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Earlier this evening a motorist was photographed driving along the North-South Cycle Superhighway near to Transport for London’s HQ in Southwark. This new stretch of protected cycleway is clearly marked as a route intended as cycle-only. The photograph was taken – and tweeted – by Alec James, a PR officer for the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
The motorist was "certainly driving like they knew" it was a cycleway, James told BikeBiz. "You can do pretty much what you like on the roads on Sunday evening."
This is not an isolated case. Other motorists have been seen driving on London’s fully-segregated cycleways.
"It’s funny how after all this media nonsense about forcing cycles to use cycle lanes our problem is keeping motors on their [part of the] road!," joked @nuttyxander.
Others have been more generous, claiming that the cycleways are so new – and so wide – that motorists may mistake them for roads.
https://twitter.com/AEWJ/status/688818083650252800
There were many suggestions about what to do about motorists encroaching on the cycleways, including barriers, and bollards, although the most popular one was camera-enforcement, as happens with bus lanes in London.
@AEWJ @ardhow pic.twitter.com/iMzIAHUuA9
— Ed (@edbanger1) January 17, 2016
Elsewhere in the UK (which doesn’t yet have the sort of stellar cycleways that London cyclists are now benefitting from) provision for cyclists remains patchy at best. And pedestrians don’t always fare much better. Cars, it seems, get everywhere, including on footways …
