Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Another accident at North Sheen level crossing

Another proof that a level crossing has no place in a dense urban setting.

A vehicle smashed a barrier at the level crossing on Manor road. The barrier was lying on the pavement tonight (on the right on the picture) and all traffic was interrupted -including for pedestrians as there's no footbridge to the South side of Manor road (see posts below).

At the time of writing, three police patrol cars and a Network Rail engineer were on site.

This is the second incident in a week, as I saw the police at the same place on Monday apparently carrying checks for motorists running through the crossing lights...

See my previous posts on the subject:

Monday, July 02, 2012

Cyclist fatalities increase in London -I squarely blame TfL for not providing adequate infrastructure

Cyclists in the City just came up with this Boris-seeking missile:  Outrageous: 33% more pedestrians killed, 60% more cyclists killed and 21% more cyclists seriously injured. Boris Johnson - your traffic smoothing policy is killing people.

Personally, I'm not sure Boris or Ken made much improvements -or to put it correctly, they slowly gave in to pressure but both failed to redesign the city to put bikes first. Because you see, this is what the Dutch have done, something that even the LCC don't really recognise.

In essence, the infrastructure is still grossly inadequate -something I've blogged about previously. In a nutshell, I think TfL has absolutely no idea whatsoever on what a "cycle track" is. I don't think any of their engineers actually cycles. Can't be. Or that would be an all time height for ineptitude.

And those sad numbers? As far as I am concerned, the fact there's been a huge increase in cycling can not play a contributing factor. Many of those cyclists are not that proficient either, nor are the drivers.

Related posts: