Tuesday 23 October 2007

Bendy busses cause congestion

Bendy busses have attracted plenty of opprobrium from Londoners but I have had my own demonstration of the problems such long vehicles cause. The scene was an urban dual carriageway leading to a roundabout near Jaguar’s engineering centre in the Whitley district of Coventry. A bendy bus was in a bus stop (sensibly off the main carriageway) behind a smaller bus which meant the bendy bus could not fit into the stop and blocked the left lane of the road. To clear the busses traffic was concentrated in the right hand lane, which is where the smaller bus needed to be. Granted it wasn’t a major hold up but it took a good few minutes for there to be a large enough break in traffic for the busses to pull out. Had the bendy bus been shorter (or the bus stop longer) the problem could have been avoided.

1 comment:

David Wilkins said...

Actually, I think the problem isn't just the bendy bus but the fact that the bus stop was in a bay. This always *looks* like a sensible idea but in fact causes loads of delays as buses have to wait ages for a space in order to pull out, or have to pull out anyway when there isn't a space. I believe the policy of TfL and its predecessors is gnerally not to have these bay type bus stops for this very reason.