Cycling UK Forum

skrx wrote:... I still don't see a reason taxis should have priority over other cars.

Taxis in bus lanes is not something I lose sleep over but here goes.

From a cyclist's perspective, sharing road space with buses can be a real pain - buses regularly stopping and starting being the most obvious problem, hostile bus drivers sometimes being another, especially if the road signs are unclear. There can also be design issues, e.g if a cycle lane is interrupted by part-time bus lanes, because there is then no cycle lane outside the bus lane operating times. OTOH, cyclists can get a lot of benefit from being included in traffic management schemes intended to prioritise buses eg exemptions from prohibited manoeuvres, dedicated short cuts etc.

More generally, public transport is increasingly seen as 'a good thing.' This is not because there is an inherent social benefit in moving people around in bulk, but rather because it offers an alternative to all the problems caused by them all travelling in their own cars. ( I'm not sure if anybody has really worked out all the effects ; eg it is sometimes suggested that Park and Ride schemes may actually increase private car use.) Like it or not, in that light, taxis, minicabs and private hires are all a form of puublic transport, offering an alternative to private cars.

Many bus lane schemes already allow use by taxis. I appreciate some people see the use of taxis as being one step short of owning a limo and employing a chauffeur. On that basis, taxis in bus lanes is a bit like Soviet party chiefs (and anybody else with the $$$ to bribe the police) tearing down the middle of the road in their armour-plated ZIL, with the blue beacon flashing. If minicabs and private hire are mainly for us plebs, then it seems more egalitarian to extend bus lane exemptions to them. It might be even more progressive to allow them and ban taxis favoured by the élites.

I suppose the facile answer would be to say that even if taxis etc provide a valuable supplementary public transport system, the presence of a bus lane suggests that particular route is already adequately served and there is no need to attract extra traffic with bus lane exemptions. One thing seems pretty clear to me: 'they' will pay no more attention to cyclists views on this, than a demand to remove buses from bus lanes.

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Returning to Cunobelin's first picture, of the taxi on the footway, this diagram, which is part of the Pedestrian Crossing Regulations 1997, suggets to me that the taxi is not within the controlled area of a pedestrian crossing. http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si1997/97240001.pdf Around here, they avoid that problem by stopping cycle lanes where the zig-zags start.