Right hand traffic (was London Squares)
 

"Neil Williams" wrote in message
...

They need to lengthen the slip roads on service stations as well. The
worst are the oldest ones, which often have a give way right before
the slip road so you can't start accelerating until you're on it, and
most are far too short and often have tarmac in very poor condition.
Most need, IMO, to be twice as long as they currently are.

Downright dangerous, and the worst thing is that all you'd need to fix
it is a can of paint (and a slightly narrowed hard shoulder) in most
cases. I'm not familiar with J8 as I rarely go south of 13 by car,
but I suspect it's similar.

Really the answer is to provide an extra lane between junctions, so that
there is never any need to merge off a slip road.

The solution in some places has been to abolish the inside lane between on
and off ramps. Again a paint job, but needing some changed overhead signs.
--
Terry Harper, Web Co-ordinator, The Omnibus Society
75th Anniversary 2004, see http://www.omnibussoc.org/75th.htm
E-mail:
URL: http://www.terry.harper.btinternet.co.uk/

Driving on the wrong side of the road (was: London Squares)
 

On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 01:22:33 -0000, (Mark Brader) wrote:



All of the above except Gibraltar. Most places that drive on the left
are around the Indian Ocean; the exceptions, like Japan and Britain,
are island countries.

On the British Virgin Islands (not sure about the US Virgin Islands)
they drive on the left. All the cars are LHD though!

London Squares
 

In message , Ian Jelf
writes

In message , Paul Terry
writes
In message ,
Martin Underwood writes

Which countries still drive on the left?

Not Gibralter.

I was about to ask about Gibraltar earlier in this thread.

I knew that it drives on the right but did it *ever* drive on the left
and change later? Anyone know?

The answer is given in the URL I gave earlier in the thread:

Gibraltar changed to right-hand traffic in 1929 and China in 1946.

--
Paul Terry

Right hand traffic (was London Squares)
 

In message , Richard J.
writes

"Paul Terry" wrote in message
...

It looked fine here

Interesting. What font do you use to display plain text messages,

Courier New, 11 point.

and what newsreader are you using?

As it says in my headers: User-Agent: Turnpike/6.05-M

I'm using OE (normally with Quote-Fix
but native OE was just the same), and tried Courier New, Arial and Times
New Roman, with equally bad results from all three.

The difference is probably what OE does with the tabs (here I have tabs
set at the default 10-character spacing). As Tim pointed out, using tabs
in a post can have unpredictable results. My own preferred newsreader
(Turnpike) guards against this warning by the user and then converting
tabs to multiple spaces before posting.

--
Paul Terry

Right hand traffic (was London Squares)
 

"Neil Williams" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 10 Jan 2005 23:19:21 +0000, Clive Page
wrote:

They need to lengthen the slip roads on service stations as well. The
worst are the oldest ones, which often have a give way right before
the slip road so you can't start accelerating until you're on it, and
most are far too short and often have tarmac in very poor condition.
Most need, IMO, to be twice as long as they currently are.

The worst example of a short slip road is at a Little Chef service station
on the A1 somewhere on the northbound side near Doncaster. I stopped once
there for a pee and it took me about 10 minutes to join the A1 because the
slip road is so short that there isn't sufficient space to accelerate to 70
within the normal gap between cars. And that's with a reasonably powerful
car. How lorries ever manage to rejoin the A1 safely is a mystery to me.

London Squares
 

"Robert Woolley" wrote in message
...

Most squares in Westminster/Camden were converted to one-way operation
c.1968 as part of a series of traffic schemes to 'improve efficiency'.

Thanks. It looks like a whim then, because there is no way that an
efficiency problem would suddenly have appeared at every square in Central
London, and as far as traffic is concerned a square is just like any other
city block.

The clockwise nature of operation prevents right turns
both entering and leaving the square - minimuises conflcts.

.... when the roads are two way, but most of the roads are one-way.

The removal of the Shoreditch one-way system
is symbolic of this trend being reversed.

That thing was huge, though.

I emailed TfL and suggested that Baker St and Tottenham Court Road should
become two-way, for buses at least, because these are full of significant
destinations whereas Gower St or Gloucester Place contain little of
significance. They didn't reply. Another OWS that should be repealed is
Holloway.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

Driving on the wrong side of the road (was: London Squares)
 

John Rowland ) gurgled happily,
sounding much like they were saying :

Well, at least there are no longer any countries where
it varies from one part of the country to another.

You've never been down Savoy Court near Aldwych, then.

Or the council car park at the side of M&S in Rickmansworth - that's
"wrong-side-of-road" as you go in.

London Squares
 

"Martin Underwood" wrote in message
...

If London squares are configured as clockwise roundabouts,
it allows the normal "give way to traffic on your right that's
already on the roundabout" rule to be used;
otherwise a contrdictory, counter-intuitive rule
would have to be used in those circumstances:
hence there woudl be the need at every junction
to think "Is this a clockwise roundabout or an
anticlockwise one? Do I give way to traffic on
my right or on my left in this specific case".
Better to have one rule for all situations.

A square is not a roundabout. When you are entering a square, it doesn't
look like a roundabout. It looks like a T-junction between three one-way
roads, like the other million T-junctions between three one-way roads in
central London. A quick glance at a map suggests that, excluding the
squares, these junctions are split 50:50 between those where you must turn
right and those where you must turn left.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

London Squares
 

"Mait001" wrote in message
...

There might be better visibility once in the square,
curving to the left, but surely with traffic going clockwise,
entry TO the roundabout, square or whatever
is much easier than if the traffic were coming from the left,
since visibility is better to the entering driver,
sitting on the right, if traffic is also coming from the right.

That same logic is why, presumably, in countries where
traffic drives on the right, roundabouts etc. are anti-clockwise.

Not at all: it is because, when the roads are two-way, this removes
conflicting motions between cars entering and leaving at the same side road.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

London Squares
 

"Richard J." wrote in message
k...
John Rowland wrote:
Hi all,

Nearly all London squares have a clockwise one-way
system, even though when all of the roads in and out
of the square are one-way, an anti-clockwise one-way
system is superior (because drivers have
better visibility when curving to the left).

I think that's a very marginal advantage, offset by the better
view of vehicles joining the roundabout from the driver's left.

Why would traffic already on the square need to have a view of traffic
joining it, over whom they have prority?

Many squares, such as St James, have roads
which are wide enough to be two-way,
and the squares are large enough that you don't
particularly want to be forced to go the long way around
for no reason, so I don't know why they one-way at all.

The road around St James's Square is not all that wide,
but it does allow a slow car, whose driver is seeking
a parking space, to be overtaken.

I can't think of any non-square which has been made one-way just to aid
overtaking of parking cars.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes