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Luke Z wrote:

The problem with the Victoria Embankment junction is that it's so much quicker to cycle on the road approaching from Parliament Square than it is to follow the cycle lanes. If you're coming from the west up Great George Street, you'll have three sets of cycle lane lights to wait for before you'll get to the Victoria Embankment cycle super highway rather than the two on the road which also have a much longer sequence. However, when making that left turn on to Victoria Embankment, the pedestratian crossing is green for pedestratians. I haven't seen any collisions myself, but I have seen near misses.

Source: I commute to work via this route.

The cycle lanes around Parliament Square suffer from short light sequences and lengthy queues during rush hour. You also have traffic from Westminster Bridge that can block the ability to cross, and it's often a tourist free-for-all, especially during the summer. The road up to Westminster Bridge is two lanes, but in the morning, the leftmost lane is often blocked by deliver vehicles (especially Tesco vehicles) which leads to horrible convergence if you are trying to go fromt he road to cycle super highway. It's deffinitely better than not having the infrastructure, but it's not without its problems.

As any true petrolhead would say.

hirsute wrote:

Need a bit more info on the traffic order. Where exactly is this?

Do they mean here ? https://goo.gl/maps/MDM2UThATgP2

It's absurd if that's what TfL really is going to do. Why build a cycle lane if you can't get into one end of it?

OldRidgeback wrote:

hirsute wrote:

Need a bit more info on the traffic order. Where exactly is this?

Do they mean here ? https://goo.gl/maps/MDM2UThATgP2

 

It's absurd if that's what TfL really is going to do. Why build a cycle lane if you can't get into one end of it?

google maps research shows the cyle lane on the river side of the road on embankment, so from the north you have eastbound road, westbound road, eastbound cycleway, westbound cycleway.

on bridge street you have  (starting on the east side)  southbound road, northbound road, southbound cycleway, northbound cycleway.  Both north and south cycleways show turns heading for the embankment.

It is not clear, are they banning cyclist in the cycle lanes from turning left (crossing both directions of traffic going on and off the bridge) or are they banning cyclists from starting on the road (southbound bridge street) then moving onto the cycleway just before going onto the bridge. I can't see any reason for doing this unless it relates to phasing of pedestrian lights crossing cycle superhighway.

more detail definately required.

hirsute wrote:

Need a bit more info on the traffic order. Where exactly is this?

Do they mean here ? https://goo.gl/maps/MDM2UThATgP2

Just a tiny bit further on from that, into the cycle path which runs parallel just to the south of the road.

https://goo.gl/maps/RcZPmxcsf5w

I assume they are stopping left turns from the road into the cycle path, but allowing them from cycle path to cycle path, so anyone who wants to use the Embankment cycle path also has to use the one in front of parliament.

I haven't cycled in the area myself, but I assume that currently many people choose not to use the cycle path in front of parliament - from the quoted tweet I guess that people do so because of some issues around Parliament square, though I'm not sure what those are.