There appears to be literaly nothing Boris won’t claim as part of his committment to ‘smoothing traffic flow‘ – new Routemasters, putting in traffic lights, pulling out traffic lights, keeping gyratories and of course removing gyratories. It’s like the Hokey Cokey on asphalt:
The latest project to smooth traffic flow in the Capital will go live next weekend, when the gyratory system in Brixton town centre will be removed to convert Brixton Hill from a one-way to a two-way traffic system.
Now people using Brixton Hill will be able to drive in both directions on Brixton Hill for the first time in decades.
Now, obviously this is very welcome, gyratories are the classic example of bad road engineering prioritising speeding the motorist over aesthetics and pedestrian comfort and are also extremely disliked by cyclists, but really, claiming as part of your ’smoothing traffic flow’ initiatives things like…
…pavements in the town centre widened, the installation of a signalised pedestrian crossing and improvements to bus lanes in the area.
does rather beg the question as to where the note of consistency is to be found. As Kulveer Ranger says:
‘Brixton gyratory was an unpleasant relic of the past and going back to two-way is simple common sense. It should greatly smooth the flow of traffic through the area as well as improving public space.’
or as he previously said:
The mayor’s decision not to proceed with the old administration’s plans for Parliament Square was a bold victory for common sense.
Kulveer’s special common sense there, stretchy like a piece of good elastic and about as reliable. Gyratories were *put in* to speed traffic flow, so removing them will do what, precisely?
Of course, the Brixton scheme isn’t a Boris scheme, he’s just claiming it, as usual. Claiming it while simultaneously advocating the opposite policy elsewhere is also hardly new, but this is a late-era Ken project and the well of those will run dry soon enough, and then what will Guto Harri claim? HIV cure? World peace? Saving British Airways from bankruptcy? We await developments.
Meanwhile, yesterday’s Surface Transport Panel meeting considered this highly revealing paper which confirms that TfL is attempting to increase the capacity of roads for motor traffic at the expense of pedestrians by cutting the green man time markedly (to the DfT minimum of 6 seconds, in fact). This bit was particularly good:
‘Smoothing traffic flow may cause pedestrians to feel unsafe’
What they mean, of course, is ’speeding up traffic, encouraging people to drive faster and reducing the safe time for crossing the road may cause pedestrians to feel unsafe’. Well, like, durr, brainy TfL people. More on ’smoothing’ here in Item 11.
Tags: 8 Comments
8 responses so far ↓
Of course you can smooth traffic flow by setting the lights to all go green if you drive at say 20mph. This keeps things flowing and might cut down on the race of motorbikes/cars/vans/buses trying to beat the next light going red.
Also most decent cyclists would benifit from this as there would be less stopping and starting for them (as well as reduced speed for the other traffic).
Tim,
I agree completely, I believe Sweden has adopted a policy of removing traffic lights – it may sound dangerous but it’s actually safer and more efficient.
This can be seen whenever the traffic lights at the bottom of Ludgate Hill fail ( which is quite often) – there is a lot less traffic queueing and the motorists are much more cautious.
There is a phrase used by forward looking traffic management – “If you treat motorists like idiots then they will act like idiots”
The use of the kerb and other ‘lane guidance’ to seperate motorists from non-motorists is a huge part of the problem. If you remove these lines of ‘territory’ you find that everyone has to share – which is better for all road users.
Unfortunately there isn’t a politician in the country who has such a forward thinking brain. Tinkering with the existing traffic lights is making no difference to the roads.
“I agree completely, I believe Sweden has adopted a policy of removing traffic lights – it may sound dangerous but it’s actually safer and more efficient.”
Sweden’s got only a million more people living in it than London has, in a much larger land area – a lot of the ’shared space’ ideas are perfectly valid in small towns or *areas from which cars have been actively discouraged* but totally useless around, say, Hammersmith Gyratory or anywhere where the volume of traffic will discourage all but the brave, mad or suicidal from mixing it. It’s the combination of ripping out traffic lights while doing nothing to discourage drivers (in fact, actively encouraging them by promising more reliable/faster journey times and scrapping the WEZ) that’s the error in the policy.
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“Of course you can smooth traffic flow by setting the lights to all go green if you drive at say 20mph.”
…
Uncanny. See next post for Kulveer’s follow up bit of overclaiming.
I like shared space, but as Tom says it works best in central areas and some residential roads.
But where there have to be lights, I can’t believe we haven’t already got green waves set up. The idea has been around for ages and was talked about at the election. Its not that expensive (just some re-programming).
There are some lights that actively encourage speeding as youcan make the next green, but only if you set off like your in a Moto GP race.
That was a bit uncanny about the Camden story.
The new road layout just south of Brixton was first proposed 10 years ago by Lambeth Cyclists. Their proposal aimed to do something about a junction where there is no alternative route for cyclists but which presents serious problems of danger, congestion, pollution and stress. If cycling was to become more common the problems of junctions like this would need to be addressed. It would also improve the Brixton town centre environment by creating a larger open space at the south end of the town centre.
Boris inherited this scheme from Ken. Boris’ announcement seems to play down the original objective of the scheme, even though Boris tries to pose as the cyclists’ friend.
If you look at the papers to the TfL surface transport panel, you will see that the logic about removing the Brixton gyratory is:
- make conditions better for pedestrians and cyclists
- thus encourage walking and cycling
- thus reduce the number of motor vehicles
- thus smooth the traffic flow.
This was, of course, a Ken-era scheme and I wonder whether Kulveer “no heirarchy of modes” Ranger agrees with this logic. If you look carefully at the papers to the Panel you will see that the projects to smooth traffic flow are highly diverse: some try to reduce traffic, some try to speed up traffic (and thus probably encourage more traffic). It’s a nice phrase that actually ducks the key question about whether you give priority to motorised or non-motorised modes of travel.
“I can’t believe we haven’t already got green waves set up”
It was rumoured back in the early 90s when I lived in the area that the A34 through Burnage in Manchester had the lights green if you stuck to 40 mph. The problem comes in congested inner city areas where there isn’t a simple single through route – my mathematical intuition tells me there probably isn’t an optimal solution and that it won’t take much deviation from optimim to render the idea mostly useless.
BTW the traffic light paper from Colin Buchanan is well worth a read. I’ll blog something when I’ve read it all.
Gothenburg, Sweden’s second city, has plenty of traffic lights. The cobbled streets and square with City Hall in the old part of the city are “shared space” but that’s a very small part of the whole city. Extensive and well-signed cycle networks predominate. The housing in the suburbs is mainly low-rise developments with large cycle parks and car parks that are much smaller than those which would accompany similar-sized developments in the UK. Everybody uses the trams (and articulated buses).
The Universeum, a purpose-built science discovery centre, has a section on road safety, with hands-on activities such as a huge juggernaut with simulator: http://www.universeum.se/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=50&Itemid=54
Stora Holms Traffic Training, which trains 14,000 drivers each year, has sponsored some of the Universeum displays: http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=sv&u=http://www.storaholm.com/&ei=fOMHS9THMcOK4QaX09TQCw&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAwQ7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dstora%2Bholms%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG
One of the Universeum display’s road safety displays is a 30kph sign with a picture of a child and an information board reading: “KILLING SPEED – 400 to 500 people die every year on Swedish roads. It is speed that kills. Do you really want to drive at killing speed? Do you want to live a happy life? Do you want to save someone’s life? Maybe your own. A lot has been said about the Goteborg [Gothenburg] miracle reversing the trend of many serious injuries and deaths on the roads. One solution is speed bumps, which is actually a Stone Age solution, but a key to life and happiness. “