wrote:
Conductor in Charge of.......... wrote:

Well don't forget there is a nice big chunk of the bypass taken up with
bus lanes so that will not help traffic much!

What is the point of a bus lane on the bypass? Surely the buses need
to serve the stops on the main road, which would be bypassed.
Am I missing something?

It isn't just a bus lane; it's a lane for 'priority traffic'. It can be
used by lorries and motorcycles as well as any buses that are using the
by pass. And it doesn't take away road space from other traffic as it
is an additiional northbound lane. The bypass has one lane for general
traffic in each direction and thus matches the road network to the
north and south and therefore has the same (or more) capacity as the
rest of the network.

One of the main benefits of the new road is to get the bulk of the
through traffic out of the town centre and to let it get back to being
a proper town centre. The congestion at the north end of the bypass
(for northbound vehicles) will not be cured permanently until Purley is
sorted out, as traffic often queues all the way back into Coulsdon.
However, some of the current congestion may be due to the need to fine
tune the signal timings once the traffic has settlled down into its new
patterns and everyone has got used to the road. That often takes a
couple of weeks until some drivers eventually get to understand the
layout and stopped dithering about.

Peter