New, high-profile events like Ride London and the intense debates about street infrastructure of recent years could leave an impression that efforts to make the capital more of a cycling city didn’t really begin until Boris Johnson became mayor. But the promotional film above, held in the City of London’s London Metropolitan Archives, shows that London-wide government was pursuing the same goal more than 30 years ago.
The 24-minute film, which, judging by the statistics shown, must have been made after 1982 but before the abolition of the Greater London Council (GLC) in 1986, is striking for the familiarity of cyclists’ concerns, the reasons for people turning to cycling and the sorts of solutions produced by the road engineers of the time. Didn’t spot any helmets, though. Or lycra.
