🚲 London’s amazing new cycle lane — London Bridge to Greenwich is now so easy

You can cycle from London Bridge just south of the river Thames to Greenwich in south east London, entirely on quiet streets and protected cycle lanes. #londonlovescycling

The route is 6.5km long (4 miles) and makes use of the brand new completed Cycleway 4 protected lanes, as well as quiet streets around Bermondsey Street and on Cycleway 14.

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You can see a digital map of the route and download a GPS/GPX file to use on whatever device or app you want here:

https://www.komoot.com/tour/1471631300?ref=wtd&share_token=a85kifGfGB1S1heWEF0LxnY5ZwL3wlTzaAoMMB1D7H3SGqBEfL

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I also highly recommend the Safe Cycle London map for route planning, which is compiled by @SafeCycleLDN on twitter:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1XlpvN9R-Wg7qZHyezO8y-eVlftr4e0WX&hl=en&ll=51.516975804561255%2C-0.21828576419061996&z=11

Hello and welcome back to London cycle routes today I’ll be showing you how to cycle from London Bridge just south of the river to Greenwich in southeast London this ride takes about 25 minutes and you can do the whole thing on quiet streets and protected cycle Lanes by public transport the same

Journey takes around half an hour and requires a change of lines or a long walk so cycling is a great way to get between these two places especially now a new Cycle Way has opened up connecting them which we’ll be talking about in this video If you find this video useful or

You just enjoy watching it then please don’t forget to hit subscribe on the channel as I try to post new videos just like it every week I’d also like to say a huge thank you to everyone who continues to support the channel on patreon if you’d like to contribute as

Well then you can find a link in the description below the video all right let’s get going so we’re starting on Tuli Street by London Bridge station and we’re going to head right down Burman his street running along the railway archers and underneath the platforms today we’re going to be taking

A detailed look at the newly opened section of cycle Wave 4 from London Bridge to Greenwich you can just get to cycle Wave 4 by going down Tuli street but I’m going to show you my preferred way of getting there which involves going down some slightly quieter streets

The first bit of this link makes use of a closure on Burmy Street here coming up you can see the Ballard and the no entry signs which prevent cars from using it as a rat run or through route means it’s really nice and quiet we then turn on to

Cycle wave 14 an existing backst Street Route which I think is pretty good and usually has reasonably low levels of traffic on it if you keep following the signs for cycle wave 14 you’ll eventually meet cycle Wave 4 and we’ll turn on to it in a bit hopefully in the

Future cycle W 4 with its great protected Lanes will be extended down Tuli Street past London Bridge station and meet up with the protected Lanes on London Bridge itself but for now I think that this is probably the best way to go just on our right here don’t miss M

Street Market which is a weekend Food Market in the railway arches there it’s a nice place to stop and have a coffee or something to eat you can’t really tell from the video but often when you cycle past this point you will be able to smell the Coffee Roastery so it is

Actually quite difficult to miss if you know what you’re looking for we’ve now turned on to cycle Wave 4 and as you can see this is a proper cycle way it’s it’s a two-way protected cycle track separated from motor traffic by a curb or sometimes later on plastic

Ones as well what’s brilliant about this apart from just the general really high quality of the cycle track is the fact that it now runs continuously all the way from where we joined it near London Bridge down to grenwich if you’ve not been following its construction as

Closely as I have and I have been down here probably about six or seven times while it’s been under construction just to take a look C4 is being constructed in various sections unfortunately the sections were not constructed in order which doesn’t really make sense and kind of limited their usefulness until now

That’s because a hole in the middle of the cycle track around s key station was just filled giving us this continuous and direct route that we’re riding today the track doesn’t just run like this all the way from London Bridge to Greenwich there’s also a further section

Past Greenwich that runs all the way to Charlton although that hasn’t been properly connected up yet I do know a safe route using the quiet streets to get there and link to this Lane so if anyone wants to go to Charlton in future by bike then do hit subscribe as I will

Be doing plenty of videos along that there’s also other connections you can make in the East to places like woit and I reckon I can find safe route going west from London Bridge into the city Westminster and even as far as say Kings Cross Camden and I’ll be doing videos on

All of those so do stay tuned for more the section that we’ve been riding on so far opened a couple of years ago but we’re just about to cross into the new section which opened a couple of weeks ago and we are on it now you can see

That the key difference here is that instead of curbs most of it is done with plastic wands this wasn’t actually the original intended design the reason it’s been done like that is because of the financial situation that transport for London is in as a result of the lack of

Cash at tfl the design has been revised to replace some of the curb lines with ones because they are significantly cheaper than building curbs fortunately curbs were still used at key points like on the bus stop bypasses that we went past and at some of the Junctions

In my opinion the effect is good I think this is a fair compromise to save money and just get the thing built I never felt unsafe riding down this track even though the protection is slightly less firm than in some of the other sections I did ride down here on a weekend

However when traffic was fairly light so I’d be interested to ride it during rush hour and to hear from any of you in the comments who have also ridden it at a busier time to see what you think as well if I have one constructive criticism of

The new section it is the timings of the lights the lights when we went past s key station do have a very long wait time and you don’t get a huge amount of time to cross the same also goes for here at the junction with plow Lane

Where you do find yourself waiting for quite a long time hopefully the timings can be tweaked a bit especially as it becomes apparent that the section is incredibly well used it’s not the busiest at the moment as I’m here on a relatively early Saturday morning but from the videos I’ve seen on social

Media at rush hour it looks like it’s already pretty packed with people riding into Central London for work the phases do need to be long enough to get everyone through the lights at once another small thing that could be fixed is that they could have done a

Slightly better job of erasing the old Rob markings on the new section lot of them are still visible especially on a sunny day like this and it can be a little bit confusing for it to say bus lane or something like that talking of bad light phasings this Junction here is

Particularly slow I did end up waiting for one or two minutes but what marks it out is that there wasn’t actually any traffic using the side road so that could be one to tweak as well it is an existing Junction though not part of the new section overall though cycle Wave 4

Is absolutely absolutely brilliant and the completion of this latest section is an absolute GameChanger for cycling in southeast London regular viewers of the channel will know that there are already some good routes to get down to Greenwich uh that includes quiet way one which is now known as Cycle Way 10 which

Is a decent route with very low traffic on it I do like riding q1 but riding on C4 here is just so much more fun and feels a lot more direct there were also some issues with cycleway 10 the quiet way route particularly around the mil wall Stadium

Where there were reports of people being regularly mugged cycling down on that quite isolated path if that’s the sort of thing that concerns you well you now have cyle Wave 4 and you can cycle along here it’s a lot less isolated much more public but just as traffic free now this

Channel is no stranger to cycling on quiet backing streets don’t get me wrong you can cycle on some absolutely fantastic routes in London staying away from the main roads but what I think that the high quality of cycle Wave 4 shows is that those quiet back streets

Need to be connected to Big protected Main Road trunk routts like this one they are complimentary to each other they’re not a replacement you need to have low traffic neighborhoods on the back streets keeping them quiet so people can get to their final destination but for longer Journeys and

Going in between areas the main roads also need to be safe to cycle on and that is a job that cycleway 4 does incredibly well fortunately there are already further expansions planned connecting to cyle wave 4 and making the best of the new infrastructure one is that leam recently

Consulted on protected Lanes down depford Church Street connecting to this route and gaining Network effect benefits from it and Greenwich council is is also planning on extending this Lane through Greenwich toown Center which you will be able to get through by going straight ahead here where that guy

In the fluorescent jacket has gone they have also published plans to take it all the way to woit in East London which will be fantastic for now though there is a way to get past Greenwich toown Center and it’s what we’re on now we’re going down Norway Street and temp Street

And then turning off up to a horse fairy place which I’ve always thought could make quite a nice Public Square near the temps then we follow the temps path and we get to the ktis Sark ship and the southern entrance to the Greenwich foot tunnel which you can see in that Dome on

The left there so we have made it all the way to the cyar in Greenwich which is where I like to end videos in Greenwich cuz it’s a lovely spot you can also see the towers of canary Warfare up there over the river now let me know in the comments

What you think of that have you ridden on it what’s your experience of it would you make any changes if you enjoyed the video then make sure you hit the like button as it does Boost it and help other people find it and also hit subscribe if you haven’t

Already cuz there are plenty more videos coming in the same vein thank you again to everyone on the patreon you are all fantastic and if anyone’s been particularly enjoying the channel recently feels generous and wants to contribute you can find a link to the patreon in the description below the

Video there’s also a link to a free downloadable map of the rout which you can use on whatever app or device you have I will see you all again next time goodbye