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Ed's right. Red Ken destroyed the traffic flow in many parts of the city prior to the Congestion Charge. I lived in Bermondsey at the time and prior to Red's antics the traffic flowed smoothly and predictably, once he got his hands on the light sequencing, closed lots of back streets, made roads one way, it all went to pot pretty quickly
mikec-
Red Ken destroyed the traffic flow in many parts of the city
That's good isn't it? Disrupting traffic flow ie smoothness of travel for people in cars, making it harder to drive is one of the things that will get people out their cars. Cyclists traffic flow is improved, especially with bus lane enforcement and the ability to filter through the closed (to motors) streets. Bus lanes help to ensure bus traffic flow. The next phase in making it harder to drive is less likely to happen, making driving much much more expensive, fuel escalator, VED hike etc and even banning some vehicles like the french are doing.
(oh and it's drive to work day on Thursday) -
Personally I think it's a good thing, why would you take a bike or public transport if driving is so easy to get from A to B? Stevenage is a perfect example of this as @skydancer pointed out.
If you remember the chaos of the Olympic where locals people finally start to feel like a second class citizen, the traffic was great, more people cycle (we sold a huge number of Bromptons at the time), lots of people walked.
Buses and tubes appear to be quite busy, but they're always over capacity anyway.
skydancer
edscoble
I recall vividly years ago that the traffic light phrasing for instance are not quite in favour to motorists (peds light used to be quite long) under Ken Livingstone.