It's not just cyclists who have to be catered for, and those road island pinch points you complain that are being added are there to give the elderly, mums with prams etc a chance of crossing very busy fast wide roads.
While I agree with this comment of yours:
"Boris has already got things moving here in London as now there is a trial is going ahead allowing cyclists up the one way roads - so they don't have to cycle round the houses as it were."
It doesn't equate with what you complained earlier:
"Some of them require you to go the wrong way up a one way street so you can imagine what I think of them and those that planned them!"
and I think that highlights the impossibilities that I mention.
I do know though that we have definitely benefited more in the south than you have. In my area the trams are often packed with people who would formerly have been on the convoys of double deckers that clogged some routes, much of the tram route being either off road or on old railway routes.
If you had that sort of thing you'd be able to see the advantages of course, as you would if you had some cycle routes
like this, with multiple toucan crossings bypassing the fast roundabouts.
Although not obvious, there's 9 lanes there, a service road for the houses, a two lane each way dual carriageway for the cars, the cycle lane, the pedestrian way, and behind the railings on the left are the two way tram lines. And it's appeared in this London Mayor and congestion charge decade.
.