Janet Street-Porter continues anti-cycle superhighway campaign on BBC’s Daily Politics show

Increasingly a figurehead for those opposing London’s cycle superhighways, Janet Street-Porter has said that it is time for people to stand up for their rights by telling cyclists that ‘roads are also for buses, cars, lorries and taxis.’

Earlier in the year, Street-Porter penned an article for The Independent, entitled “Cyclists and their powerful backers are destroying London for the rest of us.” The piece was described by Chris Boardman as being “what you have to do when you don't have logic, evidence or a moral case to support what you want.”

Unfazed, Street-Porter has ploughed on, repeating many of her points in a personal film shown ahead of a debate on BBC Two’s Daily Politics show yesterday.

In the film, Street-Porter says that the work to create London’s cycle superhighways has made life “vile” for pedestrians before going on to question why the capital has been ‘brought to its knees’ in the name of cycling.

“I thought we lived in a democracy,” she says. “But it seems, in this city, cyclists have more clout than anyone else. Isn’t it about time that the rest of us stood up for our rights and told cyclists that roads are also for buses, cars, lorries and taxis?”

Street-Porter believes that cyclists “won’t be happy until all other forms of transport are eradicated” and claims that they “breeze through the city with little regard for anyone else.”

The debate that follows appears a frustrating one for London cycling commissioner, Andrew Gilligan, who finds himself repeatedly urging his fellow panel members to go outside and look at the cycle superhighways if they need proof that they are being used.

His claims largely fall on deaf ears and he is left visibly exasperated, at one point saying: "This discussion is a kind of example of the lack of rationality about the debate in cycling."

Street-Porter responds by saying: “The lack of rationality is that Boris said he wanted £12.50 allocated per Londoner going forward for cycling. But you’re not allocating £12.50 to pedestrians.”

Some might argue that pedestrians already have their own lanes.

Gilligan concludes by saying: “The fact is, we have 10,000 people a month joining the population of London. The only way to cope with that on the roads is two things. Either we build more roads, which is politically impossible and physically impossible, or realign the roads to make better use of them by encouraging forms of transport, like bikes, which take up less space.”