This morning's commute and other commuting stories

Vauxhall Walk

I've been meaning to write something on this but didn't have time. You'll know this, obviously, but Vauxhall Walk (one-way southbound) is one of countless local streets that is part of a one-way system. Its other arm in this case is Tyers Street (one-way northbound). While I don't know for what reasons exactly this one was put in, usually it was to address rat-running, but in a rather ham-fisted way--the upshot being that rat-running continued in one direction (and was often worse for that).

Here, Glasshouse Walk would originally have continued to be two-way, but it would later have been made one-way westbound (with a cycle contraflow). This means that southbound rat-running from Black Prince Road to Albert Embankment continues, and that Vauxhall Walk is affected worse by this than Tyers Street, as it is one-way southbound and therefore part of the rat-run. Tyers Street isn't necessarily better, being unfiltered all the way from Kennington Lane to Black Prince Road, although that is probably a slightly less convenient rat-run. The car parking in Vauxhall Walk may have been there from the beginning when it became a one-way street (and its existence or introduction may have been one of the reasons why it became a one-way street), or it may have been introduced later in a vain attempt to 'calm' traffic there.

As ever, the reason why these rat-runs exist is because despite a lot of past work on the area that's evident from street photography, the local highway authority still hasn't trammelled up the courage to filter it. Were one to think of the area bounded by Albert Embankment, Black Prince Road, Vauxhall Street, and Kennington Lane as a small cell (although a larger one incorporating the area to the east of Vauxhall Street is conceivable), one would need a grand total of two filters to remove all rat-running from the cell, and all streets could be made two-way without any problems.

tl;dr The reason why you encounter such bad driver behaviour is because these people are rat-running. They are very keen to save time and not to get stuck in the narrower streets they're rat-running through. Naturally, as you're on a bike you're a spanner in those works. The situation isn't likely to improve unless there is actual filtering.