Street works on The Cut and Waterloo Road

It's been like tackling an army assault course for the past nine months what with Thames Water digging up the road and Conway refurbishing the street at the junction between The Cut and Waterloo Rd.

I'm sure all the aggrevation and ugliness will be forgotten when it's finished, but does anyone know when?

Don't worry Phil, it'll be finished just in time for the next lot of roadworks to start :-)

Has anyone else noticed that since someone decided to narrow the road outside The Old Vic on waterloo road there is now no longer a bus lane all the way to the junction, causing buses to have to fight to merge back into the single lane for the lights (Heading towards waterloo station) causing huge jams and adding about another 15 20 mins onto the journey time into the West End.
Surely they should be adding bus lanes in an attempt to cut car usage not taking them away, and why do we need such a wide pavement on the corner!

I agree, it's a mad change to the road, is it definitly permanent, was there consultation?

I rarely drive up that bit of road, but on the few occasions I have recently the bus drivers have almost rammed me to get into the lane, it was alarming, but I can't blame them when it's adding so much to the journey.

shoggy wrote:

Has anyone else noticed that since someone decided to narrow the road outside The Old Vic on waterloo road there is now no longer a bus lane all the way to the junction, causing buses to have to fight to merge back into the single lane for the lights (Heading towards waterloo station) causing huge jams and adding about another 15 20 mins onto the journey time into the West End.
Surely they should be adding bus lanes in an attempt to cut car usage not taking them away, and why do we need such a wide pavement on the corner!

Obviously you were not unnaturally deluded into thinking that the inception of the congestion zone, traffic light re-phasing and road narrowing and/or closing was designed to assist the flow of traffic in London. Nothing could be further from the truth it appears to me. I think the idea is that travelling by car, bus or taxi in central London is to be made so difficult and frustrating that people will give up and either walk, cycle, or emigrate.

shoggy is right. The buses take much longer to get through the lights now. I've started getting off the bus at the stop before the lights and walking. I'm normally entering Waterloo station by the time my bus gets to the front of the queue at the lights.

I too would like to know if there was a consultation with the public. I wonder who decided this was a good thing? Was the pavement so busy with people that they were stepping into the road? Were any pedestrians hurt at this intersection?

To me, everything about this is wrong, I don't own a car but cross Waterloo Road on foot every day and take the bus several times a week. The congestion caused by this "improvement" has made the road more dangerous and lengthed travel time for buses.

One could also say that the environmental impact is negative as well, in the mornings I often see a long line of buses idling down Waterloo Road. At least the pavement is getting used more as people bail from the buses to walk.

The pavement along Waterloo Road is in terrible condition with lose, broken, and crooked stones (aside from around that intersection of course). Personally I would prefer them to fix the pavements we have rather than spend the money on this expansion around the Old Vic.

It seems that our local government simply hates all vehicles and will stop at nothing to make life in central London more difficult.

I wonder how much all this work costs, particularly in these lean times.

Sorry for the rant, but traffic calming like this is a particular hot button.

Yes - what is it with all this widening of pavements? It seems to be happening all over the place - Blackfriars Bridge is probably the worst example of this. Huge wide pavement, huge wide bus lane and now there's permanent traffic jam. Horrid for pedestrians and all other users.

The queue on Waterloo Rd this morning went all the way back to St George's Circus where buses were blocking the eastbound traffic on Westminster Bridge Rd.

I also saw ambulances leaving the control centre and having to wait for gaps in the nose-to-tail traffic before they could squeeze through and get on their way.

We have to expect today to be pretty bad though, with the strike. I could barely fit my bike past the lines of traffic on The Cut, and I turned a little bit into one of those people who weave, which I never do normally, but I wanted to get out of the way of the more lunatic car drivers who clearly don't normally drive to work, or ever.

However, Lambeth can't make changes which have such an impact without asking people - they probably did ask people but in that way that no one knows about, councils are good at that.