Wide cycle lane dividers: are they a waste of space & can I motorcycle on them?

[simonp]

Using a section of road to pass should be "safe, necessary and legal". At best what you're ticking one of those boxes here, at worst none.

Filtering is permitted only when safe. Not as an automatic right. I was stuck in traffic and late for a training session on Tuesday evening. The car in front mounted the pavement to make progress. I waited (also in a car). On the bike I could have safely progressed without mounting the pavement but I had to wait an extra what felt like several minutes until the queue crept forwards far enough.

Edit: by bike I mean motorbike in this case. I'm currently training for a RoSPA advanced test.

[tonycollinet]

Porkins - Don't know what you are on here, but you are dead wrong.

It doesn't matter how "careful" you are around peds/cyclists, or how much you minimise the risk. That area is there to eliminate the residual risk, not have entitled motons (and that is what you are right now) using it because "hey I've got the right to go faster than anyone else and why not? I can get away with it"

And as pointed out above - no better than riding down the pavement.

Not sure what reaction you were expecting from YACF.

[Peter]

And from your own point of view, I would have thought the first time you encounter a door across your path as a frustrated passenger is let out might encourage you to change your mind.  Make sure, too, that you wear a helmet to protect you from fists!

[jsabine]

It's all a bit tragedy-of-the-commons, isn't it - the appropriation of a communal resource for personal advantage. And what makes it worse is that, as others have so ably pointed out, that advantage is likely to be largely illusory.

(click to show/hide)

(I confess that my first thoughts about the question were either troll or sociopath, but they're a bit unexcellent, so I've been trying to suppress them.)

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

More and more road space is being gobbled by these things. What's the justification for making them so wide? I don't see why I shouldn't ride my motorbike on them. If I do, am I guilty of riding on the pavement, or in a cycle lane, or what?

Have you tried asking Pistonheads?

[alexb]

I don't believe they're pedestrian refuges. If they were there'd be railings, as there are on refuges already.

TFL have been removing railings left, right and centre.
They encourage speeding, trap and kill cyclists when lorries turn across them.
Make the whole of London look ugly and car dominated.

Open streetscapes are the current trend.

[TigaSefi]

I ride down that road in the first post. I seen twattish motorcyclists "hop" over the separator and into the cycle lane to save a few minutes. I suggest that the motorcyclists don't do this as we hurtle fairly fast down that bit knowing it is traffic free. Why it is so large is another question.

[henshaw11]

Why it is so large is another question.

Perhaps so that any pedestrians aren't twatted by vehicle projections when they *are* waiting on them ?

[TigaSefi]

Why it is so large is another question.

Perhaps so that any pedestrians aren't twatted by vehicle projections when they *are* waiting on them ?

It not the best place to cross. There's a a big crossing near the pub at the top.

[Phil W]

Seems a perfectly fine width to me. Many motorists have problems seeing narrow objects plus they have large blind spots, so it needs to be that wide just to get noticed

[simonp]

If there are any gaps for turning vehicles the width allows them to wait before crossing the cycle lane or before merging into the traffic.

[benborp]

https://youtu.be/j5PIdF2nqL4

Ok, so this stretch is quite narrow but even on the wider parts of the separation it strikes me as being a very bad idea. The new CSH are a huge improvement but they are still a substandard width for the amount of cycle traffic they already carry - slower cyclists frequently ride to the extreme left, overhanging the separator to allow others to overtake.  Motorcyclists using the margins of oncoming cyclists' safe space could cause things to go wrong very swiftly.

[Butterfly]

The reason for the separation is not just to cause a barrier between modes of transport but to make the segregation visible. To tempt nervous and young cyclists to ride. If you fill the barrier with motorbike, even going at 10 or 20 mph you destroy that vision and discourage people from using the cycle facility. It's the pedestrians and people doing a 1 mile school run in the car that might try it but won't because a motorcycle is going to be in their wobble space. That barrier is their security.

[Kim]

^ As per sig, really.

[Cudzoziemiec]

And talking about "making it visible" I had my first encounter with a Cycle Superhighway "in the tarmac" yesterday – and didn't realise what it was till after we'd crossed it (on foot, at a pelican)! It was on Lambeth Road outside the Imperial War Museum. It seems the road is one-way for motor traffic there with a two-way CS the other side, but I'd taken it for an 'ordinary' dual carriageway and didn't notice till we were on the opposite pavement what it was. So it isn't that visible at all. It was completely empty when we were there, so I'm not sure if I'd have noticed any bikes coming from the direction I didn't look in – probably, but I didn't look! (The lights take an age to change so were still on red man.) So I think it could perhaps do with a bit more visibility. Bike symbols painted regularly on the tarmac, perhaps. Even a centre line would make it clear it was something "different" due to the narrower lanes.