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Drawing on accounts of travelling within London, this article explores the ways in which mobility discourses are tied to the responsibilities of ‘a good citizen’ and suggests that car-dominated automobility has been significantly fractured, at least in one urban setting. A consensus hierarchy of transport modes now configures driving as immoral, as well as dysfunctional, and cycling, in contrast, as particularly laudable. Within this new moral economy of transport, cycling holds the promise of conscientious automobility, enabling a number of explicit and implied citizenship responsibilities to be met. These include ecological responsibilities to the city and global ecosystem, but also responsibilities to enact the ‘new citizen’: a knowledgeable and alert risk-assessor competent to travel in ways that maximize independence, efficiency and health. However, cycling has its own contradictions: whilst enabling some to enact a new ‘moral’ citizenship, it simultaneously underlines the marginal citizenship of less mobile Londoners.