difficult and expensive to the majority of people and could lead to one of the largest car-free zones anywhere in the world and an oasis of calm, clean air.

 

The shift to various modes of power-assisted micro-vehicles is without a doubt the future of urban transport – let’s hope it continues even through the colder, darker winter months and try to bear in mind a quote by Alfred Wainright; “there's no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.”