On Sun, 30 Mar 2014 12:45:16 +0200, Robin9
wrote:


About a year ago Boris Johnson and his henchmen caused traffic chaos in
London by staging a cycling event which closed several major roads and
crippled surrounding routes.

As a resident of Leyton, I have now received a leaflet from TfL, bearing
the
imprint "MAYOR OF LONDON", about the Tour de France Stage 3 - Monday 7
July 2014. If what this leaflet threatens is true, further traffic chaos
will be
caused.


Why it comes over here in the first place baffles me! Don't we have
enough of our own cycle races?

The clue is in the title - Tour of France. Does it invade other
countries bordering France?

In message
-septemb
er.org, at 23:36:21 on Sun, 30 Mar 2014, Clank
remarked:
So the traffic will be a bit ****ty for an afternoon.

Not really.

In Cambridge, the closures start at 5.30pm on Sunday, the core closes at
4am and whole route through Cambridgshire is pretty much locked down
from 7am.

In Essex it looks like this:

Uttlesford and Braintree: 7.30am to 4pm
Chelmsford: 8am to 5pm
Epping DC: north of the A414 closed 8am opened 5pm.
Epping DC: south of the A414 and including the A414 closed 9am opened
5pm."

Seriously, deal with it. If it really bothers you that much, take a
holiday

It would be nice if the schools had an amnesty that day for parents
taking their children out of school; after all quite a few won't have
the means to get there anyway, let alone the idea of being a spectator.

Some schools, and many businesses, are of course on the route, and will
be landlocked all day.
--
Roland Perry

In message , at 01:13:15 on
Mon, 31 Mar 2014, Paul Corfield remarked:

In Cambridge, for example, three of the four vehicular river crossings
will be shut, which would cause chaos on a normal day even without lots
of other roads closed too. I can't see a way to make the cross-City bus
routes "join up" without a two mile gap between the severed ends.

I am not intimately familiar with Cambridge's road layout or bus
network so can't comment in any sensible fashion.

Here's the closures:
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News...r-road-closure
s-announced-for-central-Cambridge-20140320143455.htm

With the only road bridge still open about 25% off to the right
(Elizabeth Way, see the next map).

Here's the bus map:
http://www.stagecoachbus.com/uploads/cambridge_mar14a4.pdf

With routes exclusively using the three bridges that are closing. The
whole area marked "City Centre" is closing.

On top of that you have the longer distance buses (including the Guided
Bus) and buses serving five P&R dotted round the perimeter. Of that lot
lot just one (A P&R from beyond the Science Park) uses the Elizabeth Way
bridge.

http://www.thebusway.info/central-cambridge.aspx

Shows the problem with using Elizabeth Way as al alternative route
because the cross-roads at Parkside/East Rd (just left of where it says
"Cambridge City Centre"[1]) is where the race starts and is closed the
longest. The area under that CCC name is a maze of Victorian Terraces
that you can't use as alternative vehicular routes.

[1] That's the name of the map, not a place; the actual centre is more
like Arts Theatre/Corn Exchange.

I watch the TDF every year and see it whizz its way through hamlets,
villages, towns and cities across France (plus Belguim / Spain / Italy
/ Switzerland as required). The thing that always strikes me is the
fact that people love to watch the race and in the larger conurbations
you can see people still managing to get around and going about their
business. I accept the UK does not have the same level of interest in
cycle racing as France does but the TDF is a spectacle and I, for one,
am happy to see it back in London.

I'm not against the race as such, I'm more against it cutting so many
large and busy places in half on a weekday.

I think people are forgetting that we have had the race in the UK a
few times before and certainly in London. I have no recollection of
mass complaints the last time the Tour was in Central London or the
ride out through South East London into Kent.

People like the London Marathon too, but that's on a Sunday.
--
Roland Perry

It would be nice if the schools had an amnesty that day for parents
taking their children out of school; after all quite a few won't have
the means to get there anyway, let alone the idea of being a
spectator.

There's a fair few parents in East London who can't afford to take
a day off work to look after their children let alone to go watch the
Tour. (I think that's one significant difference from 2007 when the time
trial was in central London on Saturday and 1st stage on Sunday.)

Prompts the thought that some commuters will end up using 2
buses where usually it's only one. And the extra GBP 1.45 will
matter to some of them. It'd be nice if TfL could do something to
address the point. Could they instruct drivers to issue "bus transfer
tickets" where routes are curtailed? (Not something I've seen them do
routinely.)
--
Robin
reply to address is (meant to be) valid

In article , (Roland Perry)
wrote:

In message


rg, at 23:36:21 on Sun, 30 Mar 2014, Clank
remarked:
So the traffic will be a bit ****ty for an afternoon.

Not really.

In Cambridge, the closures start at 5.30pm on Sunday, the core closes at
4am and whole route through Cambridgshire is pretty much locked down
from 7am.

In Essex it looks like this:

Uttlesford and Braintree: 7.30am to 4pm
Chelmsford: 8am to 5pm
Epping DC: north of the A414 closed 8am opened 5pm.
Epping DC: south of the A414 and including the A414 closed 9am opened
5pm."

Seriously, deal with it. If it really bothers you that much, take a
holiday

It would be nice if the schools had an amnesty that day for parents
taking their children out of school; after all quite a few won't have
the means to get there anyway, let alone the idea of being a
spectator.

Some schools, and many businesses, are of course on the route, and will
be landlocked all day.

FSVO "whole route". A large part of the north and east sides of the city
centre will be open.

The "landlocked" schools include my granddaughter's and that will only be
hard to access by car. On foot and by bicycle will be fine. I think it's
going to close anyway.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In message , at 04:13:55
on Mon, 31 Mar 2014, remarked:
In Cambridge, the closures start at 5.30pm on Sunday, the core closes at
4am and whole route through Cambridgshire is pretty much locked down
from 7am.

In Essex it looks like this:

Uttlesford and Braintree: 7.30am to 4pm
Chelmsford: 8am to 5pm
Epping DC: north of the A414 closed 8am opened 5pm.
Epping DC: south of the A414 and including the A414 closed 9am opened
5pm."

Seriously, deal with it. If it really bothers you that much, take a
holiday

It would be nice if the schools had an amnesty that day for parents
taking their children out of school; after all quite a few won't have
the means to get there anyway, let alone the idea of being a
spectator.

Some schools, and many businesses, are of course on the route, and will
be landlocked all day.

FSVO "whole route". A large part of the north and east sides of the city
centre will be open.

And the only vehicular route (other than the M11/A14/Fen Ditton) between
the two is via Elizabeth Way. Yes, some people will decide to walk (I
don't think no-race cycles are going to be much help) three or four
miles to go about their normal daily business, but even that's going to
be tricky with the closures.
--
Roland Perry

On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 06:11:02PM +0100, Paul Corfield wrote:

I think you are underestimating the extent to which people will wish
to view this event and that includes the schools right along the
route. The long standing tradition in France is for the passing of Le
Tour to be an excuse for a party but perhaps you'll be in the "party
pooper" category?

I fail to see what there is to celebrate about a few sweaty oiks zooming
past for a few minutes.

I am afraid I do not understand the raging contempt people have for an
event if they can't get out of their house for a few hours. The
reaction from people in Surrey is somethng I just don't get given the
ability to plan around the event months in advance and the guarantee
that anyone suffering an emergency will get the help they need.

How about the fact that, just like the Olympics, it's a pain in the
arse, and that the powers that be can't be arsed with actually talking
to the people affected, they just impose these events on their home
towns. At least the Olympics was long enough that it made sense to
avoid it by going on holiday.

I spent a week of them in north Wales, where it seems that almost all
the other tourists were Londoners escaping from the sportsgasm.

--
David Cantrell | top google result for "internet beard fetish club"

Perl: the only language that makes Welsh look acceptable

On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 09:00:26PM +0000, Clank wrote:

I invite anyone who finds this all so life-changingly inconvenient *not* to
come to live on the Isle of Man, because by then end of TT an apoplexy
induced heart attack is guaranteed ;-).

At least with the TT and the Manx GP you know that it's going to happen
every year before you move to the island.

Or maybe people should just do what almost everyone
does here and realise that life is about more than the daily grind, and an
opportunity to stand outside in the sun, drink a cold beer, meet people
you'd never normally meet, and to cap it all get to watch some entertaining
sport is worth more for your longterm wellbeing than worrying about
ambulance response times*.

Unless you're the sort of anorak who cares passionately about lap times,
there's precious little entertaining sport at the TT. You see someone go
zoom past, then you wait a bit, then you see someone else go zoom past,
then you wait a bit, repeat for several hours. That's it. You're
extremely unlikely to see any overtaking as you can only see a tiny
fraction of the whole course. If you want to see entertaining sport,
you're better off watching the bike racing at Silverstone. But even that
is better seen on TV for the same reason.

* in fairness ambulance response times are actually rather important during
TT for spectators as well as riders, if you're standing in the wrong place
at the wrong time. But the TdF is a little less deadly on the whole.

But the surrounding houses and streets are just as perilous as normal.
And cutting a large densely populated area in half is obviously going to
cause more problems than cutting a sparsely populated area in half while
leaving all the surrounding more densely populated areas intact.

Perhaps if the mayor wants to show how cycling is normal and safe, the
race could be run in normal traffic. Loads of cycling clubs do this
already.

--
David Cantrell | semi-evolved ape-thing

More people are driven insane through religious hysteria than
by drinking alcohol. -- W C Fields

On Mon, 31 Mar 2014 09:28:53 +0100, "Robin" wrote:

Prompts the thought that some commuters will end up using 2
buses where usually it's only one. And the extra GBP 1.45 will
matter to some of them. It'd be nice if TfL could do something to
address the point. Could they instruct drivers to issue "bus transfer
tickets" where routes are curtailed? (Not something I've seen them do
routinely.)

A little less than 1.45/journey with the cap (assuming a return
journey), but yes, it would be a nice move to issue transfers, or
better -- get Oyster to do it. I don't know if it's possible to
enable free transfers at all or per route, other than making half the
route free, or just letting everyone on for nothing at the first stop.

I've bored before that bus transfers are the right thing anyway. (And
no NR-LU price difference.)

Richard.

On Monday, 31 March 2014 13:16:56 UTC+1, David Cantrell wrote:
Unless you're the sort of anorak who cares passionately about lap times,

there's precious little entertaining sport at the TT. You see someone go

zoom past, then you wait a bit, then you see someone else go zoom past,

then you wait a bit, repeat for several hours. That's it. You're

extremely unlikely to see any overtaking as you can only see a tiny

fraction of the whole course. If you want to see entertaining sport,

you're better off watching the bike racing at Silverstone. But even that

is better seen on TV for the same reason.

TV doesn't give you atmosphere, a sense of event and occasion. You could say the same
about football, you'll mostly get a better view on TV but watching at home or in a stadium
are incomparable.

For the same reason people go to concerts when they could just listen to some CDs at home.