best cycling blog I’ve yet found.

That’s a misinterpretation of what the DfT guidance says – which is that road user hierarchy depends on the functions that the road performs. While pedestrians should be top in town centres, in other contexts it is completely right that cars should be at the top of the hierarchy.

The relevant guidance is contained in the “Network Management Duty Guidance” under Section 2 of the Traffic Management Act 2004 http://www.lotag.com/downloads/inform/lhaucdft_roads_033066.pdf paras 87 to 89

87. Identifying and grouping roads according to their location and the activities on them can assist LTAs balance competing demands whilst continuing to manage their network efficiently. To group roads in this way a LTA should define the uses of different sections of road or types of road in its network, then establish hierarchies of different road users for these different sections or category of roads. These road user hierarchies will depend on the authority’s policy objectives and the road classification, layout and the extent of its use by different types of traffic including cyclists, and its use by pedestrians as a place for example, for living, working and shopping.

88. In a town centre environment a road user hierarchy might give particular attention to the accessibility needs of pedestrians and people with disabilities, including around temporary works. So the resulting hierarchy might be Visually impaired and other disabled people, Pedestrians, Cyclists, Buses and Public Transport (including taxis and private hire vehicles), Freight (including loading facilities),Private cars and motorcycles, On street Parking

89. In other environments a different hierarchy might result, giving more emphasis to the movement of people and goods including more extensive bus priority on significant bus routes or priority to freight traffic. Each LTA will need to strike a balance that reflects the policies and priorities set out in their transport strategies, those of the Mayor in London and those of the PTE in a metropolitan area.

The argument’s not about urban motorways though, is it?

It’s about giving cars a little more priority on the key strategic roads to get the roads moving for business and freight needs. I think that’s a justifiable goal.

But it must be combined with making sure that London’s town centres become nicer and that pedestrians and cyclists have safe and convenient routes to travel across too. I’m not yet convinced that this is really being taken seriously by the Mayor (it all seems a lot of window-dressing like the Velib gimmick and blue lines on roads), but it has the potential to if he stops caving into the motorist lobby every time there is conflict.

I think that way there can be a win for both car-users and others.

Quite, my point is more that it’s unlikely such an inexperienced tyro is going to able to put up either cogent argument in public for this position or, more importantly, one in private about why it’s bollocks.

“Take the M4 or the North Circular – it stands to reason that these are roads where the car should be king.”

That’s rather a wedded to the past view – London rather gave up on the idea of solving the traffic problem by demolishing half the city for urban motorways in 1973. Since then we’ve mostly had muddle, but recently the tube and bus have been publicly prioritised, currently the tide is moving in favour of cycling and walking and Boris and Kulveer are stuck in the pre-1973 mode that the rest of Tories finally gave up on in about 1990.

The point about urban motorways is not so much the roads themselves as the fact that cars have to get to them first, so the end result is that one merely moves the congestion, at massive cost and disruption, half a mile up the road, and simultaneously you have just left your public transport system unfunded and declining for twenty years. You can’t continue squeezing more and more into the same space and sadly that means the role of the politician is to decide who loses out. The car, by any logical, environmental, economic or indeed any other analysis, comes last. At which point you’re back to a hierarchy.