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Lembit Öpik: The Motor Cycle Industry Association has examined the evidence and made it clear that it is safer for motor cyclists and better for the environment to make it easier for people to use two wheels instead of
four when they choose to travel alone. That point is born out by the expert literature, including Motor Cycle News, which backs up the right hon. Gentleman's point that there is no downside to allowing motor cyclists in bus lanes because buses will never be held up by higher-performing motor cycles.
Mr. Redwood: I agree with the hon. Gentleman's views. Motor cycles will not normally hold up buses, and allowing them to go in bus lanes will give them greater flexibility. The multiple-occupancy vehicle lane is often congested, which makes it difficult for motor cyclists and other vehicle users.
The green argument, which probably informed much of the original work on bus lanes, contains a mistake. The sad truth is that buses travel around this country with, on the whole, few occupants. The average bus has only nine passengers, although occupancy is obviously much better during rush hours in urban areas. If a bus is travelling around with so few passengers, it is, of course, a less green option than all those people travelling in their respective modern motor cars. The average bus is quite old and average fuel efficiency is very poor as a result. It is a less green option to switch people out of modern cars into older buses unless the buses achieve high occupancy rates, which is a point that should inform debate on the selection of bus lanes. The green argument for bus lanes only holds in areas in which high occupancy can be obtained with frequent services that people can rely on.
The case for licensed taxis is easy. Licensed taxis are, after all, public service vehicles that offer a service to the general public, and they often help those who find it most difficult to get around in our community. I should have thought that they, like buses, should obtain some advantage from the use of privileged lanes. That is not only my view but that of many Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative councils around the country, which can allow taxis in bus lanes.
In many cities, oddly, some bus lanes allow taxis and others do not. In some cities, some lanes are taxi friendly and others are not. Such situations make it difficult for novice taxi drivers, and taxi passengers cannot understand why they sometimes buy an advantage and other times do not. A general measure to allow taxis in bus lanes would be welcome to taxi drivers and passengers countrywide. The point is certainly important in the evenings when people want to go out. If it were easier and cheaper to use taxis because they travel quickly down bus lanes, it would encourage people to use them rather than their own cars, and if people are tempted to have a drink there is no possible danger to them or other road users.
Finally, invalid vehicles are slow-moving vehicles used by some of the most vulnerable people in our community. I am not saying that they must use the bus lane—it is difficult for them to decide where they should go on a busy road with both a bus lane and a multiple-occupancy vehicle lane—but it would be good to give them the choice because some of them might feel safer if, like bicycles, they travelled close to the curb with a threat from one stream of traffic only rather than having to travel in the multiple-occupancy vehicle lane. That lane probably contains a threat from both types of traffic because invalid vehicles are often relatively
narrow and other vehicles think that they can get past them, which is not always the case on a narrow stretch of two-lane road.It must be terrifying for some people in those vehicles on busy roads with two lanes, where they are sandwiched in the middle. I would like to give them the choice. They would not have to use the bus lane, but they would probably welcome the choice. I hope that I can persuade my right hon. and hon. Friends and the Liberal Democrats to agree with new clause 6, and I am happy to support new clause 4, especially with the amendment to make it clear that it does not apply to contraflow bus lanes.
Mr. Forth: I admit that I am puzzled by what my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) has just said. I am not sure that there is an amendment to new clause 4. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight) tried to slip one in, rather cleverly, but I am not sure that it is valid. I am therefore puzzled as to whether I am debating the wording as it appears on the amendment paper, which states:
- "Any motor vehicle with two or more passengers shall be entitled at any time to use any carriageway marked out as a bus lane."
Mr. Redwood: I think that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight) was hoping that the Minister would think that his suggestion was a good idea and would wish to have a similar amendment tabled in the other place.
Mr. Forth: It remains to be seen whether my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire wishes the Minister to take up the wording on the amendment paper or the wording of his verbal amendment. I thought that I would try to clarify that point, and I am not sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham has helped me to do so.
I approach the issue from my experience of driving on the I-5, which passes through Seattle, between Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, British Columbia. On a lengthy stretch of that road, which is arguably one of the busiest interstates in the USA, especially at rush hour, there is a traffic lane dedicated to vehicles carrying two or more persons. From my observation of that experiment, it works well and makes a lot of sense. It is not a theoretical exercise, but a practical one. We can look to such examples, especially in the United States, and draw on them.
Mrs. Dunwoody: Do I detect a slight imbalance in the amount of road space used by roads in the United States, especially in Oregon, compared with this country? From personal experience, Oregon is a rather larger county than any of the ones that the right hon. Gentleman and I normally deal with. Would not the space available affect the issue?
Mr. Forth: The good people of Oregon would be extremely upset if their state were referred to as a
county. It is a great state and it is indeed fairly large. We should bear it in mind that our entire country could fit into the state of Wyoming, which has a population of only some 500,000. However, it would appear that that is a thought upon which you do not wish me to dwell, Mr. Deputy Speaker, given the expression on your face. I take the hon. Lady's point. The United States has more space, generally speaking, for carriageways, even in the urban area of Seattle, but American vehicles are wider than ours. I do not wish to press the parallel to the distress of the hon. Lady, whose knowledge of such matters is greater than mine is ever likely to be. I simply raised the issue as a tentative example of how allowing a lane to be dedicated to a certain type of vehicle, whether for buses or vehicles in multiple occupation, is probably a good idea and seems to work well.The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Mr. Marsden) raised a reasonable point about enforcement, which ties into the intervention I made as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire introduced new clause 4. If there is a problem, it is the lack of proper enforcement of the bus lanes that already exist. To that extent, there might be a concomitant problem of enforcement if the new regime were put in place, but that is an argument for more effective enforcement in general rather than a specific objection to new clause 4. I hope that the Minister will examine the proposal positively following the debate and bear the enforcement point in mind.
I generally followed the argument that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham deployed when he spoke to new clause 6, although with the reservation that I expressed in my intervention. If we encouraged cycles and motor cycles, especially, to use such designated bus lanes, it might exacerbate traffic congestion because larger vehicles such as buses might be caused to swerve around two-wheeled vehicles and thus perhaps obstruct the mixed vehicle lane. However, I accept my right hon. Friend's analysis that that would probably be a price worth paying and that, given the benefits that we would get and the encouragement that the measure would give to people to use two-wheeled vehicles, it should probably at least be tried.
The introduction of pilot schemes and observing how the system would work might be worth exploring, although that suggestion is not explicitly provided for in the new clauses. We do not need to rush into such schemes completely when we embark on them. I am sure that the Minister accepts that pilot schemes are often a good idea, especially when assessing such suggestions. Perhaps different variations of the scheme could be tried and observed.
We thus come to the intriguing difference between new clause 4—before the attempted verbal amendment on the hoof by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire, which was a novel parliamentary experiment—which would allow any carriageway to be used, and the more explicit provision drafted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham in new clause 6, which would apply if traffic were
- "moving in the same direction"
My right hon. Friends have done us a great service by proposing such imaginative and experimental ideas. I hope that the Minister is in an imaginative mood, although he does not seem to be in any sort of mood except a somnolent one. When he replies to the debate, I hope that he will sparkle, impress on us the fact that he has grasped all the imaginative suggestions, and say that he might be prepared to carry them forward, rather than laying the dead hand of officialdom and bureaucracy on them, as is, regrettably, all too often the way. This is a bit of a challenge to the Minister. We have put the suggestions forward—I am happy to support them—and rather than dismissing them out of hand, I hope that he will give us some encouragement and indicate that he will be prepared to consider them, perhaps through pilot schemes or experiments, so that when we come into government, we can report back to the House that they have been successful.
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