bus lanes and westminster council
Discussion
Entertaining fight clearly going on between Ken "Dastardly" Livingstone and Westminster Council.
I thought I''d try my luck complaining about the ludicrous new 24hr bus lanes on Marylebone Rd & clearly I''m not the only one with doubts:
I wrote to their traffic planners:
>>>>I see that additional bus lanes are about to be
opened on Marylebone Rd (the lines have been painted
and covered signs are visible).
However, I am concerned to see, from the part of the
signs that are visible, that these bus lanes are to be
active 24-hours per day, 7 days per week. I am aware
that a number of similar restrictions exist elsewhere
in London.
I can see very little justification for 24-hour bus
lanes on the grounds of aiding bus traffic, especially
in this instance. I regularly drive along Marylebone
Road at 6.30am - traffic uses all 3 lanes but does not
queue in such a fashion as to impede bus speeds in any
way. The same is true at most times over the weekends
and in the late evenings.
I can only think of the following possible reasons for
24-hour bus lanes:
- you anticipate much heavier traffic off-peak along
this (border) road in the future when the "congestion
charging" regime comes into play & are getting the bus
lanes in ahead of time. If you have such data you
should publicise it, as it is important to the debate
surrounding the plan''s introduction.
- it is a rather cynical piece of traffic engineering
intended to increase off-peak queues in the other two
lanes and thereby "encourage" (i.e. force) greater use
of public transport
- you have not conducted the appropriate survey work
to ascertain which times of the day the bus lane would
actually aid bus traffic, and are just using the
brute-force expedient of a 24-hour lane instead
- you save a small amount of money on your
sign-writing budget by painting "At any time" rather
than "7am-7pm Mon-Sat"
I find none of these possible explanations
satisfactory. I would be interested in Westminster
Council''s justification of this timing, and also what
forum I could use to suggest a re-think if it is
appropriate.
I got this reply:
>>>Thank you for your email. Marylebone Road forms part of the Mayor''s
road
network, for which his executive arm Transport for London are
responsible.
By copy of this email to Mr. XXXXX of TfL Street Management I am
asking
him to respond to you direct. I would say that officers of the City
Council
are also a little sceptical about the extent, hours of operation and
justification for the bus lanes on Marylebone Road.
Will be interesting to see if TfL have a reasonable explanation!
you should mail this/speak to someone on the news desk of the evening standard--they love this type of story, especilly in Aug when there is little news and will probably be able to get a lot of mileage from it--someone did a similar thing when some speed bumps mysteriously appeared and dissappeared near my home in Maida Vale and it made the front page...
have fun. I am sure that there is also a responsibility for TFL to consult over such schemes with their 'stakeholders' (ie you as a users, the bus companies, the council etc) as part of the government's best value programme, which was brought in to ensure that decisions were not steamrolled upon citizens by local government despots.
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