One thing that nobody warned me about when I decided to become a scooterist was that you become a non-person as far as traffic lights are concerned.  A couple of times I have been sitting at a red light that just never changes because the bike does not get detected by the induction loop under the road. You just have to sit there like an idiot until a car comes along behind you and then the lights will change. This is a real issue if you are going through Manor Royal at night when you can sit for 10 minutes or more without a car coming along, and even 5 minutes feels like an hour when you are at a red light on an empty road.It really does make you feel like a second-class citizen. I asked around and some people swear by stamping their feet heavily, attaching strong magnets to the bottom of the bike, or trying to line the bike up along the line of the loop. I tried a different approach and emailed the company that maintains the lights to ask them if they could turn up the sensitivity at the two worst junctions I have come across.

I was mightily impressed to get an almost immediate reply, asking for clarification about exactly which lights I was talking about and then further impressed when they said they would get an engineer out tomorrow.

So far, so good, but the proof will be whether they are actually able to fix the sensors. There is a full council meeting tomorrow night so I think I will take the scooter and come back via Manor Royal while it is quiet to see if the lights change for me.