🚲 London's amazing new cycle lane - London Bridge to Greenwich is now so easy 

Those lights at Surrey Quays are painfully slow.

I've only recently discovered this channel and it is superb. It does make you realise just how big London is when you think "90% of these routes will never be relevant for me" but you do a great job of covering all over the city. Cycle infrastructure has changed so much in the lat 15 years or so - makes cycling a real joy now

This is unbelievable. I wish cycling infrastructure was like this where I live

This is the video I've been waiting for. Cycleway 4 will change my life 😊

The final part of Cycleway 4 is brilliant, much safer than the previous route where you had to change lanes across traffic and often dodge buses. Thank you Southwark Council for finally getting this done!

This is gonna be a massive game changer for me to get into central from Lewisham 🎉 thanks for covering it

Timings of the lights are so important for commuter cyclists, and bad ones are enough to push regular riders back onto the main carriageway for sections (such as parts of C9 in Chiswick that I ride often). I suppose there's an argument for keeping motor vehicles that actually block roads moving, but hopefully as more people are able to cycle and leave the car at home, we can prioritise cycle flow. Regardless, imperfect timings are irrelevant to novice or young/family riders who now feel safer to ride in London, and this new lane looks brilliant for getting more people on two wheels just in time for Spring. Looking forward to a visit in the next few weeks. Thanks for the upload.

That’s a big chunk of the London marathon route (in reverse) and the Big Half Marathon route! Good memories.

Living in Charlton I’ve made use of this quite a bit. Rode it for the first time with the missing bit completed the other day and it was very welcomed, though it does feel a bit temporary. The wands near the fire station in east Greenwich keep getting knocked over by cars (there are currently a few missing) which is a bit disconcerting, so I would prefer kerbs to be installed at some point (maybe we need to wait for a change of government so TfL isn’t so financially squeezed). I didn’t mind the traffic light wait, I was just happy not to deal with the gyratory at Surrey Quays 🙂

My commute! By far the best way to get to work 🚲

Well done to the local councils that put in these excellent routes.

You are now my most favourite London cyclist. Around 5 years ago I made a video about route choice and safety (not to mention more enjoyable routes). I have found much resistance to suggesting such things, often being referred to as _^'victim blaming'._ Other vloggers saying London is different, yet here you are showing quiet safe and often segregated cycling routes. Personally I find Cities and Towns safer places, due to slower traffic and greater route choice options. Thank you for showing people how it can be done.

Thanks. I rode this a few weeks ago before all the sections had been finished but was already impressed then. Before the cycle lane it was such a hassle, especially dealing with the tangled traffic system on the Deptford-Tower Bridge route where the traffic can be very dense and cyclists can feel exposed and which used to put me off the journey. Now Greenwich is an easy and accessible ride.

Top work again with this vid.

My Sunday (very early) morning ride. Love it!

Your videos are really good, thank you. One of the reasons I'm happy about the new route in this video is that it's a good alternative route that's much less secluded than the older one that goes past The Den, Millwall football ground, at which location people using the cycle path are regularly being mugged, as you say at 8:06. So the new route is a great alternative for me, thanks go to TfL!

Thank you so much for this video. After watching it last week I rode this route yesterday both ways. It really is a game changer. Look forward to catching up on all your rides.

This is so useful for me as I do this commute very often!

Loved this! Fast, direct and 'not scary' like some of the faster routes are. And I know the area at the beginning and end of this trip, so I can now mentally tie them together, and do it by bike next visit to London. That was not only fun, but *therapeutic*! Great to see the blossoms coming out on the trees too!

You nailed on the head about the traffic light phasing in the Surrey Quay section. During rush hour, the traffic is not moving even when they have green. Also some vehicles stop in the middle of the junction, so you have to cycle around them. Overall you have detailed my experience perfectly. I have used new C4 completed section quite a few times, though I still use other routes to vary my rides.

This looks great. A big game changer for cycle lanes is just having a decent surface to ride on.

Stumbled across this new lane on Saturday morning on my journey from Highbury Fields to Canada Water. Because of it I had only around 2/3 minutes of a 50 minute ride unprotected. Can't wait for them to connect up Hackney to London Bridge and then London Bridge to C4 and the whole thing would be so chill!

did this ride the day after it opened (not knowing it was even a thing--just luck of the draw) and it is FANTASTIC. this is the kind of infrastructure that is absolutely game changing for anyone who is considering moving to a bike shopping/commute living situation.

Thank you for the detailed video on this route. I have done it the last 2 days after seeing your video and it's great.

With the completion of this path, people will arriving earlier at Greenwich will have to find something to do in the mean time.

Crystal Palace to Herne Hill would make a great video! The cycle track on rosendale road has been extended quite a bit and is a lovely route to go down on

Great to see the Surrey Quays section is now complete. It’s a really good cycle route.

I agree with your point about the lights, this will dissuade cyclists from sticking to the cycle lane and instead they'll join the road. I may be biased, but cyclists shouldn't have to wait as long, but perhaps they'll modify these as the cycleway's usage increases, can only hope.

This is a godsend! I don’t live in SE London or work there, but I like to have Greenwich Park and Blackheath in my options for longish rides and the route there from where the live in North London has been awful until now. I’d started going via the Isle of Dogs and taking the foot tunnel when I was with any of the rest of the family.

Looks like another excellent route. 🙂. Great video! 👍

Glad I’ve found your channel. Very informative. 👍

This is brilliant, I've always got the impression that London was a cyclist hostile place so I've avoided taking a bike there (as a tourist rather than a commuter). I'll have to bring my bike with next time I'm here and go exploring. Thanks for the video!

Looks awesome! I remember trying to head down there this summer and being dumped into traffic at Surrey Quays hopefully we'll see it get to London Bridge itself soon :)

Can't wait to try C4!!! Thank you. 😊

I’ve ridden this way the other direction last summer. It’s fantastic even though it wasn’t finished yet then. I’m glad it’s finally done and hopefully I’ll be able to try it again soon.

Really interesting thanks.

Great video. I will do this route on my next London cycling trip.

Great video, I've been looking forward to this for a long time! Agree with your comments about the road markings. They really need to remove the old ones as I know I would be second guessing myself wondering if I took a wrong turn. Keep up the great work.

04:10 I like the way it gets you to the other side, properly, and not like you have to drop off your bike, cross over and then continue your ride. I do like those cycle lanes in London, well from watching them on YT xD, as back in the 90s when I used to cycle a lot in London, there weren't any cycle lanes, or maybe a few somewhere in central London? But I don't recall any of them. Looking at many YT videos, I think there are a lot more cyclists than in the 90s - well I guess similarly to any other bigger city in any country. I like watching those videos as they bring back some memories when I used to live in London. Thank you for your input and keep up the good work!

I commute from Barnehurst and this part has made it much more enjoyable now that it’s fully open. The light phasing at Surrey Quays is a real pain and hopefully they’ll fix that but it’s still a joy to use. Sadly, Bexley council don’t appear to believe in cycle lanes. The few that they have are short and terrible. On my journey, Okehampton Crescent has a few short stretches which are there simply to ease vehicles passing but there are almost always vehicles parked in them. Other than that there’s nothing.

great alternative, i stopped cycling down the other way because of all the muggings and frequent threats of violence, this is much better and more direct - even tho i quite liked the quietness of the other route

This is a big part of my commute! Welling - London Bridge, so that’s amazing news about Woolwich hoping to connect up! I’’ve hit that small slalom by Surreys Quays in peak rush hour and them lights only let about 6 through, there’s almost 20 of us bunching up. However it’s so much nicer than scooting around the block on the road.

Great video. I tried this route on Saturday afternoon with my son on rented Lime Bikes. We started at Tufnell Park on the old LCN route joining #Cycleway50 at Hungerford Road until St Pancras Way then #CycleWay6 over Blackfriars Bridge (which I find the most comfortable way to cross the river). We turned off CycleWay6 at Nicholson Street onto #CycleWay14 until we joined your route to the Cutty Sark. I’m very pleased with the new section of #CycleWay4. Afterwards we doubled back on #CycleWay4 before turning off at Copperas Street (not sure of route number) eventually stopping for food and drinks and the Ireland / Scotland Rugby match in the Ladywell Tavern. The route home was a bit wobbly but more direct. Keep up the good work!

This is great thanks for the update, I've been on bits of the C4 whilst being build and didn't actually know what the grand plan for it was 😂 I think ill be making the switch from C10 i use at thr moment to get from Nee Cross to ldnBridge cheers!

Nice video! I’ve just started cycling from Shooters Hill to Blackfriars, so looking forward to the Charlton vid to see which route you take.

Agree on traffic light timings. It was ridiculous on Thursday rush hour. A shame given the transformational effect of this route.

Great to see. I used this route for many years from Catford and later Bromley into the city for work, before any of this infrastructure existed. I gradually moved to using Q1 once that became established (having discovered it by randomly following another cyclist onto it one morning). I don't need to commute for work any more but still like to get out along this way from time to time for a weekend spin around town. It's great to see that they have now completed the whole thing, it was always odd to have such a good path from Deptford just disappearing around Surrey Quays. I love seeing this proper infrastructure being heavily used, as it just proves that 'if you build it, they will come'. I do find the light sequencing and priorities at junctions a bit frustrating, in fact in the bad old days before any of this was built, it was significantly quicker using the road/bus lanes than it is now if you stick to all the sections of the bike route and obey all signals fully. Personally speaking I'm happy to occasionally use the road to avoid long holds at lights on the bike lane, but that shouldn't be an attractive option if the lights are sequenced more effectively. Let's hope that happens.

That looks a really useful route, I might use that the next time I'm in London.

Have been using this route for years, since they put in the first sections. The Surrey Quays gaps wasnt really an issue going in to town because you could cut through the park but having the lane finished is amazing.

wow, really good effort by the council

Looks like a very nice route.

Wish there was more decent cycling tracks like this all over UK cities.

Very much in two minds about this cycle track!!

Great video!! This looks really good as an alternative to C10 and I will try this one out soon. I agree safe main street routes and quiet routes really complement each other. It's nice to have a choice of which one to take depending on which route you are on! For me the quiet routes are always more enigmatic, like a magical journey through the city, but I understand some people prefer more direct options 🚴

I'm a car refugee to Liverpool, from London. Liverpool is much smaller otherwise it would be worse than London was with pavement parking. Great video.

Great news about new bits of C4! And Barnet's first TFL cycleway opened last week! Hope to check it out when I'm back in London for the day on Saturday. With all these changes, I wonder if there's a blog where someone curates TFL cycleway updates? If not, someone should make one.

These separate cycle lanes look fabulous. Let’s hope they maintain them properly- sweeping up autumn leaves, gritting in icy weather etc. That’s where my local council definitely fails.

Please be careful! I got knocked off my bike going south just after the Rotherhithe roundabout! Drivers aren’t looking in both directions when pulling out of the side roads. Please stay safe out there

Wow!!!!

Totally agree about the lights by Surrey Quays station! That whole Bermondsey Street section is a red herring though.. just go straight along Tooley Street to Jamaica Road, much shorter

I've been taking this route every day for four years now and have to say the experience is fantastic, I cycle all the way to the Strand which can get pretty hairy near Waterloo and Southwark but overall it takes me 25 mins to get from Greenwich to the Strand. The Surrey Quays lights are so slow though I end up rejoining the road and then merging at the Tesco back into the cyle lane.

Great video Jon! We need Peckham to Rotherhithe!

Amazing 😎 makes me want to whip me bike on the EMR and go for an all day adventure

SUCH fan of your channel. Can’t wait for you to do C4 into Westminster over London Bridge & Embankment. I find the section at Monument a bit stressful so might still stick to C10.

To Woolwich I will be interested :-) Just subscribed

Rode both ways Saturday lunchtime (Shooters hill to Buckingham Palace and back), whilst it's great it is finally connected have to agree the timing through Surrey Quays needs improving, I was unlucky and got all reds. It slowed me down enough that I would likely go the other way around the one way system in the bus lane going north as only 2 sets of lights that way. Another thing they have removed the yellow box at the shopping center exit (around 6:00 in video) and traffic does queue across the bike lane when busy should have left in there

@2:47: Gist "Quite often you will be able to smell the coffee roasting"....and my immediate instinct was ...'and so you have to stop and enjoy a delicious cup and conversation'. I had to pause the video there...and get a coffee. But I can quit anytime! Honest! I'm not addicted...

This looks really good. Only thing I would advice London could add is better regulation for who get's priority on the road at intersections. Here in the Netherlands we have the white/yellow signs (voorrangsweg) to indicate that a motor vehicle or bicycle has priorty. The vehicles or bicycles coming sideways then have a "sharkteeth" (haaientanden) indicating they have to let all the vehicles and bicycles coming from the main road to pass. This way you don't need traffic lights to regulate all interactions on the road for safe passings. And perhaps they could also put higher Road signs up on the road. So you see better which roads are ment for a bicycles and which for motor vehicles.

thanks for this much appreciated. couldn't help thinking it would be great to have a pointer map in the corner following you, but appreciate that might be a hassle.

Great to see and thanks for the video. We love Greenwich when we visit London. I dont suppose you know if there is any word of getting a Santander bike station down Greenwich way now that this route is open? Would be fab to use the new £3.50 daily pass to cycle down there, problem is no where to dock currently.

I'm a complete menace on the roads and have been doing new cross to london bridge for a while, just going down the old kent road haha. That said, I've used sections of the london bridge-greenwitch cycle way when going to surrey Quays, or tower bridge which is quite a nice cycle route with smoothly paved segregated cycle lanes, although I often just cycle in the road.

Bermondsey Street mode filtered? You love to see it!

Have ridden this path from London Bridge to Greenwich to get to the O2 . It beats the Tube and buses.

When I lived in Lewisham a few years back I used a lot of the routes you just rode along and it's good to see they've now linked them all together. Still a lot of work to with cycle lanes in London, but it is slowly improving. Where you turned left just before Greenwich is there a path that actually goes round the one way system now, or do you have to link up with the Thames Path to get all the way to Woolwich and Thamesmead? I used to ride along the Thames Path all the way to Dartford from Lewisham and although there are some great cycle tracks along there, but the detour around Greenwich peninsula adds considerable time and distance to the joruney, although it wasn't a concern to me as I was doing it for leisure rather than as a commute. There are still some narrow and inticate paths with some tricky blind spots along there. Have they improved?

It’s incredible to see how they transformed the Surrey Quays sections almost wondered how they’d route a cycle lane through there. Would still be curious to see how well it fairs during rush hour as now the bus lane is gone. Must be a pain to go through by bus now.

Minor point, you can also get the ferry from London Bridge to Greenwich without changing

That junction at 5:57 always seems to have late traffic coming from Redriff rd or queuing through the junction while the cycle phase is green. There's a coach in your video still entering the junction as your light changes green and there has been someone driving through it every time we've been through so far (always on a Sunday afternoon / evening). It's definitely a place where I would encourage some tweaking of the lights or possibly repainting the yellow box. But it's otherwise a big improvement over the old situation and we're glad it's finally done.

I hope TfL still has a little money spare to put up some signs, there are a few places where the route is not obvious.

Thanks for making the video, I did notice some transitional areas where I really was unable to see where you were supposed to ride on, until you rode across a road and wibbled a bit onto a cycleway that looked more like part of the pavement. Those transitions were not as crazy as some of the things I have seen when I was younger, but it still kind of felt that you had probably already scouted out this route, to work out how to do the video in one smooth go. I get the feeling that if I were to look this route up online, and cycle it with no preparation, I would be coming up to a few of those transitions and either struggling to read the route ahead or maybe even making the wrong choice. Is this an accurate assessment of what you are actually seeing with your eyes, or do you have your camera mounted low (like maybe on your handlebars) to give a more stable picture? It's been decades since I've ridden a bike and I was thinking that cycling was getting more dangerous (what with the increase in bulky vehicles like SUVs that are more likely to kill pedestrians and cyclists) but your videos give me hope that - providing I do a lot of research first - I can maybe get a new bike and not end up in hospital. I do think that ultimately, this sort of thing needs to work for people who do not have a RU-vid expert to babysit them and that someone from outside of London needs to be able to come in on a train and decide to ride from one of the mainline terminals to any location in the region and that the roadsigns should feed them onto the best routes for cyclists. I can't say that I would be able to recreate the route you rode here, from watching your video once. I think I would need to feed it into a sat nav and mount the sat nav on my handlebars. When going through the City of London and Westminster, I've seen some posts for pedestrians, that have walking routes on them. I think it would be a good idea to put those posts along the cycleways, so that anyone on a bike who gets lost, can pull over and use the pedestrian map to check the local cycleroutes.

Brilliant vid. I live in Strood, Kent, and my daughter and her family live in Kennington. Driving to see them is a total pain; HS1 and the Northern line give me the trip in just over an hour, but it's expensive. I would love to ride it! I can go west from Strood to beyond Gravesend on cycle track, and when you mentioned a Cycleway 4 extension to Charlton on the cards, I pricked up my ears. Kennington - Cycleway 4, Charlton - Gravesend?

I'm surprised by simply using wands. Vacuum molded, bolt down recycleable plastic barriers probably wouldn't have been much more expensive, can be molded and coloured into an acceptable aesthetic, used potentially as planters and provide a much greater visual cue for drivers. This is a great cycle though. Looking on with envy - Greetings from the West Mids👍

Excellent route, but wands should never be used, if money needs to be saved use the plastic block/armadillos imo as they don’t get knocked down. Had a taxi pull in driving towards me through a knocked away gap the other day to drop someone off! Your point on the road markings didn’t help as the old markings apparently looked like a lay-by to the taxi driver. (This was a stretch of imagination for me to see, but incidents are always a multitude of small unfortunates coming together).

Great video, but think your description might be wrong as it mentions Richmond Park (in SE London), rather than Greenwich.

2:51 Where you're joining Cycleway 4 on Jaimace Road can be quite awkward when there are cyclists coming from left and right on the cycle lane

Nice, i wish they can connect to lewisham

Those light phases do seem to be an issue. If all those lights were phased, at say 12mph, there wouldn't be a problem.

I once walked from London Bridge to Greenwich and back 😂

Incredible to see this in the UK. It's netherlands level infrastructure in the UK!!! Heel Goed aan te zien!

Another great vid, good to see it's open. Did many times during covid, as there were no workers working on it. When the bit from Greenwich to Woolwich is constructed you'll have to do that. I do wish however you would pronounce Greenwich correctly, not the same as the place in New York, the 'ee' is pronounced 'i' not 'e'. though pretty much everyone not from Greenwich gets it wrong these days.

Hi! I'm hoping to ride the Avenue Verte in the summer and I've been looking at the route out of London. The established route looks a bit dodgy in places, what cycle ways would you recommend? I'll be riding with my nearly 13 year old who is less confident on roads where there's traffic.

Does anybody know about plans to exceed the cycleway to AbbeyWood ( via Woolwich)

2:42 Didn't want to stop for that chap then....

Do you cycle on the Grand Union Canal as I used it recently?

1:31 Why was there a ‘Turn right’ sign there?

Its strange that at 1:30 the lights are forcing you to turn right despite the cycle lane also carrying on straight. Is this an oversight by TFL? I wonder if the pedestrian crossing you pass through has a green man?

I really wish Rail lines had been created with footpaths along the sides (and dream of cycle too) back in the day. Would often make for great cycle highways and taking train with fold up bike even more effective.

Are there any decent connections to bromley yet? i love cycling but i feel trapped by aggressive drivers lmao

i have an idea for a route in south london

The lights in surrey quays are Annoying sometimes whenever I skateboarding but most of the bike lane is alright

🧐🧐🧐