Collisions between motorcycles and cycles fell 40% after the

[niggle]

Studies such as the one mentioned may demonstrate whether or not this possibility is a real threat to the safety of the cyclists, but will not necessarily demonstrate if it is a threat to the perceived safety of the cyclist - thus deterring him/her from using that bus lane route again.

Should we ban one group of road users from a road space because of the unfounded fears of another group?

yes - although I don't accept that it is unfounded. Cyclists matter. They are the future of London's commuting. Motorcyclists are an irrelevance. They are not numerous, and the environmental benefits of motorcycling are nothing or less than nothing. If the presence of motorcyclists in bus lanes discourages people from cycling that's good enough reason to ban them. That may be unfair, but streets serve a purpose, and if motorcyclists, for whatever reason, defeat that purpose, then they're going to have to join the rest of the traffic outside of the red tarmac.

If the fears are not grounded in a measurable reality, then they are unfounded. The environmental benefits of motorcycles are variable as they are a variable type of transport: I agree that they can be damaging in the case of higher performance machines, e.g. 'sports' bikes, with poor fuel economy which are only doing about the same mpg as petrol cars and yet a car can carry twice as many or more people (though the very facts that motorcycles spend less time grinding along at slow speeds in urban traffic and cars are very often single occupancy offsets all this a bit).

However small capacity machines like scooters and mopeds do get much better economy, e.g. the Honda Innova 125, descendant of the Honda 90 step-through, achieves around 150mpg at 30mph and the congestion issue is improved as well by their small size. Also a new breed of electric scooters is just starting to gain popularity and the old two-stroke high pollution engines are on the way out due to tougher emissions regulation.

Your comments re 'cyclists matter', 'future of London traffic' and 'motorcyclists are an irrelevance' just don't wash really TBH, the purpose of the streets are to afford people transport from place to place and I don't see how you can argue that motorcycles defeat that purpose? In fact PTWs (Powered Two Wheelers) are the most efficient way to get about an urban environment if speed is your measure of efficiency. Mind you when it comes down to it, personally I would not ride a PTW down a bus lane as I see it as a route with an unacceptable risk and would prefer to filter down the right hand side of four wheel traffic, ditto on a bicycle.

[skrx]

BoJo should be thinking about CO₂, since London is currently on track to fail to meet the minimum standards for city air quality and get fined as a result. Although as niggle suggests, reducing congestion itself improves air quality.

I would not ride a PTW down a bus lane as I see it as a route with an unacceptable risk and would prefer to filter down the right hand side of four wheel traffic, ditto on a bicycle.

Why not? It's 3.5m (or more!) of more-or-less empty road. At least in London, car/van/lorry drivers are very good at keeping out of bus lanes (perhaps because many buses are fitted with a front-facing camera to record offenders). Also, 24-hour lanes are typical, whereas I see peak-hour lanes outside London, which just causes confusion and seems a bit pointless.

The right hand side is probably congested, frequently stopping and starting, and probably has oncoming congested traffic (and oncoming people trying to overtake on the right). There's also no escape if someone makes a mistake, whereas the bus lane is next to the pavement.

The bus lanes are the best cycle lanes in London... (IMO).

[Simon L6]

If the fears are not grounded in a measurable reality, then they are unfounded. The environmental benefits of motorcycles are variable as they are a variable type of transport: I agree that they can be damaging in the case of higher performance machines, e.g. 'sports' bikes, with poor fuel economy which are only doing about the same mpg as petrol cars and yet a car can carry twice as many or more people (though the very facts that motorcycles spend less time grinding along at slow speeds in urban traffic and cars are very often single occupancy offsets all this a bit).

However small capacity machines like scooters and mopeds do get much better economy, e.g. the Honda Innova 125, descendant of the Honda 90 step-through, achieves around 150mpg at 30mph and the congestion issue is improved as well by their small size. Also a new breed of electric scooters is just starting to gain popularity and the old two-stroke high pollution engines are on the way out due to tougher emissions regulation.

Your comments re 'cyclists matter', 'future of London traffic' and 'motorcyclists are an irrelevance' just don't wash really TBH, the purpose of the streets are to afford people transport from place to place and I don't see how you can argue that motorcycles defeat that purpose? In fact PTWs (Powered Two Wheelers) are the most efficient way to get about an urban environment if speed is your measure of efficiency. Mind you when it comes down to it, personally I would not ride a PTW down a bus lane as I see it as a route with an unacceptable risk and would prefer to filter down the right hand side of four wheel traffic, ditto on a bicycle.

my measure of efficiency encompasses safety, noise reduction, sustainability and, most of all, congeniality. Motorcyclists do not offer any benefits by any of these measures.

[meic]

They do if you compare them to cars.
Pedestrians on the other hand are the ultimate and they get the worst deal of any road user.

[Cunobelin]

Studies such as the one mentioned may demonstrate whether or not this possibility is a real threat to the safety of the cyclists, but will not necessarily demonstrate if it is a threat to the perceived safety of the cyclist - thus deterring him/her from using that bus lane route again.

Should we ban one group of road users from a road space because of the unfounded fears of another group?

The number of pedestrians killed on the Bristol Bath Cycle Track by cars is nil, but there is a real fear that this would rise if cars were allwed on this track..... should we allow the unfounded fears of this group to prevent cars on the Bristol Bath cycle track?

Fears are real to the individual and to simply discount the as "unfounded" is unacceptable. The number of accidents may be reduced - but there are still a number of accidents occurring. The fear is therefore founded on the fact that these have occurred.

[MartinC]

tis curious that the motorcyclists seem more concerned about a reduction of 2 in the cyclist casualty figures rather than the 25 more motorcycling casualies.

No reply to this so far. Maybe the 25 extra motorcyclist casualties should be disregarded because the study was incomplete?

[squeaker]

A trial to allow motorcycles to share London’s bus lanes with taxis and cyclists is to be re-run after it resulted in an increase in the number of collisions between powered two-wheelers and cars making left turns.

What a surprise