In praise of London's public transport

"Thousands at Games Finale Weekend" is one of the headlines on the BBC News website today. The opening line tell us "The Olympic Park is playing host to hundreds of thousands of people on the final weekend of the Paralympics."

I can testify that the Athletics Stadium was full this morning and other venues also appeared to be sold out.


It's a gloriously sunny  day, with the gentlest of breezes. Perfect weather for those inspired to ride a bike by the successful British cyclists in the Olympics and Paralympics. 

Above are rows of empty cycle racks at 10am this morning in the Olympic Park's Abbey Lane cycle park (at the Greenway entrance to the stadium, just beyond the end of Cycling Superhighway 2, and at the end of the Greenway cycle route from Becton). The photo below shows how full it was at 2pm today:

In fairness it may be that the other cycle parks are much busier. After all Cycling Superhighway 2 is awful and you can't cycle to the Paralympics on the Greenway. 

My bet though is that most people deemed public transport, even though it may be packed and sweltering, to be the more relaxing and safer way to travel, especially as a family. We need to get the quality of our cycle network up to the quality of our public transport for that to change.