⇦

2022-07-28

Cycling in London for beginners

This page is split into the following sections:

• Why
• Navigating
• Staying safe
• Getting a bike
• Locking it up
• Being nice

Why?

• Quicker - Door-to-door times will tend to be quicker than any other mode of transport. Think half an hour for most Zone 1 and 2 journeys.
• Cheaper - Obvious, but worth running the numbers on your regular tube/bus journeys vs the cost of bike ownership, you'll probably save a lot of money.
• More pleasant - Cramming yourself on a busy tube sucks, get out in the open! Also, there's far less heavy rain than you might expect - I probably don my rain jacket 5 times a year.
• Get to know the city - After a few months cycling, central London feels a lot smaller, it feels great to know little cut-throughs between places, notice new shops opening, see people you recognise etc.
• Healthy - It's a 'miracle pill' .

Navigating

If you're not in a mad hurry, there are many bits of cycle infrastructure in London that are far more pleasant and safe than the obvious roads. Let's use the example of a journey from Liverpool Street to Angel.

Here is Google maps - it will tend to send you direct on busy roads:

source

In comparison, cycle.travel sends you on nice cycle infrastructure, it will take a bit more brain power to navigate, but definitely worth it for a regular journey:

source

cycle.travel has a pretty rubbish UI, but you can treat this as an opportunity to learn the nice cycle lanes 🙂.

To give a flavour of the extent of London's bike paths, here's a section of a (now outdated) cyclist's tube map:

source

Staying safe

Once you're off the main roads (see above), cycling in London is pretty safe, in fact it feels a lot safer than in most other UK cities. To reduce the likelihood of being involved in a crash, here are some tips on staying safe, take time to ingest them properly.

• Be super-duper careful around trucks - considering how few of them there are, a crazy high proportion of bad cycling accidents involve them.
  • Don't undertake them.
  • Don't plonk yourself right in front of them at the lights.
• Assume everyone else is going to do something dumb at any moment:
  • If a car is pulling out of a side road, until you've caught their eye, assume they haven't seen you and will pull out any second.
  • If you're cycling near parked cars, leave a door's width.
  • If it looks like someone's about to walk into the middle of the road without looking, they probably will.
• Consciously make yourself aware of your surroundings:
  • Don't wear headphones.
  • If you're overtaking and there's a gap in traffic, it's likely someone will pull out of a side street into said gap.
  • Look over your shoulder every few seconds to get a feel of what's around.
• Take your time - most near misses I see are bikes trying to squeeze through little gaps to shave 3 seconds off their commute.

Getting a bike

I've heard great things about Swapfiets . You pay monthly and it comes to about £200 a year. The bikes have lights, locks and mudguards built in. If it breaks, they come fix it. If it gets stolen, you pay a small fee for a new one. Simple!

After a year or so, you might realise you want to buy your own bike that's quicker/will carry more stuff/will handle longer trips , you can cross that bridge when you get there.

My experience with Boris bikes (Kencycles?)/dockless schemes is that the bikes are cumbersome and the parking faffy. Just get the Swapfiets.

Locking it up

Personal advice would be:

• Get a folding style lock, these are fairly light, fit around most stuff and I've not had a bike knicked while using one for many years 🤞.
• Lock inside where possible (if you work in an office, there will likely be a safe place).
• Some councils have 'cycle hangars' if you don't have storage at home - Hackney in particular seems good for this.
• Simply don't have your regular bike be something flashy and expensive.

My friend Cal did a nice writeup on bicycle security if you want a longer read.

Being nice

Don't be that city-boy MAMIL boshing up Bishopsgate shouting at pedestrians. Take your time, give big thumbs up to nice drivers, give priority to pedestrians, whistle as you ride.