London

Remember the Times of London's "Cities Fit for Cycling" campaign? Earlier this year one of the most prominent dailies in the UK pulled out all the stops to make bicycling safer in British cities, promoting a comprehensive policy platform. The campaign is for real: The Times is now getting London mayoral candidates on the record with their bike policy positions.

Across London, 20 mph zones combine a lower speed limit with physical street engineering and camera enforcement to create pockets of safety across the city. According to the British Medical Journal, serious traffic injuries and fatalities have fallen by 46 percent within the zones; 27 fewer Londoners are killed or seriously injured each year because of the zones. Now, street safety advocates are looking to join those neighborhood-sized zones with signage-only 20 mph speed limits on connecting streets.

People riding shared public bicycles appear to be involved in fewer traffic crashes and receive fewer injuries than people riding their personal bicycles. In cities from Paris and London to Washington, D.C. and Mexico City, something about riding a shared bicycle appears to make cycling safer.

Flashback to Europe, sixty years ago. Just emerging from the ruin of total war, the continent was in the midst of a nearly unprecedented reconstruction. Over the next decade, industry finally was able to turn toward consumer products, from stockings to refrigerators and, of course, the automobile. Italians owned only 342,000 cars in 1950, but ten years later that number had increased to two million, according to historian Tony Judt. In France, the number of cars tripled over the decade.

In the UK, the non-profit Sustrans is pioneering a community-based method to reclaim streets from high-speed traffic and make neighborhoods safer and more sociable places. Called "DIY Streets," the program brings neighbors together to help them redesign their streets in a way that puts people, safety, and streetlife first.

With Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith hinting cryptically at future plans for congestion pricing in New York, and with public discussion of congestion pricing percolating in San Francisco, it may be timely to check back in with London's congestion pricing system.

Earlier this week, London launched its first two "cycle superhighways" to decidedly mixed reviews. First announced by then-mayor Ken Livingstone in 2008, the cycle superhighways haven't quite lived up to the expectations for safe and fast bike travel implied by their name, as you can see in this BBC News video.