I’ve been sat for 30 minutes at a café on the corner of Great Smith Street / Great Peter Street in Westminster. This is the view of the cycle box on Great Peter Street, going westbound.
More than half of the times the lights were red cars stopped more or less completely in the cycle box. More than half the black cabs, to my surprise, broadly respected the cycle box. I wonder how many drivers actually know they are breaking the law though? Will £60 fines help?
I’m driving in london everyday and your photo show that cyclists don’t care about it, they stay out or in the middle of the pedestrian area, jump the traffic light, or cycle in the middle in the off the bus lane for no obvious reason, you can tell I drive a bike and I had to take 2 test to get my licence, cyclist should have to take a licence at least a CBT like and have a REG number, that would stop them to behave so badly.
It’s fine to charge people that don’t respect cyclist area on the road as long as cyclist get charges when they do the same.
As somebody who commutes by bike here in the US, could you explain the purpose of the bicycle boxes? Are they at stoplights, all intersections, etc? Thanks.
Jason – these boxes are a sort of compromise arrangement, and exist only in European cities that lack proper separate cycle paths. The basic idea is that they give cyclists a safe-ish place to stop ahead of the rest of the traffic, allowing cyclists to go first when the lights turn green. This is judged to be safer than having all the cyclists lined up alongside the cars as the cars start to accelerate. Almost all lights in London have them, and some do in other UK cities. Danish and German cities don’t have them in my experience as those cities have more proper cycle paths than UK cities do.
I think cycle boxes lead to congestion and danger. With a pile of bikes filling the box,
when the lights turn green, we have a situation where the front of of the traffic moving off is cluttered with bikes and frustrated motorists all trying to overtake them. Why not let the cyclists queue up on the left and form a line like everyone else. When the lights turn green the bikes will be safely to the left and out of harm’s way.
How about cyclist pays insurance and a tax to use the roads the same as every other road user I find it unfare they have free use of the roads and now the motorist faces more fines and points on there licence just to give free loading cyclist a section of roads that the motorist already pays for with road tax and as for insurance y can thy use the roads without it and potentialy damage the paying motorist car/motorbike or even pedestrians without having to pay the same things as a motorist
How much!!!! This is a joke (Mr Gilligan, who denied reports that his £913 million cycling budget was at risk from expected cuts in TfL’s government grant) for cyclist who do not pay to use the roads