Diversions due to badly parked cars are common in the network.
Permanent reroutings due to parking issues have been done now and then.
One day recently I've woken up to noticing a broken down vehicle by St Cloud Road/St Gothard Road causing 322 to be diverted, yet the powers that be decided it should skip the entirety of Gipsy Hill again when Park Hall Road is usable and Gipsy Road itself usable.
Before this I was very aware seeing at least one bus route on diversion due to bad parking, tends to be a single deck route. Sometimes repeat offenders, the 386 if my memory isn't hazy.
I've decided vengeance against anything to do with bad parking and highway restraints.
My original modus operandi was about the 400+ diversions regarding bad parking buses in London face every year as I've alluded to the 386 example above.
Sometimes it's a mechanical bus, so be it...
Addendum a 322 broke down causing the above... for 14 hours (the place in question being narrow, making it hard to retrieve)
My idea is:
fine bad parking £130
fine mechanical buses £33 per hour of disruption.
Roads must be clear where possible for all road users
Careless mistakes such as personal parking being negligent should be punished. You've spent time learning (albeit here is not as strict as Germany has it, hence they have better driving and can be trusted with no speed limits on Autobahn), with no incentive or requirement to relearn the basics after a period of time, thus either forgetting those basics or blatantly ignoring it as you may not mind the fine. Different problem for people who don't care about fines.
Whilst a vehicle being mechanical is outside the control, it is imperative time wasted is kept to a minimum, even in spite of the costs of tow trucks. A hopeful incentive to increase mechanical reliability if the issue is down to personnel quality/quantity.
Instead what we've done is reroute 273 away from some roads near Burnt Ash Road. No longer using Jevington Way and Senlac Road due to parked cars causing issues to buses.
If it's a frequent issue, those car owners should be fined in accordance to the disruption they've caused. Perhaps it's that one person. Then, that one person should be punished in no different a manner to having points on your license, or a monetary fine.
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Since our London Underground system predates most Health & Safety, it's taken a while to reach 50% of stations accessible by wheelchairs.
The latest few were on the Piccadilly Line's Cockfoster branch, every little helps, slow and steady progress.
Back in the 1950s with all sorts of ideas regarding planes being in use in cities on rooftop helipads and what have you, an American came up with a bus-on-stilts per se. Nowadays you have jetbridges when you get onto/off a plane, or get down the stairs and jump on a bus.
Those bus-on-stilts were amazing for accessibility. It's not just able people that travel of course. Less abled people that have difficulty walking or even require an aid in the form of a tool, a cane for example.
If you go to Montreal and a few other North American airports, you'll be pleasantly surprised to have a moving walking room pretty much.
Vastly cheaper to use good old staircases and a regular bus instead unfortunately, which is the rest of the world.
It's not as physically hard to install a bus stop. Many many bus routes that had Hail & Ride did end up with fixed stops, yet some remain.
In the case of 322 and many routes, even 450 being precarious in this front, is highway constraints.
Take for example these corners
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| 322's primary highway constraint |
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| One 450 restraint |
One way to do away with this issue is extending the double yellow lines to the point a bus can be parked as the turn (about 10 metres of space).
This will immediately resolve many of the highway constraints involving parking as you'd see on 322 and other restricted routes.
Extending double yellow lines from 2.5m long to minimum 10m long (if we're extreme, making this either a law or in the highway code/traffic regulation order).
Not just buses would benefit. Fire trucks and recycling trucks. That's about it I suppose.
Of course, simply extending double yellow lines takes time, as these quieter roads in question are owned by the borough. Which means cooperating with them, shouldn't be a problem. This would end up as a low-priority task, this means it'll be resolved late. Maybe they'd even forget about it, or just prioritise literally anything else.
That's the conundrum the 324 faces with DELs. The 224 took close to 2 years getting it's intended DLEs running fine and dandy along the 224 route. Obviously both serve different boroughs, so a relatively night-and-day difference.
Apparently Newham Council refused to pay for road alterations to Tidal Road for the 129's extension into Beckton. Henceforth it will use Dock Road instead.
Another scenario of minor issues is the N68 not capable of safely using LTs due to tight parking in Old Coulsdon. It has seen a few under Go-Ahead and Abellio but that's it.
Most operators would have a pool of conventional buses to fill in, though at what point is this a minor grievance or something worth avoiding? We now have 10.9m electric double decks as standard in the medium term, with a shorter 10.3m having less capacity than it's diesel/hybrid equivalent.
When 434 was another route to have fixed stops, the residents complained. As their houses don't have space to park in their lot, rely on roadside parking.
The goal is to end the sad truth where there's almost daily instances of bad parking, necessitating diversions on some bus routes, large or small.
So, tax the roads the buses use themselves.
Buy a house lot. Obviously have a new house built and/or offer a different location free-of-charge.
Then use that land to make a minimum 6-space car park. I take inspiration from Japan here, where streets are narrow, most cars are kei-cars (look that up), yet on-street parking is illegal. It has to be, their residential roads are too narrow to park (literally a single lane).
Would be expensive, yes. Less expensive than the £3 million or so on pantograph equipment on route 37 at Peckham and Putney that most definitely has been put to use (it has not).
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Variable speed limits?
e.g 20mph during school hours (or from 0500-2200) then 30mph during off hours
Will also have to be edited in GPS maps data etcetera
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Intelligent Speed Assist limits vehicles to 20mph on-paper
But it uses European standards so limits to 30kmh which is 18mph. Some variance means in real world conditions vehicles with ISA (all TfL buses new from 2019 onwards) travel at 17mph.
It's mandatory for new cars to have them from July 2024 onwards it seems
Of course a car owner could tamper with it, though insurance will have a field day knowing you've gone against rules and will either not insure you or have you pay a premium.
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