Food delivery cyclist concerns at breaching Preston city centre one-way rules

The Fishergate bus lane signs Pic: Tony Worrall

Bike-riding food couriers in Preston city centre have been branded “an accident waiting to happen” over claims that they are routinely breaching one-way rules – and then mounting the pavement when met with oncoming traffic.

A former Preston councillor says she witnesses near misses involving pedestrians almost every time she heads into town – and has been involved in one herself.

The problem, Christine Abram told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), comes when delivery riders head the wrong way through Fishergate’s one-way system – and almost invariably end up being confronted by a bus coming in the opposite direction.

She said: “When they realise they’ve got nowhere to go, they just dive onto the pavement – but they don’t bother about who might be on the pavement or who they might hit.

“I’ve seen people leaping aside – they just [have to] jump out of the way. [The riders] are on a mission, but we don’t want, say, some elderly person knocking over whose life is then ruined or someone with a pram being run into.

“I was crossing Fishergate on one occasion and I only looked one way – because it’s a one-way street – and I had to jump back when a cyclist came from the other side. He just said to me, ‘I’m on a bike’ – that was his justification,” says Christine.

Cyclists are permitted to use Fishergate during the hours it operates as a bus-only route and at any other time – but they must be heading in the same direction as the rest of the traffic.

When she was a city councillor, Christine was a vocal critic of the conversion of Fishergate into a ‘shared space’ street, which left little delineation between the highway and the footpath. However, she now points to a “lack of town centre policing” as the main cause of the incidents she has witnessed.

“It’s an accident waiting to happen – and something will happen one day. I also worry that it’s the motorist who would be blamed if they knocked a rider off their bike – but it’d actually be the cyclist that had caused it and they’re the ones who would get injured.

“I just can’t believe how many times I see cyclists doing it,” Christine added.

The highway code states that cyclists must not ride on the pavement.

Lancashire County Council told the LDRS that it has no enforcement powers in relation to cyclists. Lancashire Police did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.

Food couriers are often either self-employed or work directly for the independent outlets that utilise their services, rather than for the delivery companies whose branding they bear and which have become household names in recent years.