George Osborne, who served as the U.K.’s Chancellor of the Exchequer under Prime Minister David Cameron from 2010 to 2016, yesterday blamed cyclists for London’s traffic congestion.
Writing in the Evening Standard newspaper, which he has edited since May 2017, Osborne wrote that London’s “choking gridlock” was caused not by too many motor vehicles... but by infrastructure built for cyclists.
Specifically, he blames the Embankment Cycleway besides the Thames.
Osborne once said he “applauded” the fact London was now “one of the more bicycle-friendly cities in the world” but he has now come out against one of the icons of that friendliness.
He went in to say “some of the cycle superhighways are ill-conceived, causing near-permanent congestion and pollution. The one running along the Embankment is the most obvious mistake.”
Despite the many millions of pounds it cost to create the cycleway, Osborne wants it to be removed and redesigned: “If the current Mayor, Sadiq Khan, started again, with a better design on the Embankment, he would win plaudits and popular support .”
Osborne is the second former Chancellor to object to London’s number of badly designed protected cycleways.
During a debate in the House of Lords in 2015, Lord Lawson claimed that the building of cycleways in London had done more damage to London “than almost anything since the Blitz.”
Nigel Lawson was the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1983 and 1989.
Lord Lawson said:
My Lords, we all know the Mayor of London’s addiction to cycling, but is my noble friend Lord Higgins not absolutely right that what is happening now has done more damage, and is doing more damage, to London than almost anything since the Blitz?
His comments were in a debate where fellow Conservative peer Lord Higgins had steered the subject on to cycle lanes, blaming not motoring for London’s foul air, but cycling.
He said the “appalling increases in congestion and pollution” were “caused by the introduction of bicycle lanes.”
George Osborne’s intervention is significant because the Evening Standard is London’s leading daily newspaper and can often shape debate in the U.K. capital.
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