They have now finished the roadworks in the town centre and have turned the traffic lights back on.
The result? It's all snarled up again*.
*The author has no great personal interest in this, as he does not drive a car (altho' he does take the 'bus or a mini-cab sometimes, which are of course also affected) and further, the traffic is no longer diverted across the end of our road (which has been pedestrianised again), making my kid's life that little bit safer. I'm just saying, that's all.
Friday, 14 September 2007
Traffic lights (2)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
15 comments:
Ever since they built the A12 Leytonstone has had traffic problems, but even before that it had traffic problems
All of London has 'traffic problems'. Leytonstone was a bit jammed, just like anywhere else before the A12 was opened, which in itself made bugger all difference.
But the council has deliberately made life even more difficult with this ridiculous system of making traffice on the high road crossing over itself twice, it is just spiteful, if has got far far worse since they did that.
We had an unpleasant experience with traffic lights.
Due to a ginormous hole in the road on a junction, they were obliged to put up traffic lights to squeeze everyone round the cavernous workings.
The traffic down our way is very dependent on time of day; at rush hours you can't move, otherwise you could hold a street party and not get run over.
So the lights worked perfectly for the short period they were needed, but otherwise they were a complete pain, especially - and I say this with great resentment - when idiots with boom boxes got caught on the red lights and treated us to an ear-splitting selection of their worstest hits.
The additional braking, gear changing and the occasional surprise shunt when people got confused, as they do, in traffic queues, taught us all the value of traffic which moves smoothly at a reasonably brisk pace to where ever it bloody well needs to get to, and is not obliged to take a temporary holiday outside our door.
A few weeks later, the Council came round with a jolly plan to install lights permanently to smooth/calm/control the traffic at the junction, which is currently done by the expedient of looking where you are going and not banging in to people.
The council were pelted with rotten eggs and told not to make things any worse than they already are, which is unfortunately what many traffic schemes do.
My only reservation is that the two serious accidents I have seen on that junction both involve cyclists who, obviously, are going to come off worst if traffic pulls out without seeing them. My sympathy in this respect is moderated because the junction is on slight hill and the cyclists involved have both been coming down it at speeds which a push bike was never intended to handle outside of an organized race.
This annoys me, because the cars approaching the junction are able to brake in respect of pedestrians and the lack of smoothing means the traffic is 'lumpy' i.e. creates nice large gaps in the flow in which it is safe to cross. But cyclists go absolutely frantic if they see a pedestrian anywhere on the road as they are utterly focused on the downward swoop and can't stop safely.
Gosh this is boring. Is it what you wanted by way of response?
WOAR, yes, I bumped into somebody last year whose 'thing' is traffic lights, he raged eloquently for five minutes and he had me totally convinced.
So I am just wondering whether other people have noticed the same thing. As you clearly have.
Part II
Later, the engineers came round and fiddled with the kerbs on the four-way junction. I couldn't see why they moved the pavement out two feet, covering up the existing cycle lane which had been put in place barely 5 years earlier.
I rang the highways department and found out a couple of interesting things.
They didn't need formal council clearance so long as they kept each job below the 'floor limit', which varies from council to council. This is intended to let them do repairs without getting a formal clearance each time split tarmac needs re-filling. So it was no good whinging at my councillor, they hadn't been asked and the highways department didn't need their permission.
I never did work out if this meant that each of the four corners had been charged as a separate job, or if the entirety had been fiddled to fit within the budget which was suspiciously left over at the end of the season.
My assertion is that the work was never needed at all, and except for slowing up traffic clearing from one point, the net effect was either nothing or a little worse. In particular, I can't see why edges have to be minutely re-aligned when the old slightly woggly ones worked perfectly well.
In addition, the cyclists were supposed to be funnelled up the hill on a different route now. Needless to say, the cyclists ignored this as they didn't fancy a detour which meant getting off, complying with a tow-path walk and hacking up through an ornamentally wiggly path through the park, which would take them ten minutes extra to reach where they would be anyway and not save them one jot of effort.
It's my belief that the whole thing was just a job creation scheme for a well-known civil engineering firm, who, co-incidentally, had offered the first elaborate set of four-way traffic lights.
The ones we told them to shove in part I.
Tip: look at the name of the engineers on any proposal scheme and then see who gets to do the digging.
Tip: look at the name of the engineers on any proposal scheme and then see who gets to do the digging
You've lost me now. Does 'engineers' mean like the architects?
Didn't finish that question, all this stuff it totally corrupt, the builders get themselves as councillors and shovel our money to and fro, but do you have any tasty stories on that?
Quite the reverse, actually. When it comes to elected councillors their weakness is not money but vanity.
If you consider that becoming a councillor takes a certain amount of foot-slogging and is not that joyful a job, you can see it tends to attract the worthy person. I have met one who I thought crossed the line in to 'power mad' but even he wasn't corrupt, just manically determined that we should all live according to his precepts.
Typically the councillor walks down the road and looks for approval from the citizenry and responds to pleas to 'do something about IT'.
The councillor goes back and kicks the waste disposal/traffic/housing etc officials, who are salaried and have sat out bigger fish than the present councillor and know a thing or two about long grass. In their defence, they also know a thing or two about doing nothing because anything you will do will make things worse.
In to this pops a civil engineering firm, who just happen do be doing a a few road repairs. Someone like WS Atkins, purely for example.
"Have you thought about a traffic calming scheme?" they say innocently, handing over an artists' impression of the Councillor Jobsworth Square, populated by happy and thankful members of the electorate. The square will be smothered in block paving, fiddly iron work, cobble zones with speed cushions and probably have giant one-off art sundial. The drawing will have their name at the bottom.
"It could make your borough a boom area and deliver ecological compliance standards. You'd be in all the local government magazines. You might get on telly."
Ker-Ching. The local officer has found a way to get the councillor off his back. The councillor floats away on bubbly visions of popular acclaim where he rides through the open square in a chariot drawn by white horses with a nubile nymphet holding a laurel wreath above his head.
Sadly, this does not come to pass. The town square design is rejected as soon as the electorate get a whiff of the £12m scheme which suddenly includes some suspiciously new offices for the council officers.
"Ah well", say the civil engineering firm, "It was only a drawing after all. It only took us three days and we cried tears of creative blood over it. Why don't you let us tidy up some of the corners of your roads. We'll pop back at the end of the year, see if you've got any budget left over, like."
Then, partly because the local officers feel guilty and partly because you can't carry budget over so there is no incentive to be a frugal McDougal, the civil engineering firm picks up the contingency budgets at the end of the year and looks for little bits and pieces to patch up, whether they are needed or not.
That is how I think it works.
The only partially-substantiated allegation I had of corruption was against local authority planning officials rather than elected councillors. There have been persistent claims that supermarkets can and do bung for cooperation. In the end I discounted these; the supermarkets simply don't need to do it that way. It's not the money which matters - they aren't short of that if they wanted to do bribery - it's just that by and large that is not the motivation of local authority workers.
I did once think I might have found someone taking a back-hander when they were caught out in a lie about procedure, but that was not even the planning department but a subdivision of council lettings.
Even there, I eventually decided that what was massaged was the twerp's ego more than his wallet. He let some tenants do something without planning permission because he just felt big 'n gorgeous for exercising his prerogative. The reason I think he wasn't on the take was because when I sufficiently threatened him, he squeaked out the truth of the procedure he had manipulated, plus I happened to know the tenants were as tight as crab's wotsit, so any bribe he took couldn't have exceeded £50 because the would never pay more than that and were the kind of gangsters who offer small bribes or big injuries as negotiating strategies.
However, my mum over in Redbridge had an interesting tussle regarding trees. The council had the idea of 'greening' the borough and proposed planting trees all over the pavements, for which the householder would pay half of the cost, specfically for the tree outside their house. It was presented as more or less compulsory.
Many people either liked the idea or didn't think they could refuse, but Mum has a thing about trees. Never mind David Attenborough, she says trees are untidy, always full of birds and dropping their leaves where old ladies can slip on them.
She refused to have one and pa threatened to back a van over the sapling if it was planted by force. Mum started asking who was supplying the trees and for the names of the directors and any connection they might have with the council.
Now, I don't know if it was connected with her enquiry, but suddenly there was no compulsory tree outside her house and the subject was mysteriously dropped.
Wow, that is the best comment I have had so far, it'd do for a proper post!
The strangest thing about the trees is this:
The householders thought they were getting a bargain by only paying half the cost. Some people like trees, and good luck to them.
But where, exactly did the other half of the money come from if not from their council tax, income tax or some other re-funnelled tax? The tree planting scheme didn't have any money of its own.
Precisely. It was like the Tsunami thing, The Goblin King said, for every £1 you donate, the Government will donate other £1. The cheek of it!
'another' not 'other'
I wish woman on a raft would start a blog....
I've forgotten what I came on this post to say now...
Oh yes - just envious of folk who can survive without a car. With all the out of town supermarkets, the closure of local hospitals, the closure of village post Offices etc those of us who live out in the sticks are unable to manage without cars.. No wonder they say it cost £60 (can't remember exact figure) per week extra to live in the country - I can well believe it..
Oh yes - just envious of folk who can survive without a car
It's all a trade off, isn't it, between living in the coutnryside (where you need a car) and living in Outer London (where you don't).
Post a Comment