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The London Mayor is good at cultivating positive headlines about cycling, but apparently not so adept at actually spending cash on cycling, according to new reports which state cycling budgets have not been used to their full.
Johnson failed to spend over a third of the year’s cycling budget, underspending £38m of the £111m budget, according to the London Assembly’s site London.gov.uk.
Transport for London has underspent the cycling budget for the last six consecutive years, amounting to £150m. The report states that TfL’s budget for improving junction safety in the next decade is £100m.
As Assembly Member Darren Johnson notes, the news will come as a suprise to cycle campaigners fighting for more cash to be spent on making London’s roads safer for cyclists.
Darren Johnson said: “I am angry about the fact that people have been killed and seriously injured while money that should have been used to make roads safer has been left unspent.
"This £150m under-spend is more than the Transport for London budget for safer junctions over the next decade. Transport for London has had the time and the money to have made around 50 junctions safer during the last six years. That is a lot of pedestrian and cyclist deaths and injuries which could have been avoided if Transport for London had got on with it.
“The Mayor needs to get a grip on TfL and ensure that they start creating the safer places to cycle that they are being given the money to do. Boris Johnson has some good plans for cycling, but unless the delivery improves he will be remembered as the Mayor who brought death and injury to London’s roads.”
