London Mayoral election: Why a vote for Susan Hall is a vote against cycling

A vote for the Conservative candidate Susan Hall in tomorrow’s London Mayoral election would be a vote against active travel including cycling, threatening to undo more than two decades of efforts to make the capital safer and easier to navigate for those of us who choose to get around its streets by bike, as well as reversing progress made in improving road safety and tackling air pollution that benefit all who live and work in the city.

Pledging to reverse the expansion of the Ultra Low Emissions Zone (ULEZ) on her first day in office if elected (but without revealing how she intends to make up the multi-million pound shortfall in revenue that would result), Hall has also said that she will scrap segregated cycle lanes which she claims wreak “havoc” on the city.

Echoing the words of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in the wake of what many saw as a surprise Conservative victory at last year’s Uxbridge & South Ruislip by-election following a campaign that centred on the then-imminent expansion of ULEZ to outer London, Hall has vowed to bring an end to the so-called “War on the Motorist.”

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That includes doing away with 20mph speed limits on main roads, as well as promising to support “any group” that wants low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) in their area to be removed – both measures that are proven to reduce road traffic casualties especially among vulnerable road users, including children.

Throughout the campaign leading up to tomorrow’s election, Labour’s Sadiq Khan, seeking an unprecedented third term in office, has held a commanding lead over Hall, his closest and only realistic challenger – but the latest opinion poll reveals that it has narrowed to just 10 percentage points, the closest margin yet between the pair.

Expectations are that Khan,  will prevail, with the Evening Standard reporting that the poll by Savanta for the Centre for London puts him on 42 per cent ahead of Hall’s 32 per cent, with Lib Dem candidate Rob Blackie a distant third on 10 per cent, followed by the Green Party’s Zoe Garbett with 8 per cent of the vote.

The bookies agree. Khan is at best a 20-to-1 odds-on favourite, while the shortest price on Hall producing a shock win is 8-to-1 against.

The result, however, could be even closer than that latest poll suggests, for a variety of reasons. Many Londoners remain undecided who to vote for, while others are unaware that the election is even taking place.

Visit a city in France, Italy or Spain in the run-up to local elections and you can’t help but notice posters on every street urging you to lend a particular candidate their vote. Here, away from social networks and the established media, you’d be hard-pressed to find any sign that polling day is almost upon us.

Then there is the introduction of voter ID, anticipated to boost the Conservative vote and take support away from Labour, as is the change to the voting system to first past the post, replacing the former system which enabled voters to select a candidate as their second preference (and which in the last election, three years ago, resulted in Khan extending his margin of victory over the Conservative challenger Shaun Bailey with many Lib Dem and Green Party voters selecting the incumbent mayor as their second choice).

The 2021 result was, however, closer than the opinion polls had suggested, and a last-minute surge for of support for Hall could see a much tighter contest than most pundits would have expected even a week ago, in much the same way that the leave camp won the 2016 Brexit referendum despite consistently trailing in the polls for almost the entire campaign – and perhaps not by coincidence, just today some users of X, formerly Twitter, have noted a surge of tweets in support of Hall and against Khan.

While turnout for the pivotal 2016 vote was a record high at 72.2 per cent, historically it is much lower for Mayoral elections, at just 42.2 per cent in 2021 – so a late flurry of people deciding to vote for Hall, perhaps swayed by messaging they have seen on social media, could be influential.

According to the opinion polls, Khan’s lead over Hall is strongest in Inner London, but narrower in the Outer London boroughs. In part, that is a reflection of historic Labour and Tory voting patterns, in turn determined to some extent by the demographic make-up of individual boroughs as well as factors such as income and type of housing tenure.

But with motoring and efforts to restrict unnecessary car use and promote greener alternatives identified as a “wedge issue” – one that can be used to divide voters and thereby harness support for a particular position – following the Uxbridge & South Ruislip result last summer, it won’t be lost on the candidates’ respective parties that Hall’s support is greater in the boroughs that have higher levels of car ownership.

> Whose ULEZ is it anyway? Political chicanery as clean air zone set to expand to outer London

That by-election in north-west London last year was triggered by the resignation of Boris Johnson, who during his time at City Hall from 2008 to 2016 oversaw the introduction of the city’s cycle hire scheme (initially proposed by the Liberal Democrats and set in motion by Labour’s Ken Livingstone) and also launched the initial wave of Cycle Superhighways, the original lick-of-blue-paint design superseded by high-quality physically protected infrastructure following the appointment of Andrew Gilligan as the capital’s first cycling commissioner.

Johnson, who during his time as Mayor was regularly spotted riding his bike to and from appointments across London, was widely seen as a politician who ‘got’ cycling and understood how it and active travel could help transform our cities – something he would follow up on once Prime Minister, with cycling and walking put at the centre of plans to recover from the impact of the coronavirus, and councils across England invited to apply for funding for LTNs and temporary cycle lanes.

Under Khan and his active travel commissioner, Will Norman, London’s cycling infrastructure has continued to expand although perhaps not at the pace campaigners would want to see – partly due to the funding crisis at Transport for London brought about by COVID-19, although notable achievements include the completion of Cycleway 4 from Tower Bridge to Greenwich and Cycleway 9 from Olympia to Kew Bridge, and which is currently being expanded to Brentford.

That latter route would of course benefit from a protected stretch running along Kensington High Street to link with Cycleway 9 at Hyde Park, thereby creating a safe cycling route across the capital from east to west – but the Conservative-run Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea has refused to allow such permanent infrastructure on the road, and a temporary cycle lane installed in late 2020 was ripped out after a matter of weeks.

> Campaigners lose High Court case against council over “premature” cycle lane removal

And other policies aside – this piece is after all focused on active travel – that’s a hint of what Londoners will get should Hall win tomorrow’s election.

Cycle lanes torn out. LTNs removed. 20mph speed limits on main roads dispensed with. The ULEZ expansion scrapped.

Some, to be sure, would find cause for celebration in all of that – but for most inhabitants of the city, it would be very much to their detriment.