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

In article , (Dave
Arquati) wrote:

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.

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.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

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?).

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

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 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.

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.

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?

"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

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.