2011-09-20 - Rider Down, Aldwych/Drury Lane

Problematic is not really the word for that part of London. Once you get to know the city well, having been cycling round it for many years, you get an intuitive feel for which stretches of road are particularly dangerous.
It's not always something you can put your finger on, but it usually involves multiple lanes merging and crossing coming from and going to more than one direction.

Mike, I can usually put my finger on what the problem is. :) You'll find that it's not rocket science, it tends to be the same things over and over again. There are fairly systematic problems inherent in street design in London. ('Problematic' to me just means that there's a problem somewhere that needs solving. I didn't mean to be more specific than that.)

Examples for me include outside Kings Cross/St Pancras Station, the top of Blackfriars Bridge, The E&C roundabout (obvioulsy). The whole New Oxford Street, Holborn one way mess and Vauxhall Cross as we unfortunately saw yesterday. There are local ones specific to your part of the city that not everyone will know about.

Its been said countless times that these areas need a big redesign. They could certainly start by getting rid of the bollards in the middle of Aldwych and that fucking ridiculous taxi rank and put a big wide cycle lane there. How difficult can that be? The area is also not helped by it being slightly up hill which brings further problems

Well, a cycle lane wouldn't do anything to help with the problem. If anything, it would make it worse. The only solution that works in such cases is to make the area two-way, and most major problems disappear instantly. (There are still the usual problems of driver behaviour and stress, of course. Changing infrastructure is only a first step.)

You're absolutely right that big redesigns are needed. The gyratories are the main problem. As luck would have it, Skully's just started a thread on it:

http://www.lfgss.com/thread72710.html

Let's discuss it there.