First, I’ll put my cards on the table; I’ve never voted Tory.
OK, I’m glad that Boris cycles, it sends a positive message & I’m glad he cycles without a helmet (in my opinion, a helmet sends a message that cycling is dangerous, which is not true).
To get to the point; & correct me if I’m wrong, it was the previous Mayor, Ken Livingstone, who initiated the bikes. So why not call the “Ken’s bikes”?
I believe Ken mooted it as an idea but the manifesto pledge and all the groundwork is the current mayor’s. Ergo: boris bikes.
Although I prefer bo-cycles.
I always thought it came from the media – esp the labour-sided media*, who are always anti-tory and hence anti boris. I always thought it was a “oh, bloody boris bikes…..”, tho are they are going quite well, I’ve not seen that much complaining about them of late.
* I find the UK politicly-sided media to be pathetic and stupid, but hey….
To my mind it doesn’t matter who came up with the idea – and let’s face it they existed in many cities before Ken “thought” of them. What matters is that Boris Johnston pushed them through and made them a personal crusade. To me he deserves the accolades for this and I’m happy to have him associated with them.
Politicians always have ideas and more often than not they disappear into nothingness, so kudos to Boris for seeing it through.
There are many things to dislike Boris Johnson for, but for anybody interested in cycling surely he ain’t all bad!
It could be argued that while Ken promised it, he may not actually have been able to deliver it. I’m really not sure he would have persuaded K&C and Westminster to support the scheme. Boris has.
Quote:
There are many things to dislike Boris Johnson for, but for anybody interested in cycling surely he ain’t all bad!
…. err.. how about scrapping the western congestion charge zone …opening up bus lanes to motorbikes?
Same question discussed 4 days ago – http://www.borisbikes.co.uk/topic.php?id=73
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Ben – I’m a motorcyclist so am bound to be biased, and it is slightly OT for this forum, but the argument that allowing motorcycles in bus lanes is bad for cyclists is flawed in a number of ways. I know it is popular to conclude that motorcyclists must automatically make it more dangerous for cyclists, but that’s not backed up by the facts.
From the TfL report on allowing cyclists in bus lanes which is available here
Quote:
Collisions involving cyclists had increased. However, these collisions were
generally with cars and through poor observation. The increase could also be
partially explained by the increase in cycle flows that were observed on both the
Main and the Control sites. It would therefore appear that the change in
collisions amongst cyclists were not a result of motorcyclists being permitted
access to the bus lane
and
Quote:
There were no changes in the safety of cyclists and pedestrians that could be directly attributed to the motorcycles being permitted access to the bus lanes.
I know some cyclists don’t like it and I know that there are sometimes irresponsible motorcyclists that do ride recklessly. But thats not the majority and its just wrong to conclude that allowing motorcyclists into buslanes is defacto bad for cyclists.
I call them ‘Johnsons’
I like the idea of jumping on a Johnson
BoroCycle is my preference – mixes boris, borrow and bikes. Johnsons is the more
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