Online cycling training course launched to encourage ‘green recovery’
Cycle Skills helps participants get their bike ready for their first ride and offers tips for avoiding potential hazards.
Sadiq Khan has launched a new online cycle training course as part of measures to promote a “green recovery” from the coronavirus pandemic.
Cycle Skills helps participants get their bike ready for their first ride, offers tips for avoiding potential hazards and has guidance for cycling with children.
It is available on Transport for London’s (TfL) website and is “tailored to cycling in London”, according to City Hall.
Everyone who completes the four training modules will be sent a free 24-hour access code for rental scheme Santander Cycles.
Mr Khan visited Pimlico in central London on Thursday to try out a new segregated cycle route between Chelsea Bridge and Lambeth Bridge.
This is part of the Streetspace for London programme, which is creating extra pedestrian and cycling space on roads.
Some 11 miles of new cycle lanes have been established in the capital through the project, with a further 12 miles under construction.
Mr Khan said: “We want this awful pandemic to provide some silver linings and one of them is a walking and cycling revolution in our city.
“I think it’s really important for us to make it as safe as possible for Londoners to cycle.
“We’ve got to take advantage of the good weather and also the opportunity provided by this pandemic – an awful word to use, opportunity, when it comes to the loss of life, but actually the reality is we are transforming London for the better to make it easier to walk and cycle.”
He added: “We’ve got to make sure that we have a green recovery. What we want to avoid at all costs is a car-led recovery because that’d be awful.
“We don’t want to move from one crisis, the Covid-19 crisis, to an air quality crisis.”
