Last night Steve Jones (UCG ranks & highways officer) & myself attended the showcase for the Tottenham Court Road regeneration project.
It was held in The Building Centre on Store Street with three or so desks occupied by Camden Council Officers, including Natasha Brown.
To say it was noisy was an understatement, with 70% of the attendees local residents, all the ones I spoke to were vehemently opposed to the scheme.
A very concerned & angry resident was grilling a youngish looking council official over the 100% increase in displaced NB traffic along Torrington Place, as with all three of them he gave polite amiable responses but not solutions to the madness proposed.
I copied these predictions based on their flawed traffic modelling, conducted in the morning rush hour rather than the evening, which would've been relevant as traffic is leaving in the evening not the morning on a S-N route such as Tottenham Court Rd.
Strange to see Southampton Row ommitted as this will be one of the worse affected roads, a car park during the day most days at present.
From this point on it was impossible not to wonder why Phil Jones @philjones79 & Sarah Hayward @sarah_Hayward weren't present as they're the two main protagonists behind Camden's utopian cycling vision.
My first question to the council official chap was how does he propose I get from Charing X Station to Eustion Station during the restricted hours?
Right at Cambridge Circus, along Shaftesbury Avenue through Princes Circus.
Hold on a second this is where the fun begins.
Depending on whether you've studied the plans you may not be aware the three lanes outside the Shaftesbury Theatre are becoming a pavement ala the moon landing strip outside the UCH.
Bloomsbury Street is to became two way, so single file traffic is going to dog leg around the capital's newest & most pointless public square.
This will cause chaos in the surrounding areas.
If you cast your mind back to 2001 some bright spark at Camden decided to recreate Hampton Court maze in their quota of streets through Covent Garden with a series of direction reversals & no through routes rendering the section between Shaftesbury Ave & Bow Street useless.
I stood outside the Crown & Anchor on Neal Street the Friday they implemented it & watched baffled motorists circumnavigate the area until one decided enough was enough & drove over the sump breaker to escape.
Within a month the restrictions were lifted & any changes reversed, as the impact on High Holborn, Shaftesbury Avenue & Southampton Row meant gridlock all day.
These proposals will no doubt have a worse effect.
All bus routes are to be removed from Gower Street & two way traffic introduced along with wider pavements & segregated cycle lanes, we will either be turning right in Torrington Place or rejoining Tottenham Court Rd at Grafton Way.
Here comes one of the biggest & most glaringly obvious flaws in the plans to date, as all NB general traffic is forced back on Tottenham Court Rd, it's going to be squeezed together with the NB buses that want to join the capital's busiest ring road or head towards Camden Town. The trouble is the top of Tottenham Court Road has recently been narrowed from six lanes to three & with the introduction of the SB bus & cycle lane that'll be reduced to one each way!
When I questioned the second of the three wise monkeys on this he was flumoxed & had no answer unsurprisingly.
My second question was what was Camden's policy on Taxis?
The CO wasn't sure.
Phil Jones is very vague when asked the very same question, in fact he seems to imply that Camden regard us as regular traffic, eg. a nuisance.
I was eventually referred to Natasha Brown who was a pleasant & friendly soul, like the previous two, young & vibrant with exactly the right image to promote this nonsense.
My first question was why are we excluded despite being allowed access to every bus lane in WC1 & NW1 other than the recently introduced contraflow outside the UCH?
Her answer was remarkable, they want to revitalise the area!
I replied there's no more prestigious way to travel than by Taxi, & reminded her of the terrible KSI rate between buses & cycles, 50% of recent cycling fatalities involve TfL buses, the fatality rate involving TfL buses & pedestrians is equally startling.
The last point I raised was the lack of proposed rank space for Tottenham Court Rd station.
The promotional blurb informs us the hub will be as busy as Heathrow airport, but we're not being allocated a rank!
Natasha Brown referred me to the rank outside the Dominion, but I had to explain people won't want to cross a busy junction & walk to a rank that they're forced into the opposite direction from where they're heading.
Her response is indictive of their ignorance towards the Taxi trade in general & as a result it comes as no surprise that we're sidelined & Camden Cycling groups have been abreast of these plans since 2011.
How many meetings have Camden Council had with the Taxi trade since 2011?
I stressed to all three of them that avoiding the roads affected during the prescribed hours is impossible, the streets affected by these changes are the heart of the capital.
If you remember the seige situation on Tottenham Court Road then you'll know the impact shutting it has on the centre.
I urge everyone to fill the online consultation in although this looks like a battle we may have already lost.
