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Post by mondraker275 on May 4, 2018 7:56:07 GMT
Agree with everything said.
I would say that just simply opening up the closed side roads would help massively. My greatest issue amongst many, is that the council has gone with an approach to BOTH bring cycle lanes on main roads and close side roads. IMO, they should have focused on one or the other. What is the message here to cyclists? Use quiet roads or use the main roads. This untried big bang approach, has lead to cars being squeezed out from the side roads, congesting the main roads, and those main roads being less able to cope with it as road width has reduced. The reduced road width comes at the expense of bus lanes and also causes traffic to be less able to overtake.
The theory is flawed and rushed. They could have done the main roads and waited a few years before closing side roads. I cycle occasionally and personally there is marginal benefit compared to the negative impacts. You will never be able to segregate a cyclist from A to B. Even the segregated cycle lanes have gaps. The most dangerous areas are junctions and they're not segregated. As soon as LBR cycle lane ends in Hackney, what do I do? I cant cycle with seg-cy lanes, I will get off and take the bus?... It's completely flawed.
The only way this will be deemed a success is that, there is a culture change and there is a mass cycling take up leading to both 'safety in numbers' and reduced use in cars. This could be 10 plus years away. At the moment I see people walking their dogs on the seg-cy lanes on a Sunday afternoon on LBR.
First step, which will be relatively easy and cheap, would be to open up the side roads.
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Post by planesandtrains on May 4, 2018 9:02:35 GMT
Speaking of traffic, a distinct lack of it today, practically flew from Teddington to Richmond on the 33.
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Post by sid on May 4, 2018 9:22:04 GMT
Speaking of traffic, a distinct lack of it today, practically flew from Teddington to Richmond on the 33. The road network is generally quieter on Friday mornings and probably more so today with a bank holiday weekend and some nice weather although I'm sure things will be a lot busier later once the getaway begins!
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Post by capitalomnibus on May 8, 2018 10:49:18 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. I have said this a long time ago, but people just vote labour in councils like Waltham Forest, Hackney, Newham as though it were a football team. One track minded individuals. When they are doing bad they would still vote them in. So many people I know who live in Waltham Forest always complaining about CPZ, mini Holland etc and blaming the council, but then would go and vote labour, these people then go and constantly moan and it makes no sense, its as though they think the councillors doing these decisions are not from a political party.
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Post by capitalomnibus on Aug 1, 2023 22:32:23 GMT
Sunak orders review of low traffic neighbourhoods in pro-motorist messagePrime Minister Rishi Sunak has ordered a review of low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) in England, saying that he is on the side of drivers.www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66351785
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