London and Paris Invest in Cycling and Walking
The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, has announced a radical program to change transportation in the UK capital. The plan includes twelve dedicated cycling corridors radiating from the centre to the suburbs, a bike sharing program with 6,000 bikes that will be free to use for short trips, on-street "bike zones" in shopping and school areas where cyclists have priority, 30 kilometre per hour speed limits, and improved pedestrian routes and crossings to encourage more people to walk.
The program will cost an estimated £500 million ($1 billion), and the first six cycling corridors are scheduled to be completed by 2012. There has already been an 83 per cent increase in the number of cycling trips in the city since 2000, and the city's goal is a 400 per cent increase over the current number of trips by the year 2025. According to a press release from the Mayor, that would be equivalent to ten percent of London residents making a round trip by bike each day.
The London announcement comes on the heels of a similar one in Paris that unveiled their own significant transportation developments, which include: 200 kilometres of new bike paths, doubling bike parking in the city from the current 23,000 spots, doubling the number of bikes in the city's bike sharing program, creating an integrated pedestrian plan for the whole city with the goal of improving safety and quality of life (wider sidewalks, new pedestrian streets, better bike path/pedestrian separation and street crossings), and the launch of a car sharing network with 2,000 electric cars.
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