Cycle superhighways row: wheels within wheels | Dave Hill
The PR war over Boris Johnsons flagship cycling scheme risks impeding its progress
Cycling campaigners are raging that Boris Johnsons most ambitious cycle superhighway project is threatened by a subversive alliance of Square Mile planning officers and chauffeur-driven suits. As the consultation on the east-west Crossrail for bikes and its shorter north-south counterpart proceeds, this view has become loudly commonplace. Is it justified?
Its most strident expression so far appeared in the Guardian last week, when former Olympic cycling champion Chris Boardman, now a policy adviser for British Cycling, alleged that behind the scenes there is an intense lobbying operation to destroy the plans and that this is led by just one company, the Canary Wharf Group, and by the City of London Corporation. These Dark Lords of Mammon will not, Boardman wrote, speak against the scheme in public for fear of losing the debate so, instead, they are trying to poison the project in secret without leaving any fingerprints.
Source: Guardian Transport