London Banter - View Single Post

David Cantrell · January 13th 12, 10:13 AM posted to uk.transport.london

On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 11:31:23AM +0000, d wrote:
On Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:32:07 +0000
David Cantrell wrote:
Umm, for the hard-of-thinking, please consider what might cause a
vehicle to stop on a junction, and the effects that might have. Now
apply those thoughts to the two situations where, first, there is lots
of traffic, and second, where there is not.
If a vehicle stops on a junction because there's blocking traffic then its
the drivers fault for crossing in the first place.

True. Now consider why a driver might feel like he needs to do that.

In particular consider the case where he is driving a long vehicle and
needs to turn at the junction, and there are lots of short vehicles also
wishing to go the same way from some other direction.

Our bendy bus driver is waiting at the lights, they turn green, but
there isn't enough room in his desired direction for him to clear the
junction. So he waits. By the time the lights turn red there was
*some* room, but not enough, so he goes nowhere. Then the lights go
green in the other direction, and what space had formed gets filled with
other vehicles. Such as a normal bus, perhaps. Repeat ad infinitum.

If he is to move in any reasonable time, serving his passengers' needs
and not causing a massive queue to build up behind him, then he needs
to occupy the space that forms, with the unfortunate result that he
then blocks the junction. The problem arises because of a combination
of many factors:

* vehicle length;
* the amount of traffic;
* the spacing and size of junctions;
* where the long vehicles are (ie where the bus routes are);
* the number of long vehicles;
* traffic light phasing;
* no doubt some stuff I forgot

Suddenly introducing a squillion very long vehicles where previously
there were very few long vehicles without fixing some of those other
issues was stupid.

Then you're an idiot who shouldn't be trusted with a vote.
Pretty much.

yay selective quoting! Sorry, I couldn't resist.

and a reasonable track record from his time at the GLC.
Sorry, is that some kind of joke? Livingstone is the patron saint of whining
minority causes and to hell with the majority. He's a standard issue self
hating duplicitous anti english left wing baby boomer. The only good thing
about him and his worthless generation is that they'll soon be too old to
cause any more trouble and wreck society any further than they already have.

We were talking specifically about transport - the only thing that the
mayor has power over that people care about, remember. His championing
of the cause of one-legged lesbian nuclear-free whales is irrelevant.
What matters is his successful campaign, in the teeth of Tory
opposition, to do things like simplify fares and integrate different
modes of public transport.

--
David Cantrell | Reality Engineer, Ministry of Information

23.5 degrees of axial tilt is the reason for the season