Peter Heather wrote:
On Aug 17, 2:10 pm, "John Rowland"
wrote:
JNugent wrote:
John Rowland wrote:

The "A"23 Coulsdon bypass is a typical example of the "modern"
anti-car thinking of highway engineers in the pay of local
authorities: single carriageway (unbelievable!) and with a
significant part of the width conned-off for use only by buses (an
admission of failure before it was even opened).
There are no local buses on the bypass. I've never used the road, but I
would imagine the major beneficiaries of the "bus lane" would be taxis from
Gatwick to London. Looking athttp://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCC&cp=sjmczmgznw97&sty.. .
it seems as if there is room at the northern end to create a flat junction
which wouldn't clog.

What weird comments. Perhaps it would have been better to find out a
few facts before launching into attack. How was the road in any way
anti car? It is a single carriageway road connecting a single
carriageway in the south to a single carriageway in the north. It's
main purpose is to take the through traffic out of the town centre and
has been very successful in that. A dual carriageway wouldn't achieve
anything more than the single carriageway. Nothbound traffic will
still sometimes find congestion as they leave the area because of the
bottleneck a couple of miles to the north at Purley, but southbound
traffic now flows much more freely without having to fight its way
through the town. So car traffic is helped rather than hindered.

The 'bus lane' as you call it is in fact a 'priority traffic' lane
that is used by lorries, motorcycles, taxis and buses (there are long
distance buses on the road) and has been provided in addition to the
nothbound traffic lane and not to the detriment of cars. Incidentally,
the road was extremely popular with local people (with a high
proportion of car drivers), with huge pressure to get it built to make
Coulsdon town centre free of congestion.

And the comment about the northern junction needing work to avoid
clogging is absurd. The junction is fine and only clogs when traffic
tails back from the north, which no amount of redesign of the junction
would cure. It needs a major rethink at Purley to cure that, but the
political will (locally and at TfL) to sort that problem out seems to
have evaporated in recent years.

Peter Heather


All true except that northbound traffic has delays to get off the new
road & this is nothing to do with congestion further on.
You will see an increasing amount of traffic going north that is
starting to use the old road as it is often faster.

--
Tony the Dragon