Bus Lanes That Cause Congestion

[Paul O]

On one of my journeys to the office in Leeds, there is a newly developed bus lane. This is on a stretch of road, which used to be two lanes that go into one.

This has changed and the merge of the two lanes now happens 200 yards sooner and there is a bus & taxi lane for the old bit of duel carriageway for 200 yards.

At the end of the old merge there are now traffic lights whose sole job is to let buses and taxis through first. In the several years I have used this stretch at rush hour it has never once been congested.

Today, I was on this road, traffic was flowing at the speed limit a taxi pounded down the bus lane, causing the lights to immediately change for him. This caused a queue of around 5 cars. Lights changed again and, because of this queue there was now a bus pounding down the bus lane. Lights change again after letting 3 cars through and as a result, there were 10 cars queuing.

So now we have actual congestion. If the lights were not there in the first place, there would be no congestion and everyone would have got to the same place at the same time. It seems like deliberate inconvenience.

Why why why why why do they' do this? A huge waste of money, ongoing traffic light costs and an actual cau'se of congestion.

Does anyone know? There must be an actual reason?!

[GoneAnon]

For now, the lane is for buses and taxis. In a wee while they will allow politicians, councillors and public servants to use them too so they can get wherever they are going with minimal contact with the great unwashed electorate.

"Think Olympic"

[R0G]

The council have acheived what they set out to do which is to make more non public transport congestion so it temps those in that to take the alternative public transport

Leicester inner ring road has had the traffic lights deliberately set so it causes start stop a lot to try and get motorists to take the bus

[Six Fiend]

They've done the same in Bristol and are now in the process of removing part of it. There is a campaign to get rid of the whole stretch and thus reduce the congestion and POLLUTION caused by the greenie bus lane

[bob1179]

GoneAnon said:

For now, the lane is for buses and taxis. In a wee while they will allow politicians, councillors and public servants to use them too so they can get wherever they are going with minimal contact with the great unwashed electorate.

"Think Olympic"

Ahhh, the 'Soviet' way...

[RVVUNM]

Some bright spark in Bristol city council thinks it's a good idea to bring the bus stops out into the main line of trafic, utter genius, now all the traffic stops when the bus stops.

[davetibbs]

Also in Bristol, probably the same bright spark, has decided that the traffic lights that merge bus lane and normal traffic don't even need to be sensor-driven, so they're on timers. This means that even when there's no buses, you've regularly got queues of traffic building up waiting for an empty bus lane. Three examples of this in the city that I can think of.

Clearly deliberate.