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Spotted another of these toerags earlier tonight whilst on instructor duty again. His van was so well hidden that I didn't notice it, but a passenger did.
The van was parked up on the pavement, round a bend, at the end of the bus lane, at 6.50pm, so near the end of restrictions. All calculated to extract maximum council revenue at minimal worth to society as you can imagine.
Quiet roads, not a bus in sight. So while Britain burns, and policemen stand around doing nothing but complain and make excuses, they still have time for this.
Now I don't know what sent Raul Moat off his rocker, or what lies behind the widespread alienation of a large portion of the young people, but this kind of cynical exploitation can't help matters.
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Frankly ludicrous suggestions of a link between over zealous road traffic enforcement and a pile of scum setting fire to London aside...there is a discussion to be had on the merits of Bus Lanes.
Bus Lanes are pointless and make no mathematical sense. Department for Transports figures show approximately 4% of the commute is on the Bus with around 92% in a car. Why does 4% of the commute get 50% of the road? While 92% of the commute is jammed into one lane when they could use two? Seriously Bus Lanes make no mathematical sense all they do is add to congestion, as miles of traffic all bottled into one lane where they could use two lanes, but no, an entire lane shut off so as one bus can drive in it four times an hour, absolutely ridiculous. And they're unsafe, they give alot of Bus Drivers this sense of 'entitlement' and ive literally seen an instance with a cyclist in the Bus Lane, stopped to fix his chain or whatever and the Bus comes along the lane and without even braking just turns right into traffic to bulldozer past making the rest of the traffic ........ Cyclist wouldve gone on the path if they're wasnt a railing there stopping him. And the news heavily publicise pedestrians run down by cars but instances of traffic jam, que of traffic, pedestrian walks through, Bus comes along doing 30mph in its own lane and BANG! You dont often hear about those but they're more common than you think.
All Bus Lanes do is create congestion and jams where there never used to be any, every single road they're on is now more congested than before. And i cant help but feel thats been done on purpose as the previous Government never used logic, science or maths to backup their anti-car brigade. It slows everyone down (including Buses sometimes), uses more fuel, increases journey times, increases pollution, increases traffic jams. The only use i can see for the Bus Lane is to fine people for driving in them. I support the Mayor of London's idea to let motorcycles use the Bus Lane, but the brutal fact is the Bus Lane shouldnt be there to start with. Its purpose-made congestion to add to the 'over congestion' story to artificially justify higher fuel taxes and the road pricing idea to cut the congestion which they caused on purpose.
Please stop swearing. Boris
Edited by BorisTheSpider on 11/08/2011 at 11:16
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It did occur to me to let his tyres down, but then I'd be no better than your scum.
So what retaliation is possible against this mindless abuse of power? None that I see.
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So what retaliation is possible against this mindless abuse of power? None that I see.
Read the highway code, don't break the law and they will have no income to pay people to sit in these vans.
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Bus lanes in Liverpool - everyone just drives in them anyway.
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If the Minister for Transport Philip Hammond stays true to his word and has the M4 Bus Lane removed after the Olympics, we will then see how useless they are as traffic flow will improve on the M4 with three lanes instead of two (one of which was never used, but for the odd taxi or coach, it was empty most of the time as everyone parked in two lanes). Following that hopefully he (who seems a sensible enough chap from what ive read) will then realise all Bus Lanes of Britain need to be removed and approve a few million quids worth of black tarmac to reverse the horrific decisions by councils and local authorities to impliment ill advised Bus Lanes as a means to make car travelling worse as a means to artificially improve the standing of Public Transport*** which have only led to delays and further congestion and finally we can get Britain's roads moving again.
*** I should explain, for years people like Transport2000, Ken Livingstone etc have been blunt in their anti-car agenda, now its all well and good improving public transport and anything which achieves that will get my support, however, artificially inflating its merits by purposely going out of your way to restrict the effectiveness of the car is not the way to go about it. Imagine you're in a duel and you have a knife and your opponent has a sword, clearly you're not going to win. But rather than get your own sword you remove your opponents sword to make your knife look better than it wouldve otherwise been. All it will result in is keeping public transport at the same awful level it was 15 years ago while making driving just as pointless and bad, surely we should be investing in public transport to make it more effective? Rather than cutting off the legs of its competitors to make it look better?
Rant over.
Edited by jamie745 on 12/08/2011 at 02:06
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"M4 Bus Lane removed after the Olympics, we will then see how useless they are as traffic flow will improve on the M4 with three lanes instead of two"
I'll have to disagree with you here Jamie. Even if the bus lane is removed, the 3 lanes have to converge into 2 for the elevated section. So you will get a bottleneck, which will still see traffic building up here on approach.
The answer is to have either average speed cameras from the M25 junction, or have the gantry speed limit signs as used on parts of the M25. These would be of use to gradually reduce speed on approach to the elevated hopefully stopping the wave effect. Unless this section of the M4 is tackled in this sort of way, I'm afraid your hope of a traffic free drive up onto the elevated will be short lived.
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Defend the M4 Bus Lane again and i will kick you LOL
I didnt say it'd solve it, but nobody with sanity or a brain cell would suggest for a second the M4 Bus Lane has improved it. All its done is force drivers to sit parked up in two lanes instead of three whilst staring at an empty lane beside them which is never used. Few years ago there was a website which had a live webcam feed of that section of the M4 for anybody bored enough to check it out and there was never a bus on it! Couple of taxi's, the odd coach from time to time but no buses. Complete waste of money. New Labour's transport policy summed up in one four mile stretch of red tarmac.
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I'm not defending the bus lane on the M4. I was apposed to it's implementation as you were.
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That sounds like a good idea, Ben 10. The limit goes down to 60 at J4, so maybe 50 at J3 and then down to 40 as it is now when you get to the elevated section. Perhaps they should also put in the chevrons that have been tried elsewhere, in the hope of persuading the tailgating idiots to leave space between them and the person in front.
Excessive braking is what causes jams and accidents on motorways, much more than excessive speed.
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40?! May as well walk!
I agree with the last point about excessive braking causing alot of jams, it can be like a domino effect, when one car brakes needlessly then you end up with five miles of traffic all slowing down. In my view, the key principle in all of these things has to be smooth quick traffic flow, its all about flow. The main aim of any transport policy has to be that cars wheels are parked on the road, not moving, for the shortest time humanly possible. Stationary wheels is the enemy in my view, we dont want to see any of that, we want to see cars moving. And in my opinion the previous Government purposely went against that with needless road clutter, insane slow speed limits, bonkers bus lanes, needless speed bumps and road narrowings and not to mention all the traffic lights and crossings, all of which purposely designed to make drivers lives more difficult while benefitting nobody. Hopefully someone will get a grip of transport policy and help sort this but with Local Government given extra powers yet budget shortfalls, temptation to tax or penalise the motorist as an easy target may be greater than ever. We shall see.
The problem with the M4 specifically, a road i admittedly dont go on often i think ive been on it three times (and on none of those occasions did i see a bus in its bus lane) is the same as with alot of motorways in that it struggles to cope with the demand of the traffic in certain stretches, and where as i never claimed removing the bus lane would fix it, it has to be acknowledged on an already congested motorway, to remove one of the lanes (it mustve spent 99.9999999% of its time with no wheels on it) isnt a productive move.
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So as you admit you have rarely used this part of the M4. Well as someone who regularly uses it, in both directions, I can let you know that the lane was dominated by black cabs from Heathrow. Also in London, taxis and chauffeured limos display a green badge. These were entitled to use this lane and did. It was open to motorcycles as well. Coaches were common, though no bus route used this route obviously. I don't know where you get your statistics from, but believe me, it was in use more than 99.99% of the time. Was probably coincidence that at the rare times you were on it, there were few coaches in it.
If you hopped in a cab at Heathrow, you would have sailed past standing traffic at this point on numerous occasions. As said, the stumbling block is the reduction from 3 to 2.
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But could those Taxi's, Chauffeured limo's, motorcycles and coaches not have used a normal lane like all the rest of us and saved £2million? Those four sorts of vehicles couldve used the motorway if it was a normal lane (and guess what, so could everybody else) those four types of vehicle would still have been allowed on the road. Thats what i mean by a senseless waste of money purely designed to make the private car drivers life more difficult, thats the only thing it achieved. Yes it mightve been used but they could still have used it without wasting the money for the sole purpose of excluding cars from the lane.
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Totally agree. Why should they get an advantage. All I was trying to say was it was being used in some form. Your description painted a tumbleweed scenario, which wasn't the case. And following the announcement it was to be scrapped, it was admitted that the lane wasn't being policed by cctv traffic cameras and anyone could have driven in it with impunity.
One morning I was following a Met Police dog van. From Heston J3 to the elevated there are 3 speed cameras. The one following the one at J3 is set for 60mph. The following one before the elevated is set at 40mph. He shot past both at least 70+. I was with him until the 40 one. I slowed to 40 and he sailed through. Me thinks these two are both duds. And no, he was not on a blue light or switched them on as he passed.
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Well anybody with a brain (that includes traffic officers) will be able to see what a stupid idea the M4 Bus Lane was and if they have any integrity they'd ignore normal motorists using it as a normal lane. You know my feelings on bus lanes, i feel they purposely hold up traffic and block off road space and purposely add to congestion. Cycling campaign groups talk alot about how motorists supposedly feel 'entitlement' of the road, yet nobody has yet argued giving a bus its own lane and telling all other supposedly equal road users to bunch into another lane gives the buses a sense of entitlement? Why does a bus have its own lane or more right to be on the road than me? Why shouldnt we all be using the same road with the same entitlements? Why do people who got a taxi from heathrow have more right to be on the road than a motorist in their own car?
The M4 Bus Lane is essentially a symbol to the flawed New Labour transport policy. Its a policy of kick the car, give buses and taxi's 'priority' in a hope people will stop using their cars and use the bus, whilst at the same time not making public transport even 1% better than it was in 1997. It just really seems like the DfT was run by apes who didnt understand anything, to go '£2m to put a bus lane on the outside lane of a motorway, that sounds super' you have to be an absolute vegetable! Also they panicked and made anti-car policies based on alarmist data. There were 25 million drivers in the UK in 1997 to 33 million now, they felt in another 10 years that'd go to over 40 million. But at the same time their own census figures guessed the population would grow by half that rate, so it was demographically impossible for there to be that many. And if they really based policies on that, and spend money based on it, wow. Words fail me.
*puts down megaphone*
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When Ken Livingston came in as mayor, Transport For London (TFL) would not listen to anyone that criticised their decision making which made travelling in London horrendous for the average car user. Ken travelled everywhere by cab, bus and train. This led to the congestion zone and all these restrictions were instigated and policed by TFL. I on several occasions sent them suggestions to improve congestion in London. On all submissions they gave a standard answer saying they were managing the capital. Sorry.....they were not MANAGING anything. Monitoring yes. How on earth was this unelected board able to dictate how we get around the captial anyway. They sang to Kens's tune. Now Boris is here, he seems to be pulling their chains and doing SOME good. But he needs to rein them in further. The best way is to phase the traffic lights properly adjusting them to weight of traffic from whichever direction. At the moment it is the biggest cause of hold ups and gridlocking. And yes Jamie, scrap bus lanes. Using all the available cctv cameras in London to manage the traffic properly would go a long way to sorting a problem out. So we would not need bus lanes.But at present it is used to raise revenue. I hope Boris will sort TFL out and get them to work for us and not against. If he does, he will rubber stamp his own re-election.
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In the late 90s Ken Livingstone said 'i hate cars, if i get any powers again i'd ban the lot' proving he had an agenda and would skew any facts in order to backup his agenda and push his ideas through. Such an unreasonable left-winger isnt someone you can debate with or reason with. There was a rumour in London shortly after he took over that he was controlling traffic lights to purposely cause jams, and being green for 8 seconds and red for 3 minutes you can see why such rumours came about. His congestion charging was a disgrace, and to be allowed to impliment it when only residents of one city were eligable to vote, yet that city is just as much my capital as it is yours and i'd still be expected to pay it was disgusting. And the fact all the foreign delegates now refuse to pay it due to it being a 'tax not a service' tells its own story. All the charge did was move congestion to other less equipped roads, so guess what, he went after those as well but fortunately Boris scrapped the extension.
In fact ive just looked at the 2000 London Mayor statistics and he became Mayor from an election with a pithy 34% turnout. So if you were in the 66% and own a car, not bothering to vote cost you alot of money. And he was only first preferance in 39% of that 34% turnout. Millions of wallets hit through the wishes and votes of a tiny minority of people. Him and TFL, Transport 2000 etc are car hating institutions, and deliberately go out of their way to make car driving more difficult, despite the fact motorists are people and tax payers too. And its not based on science because taxi's, trains and buses pollute more than private cars anyway, so its all a political idealogy on how people like him thinks everyone else should live. And i absolutely hate people who make policies based on how they think life should be, rather than on whats best for the people. Politically im on the side of small Government and a general principle of leaving people alone, rather than interfearing and badgering them to live differently.
Come on Boris sort these clowns out!
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