Navigating Bow roundabout/flyover

Absolutely...that really is the only way. You have only to look at a map of the area or an aerial view to see how ridiculously complicated that whole junction is. The simpler a junction, the easier it is to understand and negotiate, the safer it becomes. Couple that with reduced speed limits, although by simplifying a junction this could well be a side effect. Many of these massive junctions in London, designed to be part of a huge London wide road system which never materialised in the end, have built in multi lane wide stretches which encourage short bursts of speed where there is space, followed by dramatic slowing down when the road narrows again. Simplify the junction, taking some of that space away from motor traffic results in more uniform speeds across a whole motor vehicle journey.

 But getting TfL traffic planners to see that argument is so hard.  I am pretty fed up at the moment having been to a meeting a couple of weeks ago about the proposed Lewisham Gateway development.  Here there actually is a unique opportunity to redesign a major junction from scratch... They are removing the horrid roundabout completely.  What have they come up with, despite advice to the contrary, more of the same old multi lane complex junctions... And whenever we suggested taking space away from motor traffic, TfL reps come up with reasons why they can't.  The whole thing looks like a massive multi lane race track.  Depressing.  We have told them exactly what we think, but I have a horrid feeling it will make no difference.

Thanks for quoting that, Jane. I probably would have written exactly the same thing again had you not reminded me that I'd already posted it. :)

N16commuter, give the LCC a call if you want more info--ask for Mike Cavenett or Charlie Lloyd on 020-7234 9310. I imagine that the ES journalist knows about them and has already spoken to them. They probably wanted a non-LCC comment from you, but you're clearly uncomfortable with saying something about it. Just follow your instinct and say that you don't want to comment or say what you think if you can arrive at a form of words that you're comfortable with.

I feel your pain about Lewisham, Jane. You will have seen our Old Street/City Road page. Something similar is needed for Lewisham, Bow, and many other areas. The problem is that the big problems are being shirked, largely because there's no proper development and planning strategy in place for London, and no political leadership whatsoever, with the Mayor being a visionless vacuum when it comes to dealing with this stuff (not that his predecessor was any better--in fact, he certainly exacerbated the problem with his 'tall buildings in the centre' strategy). It's still 'everybody pile into Central London' and damn the consequences for street design. We design junctions only for rush hour (tidal) traffic--flood in the morning, ebb in the evening, and mostly radial, so it's no miraculous surprise that designs are this bad.

Junctions like Bow were designed when planners thought that London should be penetrated by urban motorways and that all the future would be car traffic. It is now completely out of its time and requires that radical redesign. And, yes, it would cost tens of millions of pounds and cause huge disruption, but it's the only way to even out activity across London (as I always preach) to solve some of its problems. At the moment, it's just business as usual--the same old paralysing motor traffic capacity nonsense, no sane voice on engineering, etc.