On Yer Bike Beyonce

It’s all about bikes this week. Beyonce was spotted tootling around
Dublin on two wheels, while Boris Johnson announced that £111 million
was to be invested in improving and encouraging cycling in London.
Elsewhere in the capital 300 climate campaigning cyclists created a
roadblock on Westminster Bridge. And what’s more next week is National
Bike Week.

Although her boyfriend Jay Z’s backstage requirements were recently
revealed as including a gas guzzling Maybach limo, Beyonce it would
appear prefers a much more modest form of transport. Prior to her
headline show at Dublin Arena last week, the Destiny’s Child star was
papped pedalling around the Irish capital. Reports that her next single
will be entitled ‘Crazy in Lycra’ remain unconfirmed.

London Mayor, Boris Johnson, was also photographed extolling the virtues
of pedal power last week. The Mayor, speaking at a press conference in
Trafalgar Square, kick started his “cycling revolution in London” with
news that a cool £111m will go towards delivering 66,000 new cycle
parking spaces, including 138 at Euston Station, and 12 new ‘cycle
super-highways’ by 2012. The whopping 10-figure investment will also
fund the long awaited London Cycle Hire Scheme that will see 400 bike
docking stations, housing over 6,000 cycles, spring up across Zone 1 by
the tail end of 2010. Bikes will be available to hire by the half hour
and hour and will apparently be priced at next to nothing to encourage a
quick take up. According to Transport for London, cycling in London is
up by nine percent on last year, with around 545,000 bicycle trips being
made each day so it looks like this ambitious scheme may not even meet
the demand.

And speaking of demands, over 300 cyclists downed frame and forks on
Westminster Bridge on Monday (1st June) to protest at the Government’s
plan to start a programme of building coal fired power stations even
though the last of these eco-monsters was built some 30 years ago. The
Evening Standard reported that traffic was blocked at Piccadilly Circus,
Shaftesbury Avenue and Oxford Street before the ‘Climate Rush’ group
began their sit-in. A police source said they allowed activists to close
the bridge as using force to remove them would be “disproportionate when
viewed against the behaviour, mood and make-up of the crowd”. Pity the
coppers didn’t take that approach at the G20 marches back in April.
There again, maybe the boys in blue were simply terrified by an army of
shorthaired women armed with bike pumps. Sorry, enough of my fantasies.

Anyhow, with all of this two-wheeled tom foolery going on it seems like
there couldn’t be a better time to launch National Bike Week, which
begins on Saturday 13th June. Activities include a midnight cycling trip
and bike rides around hidden London. Find out more at tfl.gov.uk. Hopefully
see you there.

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