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#1
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Apparently, the Mayor is now in favour of bike user/vehicle
registration, and wants a private bill put through Parliament to achieve this. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/5225346.stm I definitely have mixed feelings about this. I disagree with the guy from British Cycling who says a "tiny minority of cyclists" are flouting road regulations - in my reasonably frequent cycling experience, I reckon about half of cyclists go past me through red lights, and as a pedestrian I come across people cycling on non-shared-use pavements nearly every day. On the other hand, I agree with the RAC guy who says we need to encourage cycling rather than putting people off. I'm inclined to believe that the benefits of registration (easier enforcement, less anti-social cycling) would be outweighed by the disbenefits (people put off cycling because of the hassle factor). Then again, we've had this discussion on u.t.l many times before. -- Dave Arquati Imperial College, SW7 www.alwaystouchout.com - Transport projects in London |
#3
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Colin Rosenstiel wrote:
This is totally Dagenham (several stops beyond Barking) is if not Upminster. It's also Ken reverting to New Labour control freakery to a degree I didn't believe him capable of. He *has* changed since he was first elected! It would decimate cycling in London, not to mention making life impossible for cyclists like me who bring their bikes in on the train from Cambridge. We certainly won't be doing anything so dotty in Cambridge because we actually know we have to promote sustainable transport. The alternative is total gridlock. Well said, Colin. It would also be entirely impractical unless it were a national implementation. For example, how would they be able to regulate those of us who (like yourself) take a bike on the train into London but then cycle from one terminus to another before heading out of London to our destination (in my case, in from Metroland and out of King's Cross to Peterborough - perhaps Ken would prefer me to clog up the Metropolitan line by taking my bike right through to KX, in order to avoid the need to license it?). |
#4
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![]() Jack Taylor wrote: Colin Rosenstiel wrote: This is totally Dagenham (several stops beyond Barking) is if not Upminster. It's also Ken reverting to New Labour control freakery to a degree I didn't believe him capable of. He *has* changed since he was first elected! It would decimate cycling in London, not to mention making life impossible for cyclists like me who bring their bikes in on the train from Cambridge. We certainly won't be doing anything so dotty in Cambridge because we actually know we have to promote sustainable transport. The alternative is total gridlock. Well said, Colin. It would also be entirely impractical unless it were a national implementation. For example, how would they be able to regulate those of us who (like yourself) take a bike on the train into London but then cycle from one terminus to another before heading out of London to our destination (in my case, in from Metroland and out of King's Cross to Peterborough - perhaps Ken would prefer me to clog up the Metropolitan line by taking my bike right through to KX, in order to avoid the need to license it?). It would be totally impractical to enforce, just how many bicycles are there in the London area that would be affected? Anyone can buy a bicycle from anywhere without need to register it. It would require and Act of Parliament to make it legal and such a thing would never be passed. Neill |
#5
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#6
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![]() Colin Rosenstiel wrote: In article . com, (Neillw001) wrote: Jack Taylor wrote: [Ken's bike lunacy] It would be totally impractical to enforce, just how many bicycles are there in the London area that would be affected? Anyone can buy a bicycle from anywhere without need to register it. It would require and Act of Parliament to make it legal and such a thing would never be passed. Ken is talking of a Private Bill, something London has every year. But it could well fall foul of the Parliamentary procedures because of its effect on people outside London. -- Colin Rosenstiel Colin, I understand what you say about impracticality of "local" legally-enforced bike registration; i.e. it would have to be national or nothing. But, does Cambridge University not still have a mandatory College resistration system for students' bicycles? I remember my number - Q283, from all those years ago! I'm not sure what the sanction was for failing to register and/or display one's number. Moreover, all resident Members of the University were required to obtain the Motor Proctor's written consent before having motor vehicle in the City. I wonder whether that still applies.? Marc. |
#7
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wrote in message
: Colin Rosenstiel wrote: In article . com, (Neillw001) wrote: Jack Taylor wrote: [Ken's bike lunacy] It would be totally impractical to enforce, just how many bicycles are there in the London area that would be affected? Anyone can buy a bicycle from anywhere without need to register it. It would require an Act of Parliament to make it legal and such a thing would never be passed. Why. If there was a political will, it would happen. I don't know why it wasn't enacted several decades ago: any vehicle on the road needs to obey the Highway Code and needs to be identifiable if it fails to do so. Ken is talking of a Private Bill, something London has every year. But it could well fall foul of the Parliamentary procedures because of its effect on people outside London. Colin, I understand what you say about impracticality of "local" legally-enforced bike registration; i.e. it would have to be national or nothing. As a cyclist (as well as a car driver) I'd wholeheartedly support a national bicycle registration scheme with a requirement to display clearly-identifiable number plates front and back that could be read by police or traffic-light cameras. It's rare to see cars go through red traffic lights (I see maybe one every couple of months) whereas almost every day I see cyclists ride straight through lights as if they don't apply to cyclists - and this is at any time in the phase of the lights, not just at the very start or end of the red phase. Presumably the thought of being identified and nicked is a great deterrent for car drivers and the absence of this for cyclists makes them think they can get away with it... which they can :-( Likewise for cyclists who drive full-tilt at zebra crossings with loads of people on, scattering them in their wake - I saw this in Oxford while I was out cycling: a nutter cyclist overtook me as I was slowing down for the zebra and rode straight at a group of tourists on the crossing, scattering them in panic. Luckily a police car was passing and pulled the cyclist over, but had the police not witnessed it, there was no registration number that I could have reported to the police. I believe that road traffic offences committed while cycling don't count towards penalty points on a car licence: I'd like to see this change too. |
#8
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Martin Underwood wrote:
I believe that road traffic offences committed while cycling don't count towards penalty points on a car licence: I'd like to see this change too. So how would that apply to those of us who don't have, never have had and never intend to have a full driving licence? |
#9
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![]() "Dave Arquati" wrote in message ... Apparently, the Mayor is now in favour of bike user/vehicle registration, and wants a private bill put through Parliament to achieve this. I see from the Times of Friday 28th July that Ken Livingstone is proposing that bikes, and their owners, be required to be registered. I can live with that. I used to live in Washington DC, which had at least thirteen registration schemes in various parts of the metropolitan area. The schemes usually arose from "Yes Minister" type reasoning: "We've got to do something. This is something, so we've got to do it." The usual trigger was bike thefts. It was generally agreed by the powers that be that assigning a policeman or two to catch a few bike thieves was not worthwhile, and registration seemed to be the only other way of actually appearing to be doing something. The leader in bike registrations was the city of Takoma Park, just to the north of the District of Columbia. Picture the Muswell Hill of the Washington area. Takoma Park was involved with four registration schemes, although any particular cyclist only had to deal with three, city, county and state - the city straddles the border between two counties. Maryland's state scheme was voluntary, and in fact has since been abolished on the grounds of general uselessness. The county scheme was compulsory, at least Montgomery County's was. Prince George's County, and the city's own scheme, I don't know about. Bureaucratic arrangements for the different schemes round Washington varied. Information about the registered bikes was kept on everything from the State Department of Motor Vehicles car registration databases to card indexes at police stations. Arrangements for proving that the bike was actually yours to register, rather than a stolen bike, also varied. For Montgomery County, where I lived, arrangements were fairly informal. I had a scheme, which I, alas, was never able to carry out, to discover the serial number of the bike belonging to the County's Chief Executive, so I could register the bike in my name, not his. Arrangements for demonstrating that the bike had been registered also varied. Most common was a little sticker, to stick on the bike's frame, slightly bigger than the stickers that bikes sometimes carry here, to indicate their owner's club affiliation. Some jurisdictions punched numbers into the bottom bracket, rather in the way that postcoding is done here. Just as many cyclists here avoid postcoding, because of possible damage to the bottom bracket bearings, so they did in Washington, even when it was compulsory. Arlington, Virginia, I think it was, issued little metal number plates, not very visible from far off, that were supposed to be fixed to the bike's back rack. What the requirements were for those bikes that did not have a back rack, or mudguards, I am not sure. The bike club here, Audax UK, has a long running and proverbial dispute about whether and when bikes on Audax rides should be required to have mudguards. If Ken Livingstone joins in that, it will add a whole new dimension to the amusement. With car registration in the USA, reciprocity between states was not achieved until sometime in the 1920s. Before then, a car crossing a state border had to have an extra car registration, and an extra set of number plates. For bikes there is no formal arrangement yet, although some jurisdictions did write rules on the subject when introducing their registration requirements. The rules were somewhat academic, I suppose, since, in practice, nobody knew what those rules were for any particular part of the Washington area, and any particular kind of visitor. Ken Livingstone will have to consider the subject of visitors, and tell us what the requirements will be for those cyclists coming over the border from Staines, or Watford or Epping or Dartford. Will they have to get a temporary pass? Will there be a grace period? Will the Tour de France riders have to be registered, or Dutch tourists? Will a bike have to be registered if it is merely on a train, rather than in the street? In addition to registering, bikes, there is the question of registering riders. American police all seem to have a standard procedure to go through when stopping vehicles. The procedures were all undoubtedly drawn up by people who assumed that all vehicles were motor vehicles. Fairly early in any script comes the request to see the driving licence. Of course I, on principle, never carried my drivers licence when riding a bike, they being irrelevant when your vehicle is not a motor vehicle. At the point when the script broke down, and there was no set procedure, I could actually talk to the policeman as one human being to another. If London introduced a quasi drivers licence for cyclists, presumably one would have five days to show it at a police station, and I suppose that you could make such a procedure compulsory for five year old children, as well as adults. You would have to make suitable arrangements for the non Londoners, for example by requiring the children from Watford to carry their passports. In practice, of course, just as enforcing the rules against riding on the pavement gets a lower priority than stopping terrorism or armed robbery, so enforcing the bike registration laws got a lower priority than the riding-on-the-pavement laws. The registration laws, and their utility in hassling people, are, however, very useful for keeping people out of the "wrong" neighbourhoods, especially for discouraging poor black children from exploring rich white neighbourhoods. It will be interesting to see how Ken Livingstone's scheme develops Jeremy Parker |
#10
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Jack Taylor wrote in message
: Martin Underwood wrote: I believe that road traffic offences committed while cycling don't count towards penalty points on a car licence: I'd like to see this change too. So how would that apply to those of us who don't have, never have had and never intend to have a full driving licence? If you haven't got a driving licence, you can't get points on it - although maybe the law might be framed such that if you subsequently got a driving licence within the time that the points would have appeared on a licence (if you'd had one), the licence would be issued with those points already applied to it ;-) Maybe one day, if bike number-plates ever become law, the next discussion might be about requiring a driving licence to ride a bike on the road, with points applied to it for offences committed either while riding a bike or driving a car. But let's overcome one hurdle at a time! It pains me to see cyclists get away with committing offences for which car drivers would be punished, and the comparatively small number of bad cyclists blackening the name of all other cyclists (like me) who abide by the same rules and "drive" to the same standard when cycling as when driving - including stopping at every red traffic light and occupied zebra crossing, and not overtaking cars on the left in a queue of traffic especially approaching a left turn. |
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