Some disheartening news from Ben Willis in The Guardian today: "TfL and the boroughs are jointly lobbying for new powers in a private bill that gets its first reading in the House of Lords today. Should the new laws be approved, councils will for the first time be legally empowered to seize cycles without warning."
Sounds bad. But then again, a London Councils Rep justifies the proposals on the grounds of safer streets: "This bill is not about decluttering, it's about safety," says the body's director of transport Nick Lester. "Anything councils want to take action on has to be causing serious obstructional damage." So the bikes would presumably only be taken away if they were parked with obvious disregard for other road/pavement users. Which in a way is fair enough. Except that it's already hard enough to find somewhere to park your bike where it's not in danger of being lifted by a passing thief. When there's no proper bicycle racks around, locking your cycle to some handy railings can be the only solution, even if it does cut the pavement in half.
Surely the solution is not to bring in laws that punish cyclists, but rather to introduce a law that forces councils to plant bucketloads of bicycle racks all over the place. Then we wouldn't have to lock them in the way of everyone else, there'd be less thefts and everyone would be happy.
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