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Post by capitalomnibus on Apr 30, 2018 16:05:11 GMT
Traffic leads to fall in bus passenger numbers, Hoe Street in Walthamstow www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/16193905.Once____unimaginable____traffic_delays_lead_to_drop_in_people_using_buses/
No surprise at this. What do they expect when they close off every side road and traffic forced onto the main roads. Plus with banned right turns from say Lea Bridge Rd into Hoe Street as buses take a long detour around Leyton Green Rd, cars now have to do the same where they used to use Grove Rd or the other side roads. The council has turned the whole area into a money making CPZ.
The Hoe Street bus lane is now pathetic as it has no continuity, so bus drivers are reluctant to use it as it would mean they fall behind in traffic, waiting to exit it. We have the same thing going on in Lea Bridge Rd with the bus lanes now being eroded away for cycling pansy schemes. We also have the brain dead situation at Forest Rd/Palmerston Rd where vehicles waiting to turn right into Palmerston Rd, hold the rest of Forest Rd up at traffic lights as they cannot past as the cycle lane pavement has taken roadspace. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 30, 2018 23:18:09 GMT
I live on Palmerston Road and the W11 and W15 are my local routes.
When I moved here in 2011 if I left my house with 2mins to spare I would miss the bus. Now if I leave at the same time I'm waiting 6-8mins because of the poxy traffic lights at Higham Hill Road.
Sometimes it can take 25mins to Walthamstow Central, it's booked a 4min journey. It's quicker to walk between 2pm-7pm than to take the bus.
Oxford Street flows better than Selbourne Road and Hoe Street at *any time* of day!
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Post by busaholic on Apr 30, 2018 23:33:52 GMT
I live on Palmerston Road. The W11 and W15 are my local routes. When I moved here in 2011, if I left my house with 2mins to spare I would miss the bus. Now if I leave at the same time I'm waiting 6-8mins because of the poxy traffic lights at Higham Hill Road. Sometimes it can take 25mins to Walthamstow Central, it's booked a 4min journey. It's quicker to walk between 3pm-5pm than to take the bus. Oxford Street flows better than Selbourne Road and Hoe Street at any time of day! How much is this down to Waltham Forest Council, or are TfL implicated in the traffic engineering too? |
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Post by vjaska on Apr 30, 2018 23:53:19 GMT
Waltham Forest was one of the worst boroughs they could of picked to install multiple cycle lanes due to the fact that many main roads in the borough are much narrower than other London boroughs and coupled with the fact that they seem to enjoy planting restrictions almost everywhere resulting in traffic having nowhere to go. They also insist on installing Copenhagen crossings which can be very dangerous given that the pavement continues across the road which can cause confusion to both pedestrians & drivers alike
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Post by snoggle on May 1, 2018 11:43:51 GMT
I live on Palmerston Road. The W11 and W15 are my local routes. When I moved here in 2011, if I left my house with 2mins to spare I would miss the bus. Now if I leave at the same time I'm waiting 6-8mins because of the poxy traffic lights at Higham Hill Road. Sometimes it can take 25mins to Walthamstow Central, it's booked a 4min journey. It's quicker to walk between 3pm-5pm than to take the bus. Oxford Street flows better than Selbourne Road and Hoe Street at any time of day! How much is this down to Waltham Forest Council, or are TfL implicated in the traffic engineering too? TfL are directly implicated because they are funding this ludicrous ferago to the tune of £30m from the Mini Holland funding. For those complaining about the cycle works so far and places like the Higham Hill Road junction you wait until the major redesign / restructuring works at Bell Corner, Higham Hill Rd / Palmerston Rd and Blackhorse Road start. That will be months and months of chaos and there will be a long term impact of junction throughput meaning bigger traffic jams and even slower bus journeys - if that were possible! Worse we have the utter disaster that is the Hoe St bridge rebuilding where the Council approved a scheme which any idiot could see would never ever work as it proposed removing the bus arrival bus lane which then filters buses into the bus station. The council scheme was to remove that lane and have buses queue up with general traffic to then wait to turn right into the bus station. I believe TfL pointed out to the council that this scheme could never work so we have a half completed scheme with no new scheme yet evident and a rebuilt bridge sitting there behind hoardings doing nothing. If you ever wanted an example of how to wreck a bus network then Waltham Forest is it. We have had more frequency cuts and declining patronage than anywhere else. I wouldn't mind quite so much if the new cycle lanes were full of cyclists but they aren't. I see the odd person riding along them but it's not exactly Holland. |
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Post by busaholic on May 1, 2018 20:51:46 GMT
How much is this down to Waltham Forest Council, or are TfL implicated in the traffic engineering too? TfL are directly implicated because they are funding this ludicrous ferago to the tune of £30m from the Mini Holland funding. For those complaining about the cycle works so far and places like the Higham Hill Road junction you wait until the major redesign / restructuring works at Bell Corner, Higham Hill Rd / Palmerston Rd and Blackhorse Road start. That will be months and months of chaos and there will be a long term impact of junction throughput meaning bigger traffic jams and even slower bus journeys - if that were possible! Worse we have the utter disaster that is the Hoe St bridge rebuilding where the Council approved a scheme which any idiot could see would never ever work as it proposed removing the bus arrival bus lane which then filters buses into the bus station. The council scheme was to remove that lane and have buses queue up with general traffic to then wait to turn right into the bus station. I believe TfL pointed out to the council that this scheme could never work so we have a half completed scheme with no new scheme yet evident and a rebuilt bridge sitting there behind hoardings doing nothing. If you ever wanted an example of how to wreck a bus network then Waltham Forest is it. We have had more frequency cuts and declining patronage than anywhere else. I wouldn't mind quite so much if the new cycle lanes were full of cyclists but they aren't. I see the odd person riding along them but it's not exactly Holland. You seem to have been remarkably unlucky in Waltham Forest over the years with bus services, starting with the creation of Forest District when London Buses was being divided up prior to privatisation. That sorry saga is the most depressing part of reading the 'Privatising London's Bus Services' book, and so much was avoidable if common sense had been applied and a couple of individuals had not been allowed to get involved. Like most places in London, things did look up buswise for a few years under Hendy/Daniels, with money apparently not in short supply, and WF must have benefitted directly or indirectly from the Stratford Effect. I only ever managed to do it once, maybe twice, before they went but a speedy run from Leyton Station up to Chingford Mount on a trolleybus on the 697/699 remains in my memory (too fast even to get a proper look at Wathamstow Depot, it being a West Ham vehicle). I think my visits to the area better remain in my memory, because I'm too old now for masochistic tendencies. |
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Post by snoggle on May 1, 2018 22:22:15 GMT
You seem to have been remarkably unlucky in Waltham Forest over the years with bus services, starting with the creation of Forest District when London Buses was being divided up prior to privatisation. That sorry saga is the most depressing part of reading the 'Privatising London's Bus Services' book, and so much was avoidable if common sense had been applied and a couple of individuals had not been allowed to get involved. Like most places in London, things did look up buswise for a few years under Hendy/Daniels, with money apparently not in short supply, and WF must have benefitted directly or indirectly from the Stratford Effect. I only ever managed to do it once, maybe twice, before they went but a speedy run from Leyton Station up to Chingford Mount on a trolleybus on the 697/699 remains in my memory (too fast even to get a proper look at Wathamstow Depot, it being a West Ham vehicle). I think my visits to the area better remain in my memory, because I'm too old now for masochistic tendencies. I can only speak as a user of bus services from the early 1980s. My impression over the years is as follows. - LT didn't really know what to do with services in the area. We had endless tinkering with routes like the 58/58A/158, 69/97/257 - what runs to Chingford this week? but not much else happening. - the reopening of Selborne Rd to through traffic and the provision of a "proper" bus station allowed a service restructure which put small buses into areas that never had them and allowed for some new links. That was all to the good. - we then got the infamous London Forest episode. I know Mr Torode who was one of the local managers at the time. I can remember the "Torode to Ruin" plackards appearing on the TV and the Heinz varities we got on the temporary services - the 123 had London Buslines vehicles on it, the 251 and 505 were enhanced with all sorts of vehicles to partly replace routes that Walthamstow Garage couldn't run. The aftermath with Capital Citybus and Lea Valley and Thamesway picking up the main bits set the scene for the still very varied mix of operators we still have 25+ years on. - we didn't do overly well during the Ken L years of largesse in terms of new routes (except the W19) but we did get double deckers where they were needed and enhanced frequencies. The 123 managed to get and somehow retain its pretty late finish in the evening. When you consider some routes have last departures at 2330 and the 123 is 0100 then we're not badly off. - we have suffered from a Council with no clue as to what it wants from the bus network. I actually think the local transport liaison committee has given up on buses with trains and tubes getting the most attention. The current obsession, largely stemming from a certain Cllr Loakes, with road closures, cycle lanes, speed bumps etc has wreaked untold damage on the bus network and it will get worse. I suspect that when several junctions are remodelled along Forest Rd to give cycle only phases that will slow the 123 down enough to cost at least 1 bus on the PVR or, if you are TfL, force a frequency reduction to contain costs. Let's hope someone is briefing the bidders for the route or they've been clever enough to realise what is coming and to incorporate the risk into their bids and to price it upfront to TfL as an option. Similar problems will arise for every route through Whipps Cross - the roundabout is being remodelled and cycle lanes have to be added to Whipps Cross Road. Similar will affect every bus passing through Walthamstow Bus Station with long standing rumours that cross Walthamstow routes will no longer serve the bus station - to save time - with passengers facing a loss of integrated and convenient interchange. I'd love to see where all these downsides were modelled in the Mini Holland business case. Oh hang on - they weren't modelled were they because that would mean it wasn't worth doing! |
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Post by busaholic on May 1, 2018 23:40:07 GMT
You seem to have been remarkably unlucky in Waltham Forest over the years with bus services, starting with the creation of Forest District when London Buses was being divided up prior to privatisation. That sorry saga is the most depressing part of reading the 'Privatising London's Bus Services' book, and so much was avoidable if common sense had been applied and a couple of individuals had not been allowed to get involved. Like most places in London, things did look up buswise for a few years under Hendy/Daniels, with money apparently not in short supply, and WF must have benefitted directly or indirectly from the Stratford Effect. I only ever managed to do it once, maybe twice, before they went but a speedy run from Leyton Station up to Chingford Mount on a trolleybus on the 697/699 remains in my memory (too fast even to get a proper look at Wathamstow Depot, it being a West Ham vehicle). I think my visits to the area better remain in my memory, because I'm too old now for masochistic tendencies. I can only speak as a user of bus services from the early 1980s. My impression over the years is as follows. - LT didn't really know what to do with services in the area. We had endless tinkering with routes like the 58/58A/158, 69/97/257 - what runs to Chingford this week? but not much else happening. - the reopening of Selborne Rd to through traffic and the provision of a "proper" bus station allowed a service restructure which put small buses into areas that never had them and allowed for some new links. That was all to the good. - we then got the infamous London Forest episode. I know Mr Torode who was one of the local managers at the time. I can remember the "Torode to Ruin" plackards appearing on the TV and the Heinz varities we got on the temporary services - the 123 had London Buslines vehicles on it, the 251 and 505 were enhanced with all sorts of vehicles to partly replace routes that Walthamstow Garage couldn't run. The aftermath with Capital Citybus and Lea Valley and Thamesway picking up the main bits set the scene for the still very varied mix of operators we still have 25 years on. - we didn't do overly well during the Ken L years of largesse in terms of new routes (except the W19) but we did get double deckers where they were needed and enhanced frequencies. The 123 managed to get and somehow retain its pretty late finish in the evening. When you consider some routes have last departures at 2330 and the 123 is 0100 then we're not badly off. - we have suffered from a Council with no clue as to what it wants from the bus network. I actually think the local transport liaison committee has given up on buses with trains and tubes getting the most attention. The current obsession, largely stemming from a certain Cllr Loakes, with road closures, cycle lanes, speed bumps etc has wreaked untold damage on the bus network and it will get worse. I suspect that when several junctions are remodelled along Forest Rd to give cycle only phases that will slow the 123 down enough to cost at least 1 bus on the PVR or, if you are TfL, force a frequency reduction to contain costs. Let's hope someone is briefing the bidders for the route or they've been clever enough to realise what is coming and to incorporate the risk into their bids and to price it upfront to TfL as an option. Similar problems will arise for every route through Whipps Cross - the roundabout is being remodelled and cycle lanes have to be added to Whipps Cross Road. Similar will affect every bus passing through Walthamstow Bus Station with long standing rumours that cross Walthamstow routes will no longer serve the bus station - to save time - with passengers facing a loss of integrated and convenient interchange. I'd love to see where all these downsides were modelled in the Mini Holland business case. Oh hang on - they weren't modelled were they because that would mean it wasn't worth doing! As a total outsider, I can't really add to your comprehensive account, except to empathise with your first paragraph. The tinkering with bus services began very soon after the trolleybus replacement programme and reached a crescendo shortly after the opening of the Victoria Line to Walthamstow. To a limited extent I can sympathise with the bus dept in that it was a question of guesswork as to how patterns of travel would alter following the first opening of an underground line in decades. Funnily enough, it was the extension of the Central out to the north east that had been the last major shake-up. While I was working in Traffic Management Dept in the early 1970s the changes to bus routes came thick and fast, sometimes re-introducing routeings or numbers that had only been disposed of months before! There were all the suffix routes, Saturday and Sunday variations i.e. different for each day,etc. I prided myself in knowing the extent of each route on any day of the week or time of the day, also which garages operated each route on any given day of the week, but it tested my powers of memory sometimes in your neck of the woods. There were four individuals specifically tasked with making changes to bus services, and London got divided into N,S,E & W for these purposes, and the East part covered, basically, east of the Hertford Road down to Rainham. Central got divided up between them, which might show how we've inherited the totally unsatisfactory situation we're in now. |
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Post by capitalomnibus on May 2, 2018 11:20:32 GMT
I live on Palmerston Road. The W11 and W15 are my local routes. When I moved here in 2011, if I left my house with 2mins to spare I would miss the bus. Now if I leave at the same time I'm waiting 6-8mins because of the poxy traffic lights at Higham Hill Road. Sometimes it can take 25mins to Walthamstow Central, it's booked a 4min journey. It's quicker to walk between 3pm-5pm than to take the bus. Oxford Street flows better than Selbourne Road and Hoe Street at any time of day! How much is this down to Waltham Forest Council, or are TfL implicated in the traffic engineering too? Combination of both, more down to the idiots at Waltham Forest council who doesn't give a crap, because they know they would never be put out of office. |
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Post by capitalomnibus on May 2, 2018 11:22:12 GMT
Waltham Forest was one of the worst boroughs they could of picked to install multiple cycle lanes due to the fact that many main roads in the borough are much narrower than other London boroughs and coupled with the fact that they seem to enjoy planting restrictions almost everywhere resulting in traffic having nowhere to go. They also insist on installing Copenhagen crossings which can be very dangerous given that the pavement continues across the road which can cause confusion to both pedestrians & drivers alike I never like the Copenhagen crossings and feel unsafe it is just like walking in the road with other cars in developing countries. Whenever I cross any of those Copenhagen crossings I would run. With no sidewalk, I do not feel sheltered. |
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Post by capitalomnibus on May 2, 2018 11:28:26 GMT
TfL are directly implicated because they are funding this ludicrous ferago to the tune of £30m from the Mini Holland funding. For those complaining about the cycle works so far and places like the Higham Hill Road junction you wait until the major redesign / restructuring works at Bell Corner, Higham Hill Rd / Palmerston Rd and Blackhorse Road start. That will be months and months of chaos and there will be a long term impact of junction throughput meaning bigger traffic jams and even slower bus journeys - if that were possible! Worse we have the utter disaster that is the Hoe St bridge rebuilding where the Council approved a scheme which any idiot could see would never ever work as it proposed removing the bus arrival bus lane which then filters buses into the bus station. The council scheme was to remove that lane and have buses queue up with general traffic to then wait to turn right into the bus station. I believe TfL pointed out to the council that this scheme could never work so we have a half completed scheme with no new scheme yet evident and a rebuilt bridge sitting there behind hoardings doing nothing. If you ever wanted an example of how to wreck a bus network then Waltham Forest is it. We have had more frequency cuts and declining patronage than anywhere else. I wouldn't mind quite so much if the new cycle lanes were full of cyclists but they aren't. I see the odd person riding along them but it's not exactly Holland. You seem to have been remarkably unlucky in Waltham Forest over the years with bus services, starting with the creation of Forest District when London Buses was being divided up prior to privatisation. That sorry saga is the most depressing part of reading the 'Privatising London's Bus Services' book, and so much was avoidable if common sense had been applied and a couple of individuals had not been allowed to get involved. Like most places in London, things did look up buswise for a few years under Hendy/Daniels, with money apparently not in short supply, and WF must have benefitted directly or indirectly from the Stratford Effect. I only ever managed to do it once, maybe twice, before they went but a speedy run from Leyton Station up to Chingford Mount on a trolleybus on the 697/699 remains in my memory (too fast even to get a proper look at Wathamstow Depot, it being a West Ham vehicle). I think my visits to the area better remain in my memory, because I'm too old now for masochistic tendencies. I would not say so. Only unlucky we lost London Forest as a red LBL company, which then saw droves of non LT buses ply the roads. It benefited hugely from the hoppa network with W11, W12, W13, W14, W15 and W16 taking over services that were poorly run and had encouraged bus use within the borough. When Selborne Rd reopened and the bus station was built it was also very attractive back in the late 1980's combined with the shopping mall. Then bus lanes were put into places like Lea Bridge Rd in the 90's and Hoe Street to help buses. Now its the opposite. We also had the same idiotic councillors ruin Leytonstone with the one-way system which just takes forever in a car let alone a bus.
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Post by RandomBusesGirl on May 3, 2018 16:44:27 GMT
Good gosh, finally someone bothered to write about this - years overdue!!
I've happened to be there around 12 noon yesterday, fruitlessly trying to catch WVL111 on the 20 which ended up having over 40min stand time for some reason (but showing as due at Grosvenor Park Road for all that time, then as "subbed", only to emerge when I was on a 179 in Woodford lol).
The traffic was so dreadful I bet if one walked from Bakers Arms and back, they would've still gotten there before the buses.
It's atrocious what was done there, and why isn't there a body to intervene?!
Also, why are there still people who decide to drive that way knowing it's a car park? 😤 Buses don't exactly have a choice...
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Post by snoggle on May 3, 2018 17:46:25 GMT
Good gosh, finally someone bothered to write about this - years overdue!! I've happened to be there around 12 noon yesterday, fruitlessly trying to catch WVL111 on the 20 which ended up having over 40min stand time for some reason (but showing as due at Grosvenor Park Road for all that time, then as "subbed", only to emerge when I was on a 179 in Woodford lol). The traffic was so dreadful I bet if one walked from Bakers Arms and back, they would've still gotten there before the buses. It's atrocious what was done there, and why isn't there a body to intervene?! Also, why are there still people who decide to drive that way knowing it's a car park? 😤 Buses don't exactly have a choice... People will always drive in Outer London. The town centre shopping centre has huge car parking facilities as does Sainsburys. While the bus services aren't dire in terms of frequency they are now very slow and some parts of Waltham Forest have no convenient links. This means relatively simple journeys are ludicrously involved for people. Here's one example - an old lady I sometimes see at Sainsburys at the Billet lives on the 275 route. As she's not fantastic on her feet she has to take a W11 to the Central and change to a 275. God knows how long this takes if the traffic is even moderately bad. The provision of a local minibus link or extension of the 385 / 397 via Wadham Rd could give that lady a direct bus with much shorter journey times. I am sure you could find tens of thousands of similar cases across London. Obviously you can't fix every journey need but there are glaring gaps in Waltham Forest's network because they *used* to exist but were scrapped when LT went through a particularly bad phase of route rationalisation. The only way to change things in Waltham Forest - and probably NOT for the best - would be a change of political party at the Council. I can't see that happening at all as things stand. Can you imagine the chaos of the works to *remove* all the cycle lanes and unblock side roads? Do we really need three years of more road works? I suspect that some people who've had side roads closed may actually not be overly upset at the loss of traffic if it means the road is quieter and their kids can play outside in greater safety. I don't think there is anything that can be done to speed up buses in Waltham Forest. We're lumbered now with a slow, not to be expanded network. The bus station can't take many more buses and if the council's plan to build on the Town Square goes ahead then there will be no space to expand the bus station (difficult as that would be in any case). The only way to increase bus throughput would be to reinstate stops on Selborne Road for boarding and alighting for some routes. That would allow more buses to use the bus station. However the entire junction capacity may be exhausted by such a change. |
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Post by Deleted on May 3, 2018 22:57:03 GMT
Since all this cycle lane and block of side roads "crap" has started Waltham Forest especially Walthamstow/Leyton has turned into a car park.
I would like to mention the disaster cycle lanes on Hoe Street and Lea Bridge Road, the busiest roads in the borough - well how thick can people be to add cycle lanes to busy roads and increase congestion? Removal of the bus lanes is a total joke and mind my language bullshit.
As a person who has lived in Waltham Forest for many years till recent, I seriously feel like insulting the dumb brains that came up with these ideas in the 1st place.
Thank God, that I have recently moved and won't have to suffer with the disaster of the roads, I just hope who ever these dumb brains are they don't spread their dumb ideas to Lewisham.
Before I end this, what is the smallest thing on the road? CYCLISTS & the biggest is either a Bus or a Lorry etc and these people are giving so much priority to cyclists.
I think I have said enough now and need to take a break.
Thanks
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Post by Deleted on May 3, 2018 23:00:06 GMT
Good gosh, finally someone bothered to write about this - years overdue!! I've happened to be there around 12 noon yesterday, fruitlessly trying to catch WVL111 on the 20 which ended up having over 40min stand time for some reason (but showing as due at Grosvenor Park Road for all that time, then as "subbed", only to emerge when I was on a 179 in Woodford lol). The traffic was so dreadful I bet if one walked from Bakers Arms and back, they would've still gotten there before the buses. It's atrocious what was done there, and why isn't there a body to intervene?! Also, why are there still people who decide to drive that way knowing it's a car park? 😤 Buses don't exactly have a choice... Thank you so much. It's good to know that other members understand the disaster that the public is experiencing. Thanks again |
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