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I'm not sure you've said anymore than when it's quiet it's quiet enough to be unneeded and and when it's busy it comes down to tfl priorities.
Haha, no, I've said considerably more than that.
Unless there's some concomitant desire to improve the importance of pedestrians this won't change anything...
Er? Where has it not been clear that this is precisely Khan's desire?
We don't need fancy grand ideas, we need Khan to say to tfl, lower the importance you give to motor traffic in junction design. Until and unless he does that, nothing has happened except some headlines...
This measure isn't a 'fancy grand idea', it's a perfectly sensible, workmanlike step that will most certainly change the pedestrian environment for the better. Obviously, it's still limited in its scope with only ten locations, but once rolled out more widely it'll be seen as important.
As for junction design (in the peak hour, and along the various routes into Central London), you won't get a different approach until network-wide problems are addressed, as I keep banging on ad nauseam: reduce the need to travel by evening out activity and not having the vast majority of economic activity taking place in just a small area of Central London (and yes, that's what needs to happen first; it's a case of redirecting investment, and it needs to be in the London Plan). Even were that to happen, the (Boris Johnson-'era') threat of the Roads Task Force-style massive expansion of motor traffic capacity around the perimeter needs to be fought off.
Anyway, that's getting very far away from what we're talking about.
Oliver Schick-
As for junction design (in the peak hour, and along the various routes into Central London), you won't get a different approach until network-wide problems are addressed, as I keep banging on ad nauseam: reduce the need to travel by evening out activity and not having the vast majority of economic activity taking place in just a small area of Central London
That just ends up with people living in A and working in B, and vice versa, all committing through C which used to be a nice village but which is now in the way of a shiny new bypass. For example look at cities like Houston. Because economic activity is spread out it is very easy to build direct road links over huge distances - nothing valuable is in the way.
By comparison, extreme centralisation:
- has economic benefits (specialisation)
- drives up land value and density making it too expensive to build roads compared to high capacity public transit
- allows people to select where they irrationally want to live and still get to the center of economic activity without using a car
- allows people to meet to their friends (who have probably moved to another district) without relying on cars as they can meet in the middle or connect public transport there
High rise cities should also benefit cycling because everything is closer together.
- has economic benefits (specialisation)
inappropriate_bike
I'm not sure you've said anymore than when it's quiet it's quiet enough to be unneeded and and when it's busy it comes down to tfl priorities. Unless there's some concomitant desire to improve the importance of pedestrians this won't change anything...
We don't need fancy grand ideas, we need Khan to say to tfl, lower the importance you give to motor traffic in junction design. Until and unless he does that, nothing has happened except some headlines...