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CYCLING Lucy Winkett on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Thought for the Day’ programme recently reported that ‘1.3 million bikes were sold in the four months after the Covid Lockdown started in March 2020’. However she also records that ‘only 10% of the ‘less well off’ cycle and 75% never do so’. This is interesting as a century ago cycling was a popular working class activity with workers escaping from the industrial towns on their bikes. Moving forward 100 years and urban cyclists, are mostly middle class and they are at the forefront of the move to reduce congestion and air pollution from the city. They are supporting schemes such as the London Streetspace Plan which during lockdown has blocked off side streets to create Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. Niamh McIntyre in a Guardian article says this has been done to address the increase in urban traffic ‘because between 2009 and 2019 the miles driven on London’s residential streets increased by 70%’. At the same time ‘air pollution has played a major role in the premature deaths of nearly 1,000 Londoners each year’. She claims that, ‘over a half of car journeys in the capital are less than 2.5 miles’. However the opposition to these plans are mostly suburban car owners and taxi drivers who are predominantly working class.

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