Pedal Power: How Boris Johnson Failed London's Cyclists (eBook)

From the author of Just Boris, the acclaimed and controversial new biography of Boris Johnson, comes a short polemical investigation into the London Mayor’s much-vaunted Cycling Revolution. When Boris campaigned in the mayoral election of 2008 he rarely turned up to a photo-call without his trusty bike. His promise was to turn London into the greatest two-wheeled city on earth, where as many people commuted by bicycle as had done a century before. But after much fanfare, and millions spent on ‘Super Highways’ and ‘Boris Bikes’, it appears he has turned his back on cyclists in favour of the gas-guzzling motorists of London’s Conservative heartlands. Worse still, although the Cycling Revolution has brought more bikes onto the roads, it has been accompanied by an alarming rate of crashes. With the same forensic zeal she applied to Just Boris, Sonia Purnell separates fact from fiction to reveal how ‘the cycling mayor’ has failed on his greatest ambition for London, and offers a timely insight into what Londoners can expect from another term of the blond on the bike. Sonia Purnell is a writer and freelance journalist living in London and is the author of the acclaimed biography Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition. She worked closely with Boris Johnson in the Daily Telegraph’s Brussels bureau in the early Nineties at a turning point in his personal life and working career.