Police spotting (junction watch)

What is the reason for no bikes in there though? There must be some sort of logic behind it, given they're ok in every other bus lane?

Take this with a pinch of salt- I seem to recall that last time this subject came up it was explained by reason of the bus lane being too narrow for a bus to pass a cyclist.

Which never sounded very convincing, I will admit.

The situation is a lot better now, but there was a time when cyclists were not permitted in most contraflow bus lanes in London, and I'm sure that there must still be examples of this left apart from the Bloomsbury Way one, although admittedly I'm not familiar with any.

The Pentonville Road contraflow officially didn't permit bikes (although cyclists, of course, constantly used it, anyway) until about 2002. The Tottenham contraflow bus lane (which is due to be changed because the one-way system is going two-way) didn't, either. The bus lane in Russell Square on the east side northbound (now gone) didn't permit cyclists because the stub lane for buses to go straight on from Southampton Row was too short to accommodate a bus and a bike, which would have meant that a bus would have stuck out into the traffic lanes turning left into the (then one-way) square, if behind a cycle in the stub lane. Ditto for the Piccadilly contraflow bus lane (also gone).

With the Bloomsbury one, I can't remember the exact reason, but it will have been a combination of safety and capacity concerns, i.e. buses would have been feared being held up by cyclists, and, paradoxically, if cyclists had overtaken buses (i.e. not been holding up buses but buses holding up cyclists) they would have been in the opposite direction general traffic lane. This was all part of the Route 38 Bus Priority Project. If and when Holborn goes fully two-way, these problems will hopefully be addressed.