Note that the "City of London" is not the whole of the London built-up area, but just the financial services district, slightly more than one square mile in area. Still, it's a remarkable statistic even then.
If anyone non-UK types are interested in this weird entity — technically dates back to Roman days, and predates the United Kingdom by hundreds of years — this podcast episode is quite funny and informative.
Just an example of what a weird anomalous zone it is: the King (or Queen) of England is not legally allowed to enter without explicit permission from the mayor — not the mayor of London, the Lord Mayor of this square mile. It's like if Wall Street could tell the President of the US to take a hike.
> It's like if Wall Street could tell the President of the US to take a hike
An alternative take:
If it turns out, by some legislative fluke, that a particular square mile of the US is not bound by all of its laws, it won't be long until Wall St companies start moving their headquarters!
This is kind of what happens in Las Vegas, but to a lesser extent than the City of London. Most of what we think of as "Las Vegas" is actually the unincorporated territory known as "Paradise."
That's pretty common, though? It's the whole reason the census has the concept of metro statistical areas. Phoenix, Portland, Seattle, all have this same effect to varying degrees.
But none of them have a rule saying the POTUS cannot visit with the Mayor approving, so there's that. And "City of London" is tiny compared to the rest of the London metro.
I think most of the commenters missed this.
It should also be taken in the context of the city not being an area many people drive to anyway. Many of these cyclists will have switched from the tube, and many of them will have taken a train to a terminal station and biked from there.
For non-UK people, particularly American readers, the City of London, and inner London in general has zero public parking. It feels like even saying 'zero' is being pretty generous. Every street is restricted in some way (no parking, or exorbitant parking meters), and there are decreasingly few car parks/parking lots.
While there are certainly some areas like the City of London which are almost exclusively commercial/office, most of London, even the central parts, is a mashup of different land uses including residential. Not everyone commutes in from the suburbs.
You can take them on overground trains, though that's kind of restricted at rush hour. I imagine people mostly either cycle from their homes or leave the bike near a station.
No, but folding bikes are pretty common in London. Those can be taken on trains at any time whereas normal hikes are technically only allowed on off-peak trains.
Outside peak hours they are allowed on the sub-surface lines (Circle etc) as those have larger trains and simpler emergency evacuation.
It's still not something you'd want to do very often. I think I did it once with a new bicycle that I'd bought from the other side of London, where the route home would have been long and completely new to me.
If you consider levying a $20-30/day tax to every driver,[1] plus another $12/day if your car is too old,[2] plus $200-600/year to park on public roads,[3] causing people to stop driving as remarkable, then sure.
Parking is about £7/hour during work times, although it would be optimistic to expect to find an on-street spot every day. The maximum time is 4 hours anyway.
Apart from the mistake, you are probably downvoted for posting a hysterical Daily Mail article. Note the "up to".
The stuff you mention isn't that relevant - I speak as a car owner in central London. (I don't pay [1] and [2] and everyone has to pay [3]). Parking is the real problem.
Also driving in central London rush hour is kind of tedious - I prefer rail etc.
It also has the best cycling infrastructure in Greater London.
One of the big problems London has is that each borough decides how much to invest in cycling infrastructure, and a commute is only as good as its worst section. My commute from northern Camden to the City is a pleasure, a commute from west London through Kensington will be more of a pain.
IMO TfL should force the creation of good grade-separate cycle lanes in all of the major streets in London, just like they force standardised bus stops. Currently one single borough is screwing over a quarter of the city.
It absolutely does NOT have the best cycling infrastructure in Greater London! In fact, with the exception of TfL's Cycleway routes route along its southern and western fringes, I'd argue it has hardly any real cycle infrastructure at all. All this has happened despite the City of London being quite hostile to cycling!
Examples:
- Cycle-hostile layout changes on Bishopsgate. While I strongly support the number of car lanes being reduced and footpaths being widened, this has been done in a way that is hostile to cyclists - if not downright dangerous. There is no room for cyclists to overtake cars (and vice-versa) and dangerous sharp kerbs that come out of nowhere at a near 90 degree angle to the carriageway. Very poor design.
- Removal of segregated cycle lane on Cannon Street, a street which for much of it's length is much wider than it needs to be for the volumes of traffic it gets. The cycle lane was well-used and really improved conditions for cyclists.
- Removal of the zero-emissions scheme on Beech Street, which restricted the area through and around the Barbican tunnel to pedestrians, cyclists, and zero-emissions vehicles. This was previously very pleasant to cycle through, thanks to reduced traffic volumes and cleaner air. But the change resulted in a rapid return to illegal level of air pollution in the tunnel. The cycle lanes in the tunnel are also in poor condition (potholes, crumbling poorly maintained paving, etc) which besides the stinking air, makes it even more unpleasant to cycle through.
Finally, there has been talk of a proper east-west cycle way across the city of London for many years (in addition to the existing C3), but nothing ever seems to happen with it. TfL's busy C2 (Cycle Superhighway 2) cycle route simply stops at Algate East on the City of London's boundary. After all these years, why hasn't it been extended westwards through the city?
Yes the City of London is also referred to as "the square mile" - a self explanatory title.
Also worth noting they broke up all other forms of transport i.e cars, buses, vans, etc. So it's more like cyclists make up 25% of road traffic against powered vehicles in a very small area of London, at particular times of day.
I do 40+ miles a day on road across London and would be really surprised if these figures hold up in general.
Ah, that clarifies things. I've seen many photos of the traffic in the streets of London, and was wondering how such a bicycle-hostile environment would manage to get so many cyclists.
I thought that maybe the metric they were using ("the single largest vehicular mode counted during peak times on City streets”) meant they were measuring how many vehicles of a certain type were passing by. And since in gridlock bicycles travel faster than cars, you'd have more bicycles passing by than cars.
There's also the slight quirk of geography that it's next to the Thames, so therefore at the bottom of a hill, almost completely flat.
TfL had the good fortune and opportunity to repurpose two lanes of Upper Thames St. and Victoria Embankment (one single road) into cycle lanes, and also Southwark Bridge.
Without that last part, there's pretty much no other major 'through' routes that could be made safe for cyclists in the City. If there aren't any protected bike no one uses them. The vast majority of journeys into the City are along that new cycle 'superhighway'.
Also note that this is Cyclists > cars+PHV, not that Bike > cars+PHV+taxi+Van+Bus+Lorries
During one of the lockdowns in 2020 when almost all the hotels were closed I was staying near Blackfriars and traveling to the West End on my brompton. It was great, there was barely any traffic on the roads - very few buses, taxis, vans or lorries. It was only about 2 miles, but it was the most relaxed commute I've had in years.
Tried it again recently, not a nice thing at all, mainly because of the buses.
As someone who works in the City this isn't really that surprising. A lot of the roads around there are pretty much empty save for buses, cyclists and the occasional taxi. Congestion charge, lack of parking and excellent public transport links all contribute to that I guess. In other areas of London it's a very different story.
The City is unusual in many ways well-covered elsewhere.
It’s worth highlighting that this milestone is part of a long and well-planned strategy.
North Americans especially might be surprised at how aggressively they are removing motor vehicles from the district (Down over 50% since 1999). New developments are very pedestrian and cycle friendly- eg my large workplace build five—odd years ago had 500+ bike spaces, desks for 5,000 and a single digit number of car parking spaces (for VVIPs and disabled staff only) - they are also converting many streets back to vehicle-free open spaces. This is all quite popular and mostly uncontroversial.
Also funnily, (Greater) London is not even a proper city. It's a town and a county consisting of City of London, City of Westminster and all the other boroughs.
The City of London is notable for allowing businesses to vote because so few people live there. There is one residential district inside the City in the Barbican estate, the rest is commercial.
The City of London allows corporations to vote because its existence as local authority predates anything else that exists in the UK. Mentions of The City of London's special rights exist in the Magna Carta, and it was never included in any of the local authority voting reforms the occurred since its creation.
The local population number have absolutely nothing to do with the existence of corporate votes in The City of London. It's not even the smallest local authority by population, the Isles of Scilly are, and corporations have no votes there.
Sure but if the City had turned out to be full of people, those ancient rights would have been modified to suit the requirements of modern democracy. The City’s unique form of governance is only possible because it is predominantly a commercial district.
No I don’t think it would have. The City is fairly exempt from being fiddled with by parliament due to its direct relationship with The Crown. I don’t see any reason why the The City would give up its rights without a substantial fight.
Given its small area, I doubt anybody would ever be interested enough in fighting with The City to revoke its ancient rights, and independence from the broader UK government. Past monarchs and leaders have attempted to strip The City of its rights, all of them ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it.
