Peter Heather wrote:

"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?

Who said it was?

I said that the attitudes of modern highway planners are anti-car.

And they are.

It is a single carriageway road connecting a single
carriageway in the south to a single carriageway in the north.

So was the first stretch of the M6. And the first length of the M1.

So what?

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.

Except for more capacity. And except for the fact that the
single-carriageway bypass will never be widened to four lanes (the
minimum capacity for a modern road), even if the A23 to the south is
ever widened to four lanes.
Oh... hang on...

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.

Oh, the situation is better than it was. But not as good as it should be.

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.

A "priority" lane which merely excludes one class of traffic?

Is that supposed to be funny?

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.

I can well imagine it. And given that the badly-needed northern
extension of M23 will probably never be built, who can blame them? That
still doesn't mean that the bypass is optimal or anywhere near optimal.

And the comment about the northern junction needing work to avoid
clogging is absurd.

Not my comment.

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.

TaL may yet come to its senses under the new management.