Centralised discussion space for TfL plans and cycling in London

Can this make sense? Too far to walk but too near that a diversion significantly increases journey time...

1.2 mile journeys by car make no sense but getting my 80 year old mum with alzheimer's to change GP isn't going to happen. They haven't been in the GP catchment since it relocated ~30 years ago but didn't have to leave then and liked their GP at the time.

I think the route by car post proposed closures is 2.3 miles.

Do your parents think it will improve the neighbourhood, ignoring their own longer journey? Or can they not view it through that lens?

They don't have a problem in their street (gets zero through journeys as it doesn't go anywhere) and think most local people walk anyway (when they walk to the shops they always see people they know to chat to). They see the traffic through the Broadway as a problem but since that is apparently though traffic they don't think there will be any difference. I've argued that little bits help chip away at the big problem but they aren't convinced.

Speaking of piecemeal schemes, Croydon council has come up with a hilarious wheeze to put an LTN in near Crystal Palace that puts all traffic from a network of smaller roads onto a neighboring single Bromley council road. Some people seem to be having a great time, but to go full NIMBY it means my road looks like the below every morning, with queues building up to turn onto the Church road (the triangle). The grind of traffic has become constant pretty much all day from the dribble it was previously. There's also some shocking speeding sometimes.

This runs along with the really heavy traffic on the Triangle generally, which is exacerbated by the fact a motorist (who had a seizure) demolished a shopfront meaning we've had temporary traffic lights for months.

I wish Bromley and Croydon councils had bothered to speak about it and come up with something joined up - there is talk of legal action from Bromley apparently.

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Was in the city on Friday and saw these signs on all the lamp posts where I was looking to park up. There were no bike racks close by.
Not cycling friendly at all.. especially as if they did take your bike, there’s no contact details to get it returned....

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That looks like a pre-event or pre-roadworks parking suspension to me (see also the car parking suspension thing below it). Were there no other notices posted? The Lord Mayor's Show is only in November, so it must be something else.

I don't know if we've had this yet, but this is good:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/london-bus-lanes-24-7-car-ban-a4540261.html

That was the only notice on the lamp post apart from the yellow one below which I took no notice of as it didn’t have any info on it.
They were doing some roadworks on that stretch of road, but it’s not a major road, and I’ve never seen much traffic along it.

I’ll get off my outraged horse if it’s a temporary thing, but just felt really antagonistic, especially as loads of buildings in the city have signs saying not to lock up to their railings, which means you’ve got no where to lock up at all, unless there’s a bike rack nearby..

Yes, it's definitely upsetting to feel that bikes aren't welcome. Roadworks is probably the best guess. Bikes aren't covered by car parking suspensions, so they had to put up separate notices, but there's obviously better ways of doing that, e.g. 'we're doing roadworks here, so please don't leave your bike', etc. Hopefully, it's only a short while before they disappear again.

Good from the viewpoint of most car drivers as well.
It’s mainly aggressive cocks who speed down bus lanes then cut back in.

I was undertaken by a car in a bus lane while driving down Green Lanes early yesterday morning. I was travelling at 20mph so they were also speeding. To finish the set they were holding their mobile phone and had a broken brake light. I of course caught up with them at the lights. So yes, aggressive cocks but arguably since the bus lane wasn't in operation I should have been in it, allowing them to speed and overtake on my right.

One of the main interesting things about bus lanes has always been that most drivers aren't really aware of the hours of operation, and so stick to the adjacent general traffic lane even out of hours. It's odd especially in view of the satnav boom, as you'd expect that kind of software to be programmed to tell people when they can drive in bus lanes. If drivers were aware, you'd obviously get less of that occasional aggressive driving.

I assume a lot of people driving down roads with bus lanes are fairly local, making familiar journeys and not sliding satnav so that wouldn't make much difference.

In any case the signs are clear if you look but outside operation hours many bus lanes have permitted parking so pulling into one almost inevitably means having to pull back out a few hundred yards down the road and it quickly becomes easier to sit in the regular lane.

I know in my driving lessons I would be told off by my instructor if I didn't use a bus lane when I could, I don't recall what happened in my test but Wood Green B was sufficiently rubbish it got shut down.

Just an update in the Newham/Waltham Forest ltn. It has been a couple of weeks and I can say it's been nothing short of life changing, cleaner, quieter and so many more people (especial kids) cycling past my house. I really hope they keep it because I've heard that the Wandsworth trial has already been pulled? (does anyone knows if that's true?)

I'd really hate a great opportunity to be lost but cause of a few loud idiots.

Yes, Wandsworth LTN is being removed.

https://www.wandsworthconservatives.co.uk/news/council-suspends-low-traffic-neighbourhoods-after-high-level-review-following-residents

Conservative councils will fold sooner or later, driving a car is a central political right to them.

I was wondering if TfL would send an army out to change all the bus lane signs overnight. Hasn't happened.

They have put up signs suspending the loading bays / parking outside the local big builders merchants (until March 2022), which is normally a wall of battered white vans on weekdays. Going to be interesting tomorrow.

It's odd especially in view of the satnav boom, as you'd expect that kind of software to be programmed to tell people when they can drive in bus lanes

Are there part time bus lanes in Silicon Valley? Not gonna happen otherwise.

Yeah, this has been my experience too. Not sure where you are in it, I’m over on the Dames Road side of things. The removal of Odessa Road as a through route has been transformative. The thing I’ve noticed the most is the drop in volume - we used to have noisy exhausts bombing past the house at least a few times a day and that has been completely eliminated. I need to remember to leave feedback on the consultation website - there were a fair few negative comments on there when I looked.

Am I right I’m thinking that the real limit to how fast cars can move on a route is how fast they flow through the tightest constriction which is usually a junction with two lanes one left turn and one right/straight ahead. So you can have cars using the main lane and the bus lane but when you all get to the junction it’s no faster on average, it’s only faster for the cocks who have used the bus lane to weave through traffic.

That's correct but if a road backs up to the previous junction then the cars turning there are held up so that bit backs up etc.

Yeah, on urban roads the number of vehicles that can get through on each green cycle is the limiting factor on capacity, which is why roads typically fan out to as many lanes as possible at each set of lights.

And why complaints about reducing the number of lanes on a road away from junctions are usually bollocks or grossly exaggerated.

I'm on Odessa (between Huddlestone road and Pevensey Road), the noise drop is dramatic. Normally you get absolutely twats speeding down at all hours in the morning smashing out the tunes, that's all stopped. Everything just feels calmer and nicer, you'd have to be insane to want it to go back to how it was.

There are negative comments on the site but there are definitely more positive ones, the negative ones are so ridiculously aggressive as well.

I didn't know Wandsworth was tory, I'm surprised they even went ahead with the trial.

As above, dropping in and out of bus lanes is hard work when you're driving. There's normally parked cars, bikes, stopped buses, etc in them so to progress you need to keep swerving in and out of them which requires much more effort than trundling along in one lane.

Depressingly there are a lot more negative comments on the site now, I just went on for the first time in while and there's lots (although you get the vibe that a lot are written by the same person).

The best negative comment I read said we don't need it because there's no accidents on Odessa, a speeding car literally crashed through someone's front garden wall a few months ago.

"At All Times" signs now up on Holloway Road.

No changes to parking signs, and reading the traffic order it doesn't look like there will be widespread removal of bus lane parking bays. Which is bloody useless.

Another little point, I usually have to pick a couple of empty crisp packets, chicken boxes and other general crap out of my front garden every day plus sweep the path of all the dust, leaves etc every few days but since the road closed my front path looks just like it did when I cleaned it a couple of weeks ago. Pretty incredible to see in real time how much crap passing cars push out from the road.