please empty your brain below
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I gave up owning a car 12 years ago. I use public transport or my electric bicycle to get around. However I do not like to see roads closed. Nor am I anti car, just car overuse.
I think motorists should be discouraged from using their cars by paying for road use by the mile. This would be a low charge for electric vehicles and very high for the most polluting vehicles.
Personal ownership of cars should be discouraged (might get some front gardens back to flowers again) and car clubs or car sharing become the norm.
John | 15.07.19 - 7:16 a.m. | #
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It risks turning the area into a bunker where residents are forced miles out of their way just to leave or enter.
Andrew Jarman | 15.07.19 - 7:16 a.m. | #
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A bus gate doesn't have to be resource-heavy - the one on Orford Road in Walthamstow is enforced by a CCTV camera. Cars can drive down if they like, but also get a £60 fine dropping on their doormat for the privilege.
martin | 15.07.19 - 8:12 a.m. | #
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Andrew: you mean if they want to leave in their own car. A large chunk (I think it's a third) of private car journeys in London are just a mile or two - by making these less convenient, it encourages people to make them by other (greener and safer) means.
martin | 15.07.19 - 8:15 a.m. | #
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What a shame! The first day of the Orford Road pilot in Walthamstow three years ago was also chaos. Of course it was: it was the first day of a major change. But the pilot ran its course, the council learned from it and it is now a very successful scheme overall.
Thomas | 15.07.19 - 8:19 a.m. | #
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I may be seriously thick but how on earth can a project like this be expected to work on day 1 if only locals have been advised. One does not have to be Einstein to realise that regular out of area users will be totally confused. DG's description of muddled signage and dithering drivers stopping on roundabouts only emphasises the stupidity of so-called highways experts that work for local councils. I can assure readers that Tower Hamlets does not have a monopoly of such people.
J. | 15.07.19 - 8:32 a.m. | #
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I'm not sure why they put "Bus Gate" on the sign rather than the far more common and understandable "Buses Only". There's already a road sign for that. No confusion there.
Scott | Homepage | 15.07.19 - 8:38 a.m. | #
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Someone at Anthill Road took matters in their own hands (image: https://imgur.com/zihT1jv,) (Reddit comments thread: here)
Jamesthegill | 15.07.19 - 9:38 a.m. | #
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Anything which can reduce the rat-run of traffic in a residential area is to be applauded. The general increase in traffic has made many side roads a lot busier. Wherever there’s an alternative way for drivers to save a few seconds, it will get used as an alternative.
I know of a main road that has a parallel single lane access road in front of a parade of shops (about 250 yards long). In rush hours, when the main road traffic is at a crawl, drivers will often leave the main road, go along the parade, and then try and force their way back into the main stream. It probably saves them about a minute, less if other drivers won’t let them in.
The first few days of any changes are always going to be a problem until people get used to them, however good the planning. Obviously, good planning helps! I wonder how late the signage was put up. How far in advance was the signage from the boundary of the trial, thus giving drivers sufficient warning? (not that it would probably make much difference anyway)
I wonder how many of the protesters / complainers were people who actually lived in the area and who would (presumably) benefit from the changes in the long term
Rogmi | 15.07.19 - 9:57 a.m. | #
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Some bus gates are enforced by having a raised section in the centre of the road. Cars trying to go over this are likely to suffer considerable damage but buses are high enough to pass over safely.
Martin | 15.07.19 - 10:01 a.m. | #
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Rogmi: Having a shopping parade lane as a short cut is easily fixed. Reverse the direction of the traffic... ;-)
John: Cars already pay by the mile: It's called Fuel Duty...
Martin: Low floor buses don't do so well either...
Southern Heights (Light Railway) | 15.07.19 - 10:17 a.m. | #
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There are various mechanical means of implementing buses-only, but they are impractical for a trial. Even cameras, though they could be temporary and removable, would cause great resentment initially. People in yellow jackets is the only way, though costly.
"Buses only" also needs to be clarified. Sometimes it excludes private hire or out-of-service buses, and sometimes it does not.
Malcolm | 15.07.19 - 10:17 a.m. | #
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There's an automatic barrier on the 265 route by South Lane in Malden Manor. Bus drivers have to swipe some sort of card and the gate opens. Obviously they wouldn't install this for a trial but they should've kept the manual one going and seen if in the long run it would've been worth installing one.
We can't get rid of cars completely but I wonder how many of the rejected drivers were making a journey easy to make by public transport.
Ethan | 15.07.19 - 10:25 a.m. | #
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I think we're getting one of these pilots in Wapping - the bus gate rings a bell. May well work here as Wapping is known as a rat-run for traffic from The Highway, including coaches and boy racers high on NO2.
E1W-er | 15.07.19 - 11:20 a.m. | #
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There have actually been lots of signs up for over a week at all of the junctions which lead to the roads that were affected, additionally overhead gantry and illuminated roadside message boards on the A12 and other roads have also been displaying a message warning of the closures for at least 7 days prior to the start of the trial along with "Public Notices" in the local press, leaflets were also put through some local residents doors although despite the fact that I live about 200 metres from the bus gate closure I never received one, the closures would have meant I would have been obliged to take a lengthy detour to drop my disabled relatives at Mile End station but I think that scrapping the scheme after less than 12 hours in operation has done more harm than good.
fishislandskin | 15.07.19 - 11:41 a.m. | #
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Agreed - lots of signs were positioned on various approach roads well ahead of time.
(but the first sign merely directed traffic away from one road closure towards another, and the second sign should have said A12 instead of A11)
diamond geezer | Homepage | 15.07.19 - 11:47 a.m. | #
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@fishislandskin / DG So absolutely no excuse for drivers not knowing about it. Even if they didn't know in advance, abundant signage on the day tells drivers of changes ahead, giving them time alter their route - exactly the same as for roadworks closure / diversion. This is especially so for drivers passing through the zone.
dg writes: Had the abundant signage been helpful and correct, you might be right. It wasn't.
Rogmi | 15.07.19 - 11:57 a.m. | #
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Having used that rat run to get to the A12 it's probably time it was shut off. Sounds like they made a complete mess of it.
Mark | 15.07.19 - 1:16 p.m. | #
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the "bus gate" was actually a flimsy expanding bit of mesh that a bloke dragged back and forth across the road each time a bus needed to get through
part of the problem with such a flimsy barrier is that it encourages people to think think it can be beaten. if you're faced by an insurmountable obstacle, you don't waste time and energy trying to overcome it, you go around it. if you're faced by a pathetic bit of wire mesh, you start complaining and trying to work out how to go through it !
ADS | Homepage | 15.07.19 - 1:21 p.m. | #
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Considering DG being an ardent public transport advocate, a fitting local, as well as the fact that he found the scheme's extremely flawed implementation, it is safe to assume that while the scheme itself is good, the ones who made it happen are highly incompetent, and the protests we see are probably not motorist propaganda (as some commentators to the Mayor believe).
Patrickov | 15.07.19 - 1:22 p.m. | #
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Drive, walk or cycle around Tredegar Square and surrounding roads in this part of E3 and it’s a joy because of historic filtering. Residents own and park cars but there aren’t any jams and no boy racers because there aren’t any rat runs.
Sad that MayorJohnBiggs doesn’t want to extend this benefit to other parts of our neighbourhood. Instead he’s more interested in keeping the taxi lobby happy than us residents. So much for being one the borough with one of the lowest car ownership.
E3 resident | 15.07.19 - 1:29 p.m. | #
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As a local resident. we got a leaflet about the changes a week or so in advance. On first read I found the Tredegar Road bus gate alarming, as it seemed very poorly thought-through. For those not familiar with the neighbourhood, that road is basically the main access to the A12 for the entire area, and with the railway slicing through between there and Bow Road there are very few crossing points to get to Bow Road, and thus the alternative access.
Of course when you went to the link to feed back on the proposals, the survey didn't open until the 13th itself, by which point, as DG reported, it was far too late.
Moogal | 15.07.19 - 2:09 p.m. | #
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Why do people keep calling streets that people use to get from place to place such an insulting term as 'rat runs'. Blocking these 'short cuts' surely concentrates more traffic on the fewer roads that remain open, creating more demand to close more streets. I'd have thought the more routes we can choose from to get about, the better.
It could be that satnavs have turned many handy back ways that were once only used by a few people with local knowledge, into routes now readily available to everyone. Maybe, rather than physically block the roads, the answer is for the the satnav companies not to offer these as through routes.
ActonMan | 15.07.19 - 3:45 p.m. | #
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Somebody forgot to tell google maps that the trial was cancelled - still showing two closures at 16:20
Rogmi | 15.07.19 - 4:25 p.m. | #
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People use satnav exactly for these rat-runs in case the traffic goes wrong somewhere (say, a collision occurs).
Patrickov | 15.07.19 - 4:33 p.m. | #
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ActonMan - look up traffic evaporation. If you reduce road capacity, some trips are displaced elsewhere, but others just don't happen by car anymore: people find other ways to make their journey.
martin | 15.07.19 - 5:50 p.m. | #
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One of the strange paradoxes of networks is that adding additional links can increase travel time. And that is without considering induced demand.
Some city centre routes in Cambridge had automatic rising bollards for the last 20 years or so, to allow buses in but keep out cars. Inevitably from time to time some car drivers (typically visitors unused to the barrier) tried to tailgate a bus to sneak through but got rather expensively stuck when the bollard automatically rose up again under the car. I think they have recently moved away from physical barriers to invisible "bus gates", with fines for transgressors enforced by automatic number plate recognition cameras. The "bus gates" don't keep all of the cars out, but they are much cheaper for the council to run and a revenue stream to boot.
Andrew | 15.07.19 - 6:14 p.m. | #
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There were rat-runs long before there were satnavs. A satnav will always offer what seems (to the software and its data) to be the quickest route. As would the human brain, if asked.
To prevent a satnav from offering routes using a particular street, the street must actually be blocked in some way (legally or physically or both). Which is exactly what was supposed to happen here.
Malcolm | 15.07.19 - 6:18 p.m. | #
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The roads aren’t being closed. They’re being opened to the hundreds of other human and social interactions that cars prevent.
If we want a healthier, happier place where children can play outside we need to restrict cars.
Plan for cars you get traffic, pollution and danger. Plan for people and you get a community.
Theo | 15.07.19 - 6:31 p.m. | #
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As we discovered when a similar closure was enacted locally, people for whom it is a regular route don't read the signs because they know the way. It is they who get caught out when a change happens, and it takes a while to reprogramme the route in their brain. You get a similar phenomenon if you have to make a journey which involves part of your regular commute - and absentmindedly get off at your usual stop instead of the one you are actually going to today.
timbo | 15.07.19 - 10:49 p.m. | #
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The story continues, one year later!
RAVS | 03.07.20 - 7:35 p.m. | #
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