Like changing the timings on the lights at the north end of Waterloo bridge. At rush hour, 50+ cyclists get maybe 8-9 seconds to pass through the lights at the southern end of Wellington Street as the head south toward the bridge.
Four things happen:
- The large queue of bikes on the cycle lane outside the Wellington pub impedes pedestrians and, at very busy times, covers the lower part of the road,
- Bikes crossing toward Waterloo Bridge are immediately stopped by the pedestrian lights on the other side of Strand leaving them sitting awkwardly in the junction,
- Buses turning right to cross the bridge get stuck here at the same time creating an immediate conflict as bikes swarm around the bus,
- A big bulge of bikes then surges across the pedestrian crossing as the lights change, effectively blocking one or both lanes of the bridge until the pack spreads out.
Fixing this properly should involve new bike-specific lights, cycle lanes and various other improvements to infrastructure and layout. If instead we merely wish to improve the situation enormously we could fiddle with the existing traffic lights:
- Stretch the green time on the southbound cycle light to an extravagant 25 seconds. It's controlled by a manual switch anyway so presumably it isn't part of the sequence if there are no cyclists around.
- Release east/west pedestrians either before the bike light goes green or after bikes have had time to clear the junction so that passage across the junction isn't impeded by the pedestrian crossing,
- Adjust the timings so that buses turning right onto the bridge aren't in the junction at the same time as bikes,
- If we want to be really daring, give bikes two spots in the light sequence to reduce the accumulation of bikes and speed the southbound flow.
These changes could be made quickly and with relative ease but their impact would be huge. Sometimes it really is easy to make a difference.
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