Crayford High Street
Bus Lane Crusade: Local authorities idiotic and unrealistic bus lane crusade has caused serious problems in many places up and down the country, as they disproportionately designate half the road resource exclusively to a very small percentage of traffic in the form of buses. Consequently, the nation's workforce often sits in traffic, coughing out fumes and compounding pollution, while half the road is not being used, except by the occasional bus that is! This is a wholly inapproriate waste of public money and an abuse of position to inconvenience the nation's workforce! Crayford High Street is one such instance where the travelling public were made to put up with the ill-effects of this for many years.
Deaf Ears! One of three main routes south from London through Dartford, Bexley Council cut the two lane approach down Crayford Hill to a single lane, to implement a nonsensical and hardly used bus lane. Congestion tailback doubled, extending right up the hill. They also, at the same time decided to stop vehicles from turning left into Crayford Way. Instead, they made motorists go all the way around the one-way system, having to potentially stop at four additional sets of traffic lights and travel a third of a mile out of their way. Talk about waste people's time. Needless to say, we wrote to complain, pointing out the defects of this ridiculous and inept scheme and making a few other points as well. Notably, it fell on deaf ears. No change there then!
Letter To Bexley Council Complaining About The Implementation Of This Scheme
REQUEST FOR THE RESTORATION OF A TWO LANE APPROACH TO THE
CRAYFORD ONE WAY SYSTEM AT THE BOTTOM OF CRAYFORD HIGH STREET
02/10/02
Dear Mr Morley,
We are writing to request that the junction at the bottom of Crayford High Street, that is the hill, be restored to a two-lane approach so as to double its efficiency. This will then halve the processing time of traffic travelling onto the one-way system and so halve the tail back up the hill. It is not a good thing that half the road is currently designated to a bus lane that is rarely used and patently obvious that this is not an efficient use of the available resource. This bottleneck causes a considerable number of problems for people and a high degree of unnecessary congestion. Consequently, we would like to see the bus lane removed and the road restored to a dual-lane approach.
The route down the hill is one of two main routes between Erith and Dartford, Thames Road being the other one. Both routes have been made less efficient in recent years through the implementation of schemes with notably higher congestion factors, and which presumably therefore, are not the best solutions on offer. Problems manifested on one route compound problems on the other. Halving the capacity of traffic through Crayford forces more traffic to use Thames Road. If there is ever a problem on Thames Road, the situation around here reaches crisis point. Restoring the two-lane approach will greatly help reduce the overall congestion of traffic trying to move in that direction.
As well as restoring the dual-lane approach we would also like to see the turning into Crayford Way from the route down Crayford Hill, restored to a left turn, so that motorists coming down the hill do not have to drive around the one-way system to access Crayford Way. Diversions like this are not popular and are an inconvenient waste of people's time and money. Expediting traffic flow is a key point in reducing congestion and it should be considered crucial that junctions and road schemes seen to be operating at less than their potential, be improved in their efficiency.
In the interests of achieving this we would like to see the eradication of all bottlenecks and schemes that currently route people out of their way, more roundabouts and driver initiative schemes with independent pedestrian crossing, as opposed to the less efficient traffic lighting, with integrated pedestrian crossing. Modified independent pedestrian crossings or Zebra crossings, that do not force vehicles to stop when no one is crossing, or waiting to cross, and an eradication of bus lanes in favour of getting all the traffic moving. Bus lanes represent an inefficient and disproportionate designation of road resource. The number of vehicles on the road is growing all the time and there are three things that we can do in order to preserve the ability of people to go about their business as efficiently as possible. One is to reduce the need to travel by making sure that people have what they need locally. Two is to not over populate any given area by cramming too many people into it. The last is to make sure that we elect the most efficient traffic schemes and systems on offer. This, sadly, cannot be seen to be the case at the moment.
Inefficient traffic schemes also contribute unnecessarily to the level of pollution and the growing number of pollution related illnesses that people have to suffer. In fact, it is very evident that many of the policies and types of scheme being implemented are contributing to the level of congestion and pollution. Looking towards the future, we feel that this has got to change and we would like to see a redirection of the types of initiative currently being employed towards opting for schemes that are more efficient and more practical for people living in the area and the travelling public alike.
Yours faithfully,
DJ.Tarrant
Completely Ignored! We didn't receive a reply to the above letter, which was completely ignored, along with the points made. It would be hard to see how the council could justify their idiocy and incompetence in writing, which is probably why they never bothered. The travelling public had to put up with all the inconvenience of this inept scheme for many years before the council did eventually acknowledge the lunacy of what it had done and restored the two-lane approach. They also restored the left turn into Crayford Way rather than making people go all the way around the one-way system. How much time, money, inconvenience, congestion and additional pollution could have been saved if Bexley Council had just left it as it was in the first place. This scheme is only one of many that have made our roads less efficient, compounding all the related problems. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money spent on making things worse!
The Cost To Society? Our roads and infrastructure should not be used as a playground experiment for people who clearly do not understand the ramifications of what they are doing, as they fritter away inordinate amounts of public money to the absolute detriment of society, as they ruin the efficiency of our roads. If you are going to spend money, spend it on improving things, not making matters worse. People who do not know what they are doing should not be doing the job! What did this ridiculous and inept error of judgment cost? Lots of money! Considerable wasted time. Additional pollution. Considerable frustration. Who came up with this ridiculous idea? Faceless individuals who are never held accountable for their stupidity, or for the abuse of the public and public funds alike. It's about time these people that abuse their position, abuse the public and public money were answerable and held accountable. They would be in any other job for sure!