TC notes with interest that stalwart bus fan Jenny Jones has been “shocked” by Mayor Johnson’s plan to replace Bendy-buses with more double-deckers – and so much so that she has admitted that a bus every 2-3 minutes may be “too much of a good thing”. Jones goes on to explain that the plan to have even more busses trundling along London’s streets will “guarantee that we have more bus jams, more pollution and more frustrated drivers and passengers.” The remarks were made in connection with routes 521 and 507. There is however another reason for jams caused by buses, as TC found yesterday… The ubiquitous practice of sharpening the corners of road junctions to slow the speed of turning traffic does indeed succeed in doing just that. But when taken to extremes, which it frequently is in many UK towns and cities, it makes the task of driving a bus round a left hand bend such a difficult and slow manoeuvre that it can exceed the competence and patience of its driver. TC found a case to illustrate the problem yesterday in the capital. The cause of a huge jam on all roads leading to a major junction by Stockwell Tube station was a bus which had crashed into one such corner that has just been sharpened as part of an extensive and costly road junction ‘improvement’ scheme – sanctioned by the previous Mayor. TfL have denied that the configuration of the pavement has been changed or the corner sharpened. But evidence in the form of drawings of the junction prior to a series of ‘improvements’ have not yet been released. It is however clear that the corner in its current form after the ‘improvements’ were made was too sharp for one driver to negotiate without hitting the railings – and that making the corner less acute would have helped reduce the difficulty of manoeuvring buses round it. Fortunately the crash was at a nice ‘safe’ 2 mph and nobody was hurt despite the bus being impaled by its passenger doors on the lovely new and railings just put in place to make the junction work ‘better’.
There is however something else about this mess that is perhaps worth noting. The major junction ‘improvement’ not only disrupted traffic for months while under construction and has caused more traffic jams ever since, but the scheme was doubtless thoroughly approved of by the former Mayor’s Road Safety Ambassador and Green GLA Member Jenny Jones – as in theory it helped ‘prioritise‘ bus, bicycle and pedestrian use. TC now wonders whether the railings will be re-instated or the profile of the corner made less acute as it clearly could be (i.e. back behind the bin in the picture) and in a form where buses do not get jammed on it… Go here for extra pics of crash scene.These pics were all taken after the bus had been freed from the railings on the sharpened corner. The operation required action from by a complete fire fighting crew and several police officers.
