Colin Rosenstiel ) gurgled happily, sounding much like
they were saying :

Why do these problems only seem to arise with bendies and not with
conventional length buses?

Because the bendies have to use far more of the road due to their
unwieldiness.

We can agree on that - great lard butts!

Does *anybody* (except Ken) like the damn things?

Could it be that he's on a substantial kickback from EvoBus/Mercedes?

In article ,
(Tom Anderson) wrote:

On Mon, 23 May 2005, David Splett wrote:

"Richard J." wrote in message
. uk...

It least that confirms TfL's claims about quicker boarding. Is it
really a "nightmare" to have to wait a few seconds behind the bus
until it moves off again?

I ride through here on many weekday mornings,

Me too. Any other King's Cross cyclists on this froup?

Not sure what a froup is but there appear to be at least three of us in
this group. I travel from Cambridge, three days most weeks, with overnight
stays in Putney from time to time (when of course i don't pass King's
Cross).

and TBH I don't really have any safety issues with it. However, time
and again I get delayed on the approach to turning left into Judd
Street because you have one or more bendy buses stopped in the
left-hand lane which need to move rightwards and have difficulty
getting in to the traffic flow because of their length. I feel sorry
for cars in this situation - at least on a bicycle you can make up
the lost time by walking the bike past the red traffic lights.

Hang on, though - that left-turn tailback is as often as not due to a
normal bus, at least when i'm there. I think it's just a really nasty
bit of road - a bus stop, a turning, lights and however many lanes of
traffic, all in one go.

Like i said, a proper cycle route under the Town Hall would be a much
better alternative and safer for the left turn.

I'd like to see the bus stop moved to the west side of Judd street, and
an ASL installed to the east with a feeder lane running between the bus
lane (which would usually be full of buses waiting for the lights,
making it little use for cyclists) and the left-hand lane of traffic,
so that bikes can actually get into the reservoir. The traffic's dense
enough that the reservoir would usually be full of cars, though.

I'm not sure how much that would help for cyclists going straight ahead.
IME taxis especially have no respect for ASLs at all.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

"Tom Anderson" wrote in message
h.li...
Hang on, though - that left-turn tailback is as often as not due to a
normal bus, at least when i'm there. I think it's just a really nasty bit
of road - a bus stop, a turning, lights and however many lanes of traffic,
all in one go.

Yep, quite so. And the eastbound approach to York Way is pretty hurrendous
too - for the same reasons, plus the makeshift taxi drop-off point right on
the junction (I thought there was a requirement that you mustn't stop within
10 yards of a junction?).


I'd like to see the bus stop moved to the west side of Judd street, and an
ASL installed to the east with a feeder lane running between the bus lane
(which would usually be full of buses waiting for the lights, making it
little use for cyclists) and the left-hand lane of traffic, so that bikes
can actually get into the reservoir. The traffic's dense enough that the
reservoir would usually be full of cars, though.

Not sure I fancy the idea of having a lane that runs between two lanes of
traffic - certainly not without that section of road becoming significantly
wider, which I doubt would ever happen due to lack of space. But certainly
they should get rid of that bus stop, and make the left lane for left-turns
only (i.e. no buses trying to go straight ahead).

Another thing I'd like to see is a (properly-enforced!) box junction at the
south end of Pancras Road. Far too often I get held up coming out of Pancras
Road because of vehicles (almost always buses and lorries) stopped in the
middle of the junction - this causes chaos when anything trying to turn left
then blocks the whole job thanks to the way Pancras Road has now been
narrowed.

Colin Rosenstiel wrote:
In article ,
(Neil Williams) wrote:
On Mon, 23 May 2005 00:15 +0100 (BST), (Colin
Rosenstiel) wrote:
I've seen them on the back of one 73, at both corners in the back
window. Looked official. Cyclists (and the highway authorities) expect
to use the nearside of any bus lane.

To use it, yes. To undertake dangerously using it, no. If such
undertaking was to be permitted/sensible, there would be a separate
cycle lane on the nearside as there is in some locations.

I dive off under Camden Town Hall to avoid the issue of course. Why do
these problems only seem to arise with bendies and not with conventional
length buses?

IMO it's to do with traffic light timings. Bus stopped at red light,
at front of queue. You hoping to filter past it into the Advanced Stop
Line, perhaps via the feeder lane. As you start to pass, the light
goes red/amber. With an ordinary bus, you can get to the front of it
before the light goes green and the bus starts to move. With a
Bendibus you can't.

Colin McKenzie

In article ,
(Colin McKenzie) wrote:

Colin Rosenstiel wrote:
In article ,
(Neil Williams) wrote:
On Mon, 23 May 2005 00:15 +0100 (BST), (Colin
Rosenstiel) wrote:
I've seen them on the back of one 73, at both corners in the back
window. Looked official. Cyclists (and the highway authorities)
expect to use the nearside of any bus lane.

To use it, yes. To undertake dangerously using it, no. If such
undertaking was to be permitted/sensible, there would be a separate
cycle lane on the nearside as there is in some locations.

I dive off under Camden Town Hall to avoid the issue of course. Why
do these problems only seem to arise with bendies and not with
conventional length buses?

IMO it's to do with traffic light timings. Bus stopped at red light,
at front of queue. You hoping to filter past it into the Advanced Stop
Line, perhaps via the feeder lane. As you start to pass, the light
goes red/amber. With an ordinary bus, you can get to the front of it
before the light goes green and the bus starts to move. With a
Bendibus you can't.

Possibly but there's no ASL there.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On Mon, 23 May 2005, Colin Rosenstiel wrote:

In article ,
(Neil Williams) wrote:

I dive off under Camden Town Hall to avoid the issue of course. Why do
these problems only seem to arise with bendies and not with conventional
length buses?

The first time i read this, i thought 'under' was some sort of metaphor,
but today, having ridden past it over one million times, i noticed that
there actually is a route literally _underneath_ the town hall!

I was going to ask you about your route here, since all the early turns
off Euston Road i've tried land me in this bizarre
one-way/no-entry/dead-end system in the corner of the Gray's Inn and
Euston roads, and if i follow the traffic signs, i invariably end up back
on one of those roads, and this in square one. However, i tried following
my nose, going into a no-entry street (naughty, i know, but the law is an
ass and a half in this particular case) and then down a dead-end lane, and
quickly found myself on Judd street, exactly where i wanted to be. I shall
be experimentally prodding this route a bit more over the next week or so!

tom

--
The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will be live.

In article ,
(Tom Anderson) wrote:

On Mon, 23 May 2005, Colin Rosenstiel wrote:

In article ,
(Neil Williams) wrote:

I dive off under Camden Town Hall to avoid the issue of course. Why
do these problems only seem to arise with bendies and not with
conventional length buses?

The first time i read this, i thought 'under' was some sort of
metaphor, but today, having ridden past it over one million times, i
noticed that there actually is a route literally _underneath_ the town
hall!

I was going to ask you about your route here, since all the early turns
off Euston Road i've tried land me in this bizarre
one-way/no-entry/dead-end system in the corner of the Gray's Inn and
Euston roads, and if i follow the traffic signs, i invariably end up
back on one of those roads, and this in square one. However, i tried
following my nose, going into a no-entry street (naughty, i know, but
the law is an ass and a half in this particular case) and then down a
dead-end lane, and quickly found myself on Judd street, exactly where i
wanted to be. I shall be experimentally prodding this route a bit more
over the next week or so!

No need to go the wrong way down one way streets. You can cycle under the
building (I reckon as it's a footway not adjacent to a carriageway where
it's not illegal to cycle), then straight ahead past the school and right
into Hastings Street, then left into Judd Street. Put in a dropped kerb on
Euston Road and mark a cycle lane across the pavement and you'd actually
have a useful cycle facility to match one (until the CTRL works started)
in the reverse direction via Cromer St and Argyle St.

Now, what happened to Camden Council cycling officers? They still haven't
reacted to my web site response about the missing cycle lane in
Shaftesbury Avenue by High Holborn which has a sign but no paint on the
road.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

Neil Williams wrote:
On 16 May 2005 04:25:46 -0700, "Rupert Candy"
wrote:

Actually Network SouthEast went through a real fad for this type of
displays in the 90s - as well as the Networker generation of trains
already mentioned, the Class 321 and 456 got them, and there were
several 'static' installations - examples I can remember include above
the ticket windows at Liverpool St and Cambridge (both of which became
illegible very quickly), above the platform entrances at Liverpool St
(in varying states of legibility but all still there) and on some
platform indicators (Barking seems to ring a bell). On Networkers they
were replaced with LCD displays, and on Class 456s they were replaced
with old-fashioned blinds (still in use)!

I remember those. Yes they were a bit crap, but that was technology
back then.

I think it was a BR fad. Such displays also appeared in the form of
the old departure boards at Manchester Piccadilly, Manchester Airport
and Euston (and probably others), not to mention the Class 323
Regional Railways EMUs.

I found the old display at Euston more readable. But that was not the
problem, but rather that the information it displayed never matched up
to reality! That's where the money should have been spent -- there was
nothing wrong with the display but rather with the content it was being
fed. And, as of a week ago (the last time I visited Euston), it still
hasn't been sorted.

None of them lasted well, and many have been removed, including many
of the 323s which have now gained the hugely superior LEDs, and
Manchester Piccadilly which has gained a new display - astonishingly
this is another LCD one!

I think the motivation was that they looked modern. There's a good
reason why the rest of Europe remained with flipboard technology on
stations for so long.

The continent has waited for the technology to mature. You obviously
haven't seen the modern LCD displays that are now being put on trams
and buses in place of the flipdot types in parts of Europe. These have
much superior contrast to the older types and can be replaced in
sections if they do fail.

Obviously, maintenance is important as is the need to have them set
correctly in the first place, but I don't understand why the British
seem to be the only people who can't manage to do this! Either way,
I've seen both types of display with dead or stuck pixels/segments.

The advantages of an LCD display over LED is that there is much less of
a gap between the pixels, hence a brighter, clearer display. And as it
is backlit, the display can be made much brighter too. And they don't
flicker.

Referring to the use of this type of display on a bus, both LCD and LED
are very bright at night. But during the day, with the various
reflections of sunlight on the glass, LED can be difficult to read,
particularly from a distance (or from an angle), whereas LCD remains
much clearer -- I would say, as clear as the old paper technology.