Bus lanes in Liverpool are to be suspended from next months in a nine-month long trial announced by Mayor Joe Anderson.
It will mean an end to the £700,000 a year collected in fines by drivers illegally using the lanes created for the exclusive use of buses, taxis and cyclists.
Is it the end of a scheme, built at a cost of millions of pounds as part of what was the unpopular Big Dig scheme? Big Joe finally sorts out the mess caused by Big Dig.
A quicker way of
getting down Lime StreetMayor Anderson particularly cited the ludicrous bus lane prohibiting city-centre bound drivers from nipping up St John ‘s Lane.
Currently to reach Lime Street there is a lengthy tragical misery tour across the often busy mouth of the Mersey Tunnel, up New Islington, along Norton Street and down London Road.
What about heading to the city centre down Renshaw Street? Instead of being allowed to continue along Lime Street, motorists are shunted up Copperas Hill, down Skelhorne Street. There, you join the taxis and buses queuing to get into Lime Street. It causes more gridlock than it was supposed to cure.
Mayor Anderson has asked citizens what they think of the idea, and he has already mentioned it to the taxi trade and bus industry. It's hard to imagine either of those groups being pleased with the loss of their exclusivity.
Another prime example of bus lane madness is Edge Lane. Millions was spent on the Edge Lane corridor, one of the most congested routes in the city.
It seems to me most of the money was spent on giving motorists some nice trees and posh lampposts to admire as that sat in queues. As it is, half of the road for long stretches, is reserved for buses.
It would have made more sense to keep it as a dual carriageway and spend the money on creating separate bus lanes in each direction. More often than not the traffic and travel news on local radio stations announces congestion along the Edge Lane corridor.
Mount Pleasant was
turned into a bus laneThe miracle is the trees have survived despite being poisoned by the exhaust fumes from standing traffic.
County Road and Prescot Road were other routes cited by the Mayor which are often clogged by queues of traffic.
The Mayor’s plans comes after he said he had seen for himself the impact in the city of traffic movement as a result of the 24 bus lanes in use, some of them operational for 15 or 20 years.
The Mayor commented: “For a number of years since I was elected as Leader I have thought bus lanes just work for me. They are not supposed to clog up traffic. In my view most of our bus lanes are just not working properly or enhancing the flow.”
The city council will monitor the situation using cctv surveillance over the trial period to decide whether the bus lanes should return. The bus lane signs will be removed from the morning of Monday, October 21.
Further reading here
