-
New E&C design:
http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/4584personally I liked the other one: http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/3681
but got rejected because it would slow down traffic too much. My question is: where is the blue? (and barclays logos?!)
-
This is a poor, 'business as usual' design. Mind you, the previous design wasn't that great, either, apart from what seems wider pedestrian crossings. There was a banned turn in it which would have affected cyclists, too. Not good. On both, the turning radii are much too flared and on the whole the new design aims to at least maintain motor traffic capacity, if not to increase it. You can always tell when there's blobby islands in the centre of the carriageway and the envelope of the junction is increased beyond what is reasonable that the main aim is catering for existing motor traffic flows. The fear is always that less motor traffic capacity will result in gridlock. It doesn't. All it results in is less motor traffic, after a natural period of adjustment. This is by nature a simple T-junction and should be designed as such.
Elsewhere in London, better designs for high-profile places have been implemented, such as Oxford Circus, but this progress is unfortunately still patchy and inconsistent and the proposed E&C design is decades behind current best practice.
-
The lack of foot tunnels is actually the best improvement, allowing peds to mix with traffic (not the best thing to says!), and traffic will end up being wary of peds crossing the road etc.
Currently E&C often have fast traffic because the driver know that peds don't cross that section of road, just under it, thereforth they don't need to watch out for peds.
once they've (drivers) gotten used to peds occasionally crossing the road, then the behaviour would make it easier on cyclists methinks.
of course all that is purely speculation.
-
The fear is always that less motor traffic capacity will result in gridlock. It doesn't. All it results in is less motor traffic, after a natural period of adjustment. This is by nature a simple T-junction and should be designed as such.
I've notice that when I cycle home to Wimbledon in the middle of the night where the road is nice and quiet.
Occasionally I seen car sped at the max speed limit (if not more) of the road, for example, I've seen says, 10 car sped past in says, between 5-10 second gap of each other going at 30-35mph in a 30mph road.
After a minutes approaching a junction, all the car already in a (abet mini) traffic jams of 17 cars waiting for the light to change.
At first I though it's simply because of the traffic light being there that cause the traffic but I'm starting to think that it's the speed of the vehicle (going over the limit) that cause it by trying to get from A to B as quick as possible.
-
Stopping chance for motor traffic is obviously increased by the presence of traffic signals, and higher 'burst' speeds cause faster queue build-up, leading to more time spent stationary. Uneven speeds contribute a lot to congestion increasing.
-
there's quite a lot of research showing that accelerating rapidly from light to light and then decreasing speed quickly causes tailbacks - or has ripple effects on traffic. Much better to amble slowy/adjust speed so that one doesn't need to stop, rather than stop-accelerateasfastaspossibletonextred-stop-etc then traffic adjusts and gridlock/bottlenecks dissipate naturally.
-
damn, oliver beat me to it - more succinctly too!
-
What i mean is that there's a time interval between each stop light, it's sporadic at best, but put it this way.
There's two stop light says, 500 metres of each other, the 1st one change to green but 2nd one is still red, if you sped at 35ish mph, and the light hasn't changed yet, you end up needing to slow down to a full stop and wait for a few second.
However if you sped at says, 25mph, chance are by the time you're approach the 2nd traffic light, it'd be about to change to green.
See my point?
edit - too slow.
-
damn, oliver beat me to it - more succinctly too!
Hehe. :)
-
I took your point perfectly well, Ed, and agree(d) with it. ^^^^
-
Oh that was aimed at RPM before you cock-blocked me!
???
-
Here's the definition, and not meant to be taken quite literally!;
-
Traffic lights at E&C southern roundabout = total fail. There goes one of my favourite cycling junctions.
Filter filter, faster faster.
+1
Going south from Newington Causeway towards Kennington at full speed, apex the bend on the roundabout, use the full width of the road - its commute cycling at its best. Always puts a smile on my face
pastry_bot
edscoble
rpm
Oliver Schick
willski
mashton
_rp-
Post a reply
About
TFL Cycle Superhighways
Posted by
@Drokk
I was riding to work the other day, I was a little late, and all of a sudden as I sprinted along everything went blue! I thought I'd hit some kind of light barrier, but no it was a stupid cycle superhighway. It scared the shit out of me! I now go around them, and keep up with traffic its not so scary.