Note that the "City of London" is not the whole of the London built-up area, but just the financial services district, slightly more than one square mile in area. Still, it's a remarkable statistic even then.
Just an example of what a weird anomalous zone it is: the King (or Queen) of England is not legally allowed to enter without explicit permission from the mayor — not the mayor of London, the Lord Mayor of this square mile. It's like if Wall Street could tell the President of the US to take a hike.
https://trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/e/unlocked-britainolo...
An alternative take:
If it turns out, by some legislative fluke, that a particular square mile of the US is not bound by all of its laws, it won't be long until Wall St companies start moving their headquarters!
But none of them have a rule saying the POTUS cannot visit with the Mayor approving, so there's that. And "City of London" is tiny compared to the rest of the London metro.
Its... amusing.
Either a little unincorporated hamlet to escape taxes, or a little incorporated hamlet to collect taxes from some warehouses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc
He also had a video on the mayor of The City of London
It's still not something you'd want to do very often. I think I did it once with a new bicycle that I'd bought from the other side of London, where the route home would have been long and completely new to me.
Map of allowed lines: https://content.tfl.gov.uk/cycles-on-public-transport.pdf
If you consider levying a $20-30/day tax to every driver,[1] plus another $12/day if your car is too old,[2] plus $200-600/year to park on public roads,[3] causing people to stop driving as remarkable, then sure.
Edit: why the downvotes?
[1]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10279911/Sadiq-Khan... [2]https://www.carthrottle.com/post/youll-now-be-charged-extra-... [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Excise_Duty
Parking is about £7/hour during work times, although it would be optimistic to expect to find an on-street spot every day. The maximum time is 4 hours anyway.
Apart from the mistake, you are probably downvoted for posting a hysterical Daily Mail article. Note the "up to".
Also driving in central London rush hour is kind of tedious - I prefer rail etc.
One of the big problems London has is that each borough decides how much to invest in cycling infrastructure, and a commute is only as good as its worst section. My commute from northern Camden to the City is a pleasure, a commute from west London through Kensington will be more of a pain.
IMO TfL should force the creation of good grade-separate cycle lanes in all of the major streets in London, just like they force standardised bus stops. Currently one single borough is screwing over a quarter of the city.
Examples:
- Cycle-hostile layout changes on Bishopsgate. While I strongly support the number of car lanes being reduced and footpaths being widened, this has been done in a way that is hostile to cyclists - if not downright dangerous. There is no room for cyclists to overtake cars (and vice-versa) and dangerous sharp kerbs that come out of nowhere at a near 90 degree angle to the carriageway. Very poor design.
- Removal of segregated cycle lane on Cannon Street, a street which for much of it's length is much wider than it needs to be for the volumes of traffic it gets. The cycle lane was well-used and really improved conditions for cyclists.
- Removal of the zero-emissions scheme on Beech Street, which restricted the area through and around the Barbican tunnel to pedestrians, cyclists, and zero-emissions vehicles. This was previously very pleasant to cycle through, thanks to reduced traffic volumes and cleaner air. But the change resulted in a rapid return to illegal level of air pollution in the tunnel. The cycle lanes in the tunnel are also in poor condition (potholes, crumbling poorly maintained paving, etc) which besides the stinking air, makes it even more unpleasant to cycle through.
Finally, there has been talk of a proper east-west cycle way across the city of London for many years (in addition to the existing C3), but nothing ever seems to happen with it. TfL's busy C2 (Cycle Superhighway 2) cycle route simply stops at Algate East on the City of London's boundary. After all these years, why hasn't it been extended westwards through the city?
Also worth noting they broke up all other forms of transport i.e cars, buses, vans, etc. So it's more like cyclists make up 25% of road traffic against powered vehicles in a very small area of London, at particular times of day.
I do 40+ miles a day on road across London and would be really surprised if these figures hold up in general.
I thought that maybe the metric they were using ("the single largest vehicular mode counted during peak times on City streets”) meant they were measuring how many vehicles of a certain type were passing by. And since in gridlock bicycles travel faster than cars, you'd have more bicycles passing by than cars.
TfL had the good fortune and opportunity to repurpose two lanes of Upper Thames St. and Victoria Embankment (one single road) into cycle lanes, and also Southwark Bridge.
Without that last part, there's pretty much no other major 'through' routes that could be made safe for cyclists in the City. If there aren't any protected bike no one uses them. The vast majority of journeys into the City are along that new cycle 'superhighway'.
During one of the lockdowns in 2020 when almost all the hotels were closed I was staying near Blackfriars and traveling to the West End on my brompton. It was great, there was barely any traffic on the roads - very few buses, taxis, vans or lorries. It was only about 2 miles, but it was the most relaxed commute I've had in years.
Tried it again recently, not a nice thing at all, mainly because of the buses.
North Americans especially might be surprised at how aggressively they are removing motor vehicles from the district (Down over 50% since 1999). New developments are very pedestrian and cycle friendly- eg my large workplace build five—odd years ago had 500+ bike spaces, desks for 5,000 and a single digit number of car parking spaces (for VVIPs and disabled staff only) - they are also converting many streets back to vehicle-free open spaces. This is all quite popular and mostly uncontroversial.
I've marked them in the map, roughly: https://i.imgur.com/GieyqDm.png
The local population number have absolutely nothing to do with the existence of corporate votes in The City of London. It's not even the smallest local authority by population, the Isles of Scilly are, and corporations have no votes there.
Given its small area, I doubt anybody would ever be interested enough in fighting with The City to revoke its ancient rights, and independence from the broader UK government. Past monarchs and leaders have attempted to strip The City of its rights, all of them ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it.