please empty your brain below
Surely we'll have to ban all cars within inner London sooner or later.
Didn't realise the Saintsburys was gone already, not being a frequent visitor to the Greenwich peninsula.
Even though it might not be popular politically TfL need to realise that cars are the most economically important means of transport in London and the congestion for road crossings in East London is choking both sides of the river. TfL need to realise not everyone can cycle or walk or use public transport and the car provides the only means of completing their journey yet car users are repeatedly victimised in favour of other road users.
Congratulations. you have also spotted that the 108 is one of the few routes not yet restored to its stop near Lewisham Stn.
Clearly BERT was also on the 108!
I would like to say,though,that as a public transport user (never driven a car or cycled) I generally plan my journeys,if I can,to take account of things such as football matches and especially in central London, demonstrations and marches. Once got caught on a bus from the Elephant down to Norbury,when the Brixton riots erupted. The driver was excellent and advised that we stay on while he negotiated a diversion of his own to avoid it all. Took nearly an hour more,but was I thankful!
I was stuck on a 276 at the same time yesterday behind those horse. Absolute carnage.
I was trying to get back from the City to SE London the day of the 'crane' incident, the one which left a major stretch of the tunnel drenched in hydraulic fluid and fuel.
Usually a motorbike has the ability to filter through the traffic but not on this occasion: all the 'normal' commuter routes were packed solid.
I tried pretty much every shortcut I knew but [I]every[/I] alternative route was just as bad.
It was the first time [u][I]ever[/I][/u] it took well over 2 hours for the bike to cover ten miles: normally it's about 45 minutes.
The look on the faces of most people stuck in the traffic - including the passengers on the many buses - was that of 'those who have given up all hope.'
Don't think Newham council are to blame for getting rid of the bus lanes. Wasn't it TFL that got rid of them to provide Cycle Lanes. The thousands of bus passengers lost out to cyclists.
The 25 to Oxford Circus is also a similar experience (looooooong bus ride).
Can you imaging the Jubilee Line down as well as being a match day? Arghhhh!!!
Also, the driver made a special announcement to warn regular passengers that they might want to get off early and catch a different bus to Stratford. Commendable stuff. Unfortunately he did this at the Marshgate Lane bus stop, where the 25 doesn't stop, leaving half a dozen passengers stranded while a couple of double deckers sped over the flyover. So it's not all good.
At least you got some idea of the late sixties/early seventies travel experience when London Transport replaced RT/RM with single deck 'standee' buses, OK for Central London where commuters have been standing on trains already - but no use in the suburbs where old people just want a seat near the entrance.
I have yet to find anyone who thinks this D8 / 108 swap north of the Thames has any benefit. I expect more carnage this week when school kids find their journeys disrupted with enforced changes at All Saints. I am wondering how long it is going to take before TfL has to reverse these changes because there have been so many complaints / Mayor's Questions.
And thanks for pointing out what a disaster we have on our hands with TfL's inability to update its new "more modern and flexible" website compared to the lovely "old and inflexible" Countdown website that actually worked and was updated in time. I note TfL Digital have not updated their blog to say when their much promised "improvements" and new "lighter" bus departure website is due to emerge or what it looks like. Perhaps that has been axed as part of the cutbacks and sacking of IT contractor staff?
And let's just say "not updated Spider Maps" yet again as that's another disaster inflicted on bus passengers that needs repeated mention. And TfL wonder why bus patronage is going through the floor?
Rotherhithe in an earlier comment commends a new high-capacity road tunnel. Elsewhere such a thing may work, but in London, the car is not the solution, it is the problem. Any new tunnel, which will cost gigapounds, will just be permanently full of cars queueing for the next bottleneck.
Another Mercedes, surely?
(I used to be able to drop into conversation that I was chauffeured to work in a Mercedes, (with six wheels, like Lady Penelope's FAB1 Rolls Royce) whilst omitting to mention that it bent in the middle, and I had to share it with 70 other people)
(But then, in the 1960s and 1970s, a lot of north London commuters could claim to travel to work by Rolls Royce, as that company provided the engines for the "Lea Valley" diesel trains - later transferred to the Kings Cross lines)
The LOTS website confirms that the ex-Red Arrow buses destined for the 108 are to be "upseated".
There is apparently a delay in putting new buses into service (including on three Borismaster routes), resulting in delays in reallocations between routes, because of a shortage of new Oyster readers.
Route 108/D8 never needed double decks or increases in the first place. The capacity was fine.
Providing a link to Bow School is useless as it means in one direction trying to find a crossing over the motorway. I managed to find one on google maps but I would imagine it would be very unsafe for them as it is an underpass.
So, why not just introduce a school route designed in mind of the school children from Bow School?
What they should've done is sent the D8 up Warton Road (the road the N205 uses) and then up to Stratford City. I understand that it wouldn't serve the Aquatics Centre anymore but people can walk through the Olympic Park to Stratford City from there in under 10 minutes.
I do wonder what TFL are thinking sometimes...
It's being stuck on a bus that cause us older folks to remember fondly the days when we could hop off at will!
I don't care whether DG did the journey in jumbled up bits, for reasons of his own. Or even whether he did it at all (though I'm sure he did). What matters is the finished narrative, put into an order of his choice. And it obviously reads best as the logical sequential narrative that he presents.
And however useful it might be for the rest of the population, that means no bus service.
But such a thing may be very expensive, or fall outside TfL's plans for some other reason.
I'm not sure if the buses used for the dial a bus thing (not the remaining 9xx mobility routes) would be OK for the width restriction, I also wonder if the lack of an emergency exit would be an issue, if you notice on single deck buses the emergency door has been moved to where the wheelchair area is, instead of being at the back of the bus.
So it may be that a bus for the Rotherhithe Tunnel that is fully accessible and narrow enough for the width restriction doesn't exist unless you spend a disproportionate amount of money.
• An old lady refused to believe the bus was going to Tesco because "the 108 goes there".
• The correct answer to the question "Are you going to Bow Church?" turns out to be "Yes, and no".
• A man tried to buy "a single to Poplar" with cash. The driver sent him away to buy an Oyster card.
• A confused man got off at Bow Church to try to work out where to go next, and consulted the 108/D8 timetables at the bus stop, except they were both wrong.
• A single decker would (easily) have sufficed.
Didn't LB Tower Hamlets fund a minibus service for a while that was restricted to residents? I think that died the death due to lack of use. I think we can safely conclude the Rotherhithe Tunnel will remain without a bus service for a very long time.
(It takes the fixture list from the club's website and removes the away ones)
Indeed he may have ingested so much sausage roll in his life that his very body mass consisted of sausage roll and it excreted through his sweat glands.
I am unaware as to whether a normal deodrant is sufficient to mask 100% sausage roll odour, though.
I didn't get that at all! There was still room for his estimation of Lewisham to be lowered. I have no such sub-basement in my appraisal of the place.
They unveiled a new traffic management system a few weeks back which has been a disaster and so today they are busy frantically altering it -- causing more misery.
The cost must have been immense. Anyone got an idea on how people can found out what is happening?
Newham got rid of the bus lanes pre-2012, pretending it was a lane marking scheme. They then blame the CSH for them not being there.
Past Marshgate Lane there's at least dual carriageway, in which one lane in each direction could be a bus lane.
Apparently the Mayor of Newham personally asked for bus lanes to be got rid of bus lanes across the borough cos its slows his car drive.
Man of the people, eh.
Congestion kills buses.
The government won't do anything about it.
Re the Rotherhithe Tunnel, it is possible to get a DDA compliant bus down there, as the 2002-registered Mercedes-Benz Sprinters used on the 395 service were DDA compliant (indeed - any public service vehicle build after 2001 legally has to be).
If anything, the 108 is the route that requires the larger buses. Even before the swap, trying to board a southbound bus at Bow Church was a lottery as to just how packed they'd be, even off peak.
And the removal of the bus lane from Stratford High Street, coupled with the moving of Stratford into zones 2/3, has now meant that (with my 1-2 travelcard) it's significantly more attractive to take the DLR from Bow to Stratford these days, rather than joining the Westfield queue.
@ Chris - I deliberately avoided Lewisham during the main reconstruction phase for the new road layout. I've been back once since it was finished and wasn't impressed. How the locals cope with this ridiculous mess I don't know. It wasn't great in the past with the roundabout but it's vastly worse now.
I posted this comment a few days ago based upon my own experience with only a small section of the round trip - but it was the same day I imagine when the match was on. Getting to Canary Wharf in the opposite direction is also still hopeless....
Help!
David Fielding
OCTOBER 6, 2016 AT 12:17 AM
Message to Tfl and FCARA
The change of routes 108 and D8 has not proved a success
Journey times have increased by up to 40 minutes and changes are hazardous and cumbersome, especially when travelling with luggage, children, prams buggies etc
The approach to Stratford Westfield and Stratford international on the 108 is considerably slower than the route used by the D8 adding a further 15 minutes, or more, on to the journey time, and the outbound journey from Fawe Street to Canary Wharf, which used to take around 17 to 30 minutes on the D8, is now taking more than 40 to 50 minutes changing from the 108 to the D8 at All Saints.
In terms of the sections of the routes described above this revision cannot be seen as an improvement. Mobility and access have been downgraded.
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