This article is taken from the August-September 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £25.
A spectre is haunting London — you are walking down a quiet street, crossing a silent road, glancing at your phone as you walk through the park. A shadow flickers in the corner of your eye, a cold breeze stirs your hair, and it shoots into your path: yes, the cyclist has struck again.
The cyclist is a kindly spirit in the countryside and the gentle realm of Cambridge, where he has lived in peace and harmony alongside human beings for many generations. But in London, this peaceable phantom has become a bloodthirsty wraith, terrorising unsuspecting pedestrians, and refusing to follow the laws of man or motorcar.
London is a cycling culture gone badly wrong, in which a low-level chaos reigns. Getting on your bike is supposed to be a simple and basic good. It is good for your health, good for the environment, and takes traffic off the road. It’s an easy and pleasant form of transport that people of all ages can use. Understandably, efforts were taken to encourage it in our nation’s capital, but the results have not been pleasant.
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Walk around London for a few hours, and you will quickly notice something. Cyclists blur the lines between road and pavement, turning unexpectedly and quickly onto or off pavements, shooting across pedestrian crossings, and emerging at high speeds around corners. Though far less dangerous than cars, they are small and silent, especially over the roar of traffic. At the same time, when on the roads, cyclists don’t obey red lights or observe zebra crossings, preventing people from crossing the road, or flashing by as they do so.
This may seem like a petty complaint compared to the horrors of car accidents and reckless drivers, but the overall effect on the urban environment of ubiquitous annoyance and startlement is to raise blood pressures, reduce the pleasure and calm of those on foot, and to create an unpleasant, intimidating atmosphere that is hardest on the most vulnerable, like the elderly and disabled. Cities, especially those that we most love to visit for pleasure, have a steady and joyful pulse of life. London’s pulse, by contrast, is erratic and nervy, set jangling by the impatient, the angry and the selfish.
London’s problem cyclists come in three distinct tribes. The most famous, of course, is the lycra menace; the middle-aged men who believe they have the God-given right to accelerate to their bike’s maximum velocity. This species is angrily possessive of their cycle lanes and quick to reprimand any pedestrian who ventures into their path, but will cheerfully ignore zebra crossings and other rules of the road.
Tribe number two arrived courtesy of Boris Johnson with the introduction of bike rental and sharing schemes. The noble ideal of easily accessible bikes introduced a vast fleet of irresponsible and incompetent cyclists comprising psychotic teenagers, idiot tourists and rowdy drunks. The combination of reckless riders and heavy electronic bikes has led to the phenomenon of “Lime leg” — when the 35 kg bikes fall on their riders it frequently breaks their legs or causes other serious injuries.
The last element in the chaos is the delivery riders. Deliveroo, UberEats, JustEat and a dozen other bespoke slop-to-doorstep delivery apps have further wrecked London streets. Riders, paid by the delivery, seek to maximise speed and volume, often moving fast and recklessly. Even worse, as they are picking up from restaurants and dropping off at residential homes, they mount the pavement more than other cyclists, plunging into the middle of crowds with their giant backpacks and panniers. Many are recent migrants whose knowledge of British road safety and the English language is often limited.
Making things even more chaotic are the sheer number of bicycle-like vehicles. As well as electronic bike rentals, there are the even more ridiculous and dangerously driven e-scooters. Add to this mess the music-blaring tourist rickshaws, giant bike trailers, skateboarders and rollerbladers, all merrily mounting the pavement at every opportunity. But most sinister of all are the “super e-bikes” that have been implicated in 90 per cent of phone snatchings. There are numerous viral videos of these quasi-motorbikes swerving at great speed onto pavements to target pedestrians, before racing off over the horizon.
The dream of cycling has become a nightmare in London. Small vehicles are not properly regulated, and police often refrain from pursuing them due to safety concerns. Phone thefts are barely prosecuted, and minor traffic infractions by small vehicles even less so. Nor is it much fun for those trying to cycle. One reason for the aggression of some cyclist commuters is the danger and disrespect they face on the road in London.
Cycle infrastructure that was supposed to make things better has actually made matters worse. Cycle routes are often haphazardly intermixed with pedestrian infrastructure. Cycle lanes add another confusing element to pedestrian crossings, and even when lights are obeyed, they sometimes don’t match up to those governing motorists. Worst of all are the bus islands, in which pedestrians must fight their way through a tide of flickering wheels to make it to their bus stop.
The issue is that codes of behaviour are mimetic as much as consciously taught. When you get on a road in a car or on a bike, you see the behaviour of other road users, and you fit in with the norms you observe. In London, there is a cascade of bad behaviour. Cars themselves set a terrible example, with multicultural London afflicted by thousands of drivers who would not be able to pass a British driving test, but are nevertheless allowed on our roads. The barrier to entry to get on a small vehicle is still lower. Even those who would behave responsibly in another context end up unconsciously adopting the behaviour of those around them. For example, if you’re a bike coming to a zebra crossing, and no other cyclist is slowing, it may not even be possible to stop without a collision.
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What can be done about it? First of all, look at good cycling cultures. My hometown, Cambridge, has few of London’s problems. Although there are many cycle paths, roads which lack them integrate cyclists without fuss or trouble. Bikes behave like vehicles on the road, signalling clearly before turning, and stopping at lights and crossings.
When they get on smaller paths, often shared with pedestrians, they slow down, and behave more like foot traffic, weaving when needed, politely asking people to make way only occasionally. Cars, pedestrians and cyclists basically get along, treating one another with courtesy and understanding. When someone is obviously confused or in the wrong place, people are generally patient.
Is this all just big city versus small town? To a degree, but there is much that the big smoke could learn from the sleepy Fens. Most bikes in Cambridge are owned, not hired, giving cyclists a motive to exercise caution. Cyclists typically wear ordinary clothing rather than lycra, discouraging them practically and psychologically from treating cycling as a race. Cycling infrastructure exists, but it’s about giving bikes clearance from vehicles and clear paths they’re allowed to share with pedestrians, rather than creating double roads for pedestrians to cross, or encouraging bikes to mount pavements they shouldn’t.
London needs to change the incentive structures and culture around cycling. Getting rid of hire bikes would also get rid of many problem cyclists in a stroke and send a powerful message of personal responsibility, as would the stronger and more visible policing of traffic. Car and motorcycle drivers should have to have a British driving license, and more regulation should fall upon powerful electronic bikes.
Delivery apps should be banned or heavily regulated, closing down a grey market labour pool, eliminating the nuisance of riders and pushing back against fast food culture. At the same time, many roads should be fully or part-pedestrianised, allowing children to play outside, residents to enjoy pollution-free streets for leisure and exercise, and shops to flourish.
In short, London should be given back to those who walk its streets, with every other user, from car to cyclist, taking a firm second place. Cities built around pedestrians are places we can live in and inhabit, rather than non-places through which we are continually seeking to transit, often as fast as possible. Seville was recently voted as the second best city in the world, and as I walked its streets this summer, I could see why. It’s not just the history, culture, climate or food. It was the basic joy of being able to walk everywhere, and not be menaced by cars, motorbikes or cyclists rushing to get somewhere else.
London is a magnificent city whose inhabitants rarely get to fully see or enjoy it because they are either rushing to get somewhere else, or are being rushed at. Like New Yorkers, its denizens occasionally take a perverse self-destructive pride in its dirtiness, rudeness and anonymity. Yet none of these qualities is really native to its best character, which shines forth in its peaceful Georgian squares, its jolly Victorian terraces and refined Edwardian mansion blocks and suburbs.
London is meant to be a convivial city, warm-hearted as well as brisk. Getting back to its best and most essential form will take a collective willingness to impose graciousness and order on civic life.
