The plan was to give today a miss so far as blogging is
concerned but a Ms. Greene wrote to say she rather enjoys the occasional foray
into the world of inconsiderate parkers and road design idiocies, so that is the excuse for today.
My early morning trip to Bromley today revealed three Yellow
Box Junctions to
the south of the A20 which were not there a couple of days ago. This means that
there are now five Bromley Yellow Box Junctions on that journey compared to none
last October when I began the new routine. If I am forced into a Thames Water
diversion there can be three more. Bromley Council must hate motorists
even more than Bexley does.
The three new money traps have replaced Keep Clear notices at T junctions so
relatively innocuous but those at crossroads are causing unnecessarily long
queues. It used to be that one could follow the car in front with a a gap of a
couple of car lengths in the reasonable expectation that the driver would keep
moving but thanks to the money grabbers one must now leave four or five car lengths
to make absolutely sure that the preceding vehicle doesn’t stop due perhaps to
an emergency vehicle or red light jumper appearing out of nowhere.
The junction throughput is thereby halved causing huge queues at busy times for an
immeasurably small safety benefit. At least Bromley seems to restrict the size
of their boxes to what is legally justifiable but most if not all of Bexley’s are oversized.
Returning from Bromley and descending New Road soon after 06:30 I encountered a
free wheeling cyclist near Hurst Lane. He or she was not going exceptionally
fast but was wandering between the mid point of the down carriageway up to the
middle white line presumably oblivious to the almost silent electric car free
wheeling behind him. At that time of the morning the road was entirely free of
traffic so I passed him by using the full width of the road and warned of
my intention and presence by the use of the horn. For all I know he/she was dancing all over the
road because he/ she was listening to music on headphones.
He probably thought I was being aggressive and even now does not realise that
meandering across the full width of his carriageway is pretty stupid even at the crack of dawn.
You do not want to know what I think of many cyclists.
Finally, at about 06:30 this morning and again at about 19:30 this evening
the left filter at Crook Log into Brampton Road was not working which caused the
junction to Danson Road to become blocked.
Traffic light sequencing is of course the responsibility of TfL. Nuff said!