Cycling UK Forum

The legal status of parking in cycle lanes is made irrelevant by the fact that no one would enforce it. I complained both to the police and the local authority about a car dealer parking in cycle lane and neither were particularly interested. Eventually the police claimed to have attended and said that there were no cars parked in the cycle lane. If that were true it would be the first time in months. So I am sure that they just said that to get me off there back.

Hi Gaz, that's interesting. I was doing the same as Thirdcrank and following the legislation cited in the HC.

My understanding was that cycle tracks (off carriageway) were distinct from cycle lanes (on carriageway). This distinction is maintained in the HC (Rules 62 + 63), but, as you point out, there appears to be nothing in the HA 1980 which says that the cycle track can't be in the carriageway.

Since an advisory cycle lane needs no TRO to create it, only paint, I conclude it is not a cycle track. A mandatory cycle lane should have been created by a TRO, making it a "cycle track" in terms of it's legal definition.

This is where I don't quite follow. If the authority is exercising its powers under s.65 to create a cycle track in or adjacent to a road it doesn't need a TRO at all does it? All cycle lanes placed on road would effectively be mandatory lanes.

Bicycler wrote:The get out here is that often mandatory lanes are painted without an order being made to prohibit parking. The paint in itself does not make it illegal. The other thing is that many orders do not exclude loading so it's often perfectly legal (if anti-social) for a vehicle to be stopped in the cycle lane.

Very true.

I asked the council why their wardens didn't nab people for parking on some solid white line cycle lanes and was told by a councillor there was never any intention to enforce them.

So why were they painted?

On the other hand, I did persuade the same council to start enforcing another solid line bounded cycle lane on a new one way scheme in the town centre, but that took about four years of emails and phone calls to and from the council.

Having spoken to a few councillors, council employees and traffic wardens over the years it is obvious to me that the lanes in my area were all painted during a short spell about 15 years ago and promptly forgotten about, and no councillor or council employee really cares about them, knows where they are or how they are enforced.

andy65 wrote:The legal status of parking in cycle lanes is made irrelevant by the fact that no one would enforce it. I complained both to the police and the local authority about a car dealer parking in cycle lane and neither were particularly interested. Eventually the police claimed to have attended and said that there were no cars parked in the cycle lane. If that were true it would be the first time in months. So I am sure that they just said that to get me off there back.

Ask for a photo, because you want to know what the cycle lane looks like, having never seen it before...

.

The only thing I can add to that is that s.65 is used to create our much-loved shared use pavements. It seems that white lines and blue signs constitute the "construction" of a cycle track

I'm going to throw in an interesting - and perhaps controversial - aspect here.

So you live in Birmingham, on a main road e.g. the Pershore road between Pebble Mill and Selly Oak in Birmingham, or a side road along which has been designated a cycle route such as the Rea Valley route through Edgbaston, Cannon Hill, Balsall Heath etc.

You have an older property which has no off-road parking, and you own a car. It is in an area full of similar properties.

The council mark a cycle lane across the front of your house, and along the whole street. And some adjoining streets as well.

Where are you going to park?

Are you going to give up your car so that the cycle lane can be kept clear?

If you have a visitor who arrives by car, where are they going to park?

Now consider these questions -
The house in question is occupied by someone with limited mobility - maybe you even have a parking space marked-out by the council outside the house.
The visitor is a care worker attending an occupant of the house - a regular occurrence with my in-laws.
The visitor is a doctor attending an emergency call to an occupant of the house - but not using an emergency vehicle e.g. an ambulance.
The visitor is delivering something. Maybe something heavy. (e.g. in my case I do the shopping for my elderly in-laws)
The visitor is carrying-out some maintenance on the property.

Now consider this
A cyclist not looking where he/she is going pedals into the visitor's car - who is responsible? You? (ref. an article in our latest magazine)

Now think of this in the context of said cycle lane outside your house
You are a person like me who
Owns and uses a car regularly
Leaves the car behind and goes out for the day on your bike - or public transport. Or even on foot. So the car stays where it is.

I anticipate some lively (though hopefully not too hostile) comments!

I have a house on a main A road so no parking on the road outside here, fortunately (or not as I would have considered it before moving in) I do have a bit of private property to leave my car on, though sometimes others trespass on it and leave me stuck.

Is a place to leave your car on a public highway a right, paid for by VED?

My Aunt had a house in Liverpool on Anfield Road, no parking outside and when visiting our cars parked on the side roads out of sight with obvious results to visiting cars in Liverpool inner city.

As neither my house or hers had a cycle lane outside, there was no question of parking outside the house on the road.

rmurphy195 wrote:I'm going to throw in an interesting - and perhaps controversial - aspect here.

So you live in Birmingham, on a main road e.g. the Pershore road between Pebble Mill and Selly Oak in Birmingham, or a side road along which has been designated a cycle route such as the Rea Valley route through Edgbaston, Cannon Hill, Balsall Heath etc.

You have an older property which has no off-road parking, and you own a car. It is in an area full of similar properties.

The council mark a cycle lane across the front of your house, and along the whole street. And some adjoining streets as well.

Where are you going to park?

Are you going to give up your car so that the cycle lane can be kept clear?

If you have a visitor who arrives by car, where are they going to park?

Now consider these questions -
The house in question is occupied by someone with limited mobility - maybe you even have a parking space marked-out by the council outside the house.
The visitor is a care worker attending an occupant of the house - a regular occurrence with my in-laws.
The visitor is a doctor attending an emergency call to an occupant of the house - but not using an emergency vehicle e.g. an ambulance.
The visitor is delivering something. Maybe something heavy. (e.g. in my case I do the shopping for my elderly in-laws)
The visitor is carrying-out some maintenance on the property.

Now consider this
A cyclist not looking where he/she is going pedals into the visitor's car - who is responsible? You? (ref. an article in our latest magazine)

Now think of this in the context of said cycle lane outside your house
You are a person like me who
Owns and uses a car regularly
Leaves the car behind and goes out for the day on your bike - or public transport. Or even on foot. So the car stays where it is.

I anticipate some lively (though hopefully not too hostile) comments!

I think the answer is that the cycle lane should not have been painted there in the first place if you had no other reasonable place to park. Painting an advisory lane is the councils way of getting out of that requirement that housholders can park their cars but still being seen do 'do something' about parking.

So if you genuinely have nowhere else to park then I don't see that as an issue. In many cases properties have access to the rear where cars could be parked keeping the main road out front clear, I appreciate this doesn't apply to everyone. I live in a block of terraced houses and I park my car outside my front door, but it's a side street, those fronting onto the main road have double yellows outside quite rightly and they park around the back.

At the risk of appearing to sound like a heartless Tory, does the state have a responsibility to provide a "free" parking place outside of everybody's house? Also once parking is allowed, what is to stop somebody else parking their car there and denying access anyway?

There was a call for all new builds to provide car parking space on the property but of course people will still expect to be able to leave cars outside as well when that space is filled with other cars, boats, caravans or bike sheds.

There is a pecking order that needs challenging here, one I often meet when there is a line of parked cars down one side of the road or pavement.

Moving cars
Parked cars
Cyclists
Pedestrians

beardy wrote:At the risk of appearing to sound like a heartless Tory, does the state have a responsibility to provide a "free" parking place outside of everybody's house?

From talking to local councils etc I believe that it is a requirement if not to provide parking, at least not to take it away. Most of us do have cars, even on here, and we have to put them somewhere, on a drive or in a garage is best but we don't all have that option.

Also once parking is allowed, what is to stop somebody else parking their car there and denying access anyway?

A frequent problem outside my house.

There is a pecking order that needs challenging here, one I often meet when there is a line of parked cars down one side of the road or pavement.

Moving cars
Parked cars
Cyclists
Pedestrians

Agreed, that the priority for streets should be movement, so parked cars should be at the bottom. On weekends people park on the pavements all up our street, which only has 1 metre footpaths anyway, so in order to walk to the shops we have to walk in the road.

rmurphy195 wrote:I'm going to throw in an interesting - and perhaps controversial - aspect here.

So you live in Birmingham, on a main road e.g. the Pershore road between Pebble Mill and Selly Oak in Birmingham, or a side road along which has been designated a cycle route such as the Rea Valley route through Edgbaston, Cannon Hill, Balsall Heath etc.

You have an older property which has no off-road parking, and you own a car. It is in an area full of similar properties.

The council mark a cycle lane across the front of your house, and along the whole street. And some adjoining streets as well.

Where are you going to park?

Most of Pershore Road is the A441 with yellow lines, loading restrictions and so on. (I wonder what happened so the islands around the Edgbaston Road crossroads need no-loading markings on them!) This seems to have been done to ease motorised flows, with larger-than-needed central hatching in some parts which I suspect could be narrowed to add cycleways if there was the political will. Why would it be a problem to remove parking for cycle flows when it was OK to remove parking for motorised flows?

Many of the older houses straight onto the road appear to have sacrificed their front gardens to their cars. As you get further out, more houses have drives and gardens, plus there are some large car parks nearby which look underused, like Edgbaston Cricket Ground, Queens Ride and Tally Ho, but I'm not sure what their terms of use are.

I live on an A road. It has a cycleway on one side but even before then, even if parking isn't actually banned (I'm not sure), you'd need to not value your car to park it on such a busy-yet-narrow major road... I suspect the Mean Time Between Collisions would be measured in hours. So we have space for us and any visitors to park in our garden. We don't expect the public to provide long-term parking for us: why should anyone? If you get free public-provided parking, take it as a windfall but it's not likely to last forever, especially on A roads like Pershore Road.

In the past, I've lived in properties with no parking of their own, including ones with no parking on a road outside. So we parked in nearby car parks: sometimes free to park, sometimes pay to park. In general, the paid-for parking was easier and safer. It is a cost, but it's part of the cost of keeping a car and living in a particular property which one should consider it before moving in or buying a car. If you buy season tickets, you won't usually be paying anything like the drive-up price, but maybe sometimes the added cost of keeping a car will mean it makes sense to sell it.

I've also lived in streets where almost everyone parked on the pavement and it's a massive pain to residents, so I try to find places to park my car which don't require that, even if it means paying a few pounds or walking a bit.

Visitors like care workers, medics, delivery and maintenance have always had to deal with no-parking locations and have ways to do so. The permitted acts and liabilities are fairly well established, I think, so shouldn't have any effect on the decision to build a cycleway.

So really, why should cycleways be easier to block than restrictions intended to increase motorised flows? Is this question being asked in this way even on the CTC Forum a sign that something is badly twisted in this country's transport priorities? Moving cycles are considered less important than parked cars?

mjr wrote: This seems to have been done to ease motorised flows, with larger-than-needed central hatching in some parts which I suspect could be narrowed to add cycleways if there was the political will. Why would it be a problem to remove parking for cycle flows when it was OK to remove parking for motorised flows?

Not to mention the road narrowing they are doing on the already crowded bit - why move the curb out for short distances rather than either doing so for the whole length of the road (to make the pavement wider) or mark it as a cycle lane. Which would mean banning parking for the shops of course! As it stands, new 20mph limit or not, the thought of negotiating those things on a bike with a bus or truck behind me is a tad scary. Come to think of it it's not going to be very nice in a car either - no room to safely pass a bike, or an oncoming bus or truck. Esp. on a late, cold, wet winter Saturday afternoon .....

It does rather grind my gears when you have a busy road which has central hatching but no cycle lane. That hatching could be removed and cycle lanes provided. It's often like they deliberately try to make things worse for cycling.

I've sometimes thought on road cycle lanes were the result of deliberately trying to make things worse for cycling!

You take a nice wide line and from it allocate cyclists a paltry metre or so encompassing the gutter, often positioning cyclists well to the left of where they should be cycling. Cyclists must now give way whenever they come across an obstruction, want to turn right or adopt the primary position. It encourages cyclists to ride across junction mouths and on the inside of left turning traffic at signalled junctions and effectively discourages taking primary by indicating "cyclists, this is your space". Meanwhile drivers take the lane width as indicating exactly how much space a cyclist needs, pass too closely and feel entitled to educate cyclists who actually follow current best practice in terms of positioning. How can this possibly be better than the same wide lane without a cycle lane?

I'm willing to judge individual off-road facilities on their merits but on-road cycle lanes are usually a right pain in the backside