Plans to increase congestion?

[chameleon]

The Doggers wrote: Well it's interesting, all the materials used to build speed bumps etc could have filled in all the pot holes IMO. But new research shows that the braking/accelerating/braking/accelerating for speed bumps causes more carbon to be released into the atmosphere from the car. Now, as we all know, the councils are the first to step up and show how responsible they are with regards reducing their carbon footprints. Will we now see LCC come out and declare that all speed bumps are to be abolished???I wouldn't count on it.... I think it was the AA perhaps, who showed that driving in the presence of speed bumps increases cabon emissions by 30%There doesn't seem to be quite the volume being installed that there once was does there? The ones close to me have a desigh feature built in to catch busses too, a second inverted vee shaped fillet running along side the main hump next to the footpath. Of course these are easily overcome by busses and other large vehicles stradling the centre line and leaving precious little room for anything coming the other way and cyclist wisely take to the footpath!Roads which are bus routes seem to wear quickly too on each side of the humps, effectively making them somewhat more than the prescribed 100mm in places - enough to damage a lot of smaller vehicles and pain to the drivers!I'm sure it is not my imagination either, of necessity I have to negotiate these humps in a 'comfortable manner' so don't think I am hard with my car , but I have never in my driving life experienced so many problems with wheel alignment or premature wear of suspension parts as I do now. My local trusted garage agrees too.

[chameleon]

jf wrote: The ftr buses (currently only used on No.4 route) have conductors, though I doubt they're called something that simple. An effective way of speeding up the service, plus a potential deterrent against vandalism.I'd say we need more bus lanes, particularly along Wellington St, they should have widened the road out during all the redevelopment work to accommodate this. I'm sick to death of it taking 20-40mins to get from one end of this road to the other - mainly because all the traffic coming out of the 'legal quarter' - plenty of 4x4s, porsches etc. If you work that close to the station/city centre bus routes it's pretty selfish to drive.Send the buses down Whitehall rd, up a ramp onto the old Central Station viaduct and over the top of the gyratory on a flyover. Better still to do the same but with rails Are these those big puprle caterpillars which plague the smaller estate roads?I see these things trying and failing to safely negotiate corners, requiring the entire width of the road to do so, struggling to decide whether there is room to pass a parked vehicle before an oncoming car is wiped off the road by its back end, watching with hilarity when two (properly) paas through their respective traffic calming chicanes only to find they are in grid-lock and can't progress until either something dangerously reverses to make more room, or something else takes to the footpath?They seem to appear every few minutes, how many can there be? More to the point, why are there so many? Throughout the majority of the day, these things trundle their route with empty seats, bellies devoid of passengers save largely for the poor soul sitting at the front which it ate earlier to guide it on its way!I wonder, how does the environmental impact audit on green issues alone reconcile with this minimal uptake - seemingly an entire bus for a couple of car-loads of people.

[tyke bhoy]

chameleon wrote: jf wrote: The ftr buses (currently only used on No.4 route) have conductors, though I doubt they're called something that simple. <SNIPPED> Are these those big puprle caterpillars which plague the smaller estate roads?<SNIPPED>They seem to appear every few minutes, how many can there be? More to the point, why are there so many? Throughout the majority of the day, these things trundle their route with empty seats, bellies devoid of passengers save largely for the poor soul sitting at the front which it ate earlier to guide it on its way! JF the conductors are probably now a variation on the "revenue pro tection officers" that are on the local trainsChameleon yes the purple caterpiilars are the ftr (text speak for future apparently) busses. The drivers are supposedly in a completely seperate cab (shades of the old rear loading busses). They are probably every 10 to 15 minutes and given the route is Whinmoor to Pudsey which must takewell over an hour there must be at least 10 of them

[cnosni]

tyke bhoy wrote: chameleon wrote: jf wrote: The ftr buses (currently only used on No.4 route) have conductors, though I doubt they're called something that simple. <SNIPPED> Are these those big puprle caterpillars which plague the smaller estate roads?<SNIPPED>They seem to appear every few minutes, how many can there be? More to the point, why are there so many? Throughout the majority of the day, these things trundle their route with empty seats, bellies devoid of passengers save largely for the poor soul sitting at the front which it ate earlier to guide it on its way! JF the conductors are probably now a variation on the "revenue pro tection officers" that are on the local trainsChameleon yes the purple caterpiilars are the ftr (text speak for future apparently) busses. The drivers are supposedly in a completely seperate cab (shades of the old rear loading busses). They are probably every 10 to 15 minutes and given the route is Whinmoor to Pudsey which must takewell over an hour there must be at least 10 of them Looks like theyve gone back to the old days of buses.A conductor can take fares when the bus is moving,thus speeding up the journey,and making bus travel more appealing.The presence of the conductor also adds to the "safety Factor"for passengers,and indeed for the driver, that we seem to lack today on a bus journey.Just shows how shortsighted it was to lose conductors in the first place.

[rangieowner]

most conductors on the ftr are too scared or timid to tackle yobs and the drivers arn't much help either! but i suppose it doubles the ranks against the idiots of leeds..... or does it just double the possible victims of assault??

[Si]

rangieowner wrote: most conductors on the ftr are too scared or timid to tackle yobs and the drivers arn't much help either! but i suppose it doubles the ranks against the idiots of leeds..... or does it just double the possible victims of assault?? Two staff on the bus is always going to be better than one. At least one can call 3 nines while the other gets paggered! Seriously, though, the whole point of a conductor (transportation retail operative?) is so the bus can keep moving. This negates the idea of bus-lanes, freeing up the roads and getting the passengers to their destination quicker. I also believe conductors would be a deterent to most idiots. It's just a matter of recruiting the right people. Night clubs don't hire seven stone weaklings as bouncers, do they? The only reason conductors were dispensed with in the first place is so the bus company could nearly halve it's payroll costs overnight.

[jf]

I bet you'll find out that the bus company aren't actually paying the conductors, they're probably funded by Metro. It does speed things up a bit, I noticed this ten years ago when Black Prince was running vintage back-loaders on the run in from Headingley.

[LeeRatbag]

carrotol wrote: As for the ones on Belle Isle Road........which came first? the speed bumps or the minor injuries unit?Because driving up there (even slowly) isn't good with a child with a broken bone Good point (the speed bumps were there before the St Georges Centre), and one I've pondered on many occasions while watching the ambulance Volvos bouncing urgently up the road like green and white space hoppers...    

[carrotol]

Ha ha! Only just read your message Lee. I'm now picturing a Monty Python type sketch

[Reginal Perrin]

On WoodLane in Rothwell we now have, wait for it, faux speed bumps following the resurfacing. I mean they have painted the boxes with the traffic facing arrow on as well but here is no speed bump. Slightly confusing to someone who does not know the road because further down towards the church and beyond the Haigh Road "Y" junction, there are real speedbumps. I'm amazed a motocyclist has not been killed as yet.