But his hope, Johnson explained, was that London could see the current 3 percent or so of trips made by bicycle shoot up to 20 percent. This was, he agreed, “a big ask” but very possible. Typically for him, Johnson phrased the serious intent within a joke. “It was twenty percent in 1904,” he said. “What’s the point of being a conservative if you can’t turn the clock back to 1904? That’s what I want to know.”7
