please empty your brain below
This junction seems to be getting more than its fair share of money spent on it. Knowing the area and junction but no longer a regular visitor or user of the roundabout, I do wish the powers that be would try your very simple and logical solution to this conundrum, written about many, many months ago using the empty central refuge of the roundabout as the “crossing point”.

Your idea seems so safe and logical, and from the council and tax payers point of view, cheap to install, trial and monitor. It’s almost as if the council (or TFL?) won’t try the idea out because they haven’t thought of it!

Twenty years ago, in the small village where I live, we had two minor roads joining the main road but which at certain times of the day, caused traffic congestion. The county councils proposed solution was to widen the roads and make the junctions traffic-light controlled, with lane separation and keep left bollards etc.

In my view, this was totally unnecessary engineering and with much agitation and persuasion, implored them to try installing two mini-roundabouts instead as a trial, even if it just meant painting two white circles in the road and putting up the relevant signage. Well we did get the two mini roundabouts – and they worked!

And twenty tears on we still have them and the traffic smoothly goes on its way with the minimum of hold up. Mind you, when the County Council got involved, the rumoured cost of the works – two thick white tar circles and some pedestrian railing etc; was put at nearly £500,000 (and remember this was about twenty years ago), so what they would cost today I’ve no idea! I could have done the job much cheaper – no wonder County Councils have had to make such drastic cuts to their spending when their budgets/funding has been cut.

Happy Harry (in the UK) | 20.01.14 - 8:27 a.m. | #

Happy Harry

£500,000 ??? What? - more like £20,000 and £480,000 in someones back pocket I bet

Agent Z | 20.01.14 - 9:01 a.m. | #

It's about time we tried these lights - they're common in France (for all drivers) and seem to work well.

Andrew Bowden | Homepage | 20.01.14 - 9:41 a.m. | #

FWIW, increasing numbers (me included) are using the roundabout westbound, it does make the junction safe and the move from cycle path to flyover during a busy time is an unnecessary risk for the few seconds it saves ( I realise there are still many that don't think like that).

Coming back eastbound, I still use the flyover as the approach remains easy and relatively safe.

Ham | 20.01.14 - 10:33 a.m. | #

Special low-level lights for cyclists. Don't cyclists sit higher and have less restricted views of their surroundings than car drivers anyway? :-)

Dave S | 20.01.14 - 12:32 p.m. | #

I have started using the roundabout Westbound in the mornings — better than the awkward merge out from the kerbed section to get onto the flyover. The "always red" is rather annoying; there is a long wait for the lights to go green.

Still use the flyover Eastbound on the way home though.

I'd like to see a speed camera or two around this area — I try to be doing over 20 at the crest of the flyover and would bet a lot of motorists are doing well over 40 judging the speed that they whizz past.

Robin | 20.01.14 - 12:35 p.m. | #

I saw the Police there over the weekend. I wasn't aware that the lights were being installed. I was attempting to walk along the Greenway but access was prevented by the Police and the blue and white crime scene tape. Part of the Bow Back River was cordoned off too with a Policeman patrolling it.

Vicki | 20.01.14 - 2:00 p.m. | #

It should have been obvious that two-stage lights at ordinary height weren't going to work, from experience at the country's first Advanced Stop Line for bicycles on Parks Road in Oxford. There used to be a signal next to the first stop line with an additional green bicycle where a left-filter would normally be, which showed when the main lights were red; then a standard signal three metres later at the second line.

Cyclists were more or less evenly divided between assuming that there was a left-filter-for-bicycles, and believing that it was a perpetual Go signal for them. Neither of these thoughts was at all safe. The whole thing was removed several years before the fatality there in 2007, though.

HTFB | 20.01.14 - 3:11 p.m. | #

Ah! camera, lights ...action!

B | 20.01.14 - 6:32 p.m. | #

The pole on the right at the entrance to the roundabout is for turning right i.e. going 270 degrees around the roundabout.

Being on the right you avoid traffic turning left and going straight ahead. There, directly in front of drivers of both cars and trucks, it makes you easier to see and tells drivers that you are turning right and gives them the chance, if they are doing the same to not race around trying to overtake but let you take the lane and position yourself for the exit towards Tesco.

Mike | 20.01.14 - 9:25 p.m. | #

Well that's told me, thanks Mike.

I've only lived here for 12 years, but I look forward to seeing a bike turning right here one day.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 20.01.14 - 9:27 p.m. | #

Thanks for these observations DG. I would have no idea of what is going on in and around the roundabout, because frankly I would not dream of going round it. You make it sound more lethal and irritating than it was before. Now it is lethal and holds you up.

I disagree that more cyclists are taking the roundabout. This past couple of weeks I have been watching and noting how many cyclists westbound and eastbound have used the roundabout and it was - ZERO. This was in my regular commute around 07:20 westbound and 17:30 eastbound. Maybe non-commuters are taking the roundabout outside rush hour, but the regular commuters seem to be doing their normal thing... and getting their lives risked for them by the dogy design.

I and many other cyclists are bravely taking our lives into our own hands and shoot out of the stupid segregated cycle lane to zoom up the flyover westbound. Coming home, we then have to fight our way into the stupid, narrow, weavy dark segregated eastbound cycle lane when we come off the flyover into a mass of traffic coming off the roundabout... then we have to find our little unmarked space into the cycle lane. I feel like Luke Skywalker trying to get in there to bomb the big enemy spaceship every day. But I am a real human and might not be so lucky. I feel like an accident waiting to happen.

I have already witnessed one poor cyclist who didn't quite work it and smashed into the kerb eastbound. His crash helmet was split in two and blood was pouring down his face.

kitty | 20.01.14 - 9:50 p.m. | #

PS why did we need these segregated cycle lanes along that stretch anyway? They really slow me down and pen me in.

I have never before experienced conflict with a vehicle along the whole stretch, apart from the bow flyover/roundabout junction - and that is where the segregated cycle lane now makes it more dangerous for me. I have had a few near misses with vehicles and bikes in manoeuvres since it was built, though.

If anyone could find the facts and figures to show me that Stratford High Street (excluding bow flyover/roundabout) was more dangerous before the new build, I would really love to see the stats.

kitty | 20.01.14 - 9:56 p.m. | #

I've lived on the south side of the church for 20 years and I only do that right turn a few times a year eg coming from town and going to Tesco before heading home. I can easily imagine only 1 in 500 cyclists or less turning right there. If you like I can warn you in advance so you can take pictures.

Mike | 20.01.14 - 10:21 p.m. | #

The only time I've come to grief on Stratford High Street was when they were building the new kerbs. Heading west on my way to work, filtering on the nearside past heavy traffic by the bingo, and someone opened the passenger door. Hit it at 15mph plus; was speared on the corner of the door. Didn't realise until I got home and took my shirt off, but ended up under general anaesthesia having my shoulder cleaned out and stitched up. Nasty.

Despite that, I'm happy to see the kerbs. Hate the wide "easy corners" which encourage cut-up left turns, and not a big fan of the wiggly chicanes and unforgiving high vertical kerbs, but I can take my 11 year old son on it, which was impossible before. Progress.

Robin | 20.01.14 - 10:34 p.m. | #

The dutch design for bike lanes at intersections is discussed in these videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HDN9fUlqU8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA

According to the audio, the key design element is the barrier separation on the roundabout/intersection itself.

Is this design used in the UK ?

Kate Demonstration | 21.01.14 - 1:56 a.m. | #

A 'laboratory' in Wokingham - TRL is actually adjacent to Crowthorne. It used to be the research arm of the Department for Transport - originally established in 1933 and was privatised in 1996 to become a fully independent private company, wholly owned by the Transport Research Foundation. It still however gets a lot of work from DfT and competes for other work with other transport consultants.

xmb53 | 21.01.14 - 5:56 a.m. | #

Presumably cyclists aren't obliged to use these confusing and potentially dangerous special facilities and can take their chance with normal traffic and get in the best lane for wherever they want to go. My impression is that 'cycling facilities' usually restrict cyclists more than they liberate them. I remember when I was campaigning in west London way back when, all we ever got were a few painted lanes that gave up when the going got tough. And when we did get them, I remember a cycling colleague who was judged to be 'partly to blame' when a car hit him, because he was cycling on the regular road and not on the scruffy cycle lane painted on the pavement. Quite a step backwards after all those years of campaigning by the CTC to get cycles accepted as 'vehicles', with all the rights and responsibilities that go with that status. It could be that funnelling cyclists into special facilities just give motorists more excuses to not see them and to resent them using the roads of London.

ActonMan | 21.01.14 - 11:37 p.m. | #

Have the lights been switched on? I caught the tail end of a BBC London report this morning, although it illiterated the lights using stock footage from the test centre. I expect Tom Edwards wil be down at Bow later.

| 27.01.14 - 8:32 a.m. | #











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