Absolute shit show traffic management

[Mito Man]

Anyone who knows King’s Road and the Wandsworth Bridge will know it’s been a traffic hotspot since forever, the bridge just doesn’t have sufficient capacity and ever since they shut Hammersmith bridge the traffic over Wandsworth must have almost doubled. Naturally cars end up using smaller residential streets to navigate as otherwise the traffic jam would probably stretch for 5 miles on the main road.

So the local council in their infinite wisdom decided to start placing road blocks across a few residential streets to conduct a survey, which resulted in traffic in these streets becoming close to nil (because no shit it’s feckin blocked...) but traffic increasing significantly on the main roads. It was pure hell during this survey pre-covid - it would take me 30 mins to pull out the street from my flat to the main road at 8pm whereas it used to take 5 mins.

So following this the cunts have come up with a genius new pioneering traffic scene (No less at a time when we’re being dissuaded from using public transport...) to basically block off every single side road and fine every single non resident that passes through. Fucking aids.
I can’t imagine how bad the main road will now get to the point where buses will also be unusable. Plus once other councils start doing this you might as well fucking ride a horse round London to get anywhere.

[Jobbo]

Birmingham stopped rat-running down side roads years ago by simply blocking them. So even residents were inconvenienced.

Seems an odd time to introduce this, when the effects on traffic of the increased congestion charge and other new restrictions haven’t yet had a non-COVID period to settle down and be measured.

[unzippy]

It's happening all over the place - my old 'hood are up in arms about it.

https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/1855 ... fic-rules/

[Simon]

Fun fact - my Mum grew up on that road, and my Granny lived in that house until the late 80's when she sold the place to an actor from the soap Crossroads (remember that?) and moved down to the coast. We sometimes used to drive up after school/work and visit and back then you could park practically right outside her house with no issues. Even in the late 90's when I went to do some IT work for one of the local churches parking and access wasn't a problem. Sounds like it's all gone to shit since.

Also other fun fact - my Mum's Grandfather was a doctor and was able to buy a few houses in that area at the same time. At one point he had almost every house in a close. Nowadays a doctor would barely be able to rent a room in one of the houses, let alone buy several of them. The houses were left to different people including my Gran which is how Mum ended up growing up there.

Sorry for thread hijack.

[Mito Man]

Well the council has outdone themselves in the stupidity department here.

That first paragraph is unfuckingbelieveable.

There is no rush hour at all, and how can the main roads be quieter now that all the smaller side roads are cut off?! Well there’s a fucking pandemic and almost every business in this area is closed

Edit - they also devised a simple app which you can register visitor cars or contractors by adding their reg plate for 24 hours. But it doesn’t fucking work, to register my Defender and I was on the phone for 50 minutes

[Jimexpl]

Unfortunately the initiative is being forced upon the Local Councils by the Mayor of London, and they're meant to show a successful result. All the Boroughs are suffering to varying levels. Southwark have closed the last four back street routes that I used to use to go West, all of which are mainly commercial on the ground floor.
Seemingly all of the Bus Lanes have gone from peak hours to 24/7 and can easily get you a fine when habit means that you use them.
I have an issue with TFL at the moment. Residents Discounts don't auto renew, and the Compact lapsed at the end of October, and because of an email change the first I knew about it was checking my card statements in January and seeing £1k going to them over 10 weeks, rather than about £40!
I've been on Residents Discount continuously since it began (2003?), but because it's lapsed by more than three months they won't let me renew, and won't do anything about the charges...

[Mito Man]

It’s getting fecking ridiculous, driving through a road in London now involves spending more time looking up in the sky for a tiny sign to make sure you won’t get fucked than actually looking at the road
Many of the main roads in central London are now single lane traffic too due to them widening the pavements for covid social distancing. Bet they’ll never return them to normal either. There’s more fucking people walking in tiny villages during the day than at rush hour in London...

[Nathan]

...There’s more fucking people walking in tiny villages during the day than at rush hour in London...

I've been watching walking tours of London on Youtube, definitely seems to be the case even out here

[Pete_]

I sold my car within a week of moving to London two years ago and honestly think I'd only have benefited from having one on three occasions since. Obviously you need one to travel back home, but I don't know why so many people need cars in London anyway.

[Mito Man]

Many Londoners are pretty sedentary which is a pretty crap way to live though - yes, everything is at your doorstep but how much are you missing out on because of that.
When the weathers good I go to Windsor, take the dog to Richmond, go to my favourite pub in Hampstead. You can take public transport but that’s most of your day wasted.
Proper food shopping without a car is a miserable experience, and no way to go to proper stores out of the city.

There’s also the whole disability/elderly considerations - with entire roads suddenly blocked off with bollards now such that even taxis can’t reach them you’re alienating a rather large amount of the population who don’t necessarily have the loudest voice.