(Above) Amsterdam and Copenhagen.
(Below) Princes Circus in central London (traffic approaching from High Holborn).
As any top member of the London Cycling Campaign will tell you, there simply isn’t the space on London’s narrow streets to fit in the kind of segregated cycle paths they have in Dutch and Danish cities. And anyway we prefer safety in numbers and the right to ride. If you wait, some cyclists are bound to turn up.
And here they come! Three cyclists. The male cyclist with the racy handlebars and bandana waits for the right moment to zip across at red. The two cautious helmeted women cyclists hug the gutter and wait for the lights to turn green.
Of course in London the authorities shrewdly realise that if you start putting cyclists and pedestrians before car drivers, then the economy collapses. Like in Denmark, where this poor woman is reduced to being transported to the opera in the most humiliating way. Foreigners have no sense of shame, do they?
Photo credit: Niels Henriksen.
