20 November (Part 2) - What is it that Bexley council has against cyclists? - Click any image for photo gallery (4 images)
Like
most public authorities, Bexley council’s number one priority is keeping
themselves in well paid employment at taxpayers’ expense. Hence the non-stop fiddling around with road layouts, sometimes
putting right the idiocies of a few years earlier, sometimes creating new ones.
A common theme running across many recent developments is a desire to put
cyclists at maximum risk. Narrow roads are not only a “recipe for head on
collisions” as a safety consultant once told me but they put cyclists closer to
other traffic. Even worse is an abrupt narrowing such that a momentary lack of
concentration can put a cyclist under the wheels of a bus.
One might argue
that narrow roads make pedestrian crossings safer but that theory is not always
borne out in practice. Occasionally roads have been narrowed to the point that
a central pedestrian refuge can no longer be accommodated.
Long Lane being a recent example.
But it keeps Bexley’s bureaucrats employed and FM Conway in the money. Nothing else seems to matter.
Note: The pedestrian crossing shown is of the original after the road was made narrower
and the central refuge removed. A new and similar crossing was provided a few metres to the south. Note the
re-sited pole and the tactile paving. The black patch is where the pedestrian refuge used to be.