Vocal Voices

Their latest weapon is the bus lane camera, and they are making a mint.

My home town, Leeds, is one of the worst places according to an AA survey, and that is no surprise. Some bus lanes are so poorly signposted and laid out that if motorists followed the rules to the absolute letter the resulting congestion would be far worse than it is.

The flip side is that drivers do not read the signs and do not use the bus lanes outside of their active times. This also leads to congestion, road rage, and to some extent is rather dangerous for all road users.

I wonder if the AA's bringing this to the attention of drivers via the media will change the behaviour of councils and drivers?

Yes well, you'll be interested in this, WM ....

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/mi ... 00-7405963

NB - you're not allowed to criticize the Transport Department down here. It can't be disturbed from its self-appointed task of turning the whole city into a cycle route ....

The other interesting one we had, a few years ago now (pre-camera), involved one of the main arterial routes from NE Birmingham down to Spaghetti Junction. It was a two lane north, two lane south jobbie and they imposed around 3 miles of bus lanes which, apart from a few bits of road widening at key junctions, restricted cars to the outside lane only. Absolute chaos with jams. Then after 18 months or similar they discovered they'd botched the planning permission - they'd only received a temporary mandate rather than a permanent mandate or something - so the whole 3 miles of white lines had to be painted out. The jams disappeared ......

Although they still rumble about it from time to time, they've more or less given up on the scheme now - it's never been reinstated.

The other gripe I've got is the length of time it takes them to do anything these days. There's a roundabout near us, at a junction of two majorish roads, both dual-carriageways. North / south / east / west, nothing complicated about it. So they are "improving" it. It looked at first as if they might be putting in an extra lane on the approach southbound, but no, I think all they're doing is widening the lanes by a couple of feet and slightly changing the angle at which you drive onto the roundabout. Northbound, they've redesigned the pedestrian crossing and installed a new "central reservation", literally in the middle of the two northbound lanes. Err- what? If you've got a light controlled pedestrian crossing, what do you need a refuge between the two traffic lanes for? Tortoises? (Well, there is a vets near by ... )

Oh, did I mention length of time? 55 weeks and counting. For improving a flippin' roundabout.

Love it!

A bit like the much trumpeted Leeds multiple occupancy lane (MOL) - four miles of carriageway reserved for cars with more people than only the driver. The result was traffic jams. Rather than reducing cars and improving traffic flows it had the opposite effect. Three junctions that had once been feed-in to the nearside lane via slip roads had to have traffic lights otherwise nobody could have joined the road. I suppose it was "technically" illegal to cross the MOL with only a driver on board to get to the outside lane

It was policed for a while and people were caught with tailor's dummies and blow-up dolls as passengers. Then policing dropped off and it started getting used as a normal road again and the jams reduced.

So what was the answer? Keep it as a MOL, but also make it a bus lane.

A colleague of mine told me that Swindon (his home town), had one of the worst and most traffic hostile systems in the UK.

Then he told me why. Because the council person responsible for the traffic systems in Swindon has no driving license. In fact he's never even ridden a bicycle either.....

Perfect credentials really....

Try getting across country from Bristol to the M1 to go north. Not only do you have to navigate Swindon, but also the 'Magic Roundabout' in Hemel Hempstead. These road design experts still have jobs!