please empty your brain below
As for CS2 and Marshgate lane, I don't know what the ideal solution is, but feel bus and cycle routes weaving across each other here can't be it. Is there space for a stop with a bypass anywhere nearby?
Is this really the busiest bus route in London? I assume you mean the 25 route rather than the corridor. If not would, say, Park Lane, Oxford St, or Waterloo Bridge not be busier? If you are referring to the 25 route, I'm still surprised. I always assumed the 38 was the busiest route, on account of its high frequency. I would be interested to know the figures.
dg writes: Here are the figures.
It was originally our intention to have this stop reopened once the works had been completed, and the traffic order for the cycle lane prepared by Transport for London (TfL) was originally intended to allow buses to stop at Marshgate Lane by crossing the cycle lane, however this was unfortunately missed out and the current design prevents the safe use of this stop.
We are currently working on a compromise which will satisfy all parties, however at this time I am unable to provide a scheduled date for when this stop would be reopened. We realise the inconvenience which this can cause, however given the safety implications we cannot allow buses to serve this stop until a solution is reached."
Sigh.
Assuming there is a traffic order specifying that these lanes are for cycles only, buses driving into them would be breaking not just the Highway Code, surely, but also provisions of the Road Traffic Regulation Act.
DG have you stood by the segregated cycle lane and seen or counted how many cyclists are using the Stratford - Bow CS2 - not many from what I've seen.
Maybe they're over-cautious because of the other problem there: The reason you got a grainy picture last night is because there's been no working street lighting in that spot. The surrounding lampposts, the bus shelter, all in darkness for the last year or two.
The plans for CS2x (which you also link to) show the bus stop layby was actually modified as patr of this project, by taking some width from the pavement.
And I really don't get this - , the bus stop co-existed with CS2 before the upgrade - so why can it not still do so? I suspect the problem is that having made the traffic order, a "safety case" would now have to be made to modify it, even though it simply restores the status quo ante
Perhaps transport planners should be thinking of light rail along these corridors. All of the routes in the list seem wide enough to accommodate segregated tracks over a large proportion of their lengths, with the exception perhaps of the Harrow Road. The buses and drivers freed up could be reallocated to other routes in need of extra capacity. I haven't costed these proposals yet, or conducted any kind of public consultation.
Seriously, they should fix this by the new year. It's a terrible omission. I don't see how buses crossing the cycle lane is an issue - that's what indicators are for (it's the cyclist's fault if they ignore them).
And for those questioning the busyness of bus routes there is a full spreadsheet in the GLA datastore. This was provided by TfL to the London Assembly for their recent investigation into Buses. It makes interesting reading and yes long radial routes that run at high frequencies through crowded inner London suburbs tend to have very high patronage.
For example, Cycle Superhighway 8 on Grosvenor Road: http://goo.gl/maps/VKvaM
Pre the 2012 games the old SM station was given a big refurb job to make an exit via the old building with talk of shops, cafe etc to improve the look of this part of the High Street.
This has still not been done and the exit is into Bridge Road and the still closed old Rex building which was billed as a great new night spot to party and see the games, trouble the work to open it was still going on after the games closed
For my own thoughts, it's just a self-quote of my comment in response to the post of 2 December:-
"oh f-- f---- s---
How much more [public] money is going to get p----- up the wall on these endless flawed >experiments< before they come to a solution that actually comes near to getting things right???"
London buses kill or maim one vulnerable road user every day.
As Londoners get more active and start to cycle and walk more, there will be fewer buses, which is beneficial to everyone, except lazy people.
To suggest that the bus should cross the cycle lane to stop is criminal.
"To suggest that the bus should cross the cycle lane to stop is criminal"
Not ideal, but it's done elsewhere where there is a bus stop on a road with a cycle lane. Bus drivers should of course be aware of cyclists around them, and vice versa, and give way when crossing from one lane to another
See DG's own example in Grosvenor Place, &
here on Blackfriars Bridge.
dg writes: Hi timbo, that was me. I'll remove the second one if it's not working - hopefully one example is enough.
It's probably best not to slap unwieldy 250-character Google Maps links into this comments box :)
Also if you have proper large protected cycle lanes, they can be used by the few who need mobility scooters.
The Blackfriars Bridge example is horrible; it creates conflict before and after the bus stop.
It is botch jobs like these that contribute to one person being killed or maimed by a London Bus on average every single day.
I was not defending the layout there -just citing it as typical, and thus surprising that the layout at Bow required closure of the stop.
I cycle past that stop most mornings (and have used the bus on many more)and have not seen any incidents. Although the previous layout was cited as the cause of an accident some years ago, in my experience bus drivers and cyclists are now well aware of the presence of each other.
Where does your figure of one person a day killed or injured "by" a bus come from? How many of them are cyclists? How many are passengers on, boarding, or alighting from, the bus? In how many incidents was the road layout actually identified as a cause? Does this include non-TfL buses in London (e.g coaches, minibuses etc)?
The data was released by TfL, after a FOI request by the GLA.
Read here: http://saferoxfordstreet.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/fatalities-and-serious-injuries.html
TfL is very poor in analyzing the data of the butchery for which it is responsible.
Thanks for that. It is clear it is only TfL services which are counted.
However, as a caveat to those figures note that "TfL defines major-injury incidents as those where a person or persons were taken to hospital for treatment, whether or not medical aid was subsequently required"
So, almost any injury then, however minor.
"The data is a record of incidents regardless of whether they may have been caused by a third party, such as another road user, or not. They do not apportion blame and cannot be used to suppose responsibility for a collision."
So it includes incidents where someone drove into a bus, rather than the other way round - or the one I saw recently when a a cyclist riding up the inside of the bus was knocked off his bike by an alighting passenger.
Whilst these statistics do suggest there is room for improvement, and perhaps better monitoring of who is actually driving these vehicles, emotive words like "maim" and "butchery" do seem to overstate the case a little.
Ideally we would have far less of the things as they are the slowest, most polluting form of public transport and have more underground, overground, trams & segregated cycle lanes all over London.
I mean - the only people I see using them are those who are too infirm to walk any distance OR drive. I suppose the NHS gives them to those that they deem need them; occasionally see someone use one with an adapted car, but they're rare.
End result? A lot of people who can walk a limited distance end up very dependent on buses (which isn't great for them) or cars (which isn't great for London).
Now I don't want to see the pavements full of any more scooters, they're a bit of a nuisance on the pavement (I don't begrudge those who need them, just wouldn't want to see them treble in number overnight), but equally if I had to ride one on the main road... well, it'd be scarier than cycling.
Thing is, personally, I figure a 48v electric, 30kg, 12mph scooter is a much saner, safer, greener, response to not being able to walk a couple of miles anymore than a two-tonne car.
I know in NL they use them on the cycle paths, which seems ideal to me, but what I'm wondering is whether they give them out on the same criteria? As I'm pretty certain you wouldn't get one on the NHS if you can still walk half a mile, and yet nobody's going to fork out £2000 to buy one - they've either got a car already or haven't got £2000.
It seems like the powers-that-be have essentially forgotten there's anything between walking and cars, and so it never occurs to them that people who can't cycle ought to qualify for an intermediate mobility aid.
As a person of limited mobility, I get really sodding angry with people who assume that anyone who prefers buses/cars to bikes is 'lazy'. Not everyone is young and fit, or able to get fitter. And not everyone who's fit has a desk job; some folk are on their feet all day and want a nice sit down on the way home after a long day of graft, especially in bad weather.
https://www.londonvf.co.uk/
top information for stops 76906 - Marshgate Lane
Due Oper Fleet Reg Note Route Destination
22:17 TT VN36112 BJ11DVF 25 Ilford
22:18 TT VN36116 BJ11DUU 25 Ilford
22:18 TT DN33797 SN13CHK 425 Stratford
22:18 TT DM44260 YX61FZC 339 Leytonstone
22:25 GAL SE148 YX61DTO D8 Stratford Int
22:30 TT VN36101 BJ11DSE 25 Ilford
22:33 GAL SE138 YX61BWO 276 Newham Hospital
22:36 TT VN36159 BJ11EAP 25 Ilford
22:37 GAL DWL27 FJ54ZTV 108 Stratford
22:41 TT DM44269 YX61FZM 339 Leytonstone
22:42 TT DN33613 SN11BMV 425 Stratford
22:42 TT VN36140 BJ11DZX 25 Ilford
"London does seem far more heavily reliant on buses than other large cities like Berlin, Paris and New York."
London has a much lower density of population than most large cities - many more Berliners, Parisians and new Yorkers live in apartments close in to the City Centre, rather than semi-detached suburbia. The lower density makes tram, metro etc much less economic, hence the wider reliance on buses with their lower capital cost.
As to practicality, and again strictly in an urban context (where distances are short and speeds inevitably low) being able to drive literally to the doorstep or in some cases in to the building itself is a reasonable tradeoff for a maximum speed of 12mph.. but even then, what I'm getting at is not that people should be made to give up their cars entirely, but that something lighter-weight and better suited to short journeys should to be readily available, both in terms of getting one in the first place and being able to use it once you did - which, 99% of the time, calls for the exact same infrastructure interventions (separation from fast/heavy traffic & good quiet routes) that the cycling lobby have been calling for.
Thought experiment for you.. look under the bonnet of a car. Now imagine the same machinery mounted in a workshop as part of a drill or lathe. That's one seriously heavy-gauge machine tool. Great for the big jobs that nothing else will do, but massively over-powered, noisy, wasteful and dangerous for small everyday stuff; if you live miles from anywhere that probably doesn't matter, but in a city it has consequences. Policy should be pushing people towards lighter-weight choices, whether power-assisted or not - scooters, bikes, whatever - wherever possible. Not banning cars, but using them only for the big, heavy, far-and-fast jobs where nothing smaller will cut the mustard.
!!!???
Quote Angus: "... but even then, what I'm getting at is not that people should be made to give up their cars entirely... "
Whaaa!!! I own a car. I paid for it with my money. I pay all the costs and taxes associated with insuring and running it. I tell ya, I really truly don't need other people having the impertinence to think they can dictate when and how I can use it.
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