Anyone actually seen a bus on a bus lane?.........not on one particular street in Oxford they hav'nt as the bus company cancelled the route 9 months ago!!. You could'nt make it up

Of course you can make it up... they've got whole government departments working on that sort of public inconvenience :(

Presumably they'll still fine you if you drive down it.

Was in Buxton the other day, where I took the wrong turn off a roundabout, shortly after which was a no entry sign meaning that I had no choice but to turn right, which then turned into a one-way bus lane. I actually went back there on foot after I'd managed to extract myself to check I hadn't been seeing things. Nope. Moving the no entry sign wouldn't have gone amiss, or perhaps a dead end symbol on the roundabout sign? Bet the traffic wardens camp out there to catch the unfamiliar!!!

Yes, but not in London (or Oxford).

IME the buses are stuck in the jam approaching the start of the bus lane, like everyone else, more often than not.

Yes, but not in London (or Oxford).

IME the buses are stuck in the jam approaching the start of the bus lane, like everyone else, more often than not.

Yup! Then buses often can't go down them as queueing drivers are too far over...

That said, I've never been able to work out if bus lanes are actually set in to speed up buses these days, or just to ensure a single-feed lane onto bottleneck roundabouts/junctions (or single lanes beyond).

Makefish - I take your point. Can you get an ex-bus and hang off the back boarding step singing "We're all going on a Summer Holiday"...

Mo

Yeah, that was rather my point, in that the buses are stuck in the choke before the bus lane, rather than getting stcuk by people half-in half-out of it.

I think there is a destinct lack of discipline where buses are concerned.

Why can't they be taught the basics.....

1. Bus stop

2. Bus sit

3. Bus beg

4. Good bus

got £100 fine through the post this week for bus lane encroachment at 1330 hrs, little traffic, etc

Ask for the evidence. There's an increasing tendency to not actually make such basic checks as "is the vehicle described by the DVLA actually the one in the photograph?" in cases backed by photo evidence.

Yeah, that was rather my point, in that the buses are stuck in the choke before the bus lane, rather than getting stcuk by people half-in half-out of it.

Quite so. I had quite strong views about "why on earth would they introduce this traffic arrangement?" until a traffic planner member explained that a lot were introduced for safety reasons (in the honest sense rather than "fee catching"), hence I mentioned bottlenecks (flow) above as a consideration.

Some of them IMO are just plain daft though (even with my enlightened thinking of safety planning). The economics are something else though when the economy is going around on jobs created for what seems to me sometimes to be quite artificial reasons.

Regards

Mo

Quite so. I had quite strong views about "why on earth would they introduce this traffic arrangement?" until a traffic planner member explained that a lot were introduced for safety reasons (in the honest sense rather than "fee catching"), hence I mentioned bottlenecks (flow) above as a consideration.

Regards

Mo

OTOH I know of one where the queue for the choke point tends to be about twice the length of the bus lane, and a large number of the bus routes using the lane need to turn right about 200 yds past a route stop, and 100yds past the end of the bus lane.

Also it's quite common to be travelling into town along that road about 45mins after the end of the evening restriction on that lane, and find someone driving down the "free" lane for no other reason than that they believe the bus lane to be 24 hrs!

Yup again on both counts.

Bus lane planning is awful in a lot of cases - like cars can't turn left without encroaching on a bus lane lane, yet other drivers already have (encroached on the bus lane), so can't get across because they are going straight on.

And yes, my son tells me "Mum, it's five past seven now," There comes a point when there are so many things to keep an eye on that it's getting more and more like a computer game around here.

Regards

Mo

I've seen one of those in Nottingham; if you're going to "not encroach on the bus lane" and make your turn, you have turn way sharper than you otherwise would for this particular junction, and that means being slower than you'd otherwise be on one of the main routes off the M1 into the city centre!

out of interest where was that steve as i can't think of an unused bus lane in oxford :confused:

out of interest where was that steve as i can't think of an unused bus lane in oxford :confused:

Don't know mate, but it was on regional news TV this morning (BBC iirc) so it may be repeated this evening!.

ahhh, i thought you actually knew the road